Chapter 2 

THE PASSING OF THE IMPERIAL COMPANY

"He" (the African)" is a very shrewd judge of men. ... He may, and in many instances he does, begin by crediting the European with magical power, but in the long run it is such virtues as kindliness, humanity, courage, justice, truthfulness, cheerfulness, that he looks for and admires. It is a circumstance of great value to their successors that, over a vast area, the first Europeans exhibited those virtues in an eminent degree."

The Golden Stool, by Edwin W. Smith, p. 74.

NO one who is interested in the early history of British East Africa and Uganda should fail to read the admirable account of the commercial and humanitarian venture of the Imperial British East Africa Company which is contained in Mr. P. L. McDermott's book published in 1895 and entitled " British East Africa or Ibea, a history of the formation and work of the Imperial British East Africa Company, compiled with the authority of the Directors from official documents and the records of the Company." 1 ((1 Chapman & Hall, Ltd., 1895).) Reference must occur occasionally in the following pages to incidents and effects of the Company's occupation, but, apart from these and the following brief outline of important events, the reader is referred to the above-mentioned work for the Company's authorized history of its undertaking.

In the year 1807 Seyyid Sultan, an Arabian ruler over the Island of Zanzibar in the Indian Ocean and the kingdom of Oman in Arabia, died, and was succeeded by his son Seyyid Said. In 1840 the latter established his court and capital at Zanzibar, leaving relatives to represent him at Muscat and in other provinces. He died at sea in 1856, and a dispute as to the succession between his sons Thuwainy and Majid was referred by them to Lord Canning, the Governor-General of India, for settlement. The award in 1861 declared the Zanzibar 'and Arabian possessions to be mutually independent, and confirmed Majid as ruler of Zanzibar. The State of Oman was to receive an annual tribute of about £8,000, payable at Muscat, by way of compensation for the abandonment by Thuwainy of any claims on the African dominions vested in his brother Majid, and also for the purposes of equalizing to some extent the revenues of the two treasuries. This sum was payable by the Sultan of Zanzibar, though, on his subsequently defaulting, it was actually paid for a term of years by the Government of India, in the interests of peace, which was considered essential to the development of the already nourishing trade of British Indians on the coast of Africa.

Seyyid Majid was succeeded in 1870 by his brother Barghash. In 1872 the British India Steam Navigation Company opened sailings to Zanzibar from London and Bombay. In 1877 its chairman, Sir William Mackinnon, received an offer from Seyyid Barghash of a concession under lease for seventy years of the whole of the dominions of Zanzibar, including all rights of sovereignty. The Foreign Office, however, could promise no support to a company desiring to take advantage of this offer, and it was declined.

Between 1880 and 1885 German explorers and travellers made their appearance on the East Coast, and on February 17th, 1885, the Emperor gave a charter of protection to a Society for German Colonization " for the possessions which these travellers purported to have obtained by treaty from native rulers. More than one delicate situation arose in the relations of the British and German Governments, but on November ist, 1886, an agreement was reached as to the limits of the Sultan of Zanzibar's sovereignty and the delimitation of " spheres of influence" for Britain and Germany in East Africa. The Sultan of Zanzibar accepted the arrangement on December 4th, 1886, and the French Government signified its concurrence four days later.

On May 25th, 1887, Seyyid Barghash, the Sultan of Zanzibar, granted a concession to a " British East African Association " for a period of fifty years, delegating to the Association all the Sultan's powers in his territory on the mainland to a point as far north as Kipini at the mouth of the Tana River, including the right of levying taxes and disposing of public lands. All public, judicial or Government powers and functions were to be exercised only in the name and under the authority of the Sultan of Zanzibar. During 1887 twenty-one treaties were concluded with tribes in the interior, by which the Association obtained sovereign rights over inland areas as remote as 200 miles from the coast. On April 18th, 1888, the Imperial British East Africa Company took form with a capital of £240,000, for the purposes, among other objects, of acquiring territory from native chiefs in the British sphere of influence by treaty, by purchase or otherwise, and of exercising all the rights pertaining to sovereignty over acquired districts. All was done with the understanding that " the hearty co-operation and support of Her Majesty's Government should be accorded."  A Royal Charter of Incorporation was granted by Queen Victoria on September 3rd, 1888. Article 12 of the Charter laid down that:-

" In the administration of Justice by the Company to the people of its territories or to any of the inhabitants thereof, careful regard shall always be had to the customs and laws of the class or tribe or nation to which the parties respectively belong, especially with regard to the holding, possession, transfer and disposition of lands and goods, and testate or intestate succession thereto. . . ."

The first British court was instituted at Mombasa in 1890.

