Roberts A.D. The Cambridge History of Africa, Volume 7: from 1905 to 1940
Подождите немного. Документ загружается.
PORTUGUESE GUINEA
returns of
15
per cent, little of which was spent in the islands. But
the hothouse climate so favourable to the cocoa plant also killed
people: in 1915 -19 annual mortality among workers on Sao Tome
averaged well over
5
per cent. In 1903 the length of contracts was
formally limited to five years, but this rule was slow to take effect:
workers either died
or
were repeatedly recontracted. The high
death-rate was offset both by continued imports, which up to 1910
averaged about 4,000 each year,
and by
natural increase,
for
enough workers survived
to
produce children, and these were
automatically contracted. The scandal
of
this ' modern slavery',
and
the
methods
by
which contract labour was obtained
in
Angola, caused British and German manufacturers to boycott the
islands' cocoa in 1909. Thereafter, workers at the end of their first
tontract were offered repatriation, which several thousand
accepted each year. When imports from Angola were temporarily
banned in 1910, recruiters turned to Portuguese Guinea, the Cape
Verde islands
and
Mozambique: Mozambique supplied
8,375
workers in 1915.
After the war, the planters' fortunes declined. Contract labour
had encouraged labour-intensive methods with minimal capital
investment, yet the most productive land had already been taken
up and
the
soil's natural fertility was being exhausted, while
disease took hold of the cocoa trees. Between 1914 and 1940 the
cocoa worker's annual output fell from almost one tonne to less
than
a
quarter-tonne. At the same time the number
of
workers
declined, from nearly 40,000 in 1921 to less than 30,000 in 1940,
despite continuing imports
of
contract labour. Uneconomic
plantations were abandoned and exports fell from 28,406 tonnes
in 1921
to
6,972
in
1940; they remained around 10,000 tonnes
throughout the 1930s.
PORTUGUESE GUINEA
Portuguese Guinea (Guine) consisted
of a
scatter
of
trading
posts on the estuaries of four rivers; it was an enclave surrounded
by French territory. Up to 1913 its main export was rubber, and
thereafter groundnuts, mostly grown inland: the coastal regions
exported palm-oil, while rice surpluses were often smuggled into
Senegal. The provincial government, based
on
Bolama island,
took many years to extend its authority over the mainland. Bafata
533
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
2Sfw
if>W 24PW
17°)
^•"IPorto Grande
S§oVincente ^
o
16"N
1S°N
CAPE VERDE
I S LANDS
Tarrafal^l
Santiago/ V
c
17 Cape Verde islands and Portuguese Guinea •
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
PORTUGUESE GUINEA
was occupied
in
1909,
but in
the north-west
the
Balanta and
Mandinga, using guns sold by the Portuguese themselves, held
out until 1915; their subjection owed much
to
the ravages
of
raiders recruited by the Senegalese Abdul Injai, which persisted
until 1919. The Bissagos islands continued sporadically to refuse
to pay tax, and provoked police raids as late as 1936.
After the First World War, the government began
a
programme
of road-building, which helped to tap agricultural surpluses in the
interior while causing the decline of the old riverine towns, such
as Cacheu, Geba and Buba. The Balanta people spread into the
coastal regions, where they grew rice and came to dominate the
fragmented and dwindling Nalu, Felupe and Biafada populations.
Portuguese control prevented further expansion by the Fula, but
the nineteenth-century wars had already seen these cattle-keepers
reach the geographical limits of
a
pastoral economy. Their chiefs
remained
in
effective control
of
much
of
the interior
of
Guine,
trusted by the Portuguese and benefiting from collaboration with
the administration. Indeed, throughout the colony Fula chiefs
were imposed on non-Fula populations.
