officers. A British naval officer, Commander B. Whitehouse,
mapped the entire coastdine of Victoria Nyanza. Government
and railway surveys apart, the chief points of interest for
explorers during 1904-1906 were the Ruwenzori range and the
connexion of the basin of Lake Chad with the Niger and Congo
systems. Lieut. Boyd Alexander was the leader of a party which
during the years named surveyed Lake Chad and a considerable
part of eastern Nigeria, returning to England via the Shari,
the Ubangi and the Nile. Two members of the party, Capt.
Claud Alexander and Capt. G. B. Gosling, died during the
expedition. The Ruwenzori Mountains proved a great source of
attraction. Sir H. H. Johnston had in 1900 ascended beyond
the snow-line to 14,800 ft.; in 1903 Dr J. J. David had reached
from the west to a height he believed to exceed 16,000 ft.;
and in the same year Capt. T. T. Behrens, of the Anglo-German
Uganda boundary commission, fixed the highest summit at 16,619
ft. During 1904-1906 some half-dozen expeditions were at work
in the region. That of the duke of the Abruzzi was the most
successful. In the summer of 1906 the duke or members of his
party climbed all the highest peaks, none of which reaches 17,000
ft., and determined the main lines of the watershed. Major
Powell-Cotton, a British officer who had previously done good
work in Abyssinia and British East Africa, spent 1905-1906 in a
detailed examination of the Lado enclave and the country west of
Ruwenzori and Albert and Albert Edward lakes. This expedition
was specially fruitful in additions to zoological knowledge.
Archaeological research, stimulated by the reports of Thomas
Shaw, British consular chaplain at Algiers in 1719- 1731,
by James Bruce's exploration, 1765-1767, of the ruins in
Barbary, and by the French conquest of Egypt in 1798,
has been systematically carried out in North Africa since
the middle of the 19th century (see EGYPT and AFRICA,
ROMAN.) In South Africa the first thorough examination of
the ruins in Rhodesia was made in 1905, when Randall-MacIver
demonstrated that the great Zimbabwe and similar buildings
were of medieval or post-medieval origin. (F. R. C.)
VII. SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CONDITIONS
The eagerness with which the nations of western Europe
partitioned Africa between them was due, as has been seen,
more to the necessities of commerce than to mere land
hunger. Yet, except in the north and south temperate
regions, the commercial intercourse of the continent with
the rest of the world had been until the closing years of the
19th century of insignificant proportions. In addition to
slaves, furnished by the continent from the earliest times,
a certain amount of gold and ivory was exported from the
tropical regions, but no other product supplied the material
for a flourishing trade with those parts. To their Asiatic
and European invaders the Africans indeed owed many creature
comforts--the introduction of maize, rice, the sugar cane,
the orange, the lemon and the lime, cloves, tobacco and many
other vegetable products, the camel, the horse and other
animals--but invaluable to Africa as were these gifts they led
to little development of commerce. The continent continued
in virtual isolation from the great trade movements of the
Causes of isolation.
world, an isolation due not so much to its poverty in natural
resources, as to the special circumstances which likewise
caused so large a part of the continent to remain so long a
terra incognita. The principal drawbacks may be summarized
as: (1) the absence of means of communication with the
interior; (2) the unhealthiness of the coast-lands; (3) the
small productive activity of the natives; (4) the effects of
the slave trade in discouraging legitimate commerce. None
of these causes is necessarily permanent, that most difficult
to remove being the third; the negro races finding the means
of existence easy have little incentive to toil. The first
drawback has almost disappeared, and the building of railways
and the placing of steamers on the rivers and lakes--a work
continually progressing --renders it year by year easier for
producer and consumer to come together. As to the second
drawback, while the coast-lands in the tropics will always
remain comparatively unhealthy, improved sanitation and the
destruction of the malarial mosquito have rendered tolerable to
Europeans regions formerly notorious for their deadly climate.
At various periods since the partition of the continent began,
united action has been taken by the powers of Europe in the
interests of African trade. The Berlin conference of 1884-1885
decreed freedom of navigation and trade on the Congo and the
Niger, and the Anglo-Portuguese treaty of 1891 secured like
privileges for the Zambezi. The Berlin conference likewise
enacted that over a wide area of Central Africa--the conventional
basin of the Congo--there should be complete freedom of trade,
a freedom which later on was held to be infringed in the Congo
State and French Congo by the granting to various companies
proprietary rights in the disposal of the product of the
soil. More important in their effect on the economic condition
of the continent than the steps taken to ensure freedom
of trade were the measures concerted by the powers for the
suppression of the slave trade. The British government had
for long borne the greater part of the burden of combating
the slave trade on the east coast of Africa and in the Indian
Ocean, but the changed conditions which resulted from the
appearance of other European powers in Africa induced Lord
Salisbury, then foreign secretary, to address, in the autumn of
1888, an invitation to the king of the Belgians to take the
initiative in inviting a conference of the powers at Brussels
to concert measures for ``the gradual suppression of the
Suppression of the slave trade.
slave trade on the continent of Africa, and the immediate
closing of all the external markets which it still supplies.''
