or Cross river, in a straight line towards the centre of the
town of Yola, on the Benue river. Yola itself, with a radius
Germany in west Central Africa.
of some 3 m., was left in the British sphere, and the German
boundary followed the circle eastwards from the point of
intersection as it neared Yola until it met the Benue river.
From that point it crossed the river to the intersection of
the 13th degree of longitude with the 10th degree of north
latitude, and then made direct for a point on the southern
shore of Lake Chad ``situated 35 minutes east of the meridian
of Kuka.'' By this agreement the British government withdrew
from a considerable section of the upper waters of the
Benue with which the Royal Niger Company had entered into
relations. The limit of Germany's possible extension
eastwards was fixed at the basin of the river Shari, and
Darfur, Kordofan and the Bahr-el-Ghazal were to be excluded
from her sphere of influence. The object of Great Britain
in making the sacrifice she did was two-fold. By satisfying
Germany's desire for a part of Lake Chad a check was put on
French designs on the Benue region, while by recognizing the
central Sudan (Wadai, &c.) in the German sphere, a barrier
was interposed to the advance of France from the Congo to the
Nile. This last object was not attained, inasmuch as Germany
in coming to terms with France as to the southern and eastern
limits of Cameroon abandoned her claims to the central
Sudan. She had already, on the 24th of December 1885, signed
a protocol with France fixing her southern frontier, where it
was coterminous with the French Congo colony. But to the east
German explorers were crossing the track of French explorers
from the northern bank of the Ubangi, and the need for an
agreement was obvious. Accordingly, on the 4th of February
1894, a protocol--which, some weeks later, was confirmed by
a convention-- was signed at Berlin, by which France accepted
the presence of Germany on Lake Chad as a fait accompli and
effected the best bargain she could by making the left bank
of the Shari river, from its outlet into Lake Chad to the
10th parallel of north latitude, the eastern limit of German
extension. From this point the boundary line went due west
some 230 m., then turned south, and with various indentations
joined the south-eastern frontier, which had been slightly
extended so as to give Germany access to the Sanga river--
a tributary of the Congo. Thus, early in 1894, the German
Cameroon colony had reached fairly definite limits. In 1908
another convention, modifying the frontier, gave Germany
a larger share of the Sanga, while France, among other
advantages, gained the left bank of the Shari to 10 deg. 40' N.
The German Togoland settlements occupy a narrow strip of
the Guinea coast, some 35 m. only in length, wedged in
between the British Gold Coast and French Dahomey. At first
France was inclined to dispute Germany's claims to Little
Popo and Porto Seguro; but in December 1885 the French
government acknowledged the German protectorate over these
Exclusion of Germany from the Niger.
places, and the boundary between French and German territory,
which runs north from the coast to the 11th decree of
latitude, was laid down by the Franco-German convention
of the 12th of July 1897. The fixing of the 11th parallel
as the northern boundary of German expansion towards the
interior was not accomplished without some sacrifice of German
ambitions. Having secured an opening on Lake Chad for her
Cameroon colony, Germany was anxious to obtain a footing on
the middle Niger for Togoland. German expeditions reached
Gando, one of the tributary states of the Sokoto empire on
the middle Niger, and, notwithstanding the existence of prior
treaties with Great Britain, sought to conclude agreements
with the sultan of that country. But this German ambition
conflicted both with the British and the French designs in
West Africa, and eventually Germany had to be content with
the 11th parallel as her northern frontier. On the west
the Togoland frontier on the coast was fixed in July 1886
by British and German commissioners at 1 deg. 10' E. longitude,
and its extension towards the interior laid down for a short
distance. A curious feature in the history of its prolongation
was the establishment in 1888 of a neutral zone wherein neither
power was to seek to acquire protectorates nor exclusive
influence. It was not until November 1899 that, as part of
the Samoa settlement, this neutral zone was partitioned between
the two powers and the frontier extended to the 11th parallel.
The story of the struggle between France and Great Britain
in West Africa may roughly be divided into two sections, the
Anglo-French rivalry in West Africa.
first dealing with the Coast colonies, the second dealing with
the struggle for the middle Niger and Lake Chad. As regards
the Coast colonies, France was wholly successful in her design
of isolating all Great Britain's separate possessions in that
region, and of securing for herself undisputed possession of
the upper Niger and of the countries lying within the great
bend of that river. When the British government awoke to
the consciousness of what was at stake France had obtained
too great a start. French governors of the Senegal had
succeeded, before the Berlin Conference, in establishing forts
on the upper Niger, and the advantage thus gained was steadily
pursued. Every winter season French posts were pushed farther
and farther along the river, or in the vast regions watered
by the southern tributaries of the Senegal and Niger rivers.