Agriculture remained almost entirely
in
African hands. The
Portuguese sought to raise productivity by distributing improved
seed, setting up model farms and building storehouses. They also
spread
the use of
carts
and
ploughs, adapting
the
primitive
agricultural technology of Portugal to Africa: an interesting and
not unintelligent approach. They also worked to improve water
supplies and suppress water-borne diseases. By 1940, the popul-
ation may have numbered around
400,000;
exports of groundnuts,
which averaged over 20,000 tonnes annually
in
the 1920s, had
risen to 28,000 tonnes. Virtually nothing, however, was done
to
introduce industries
or
assimilate Guineans
to
European civili-
sation. The influence of the Cape Verde islands continued, as in
the nineteenth century,
to be
more important than that
of
Portugal. Many poor Cape Verdeans came
to
Guine
to
plant
gardens
or
become artisans, while the administration was also
largely staffed by islanders. Only in the Bissagos islands were there
European concessionaires: German companies set up plant there
for producing coconut-oil and exploiting
the
extensive palm-
groves on the islands. These proved moderately successful until
the Second World War, but led
to
heightened tension with the
French.
535
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
PORTUGUESE AFRICA
THE CAPE VERDE ISLANDS
In many respects
the
Cape Verde islands, like Sao Tome
and
Principe, resembled the West Indies rather than Africa. They too
had been populated
by
slaves
who had
been imported
by
Portuguese planters, came from different African origins and soon
mixed with the Portuguese to develop a Creole culture which was
neither African
nor
European. Finally, although never wholly
without
a
role
in
Atlantic trade, the islanders depended
on the
often transient success
of
one
or
two export crops.
Island communities have
to
maintain
a
particularly sensitive
balance between population and resources, and periodic drought
has made precarious the survival
of
human communities
on
the
Cape Verde islands.
In
1900 they had about 150,000 inhabitants,
but there was a disastrous drought in 1905-4, as a result of which
Santiago,
the
most populous island, lost 13.6
per
cent
of its
population. Most farmland belonged
to a
few landowners, and
former peasants had been reduced to sharecropping; they mostly
lived
off
maize, cassava
and
beans. There were
few
export
possibilities. In 1905 Senegal imposed a prohibitive tariff on Cape
Verde salt;
the
local coffee was
of
high quality
but
extremely
vulnerable
to
drought; and the most dependable export was the
barbados
nut
(purgeira),
used
in
animal feed and soap-making;
Lisbon manufacturers prevented the islands from starting their
own soap industry. After 1910 climatic conditions improved and
the population rose, but
it
fell again
in the
1920s. Meanwhile
a
major service trade was in decline: in the nineteenth century Porto
Grande on Sao Vincente had been used as a bunkering station by
ships bound
for
South America,
but by the
1920s
the
world's
shipping increasingly used Dakar and Las Palmas. The bunkering
business
had
been monopolised
by
British coal-merchants;
the
Portuguese blamed their high prices for the loss of trade and there
were occasional anti-British riots.
21
Many people emigrated: most
went
to
the USA, but some went
on
contract
to
Sao Tome and
others
to
French territory and Guine; there was also
a
seasonal
migration of Cape Verdeans to raise a crop in Guine on temporary
plots.
21
Carnegie
to
Foreign Office, enclosing report
by
vice-consul
in St
Vincent,
26
September 1925, FO 571/11094; Petition
for
protection signed by British community,
St Vincent, 28 August 1920, FO 371/5492.•
536
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
SPANISH EQUATORIAL GUINEA
The depression
of the
1930s meant that
the
islanders were
largely denied entry
to the
USA, while
it
increased
the
number
of those who returned home. Relief works mitigated the effects
of drought in 1931 and 1936, and over the decade the population
rose again,
to
reach over 180,000
in
1940. Annual exports
of
salt
exceeded 10,000 tons throughout the 1920s and 1930s, though the
European market
for
barbados nut collapsed. Some employment
was provided after 1936
by
Salazar's construction
of
a concent-
ration camp
at
Tarrafal, while the French built a flying-boat base
in the islands. The census
of
1940 recorded only 47
per
cent
of
the working population as engaged in agriculture, and a mere 4.7
per cent
in
commerce, fishing, mining and industry; 42 per cent
were said
to be in
domestic service.