The conference assembled in November 1889, and on the 2nd of
July 1890 a general act was signed subject to the ratification
of the various governments represented, ratification taking
place subsequently at different dates, and in the case of
France with certain reservations. The general act began with
a declaration of the means which the powers were of opinion
might be most effectually adopted for ``putting an end to the
crimes and devastations engendered by the traffic in African
slaves, protecting effectively the aboriginal populations of
Africa, and ensuring for that vast continent the benefits of
peace and civilization.'' It proceeded to lay down certain
rules and regulations of a practical character on the lines
suggested. The act covers a wide field, and includes no
fewer than a hundred separate articles. It established
a zone ``between the 20th parallel of north latitude, and
the 22nd parallel of south latitude, and extending westward
to the Atlantic and eastward to the Indian Ocean and its
dependencies, comprising the islands adjacent to the coast as
far as 100 nautical miles from the shore,'' within which the
importation of firearms and ammunition was forbidden except
in certain specified cases, and within which also the powers
undertook either to prohibit altogether the importation and
manufacture of spirituous liquors, or to impose duties not
below an agreed-on minimum.1 An elaborate series of rules
was framed for the prevention of the transit of slaves by
sea, the conditions on which European powers were to grant
to natives the right to fly the flag of the protecting power,
and regulating the procedure connected with the right of
search on vessels flying a foreign flag. The Brussels Act
was in effect a joint declaration by the signatory powers of
their joint and several responsibility towards the African
native, and notwithstanding the fact that many of its articles
have proved difficult, if not impossible, of enforcement,
the solemn engagement taken by Europe in the face of the
world has undoubtedly exercised a material influence on the
action of several of the powers. Moreover, with the increase
of means of communication and the extension of effective
European control, slave-raiding in the interior was largely
checked and inter-tribal wars prevented, the natives being
thus given security in the pursuit of trade and agriculture.
Other important factors in the economic as well as the social
conditions of Africa are the advance in civilization made
by the natives in several regions and the increase of the
areas found suitable for white colonization. The advance in
civilization among the natives, exemplified by the granting to
them of political rights in such countries as Algeria and Cape
Colony, leads directly to increased commercial activity; and
commerce increases in a much greater degree when new countries--
e.g. Rhodesia and British East Africa--become the homes of
Europeans. Finally, in reviewing the chief factors which govern
the commercial development of the continent, note must be taken
of the sparsity of the population over the greater part of
Africa, and the efforts made to supplement the insufficient and
often ineffective native labour by the introduction of Asiatic
labourers in various districts--of Indian coolies in Natal and
elsewhere, and of Chinese for the gold mines of the Transvaal.
The resources of Africa may be considered under the head
of: (1) jungle products; (2) cultivated products; (3) animal
Chief economic resources.
products; (4) minerals. Of the first named the most important
are india-rubber and palm-oil. which in tropical Africa supply by
far the largest items in the export list. The rubber-producing
plants are found throughout the whole tropical belt, and the
most important are creepers of the order Apocynaceae, especially
various species of Landolphia (with which genus Vahea is now
united). In East Africa Landolphia kirkii (Dyer) supplies
the largest amount, though various other species are known.
Forms of apparently wider distribution are L. hendelotii,
which is found in the Bahr-el-Ghazal, and extends right
across the continent to Senegambia; and L. (formerly Vahea)
comorensis, which, including its variety L. florida, has
the widest distribution of all the species, occurring in Upper
and Lower Guinea, the whole of Central Africa, the east coast,
the Comoro Islands and Madagascar. In parts of East Africa
Clitandra orienitalis is a valuable rubber vine. In Lagos
and elsewhere rubber is produced by the apocynaceous tree,
Funtumia elastica, and in West Africa generally by various
species of Ficus, some species of which are also found in East
Africa. The rubber produced is somewhat inferior to that of
South America, but this is largely due to careless methods of
preparation. The great destruction of vines brought about
by native methods of collection much reduced the supply in
some districts, and rendered it necessary to take steps to
preserve and cultivate the rubber-yielding plants. This
has been done in many districts with usually encouraging
results. Experiments have been made in the introduction of
South American rubber plants, but opinions differ as to the
prospects of success, as the plants in question seem to demand
very definite conditions of soil and climate. The second
product, palm-oil, is derived from a much more limited area
than rubber, for although the oil palm is found throughout the
greater part of West Africa, from 10 deg. N. to 10 deg. S., the great
bulk of the export comes from the coast districts at the head
