Edmund Dene Morel, The Black Mans Burden (New York, B.W.

Huebsch, 1920),
232-41.
http://books.google.com/books?id=RygbAAAAYAAJ
In elaborating what should be, in effect, a charter of rights for the peoples of tropical
Africa, a League of Nations would begin by frankly recognizing that the driving force
which has conducted European States to undertake the experiment of direct
government of the tropical African region, is neither altruistic nor sentimental, but
economic. The League would then nd itself confronted (as a League) with the problem
which confronts every European State now ruling in tropical Africa, and the public
conscience within every such State. Can this economic purpose of Europe in tropical
Africa be worked out in such a way that the native peoples shall benet from its
accomplishment? To put 1 the matter even more baldly, is it possible that Europe can
become possessed of the natural riches of the African tropics and of the riches which
the soil of tropical Africa can produce through the labour of tropical man, without
degrading, enslaving and, in the ultimate resort, probably destroying the peoples of
tropical Africa? The reply is in the afrmative provided that native rights in land are
preserved, and provided the natives are given the requisite facilities for cultivating and
exploiting the raw material which it is Europe's economic purpose to secure. The
League, if convinced of the accuracy of this afrmative assertion, would then regard the
preservation of this fundamental native right as the rst step in the elaboration of its
charter.
This would be an easy matter in a considerable area of the tropical region, where policy
has either been directed to the preservation of the land rights of the native population
in Nigeria, for exampleor where policy has not been directed to usurping them. But
what should be the attitude of the League where this fundamental right has been set
aside; where the governing European administration has allocated great stretches of
country to syndicates and concessionaires; where the natives, divorced from their land
and unable, in consequence, to improve their material conditions, or even to sustain
themselves, have already lost their economic independence and with it their freedom;
where they have become the wage slaves of alien white men without any means of
safeguarding their interests even as wage slaves; where, in short, capitalistic
exploitation of the native population is in full swing?
Should the League take up the position that the evil has gone too far to be arrested, and
content itself with devising means whereby the wage slaves can be protected against
the worst abuses of alien exploitation? Or should the League recommend the cancelling
of the private interests which have been created, with or without compensation to the
beneciariesand a reversion to sound policy? The difculty is a very real one. While it
may be possible for a League in which the most important European States actually
governing tropical Africa will presumably enjoy a dominating position for many years to
come, to elaborate a general charter of native rights; it, is a very different proposition to
expect these States, which in any case would play the chief part in the drawing-up of
such a charter, to sweep away, or to buy out, the vested interests established, with their
sanction, in particular African dependencies. Nor is this the only point to be considered.
Where the destruction of native rights in land has taken place and the native has
become a helot, the edice of native society has crumbled and cannot be repaired.
Native life has been broken up. A community of free African landowners, cultivators and
farmers has been converted into a landless proletariat, dependent upon alien enterprise
for the wherewithal to feed and clothe itself. New conditions have been set up: certain
consequences have resulted. The central mischief is done, and cannot be undone.
But that is no reason why an evil political and economic system should be allowed to
grow, any more than a human disease. If it cannot be extirpated, its progress can be
checked. Ifto take a concrete casea portion of the land of British East Africa has
been handed over to European syndicates, that is no reason why the process should be
continued. The remainder of the country can still be preserved for the native population.
Nor is this all. Even where the evil has become implanted, it can be assailed indirectly.
Labour legslation can be devised of such a character as will make it impossible for
coercive inuences to be brought to bear upon the native population in the unalienated
areas, to give their labour to the corporations exploiting the alienated areas. It can also
be made impossible for these corporations, or individuals, to prevent dispossessed
natives from settling in the unalienated areas. The individual native in British East Africa
inhabiting an alienated area can be placed by law in the position to acquire land in the
unalienated areas sufcient in extent to support his family, and to enable him to cultivate
valuable crops for sale and export; in which he, and the native population on the
unalienated areas, should receive every encouragement and help from the
Administration. Should these measures eventually bring about a state of affairs which
would decrease the prots of the corporations or concessionaires by adding to the
costliness of labour, this result need only perturb those who take a short view of the part
which these tropical African dependencies ought to play in the economy of the world.
And this, for reasons which have been indirectly touched upon already, and to which I
now return.