For all their poverty, the islands came to play an important role
within the Portuguese empire. Those who returned from the USA
spread
the
influence
of
Protestant sects, negro culture
and the
English language.
The
closing-off
of
emigration
to
America
prompted Cape Verdeans
to
turn instead
to
Guine and Angola,
where
at
least some mingled with the tiny
civilii(ado
bourgeoisie,
with significant long-term political results.
SPANISH EQUATORIAL GUINEA
After a brief burst
of
interest
at
the turn
of
the century, Spanish
public opinion and politicians turned away from Africa and forgot
their colonies. The humiliating loss of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the
Philippines in 1898 led some Spaniards to hope for compensation
in Africa. But Spain had neglected to occupy the large area in the
Bight
of
Biafra
to
which
it
had historical rights, and the French
had been busily expanding their occupation
at
the expense
of
the
area claimed by Spain. The treaty of Paris in 1900, which also fixed
the boundaries
of
the Spanish Sahara, left Spain with
the
little
enclave
of
Rio Muni,
a
mere 26,000 sq.
km out of
the 300,000
stretching east
to the
Ubangi river which
the
Spaniards
had
dreamed
of. In
addition, they still held
the
islands
of
Fernando
Po (Bioko) and Annobon (Pagalu)
in
the Gulf
of
Guinea, ceded
by Portugal
in
1778.
The
three territories together made
up
Equatorial Guinea, the only colony
of
any real value that Spain
retained after the defeat
of
1898. Their combined population
by
the 1930s was reckoned
at
around 170,000.
537
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
SPANISH EQUATORIAL GUINEA
o«
I
I
Land over 1000metres
0
f
i3o miles
18 Spanish Guinea
Fernando Po, with its fertile and well-watered volcanic soil and
natural harbours,
was the
economic heartland
of
Equatorial
Guinea,
but it
lagged
far
behind
the
neighbouring Portuguese
islands
of Sao
Tome
and
Principe
in the
opening years
of the
century. The Portuguese colony was the world's largest producer
of cocoa before the First World War, with exports reaching a peak
of 35,000 metric tons
in
1913, compared
to
just over 4,000 tons
for Equatorial Guinea. However, production rose steadily
in
Fernando
Po in
the inter-war years, while Sao Tome entered into
a prolonged
crisis.
By the
1930s,
the Spanish colony was producing
some 14,000 metric tons
of
cocoa
a
year compared
to
only about
10,000 tons
in the
Portuguese islands.
A
small proportion
of
Equatorial Guinea's cocoa came from the mainland enclave of Rio
538
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
SPANISH EQUATORIAL GUINEA
Muni, but the staple export of the enclave was timber. Wild rubber
was approximately as valuable an export
as
timber before the First
World War, and when rubber exports collapsed in the inter-war
years coffee replaced
it
as the enclave's second export product.
Fernando Po was responsible for over 90 per cent of the colony's
exports by value in 1912, but this proportion slowly declined. The
tiny isolated island of Annobon, less fertile than Fernando Po and
with no natural harbours, contributed little
or
nothing
to
the
colonial economy.
The greatest constraint to economic development was a chronic
shortage of
labour.
The indigenous Bubi population of Fernando
Po,
pushed into the interior
of
the island and decimated
by
alcoholic addiction, venereal disease, smallpox
and
sleeping-
sickness, refused to work on plantations. They were prepared to
labour on well-paid public works in decent conditions, but their
own little cocoa farms gave them
a
considerable degree
of
autonomy. Moreover, the Bubi were protected from the demands
of the planters from the late nineteenth century by the Spanish
Claretian missionaries, who were very influential in the colony and
eventually organised
the
Bubi into little mission theocracies
reminiscent of the famous Jesuit Reductions of Paraguay. Catholic
penetration was furthered by two small insurrections, in 1898 and
1910,
which led to the Bubi being disarmed in 1917 and left them
dependent on the missionaries.
