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 find 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 benefit 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 affirmative 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 affirmative assertion, would then regard the preservation of this fundamental native right as the first 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 populationin 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 beneficiariesand a reversion to sound policy? The difficulty 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 edifice 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 influences 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 sufficient 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 profits 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 influences 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 fulfilled. 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 conflict 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 confines 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 profit, not for the benefit 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 figures, 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 profits 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 inflicted 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 fields, 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 fine day, saw these flourishing 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, profiting 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 find 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 first 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 fulfil. 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 inefficiency 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 flung 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 sacrificed 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 fiscal 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 classification 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 official 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 scientific research. It would itself issue periodical reports and remain in close touch with universities, educational and agricultural institutions, labour organisations, scientific 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 find 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 confirmed 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 influences: 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 unselfish 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 first 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 five hundred years have bent beneath its weight.