***
As I have pointed out, the problem of tropical Africa is at bottom the problem of so
moulding and directing an economic relation which is inevitable, that it shall not entail
degradation and destruction upon the African peoples, and disgrace to Europe. What
public opinion in the European States, which are governing States in Africa, must insist
upon; what all the decent and humane inuences in internationalism must exact, is that
the economic purpose of Europe in the African tropics shall be carried out in such a way
as will permit of the moral responsibilities of Europe for a righteous government of
tropical Africa being fullled. In much of the most populous, and intrinsically the richest
portion of the African tropics, the development of this economic purpose is proceeding
on lines which do not substantially conict with just and wise government. On the other
hand, this is not the case in a considerable portion of the tropical region. Government is
not there performing its proper function of trustee for, and protector of, the native
peoples. Its power is exerted on behalf of enterprises which make for the exploitation
and impoverishment of the native population. The welfare of the natives is subordinated
to the exigencies of the alien capitalist. The evil must be attacked, nationally and
internationally, without cessation.
But there is special need to impress upon those who are" already won over to the moral
side of the question, or whose traditions and outlook would naturally induce them to
take that side, that the attack will not be successful in the ultimate resort if it connes
itself merely to insistence upon the moral issue. It must face the economic issue. It must
form a clear conception of what is sound, and what is unsound in the methods of
economic development in these regions. It must persuade by economic reasoning as
well as by appeals to ethical and humanitarian instincts and motives. It must be in a
position to demonstrate that what is morally right is also economically sound; that what
is morally wrong is also economically unsound. It must seek to convince the public mind
that the economic purpose of Europe in tropical Africa is served by the individual and
collective prosperity of the native population, not by its impoverishment; by the
existence of native communities of agriculturists and abori-culturists producing for their
own prot, not for the benet of the shareholders of white syndicates and
concessionaires. It must be at great pains to show that the policy of encouraging forms
of European enterprise which convert African labour into a dividend-producing force for
the individual European, is sheer economic waste of the potentialities of African labour:
whereas the full potentialities of African labour can be secured for the economic
purpose of Europe by encouraging forms of European enterprise in which the African
gures, not as a hired servant, but as co-operator and partner.
The task is not an easy one, because all the tendencies of our European capitalist
system incline to make the test of "prosperity" of a tropical African territory depend upon
the number of European enterprises therein established which are acquiring prots out
of the direct employment of African labour. And curiously enough there is a type of
European Socialist mind that unconsciously reinforces these tendencies, of course from
an entirely different standpoint. This type of mind visualises the mass of African
humanity in terms of a dogmatic economic theory.
It would stand aside from any effort to preserve the native races from capitalistic
exploitation, which it regards as a necessary and inevitable episode in human
development. It would do nothing to safeguard native institutions, which it looks upon
as archaic and reactionary. It would apply the same processes to all races (it refuses,
apparently, to admit any other form of civilisation than the European socialised State) at
whatever stage of cultural development. It would cheerfully, and with the purest of
motives, assist at the destruction of African institutions, and assent to the conversion of
African cultivators and farmers into wage-slaves, sublimely indifferent to the social
havoc and misery thereby inicted upon millions of living Africans and Africans yet
unborn, content with the thought that in the fullness of time the wage-slaves would
themselves evolve the Socialist African State. The only comment that I would venture to
make upon the contentions of this school, is that the form of Socialism which Russia
has evolved, and which, I suppose, is the most advanced form of European Socialism
now available to study, approximates closely to the social conditions of an advanced
tropical African community. The spinal column of both is a system of land tenure which
ensures to the population a large measure of economic independence in tropical
Africa the degree of economic independence is necessarily greater; while the corporate
character which the Soviet system imparts to all economic activities is substantially
identical with the African social system. It seems a strange anomaly to laud advanced
Socialism in Europe, and to assent to its destruction in tropical Africa.
***
The ordinary business man's view of "prosperity" in relation to an African dependency,
referred to above, is thoroughly fallacious. The true prosperity of a tropical African
dependency is to be judged by altogether different standards, even from the standpoint
we are now examining, that of Europe's utilitarian purpose in this part of the world.