Rio Muni was the obvious alternative source
of
labour, but
prior to the 1920s the Spaniards only controlled the coast and main
navigable waterways.
The
coastal peoples, who
had
grown
wealthy as trading intermediaries in the slave, rubber and ivory
trades, were generally unwilling to labour in plantations, but took
on skilled employment and acted
as
labour recruiters
in the
interior. The
fiercely
independent Fang people of the interior only
consented to work in Fernando Po
if
they were certain of good
conditions, but
it
is likely that they sold slaves who were then
shipped off as indentured labourers. By 1912 there were nearly
4,000 Rio Muni labourers
in
Fernando Po and nearly 3,000
of
other West African origins.
West African labour was drawn mainly from the Windward
coast,
but the
British authorities banned
all
recruitment
for
Fernando Po in their territories
in
1900. Liberia thus remained
the chief source of West African labour, in conditions which drew
539
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
SPANISH EQUATORIAL GUINEA
frequent accusations that it was a disguised kind of slave-trade.
The Liberian government was desperate for money, as a growing
financial crisis threatened the survival of the country as an
independent nation, and the local Liberian authorities connived
at the widespread evasion of labour-recruiting regulations. In
1914,
Spain and Liberia signed an agreement to reorganise the
movement of labour and defuse British criticism. Contracts were
to be for a maximum of two years and a minimum of one year,
repatriation was guaranteed, and there was to be joint supervision
of all the clauses covering wages and conditions by officials of both
states.
Between 1914 and 1930, an estimated 10,000 Liberians went
to Fernando Po under this agreement, at an estimated cost per
head to the planters of £1 a month, plus the cost of passages.
However, the whole arrangement came under increasing criticism
in Liberia, whose financial position improved somewhat in the
1920s, and recruiting was restricted and finally stopped altogether
in 1930.
With the ending of Liberian imports, the cocoa planters of
Fernando Po turned to Rio Muni, Cameroun and Nigeria. It was
no coincidence that campaigns were mounted to subdue the Fang
in the 1920s, at the time that Liberia was beginning to cut back
on recruitment. There were garrisons of the colonial guard
throughout the enclave by 1926, and the whole colony was
considered 'pacified' by 1935. However, Rio Muni had a small
population, officially put at a little over 100,000 in the 1930s, and
escape over the frontiers into Cameroun or Gabon was very easy.
Moreover, the timber companies needed growing amounts of
labour, and the spread of coffee cultivation offered an alternative
means of paying taxes. Fernando Po thus continued to suffer from
labour shortages. The French only briefly permitted recruitment
in Cameroun, and the main source of labour came to be Ibo
smuggled in African canoes from Nigeria. The British rather
reluctantly made this current of labour migration legal in 1942,
in order to control it. It was this agreement which really permitted
Fernando Po to make the most of its fertile soil and become one
of Africa's most productive agricultural areas after the Second
World War.
At the turn of the century, the plantations of Fernando Po were
largely in the hands of a black Creole elite, later known as
Fernandinos. The British had settled some 2,000 Sierra Leoneans
540
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
SPANISH EQUATORIAL GUINEA
and freed slaves during their brief occupation of the island in the
early nineteenth century, and a small current of immigration from
West Africa and the West Indies continued after the departure of
the British. To this core of settlers were added Cubans, Filipinos
and Spaniards of various colours deported for political or other
crimes, as well as some assisted settlers. The mortality among
these unfortunate people was exceedingly high, but those who
survived swelled the ranks of the Fernandinos. There was also a
trickle of immigration from the neighbouring Portuguese islands,
in the form of escaped slaves and prospective planters. Although
a few of the Fernandinos were Catholic and Spanish-speaking,
about nine-tenths of them were Protestant and English-speaking
on the eve of the First World War, and pidgin English was the
lingua franca of the island. The Sierra Leoneans were particularly
well placed as planters while labour recruitment on the Windward
coast continued, for they kept family and other connections there
and could easily arrange labour supplies.