This ceaseless activity met with its reward. Great Britain
found herself compelled to acknowledge accomplished facts and
to conclude agreements with France, which left her colonies
mere coast patches, with a very limited extension towards the
interior. On the 10th of August 1889 an agreement was signed
by which the Gambia colony and protectorate was confined to
a narrow strip of territory on both banks of the river for
about 200 m. from the sea. In June 1882 and in August 1889
provisional agreements were made with France fixing the western
and northern limits of Sierra Leone, and commissioners were
appointed to trace the line of demarcation agreed upon by the two
governments. But the commissioners failed to agree, and on the
21st of January 1895 a fresh agreement was made, the boundary
being subsequently traced by a mixed commission. Sierra Leone,
as now definitely constituted, has a coast-line of about 180
m. and a maximum extension towards the interior of some 200 m.
At the date of the Berlin conference the present colonies
of Southern Nigeria and the Gold Coast constituted a single
colony under the title of the Gold Coast colony, but on the
13th of January 1886 the territory comprised under that title
was erected into two separate colonies--Lagos and the Gold
Coast (the name of the former being changed in February 1906
to the colony of Southern Nigeria). The coast limits of the
new Gold Coast colony were declared to extend from 5 deg. W.
to 2 deg. E., but these limits were subsequently curtailed by
agreements with France and Germany. The arrangements that
fixed the eastern frontier of the Gold Coast colony and its
hinterland have already been stated in connexion with German
Togoland. On the western frontier it marches with the French
colony of the Ivory Coast, and in July 1893, after an unsuccessful
attempt to achieve the same end by an agreement concluded in
1889, the frontier was defined from the neighbourhood of the
Tano lagoon and river of the same name, to the 9th degree of
north latitude. In August 1896, following the destruction of
the Ashanti power and the deportation of King Prempeh, as a
result of the second Ashanti campaign, a British protectorate
was declared over the whole of the Ashanti territories and
a resident was installed at Kumasi. But no northern limit
had been fixed by the 1893 agreement beyond the 9th parallel,
and the countries to the north--Gurunsi (Grusi), Mossi and
Gurma---were entered from all sides by rival British, French
and German expeditions. The conflicting claims established
by these rival expeditions may, however, best be considered in
connexion with the struggle for supremacy on the middle Niger
and in the Chad region, to which it is now necessary to turn.
A few days before the meeting of the Berlin conference Sir
George Goldie had succeeded in buying up all the French
interests on the lower Niger. The British company's influence
had at that date been extended by treaties with the native
chiefs up the main Niger stream to its junction with the
Benue, and some distance along this latter river But the
great Fula states of the central Sudan were still outside
European influence, and this fact did not escape attention in
Germany. German merchants had been settled for some years
on the coast, and one of them, E. R. Flegel, had displayed
great interest in, and activity on, the river. He recognized
that in the densely populated states of the middle Niger,
Sokoto and Gando, and in Bornu to the west of Lake Chad, there
was a magnificent field for Germany's new-born colonizing
zeal. The German African Company14 and the German Colonial
Society listened eagerly to Flegel's proposals, and in April
1885 he left Berlin on a mission to the Fula states of Sokoto and
Gando. But it was impossible to keep his intentions entirely
secret, and the (British) National African Company had no
desire to see the French rivals, whom they had with so much
difficulty dislodged from the river, replaced by the even
more troublesome German. Accordingly Joseph Thomson, the
young Scottish explorer, was sent out to the Niger, and had
the satisfaction of concluding on the 1st of June 1885 a
treaty with ``Umoru, King of the Mussulmans of the Sudan and
Sultan of Sokoto,'' which practically secured the whole of
the trading rights and the control of the sultan's foreign
relations to the British company. Thomson concluded a similar
treaty with the sultan of Gando, so as to provide against the
possibility of its being alleged that Gando was an independent
state and not subject to the suzerainty of the sultan of
Sokoto. As Thomson descended the river with his treaties, he
met Flegel going up the river, with bundles of German flags
and presents for the chiefs. The German government continued
its efforts to secure a footing on the lower Niger until
the fall of Prince Bismarck from power in March 1890, when
opposition ceased, and on the failure of the half-hearted
attempt made later to establish relations with Gando from
Togoland, Germany dropped out of the competition for the
The Niger Company granted a charter.
western Sudan and left the field to France and Great Britain.
After its first great success the National African Company
renewed its efforts to obtain a charter from the British
government, and on the 10th of July 1886 the charter was
granted, and the company became ``The Royal Niger Company,
chartered and limited.'' In June of the previous year a British
protectorate had been proclaimed Over the whole of the coast
from the Rio del Rey to the Lagos frontier, and as already
stated, on the 13th of January 1886 the Lagos settlements had
been separated from the Gold Coast and erected into a separate
colony. It may be convenient to state here that the western
boundary of Lagos with French territory (Dahomey) was determined
in the Anglo-French agreement of the 10th of August 1889, ``as
far as the 9th degree of north latitude, where it shall stop.''