Flourishing towns and villages surrounded by well-kept elds, plantations and live stock
(you may see thousands such in Nigeria): a happy and expanding population, self-
supporting in the matter of foodstuffs, carrying on a brisk trade with its neighbours,
cultivating products for export, becoming steadily wealthier, and in consequenceand
here the European economic purpose comes inproviding an increasingly large market
for the absorption of the manufactures of Europe, and an increasing revenue to the local
European Government, which that Government, if it is in the hands of men of vision and
commonsense, will spend upon improving means of communication and locomotion,
water supply and sanitation, forestry and agricultural improvements: this is "prosperity."
Take a concrete case. When I visited Nigeria a year or two before the war, some eight
hundred villages in one particular district had been taught by the Forestry Department to
start plantations of rubber. At that time the potential wealth of these native communities
in their rubber plantations amounted already to several hundreds of thousands of
pounds, and was, of course, increasing year by year. In due course they would gather
and prepare that rubber. They would sell it to European merchants, and they would buy
with the equivalent the merchandise of Europe. They would be purchasers of European
goods on the basis of the intrinsic value of the article their labour had produced. A party
of European capitalists came along one ne day, saw these ourishing native
plantations, and proposed to the Administration that they should buy them up. They
were told that the land belonged to the natives, not to the British Government, and that
the plantations were the property of the owners of the land. Now what would have
happened if these gentlemen had had their way, from the standpoint of the economic
relationship of these particular native communities with Europe? Simply this instead
of being purchasers of European goods to the extent represented by the intrinsic value
of the article they produced, they would have sunk to the level of wage earners on
plantations henceforth owned by European concessionaires. Their purchasing capacity
in terms of European goods would therefore have enormously declined, and the trade of
the dependency would have suffered in the same proportion.
The economic purpose of Europe in tropical Africa, properly understood and judiciously
directed, requires a free African labour, proting from its activities, working under the
stimulus which comes of the knowledge that the material reward of its labour is assured
to it. That economic purpose requires that the African producer of raw material for the
world's markets shall be encouraged to produce, by the consciousness that he will
obtain the equivalent not only for his labour, but for the value of the article his labour has
produced. It requires that the industrial classes of Europe shall nd in tropical Africa an
ever-widening market for the absorption of their output. This cannot be if African labour
is exhausted and impoverished, because if for no other reason African purchasing
capacity in the goods of Europe is thereby diminished. Other consequences are
numerous and obvious: but that one is immediate.
Now consider the picture of a tropical African dependencytake British East Africa as
typicalwhere policy is directed to ensuring that a dozen or so European
concessionaires shall earn large dividends. The rst call upon the labour of the country
is for work on the plantations and estates of these concessionaires. As a result native
villages decay. The population is unable to feed itself. The Administration has to import
foodstuffs at great expense. The people sink immeasurably in the scale of their self-
respect. They are reduced to a proletariat with no rights. There is no horizon before
them: no honourable ambition to full. Their capacities are arrested. Their condition
becomes one of stagnancy. Add to this all the abuses incidental to labour thus
economically forced, with their attendant discontents developing into sporadic
outbreaks; the notorious inefciency of African labour under such circumstances; the
decrease in vitality consequent upon the introduction of an unnatural existence; the
lowered birth rate; the increase in prostitution and venereal disease. Here is no
constructive policy, but a destructive one. Nothing is being built up, except the
ephemeral fortunes of a few white men. The future, viewed from the broad standpoint of
both European and African interests, is being undermined all the time.
The folly of the conception is palpable. If it be true in an economic sense, as true it is,
that the " asset " of a tropical African dependency is primarily, the native; a system
which enfeebles and impoverishes the native is suicidal, always from the same
utilitarian point of view. That is one side of the case. The other side is that in enfeebling
and impoverishing the African, you are destroying the major economic interest of
Europe in the African. Every penny taken from the national wealth of a European State
for the purpose of bolstering up a system of that kind in tropical Africa, is ung into the
sea. Every European nation which is a governing State in tropical Africa and which
tolerates a system of that kind in its dependencies, is allowing the major national
interest to be sacriced for the temporary enrichment of a restricted number of
individuals. And, from the point of view of economics, the national interest is also the
international interest.