From the opening years of the twentieth century, the Fernan-
dinos were put on the defensive by a new generation of Spanish
immigrants. New land regulations in 1904-5 favoured Spaniards,
and most of the great planters of later years arrived in the islands
from Spain following these new regulations. The Liberian labour
agreement of 1914 favoured wealthy men with ready access to the
state,
and the shift in labour supplies from Liberia to Rio Muni
increased this advantage. The colonial authorities were extremely
suspicious of the 'fifth column' of black anglophone heretics, and
backed their countrymen whenever possible. However, it also
appears that many of the Fernandinos fell into debt, particularly
when cocoa prices fell after the First World War, and lost their
land to their commercial creditors. By 1930, there were some
21,000 hectares of land in European hands and 18,000 belonging
to the Fernandinos. In 1940, it was estimated that only 20 per cent
of the colony's cocoa production came from African land, nearly
all of it in the hands of Fernandinos.
In addition to individual Spanish planters, there were two large
Catalan concerns, which fused in 1926. ALENA was a timber
company, based in Tarragona, which was active in Rio Muni from
the late nineteenth century and was renowned for its harsh
treatment of labour. The Companfa Trasatlantica was a Barcelona
shipping company, founded in
18 5 o
for the Cuban trade, which
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
SPANISH EQUATORIAL GUINEA
began operating in Rio Muni in 1887. Differential tariffs ensured
that the great bulk
of
cocoa exported from Equatorial Guinea
went to Barcelona, and the Companfa Trasatlantica had a virtual
monopoly
on
shipping
to
and from Spain. The company also
invested in cocoa plantations and pioneered cattle-raising for the
local market in the high pastures of the interior of Fernando Po.
The only bank in the colony in the 1930s, the Banco Exterior de
Espafia, was linked
to the
ALENA-Trasatlantica group. The
Catalan orientation to Spanish colonialism was reinforced by the
fact that most Spanish settlers came from Catalonia, and
the
traders of the capital city, Santa Isabel, depended on credit from
Barcelona firms.
Spanish policy towards Africans was inspired by French and
Portuguese models, and
in
1928 the distinction between native
Africans and 'emancipated' Africans was legally enshrined. The
great majority of
emancipados
were Fernandinos, but in 1912 1,300
Bubi were classified
as
'civilised',
and
missionary influence
increasingly drew the Bubi into the position of
emancipados.
There
were also many mulattos
in
the population, as very few
of
the
2,000 or so settlers in the 1930s brought their wives with them.
Race relations were reputed to be much more relaxed in Fernando
Po than
on
the mainland, owing
to
the existence
of a
sizeable
emancipado
community on the island which hardly existed in Rio
Muni.
Policy towards the native majority was always highly paternal-
istic,
at least in intention. In 1901, a colonial 'guardian'
(curador)
was appointed by Madrid, directly responsible to the metropolitan
government and charged with protecting the indigenous Africans.
The
curador
dealt mainly with labour issues, occasionally clashing
with other officials, and banned the sale of alcohol
to
Africans.
In 1904, communal African lands were declared to be inalienable,
and the native councils first set up in 1880 were reorganised. Each
native council was to be headed by a government delegate, with
two assistants, one or even both of whom could be Africans.
In
1908 the colonial guard was created, with white officers and black
troops. All the indications are that the
curador
and native councils
were dominated by the planter interests and did little to protect
their wards from exploitation. The
curador
was thus replaced
in
1928 by the
patronato de
indigenas,
a committee headed by the vicar
apostolic, with eight official members
and
four chosen from
among the settlers.
542
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008