Such, broadly, are some of the most important considerations which one might hope
would guide a League of Nations approaching the problem of tropical African
Government with the desire of promoting an international policy for this vast region, at
once intelligent and humane. The foundation upon which it would work would be that
the material prosperity of the native was the key-note to administrative success: that the
exploitation of African labour for sectional European interests was an economic error;
that the native communities of 1 tropical Africa need- protection, in the major European
interest and to ensure the progressive development and expansion of the economic
purpose of Europe, from the positive evils of a capitalist system which, bad for all
Europe, is fatal for Africa.
Apart from these fundamental issues it would be the object of the League to ensure the
"open door" for commercial enterprise throughout the tropical region of Africa. This
would involve absolute trading equality for all nations within the tropical area, and the
consequent disappearance of the differential tariff and the territorial concessionaire. The
subjects of the various Powers adhering to the League would enjoy complete equality in
all commercial transactions. The European States, members of the League, that were
also governing States in tropical Africa, would be free to make their own scal
arrangements; they would not be free to differentiate in favour of their nationalsa
fertile cause of endless international friction in the past. It would be very desirable that
the principle of the "open door" should be broadened so as to include capital enterprises
such as the construction of railways, harbour works, dredging of rivers and kindred
matters. In these cases the permanent tropical African Commission, referred to in the
next paragraphs, could be empowered to form a special department which would act as
an impartial adjudicating body for the placing of contracts for public works of this
character on a system of open international tender.
There would be created under the auspices of the League a tropical African
Commission in permanent session at the headquarters of the League, employing
special commissions which would be continuously engaged in visiting the tropical
African dependencies and reporting upon conditions. Such a Commission would be a
centre for the collation of all material relevant to the affairs of tropical Africa, for the
classication and study of all data bearing upon tropical African ethnology, social
customs, philology, economic resourcesactual and potential. It would receive and
consider the reports of its travelling commissioners, and make recommendations to the
League. It would be open to receive all reports, grievances and representations from
whomsoever emanating, within the limits of its jurisdiction. The ofcial papers of each
Dependency would be regularly communicated to it by the respective Administrations
reports of Residents on political affairs, reports of Forestry Departments, Agricultural
Departments, Native Affairs Departments, Treasuries, and so on. It would form, in effect,
a permanent court of inquiry, investigation and scientic research. It would itself issue
periodical reports and remain in close touch with universities, educational and
agricultural institutions, labour organisations, scientic societies, and Chambers of
commerce in every country adhering to the League. Through its instrumentality a link
would be forged between the African tropics and the economic activities and
requirements of the world of labour, commerce and affairs in Europe and elsewhere. It
would help to create an international conscience with regard to tropical Africa which
does not now exist, and would be the vehicle through which that aroused conscience
would nd expression.
Were the problem of tropical African government approached in the manner indicated
in this chapter, all that is good in European endeavour throughout that great region of
the globe would be conrmed and consolidated, and would have free scope for
increased usefulness. The men of vision and of humanitarian instincts, the men who
regard the administration of these races as a high duty and a high privilege, would be
encouraged by the thought that they were supported by progressive and coalesced
international inuences: that an organised international moral force had been created
upon which they could rely. A halt would be called to manifold errors and injustices
which the absence of an international mechanism making for just and wise government
and ensuring international publicity for the affairs of the tropical Continent, had rendered
possible in the past. It would be perceived that the duty and the legitimate interests of
Europe in tropical Africa lay on the. same path. It would come to be regarded not only
as | right in essence, but expedient in practice, that government in tropical Africa should
aim at establishing the well-being, self-respect and intellectual advancement of the
native population. Philanthropic effort directed to the welfare and progress of the tropical
African peoples would everywhere be strengthened, and the public conscience in the
various European States governing in tropical Africa could be more easily invoked for
the remedy and removal of abuses.
And out of this awakening and purifying process would grow a wider concept of the
latent mental powers and spiritual potentialities of these African peoples, and a keener
realisation of the great and noble task which unselsh effort could undertake among
them. We should look back with horror and shame at a past in which the African,
arbitrarily sundered from his land, his social and family life, ground out a life of servile
toil, with no beacon of hope, no incentive to rise, no other stimulus to labour than
starvation and the lash. For the rst time in the history of contact between the white
races and the black, the black man's burden would be lifted from the shoulders which
for ve hundred years have bent beneath its weight.