By an agreement penned on July 2nd, 1887, the " hinterland " doctrine was established. This declared that, in the case of Powers having possessions on the coast, each should have the exclusive right to administer and control the regions of the interior lying behind its portion of the coast-line, and that no Power should intrude in the rear of another. A German filibustering expedition, which was officially disowned by the German Government, cleverly ran a blockade maintained on the British coast-line, landed near Witu on June 15th, 1889, and pushed into the interior upon what was nothing less than a campaign of bloodshed and robbery. It was under Dr. Karl Peters, who has written a wonderfully frank account1 (1 New Light on Dark Africa.(Ward Lock & Co., 1891.) of his " victories " and achievements. The Company felt bound to secure the interests of Great Britain in the lake regions of the far interior lying behind its coast-line. It received strong expressions of public and Governmental opinion to that effect. The Company's expedition to Uganda under Mr. (now Sir Frederick) Jackson had some astonishing experiences with the German expedition of Dr. Karl Peters, but finally, by an Anglo-German Agreement of July ist, 1890, Uganda was definitely assigned to the British sphere of influence.

The Imperial Company had been involved in extremely heavy expenditure in consolidating British influence so far in the interior at so early a date in its career. It had incurred further heavy expenditure in the liberation of slaves at the coast, by way of compensation to their Arab masters. It cost upwards of £250 to deliver one ton of goods at the Company's outpost in Uganda, and it became clear to the Directors that without more economical methods of transport than the prevailing one of head-porterage by caravans, the drain of maintaining effective control of an area so far in the interior would, in the long run, embarrass, if not cripple, them. It was therefore urged by the Company that Government should guarantee interest upon the capital required to build a railway into the interior. Lord Salisbury supported the proposal as an effective measure for suppressing the Slave Trade. Her Majesty's Government was now under an obligation, by the Brussels Conference of July 2nd, 1890, to take all possible steps to suppress the Slave Trade at its source. Government had for long been maintaining a Naval Squadron on the East Coast of Africa at a cost of some £100,000 annually. This certainly made slave-running a highly dangerous trade on the high seas, but, on an average, only about 250 slaves were rescued annually from captured slave dhows. Government therefore proposed to guarantee the interest on a paid-up capital of a million and a quarter pounds, being an instalment of the cost of building a railway from Mombasa to the Eastern shores of the Victoria Nyanza. The Treasury, however, hesitated to propose the necessary measure in the House of Commons, where the Liberal Opposition was now supposed to be antagonistic. A proposal was substituted that Government should, for the time being, only bear a proportion, not exceeding £20,000, of the cost of a preliminary survey for a line of railway. With such a limited instalment of Government support in a measure which was at least as much a concern of the Government as of the Company, the Court of Directors felt compelled, on July 16th, 1891, to order the withdrawal of their outposts in Uganda, as a temporary measure, and to make Dagoreti, in the Kikiiyu country, some 320 miles from the coast, the extreme North-Western limit of the Company's effective occupation for the time being. The upkeep of Captain Lugard's force in Uganda was costing the Company nearly £40,000 a year.   It had repelled an invasion of that country by fanatical Mahomedan tribes, and had enforced peace and mutual toleration upon rival sections of Christian converts, between which there had been open war.1 (1 The Rise of our East African Empire, by Sir Frederick Lugard: The Foundation of British East Africa, by Professor J. W. Gregory, D.Sc, F.R.S.)   The mutual hostility of Protestant and Catholic sects was embittered by the fear that the supremacy of one or the other might mean the establishment of English or French political influence respectively, with some handicap to the subsequent missionary activities of the losing side.  As a matter of fact the Liberal Opposition on July 17th, 1891, objected even to the discussion of a vote for a partial grant-in-aid towards the survey for a railway. The Company's determination to withdraw from Uganda was published, and made a sensation in Great Britain.

The Times pointed out that such a withdrawal would be nothing short of a national calamity. With the delimitation of " spheres of influence " which the Liberal Government of 1886 had effected in consultation with other Powers, the Company's agents had become, in the eyes of all the natives of Central Africa, the agents of England. It would mean the practical defeat of our anti-slavery policy, and would invite the persecution of missionaries labouring in Uganda, and the reconquest by Mahome-dan fanatical tribes of the only African State that had shown a desire to accept Christianity. Our hopes of new African markets for our wares and of employment for our workmen depended upon holding our ground in Uganda.

Representatives and friends of the Church Missionary Society, the only Protestant mission operating in Uganda, approached the Directors of the Company with a proposal to provide £16,000, as a donation to the Company, towards the estimated cost of its establishment in Uganda for one year more. This remarkable offer, unique in the history of missionary enterprise, can now be seen to have had a profound influence upon British policy in Central Africa, and consequently upon the destinies of millions of African natives. Orders were cabled to Captain Lugard to postpone evacuation until December 31st, 1892.

British opinion had meanwhile been adequately awakened, principally by the action of The Times and the Church Missionary Society. In particular, Bishop Tucker of Uganda toured and lectured throughout the country, and the Government found it a matter of increasing difficulty to face Parliament with any concurrence, expressed or tacit, in the abandonment of Uganda. At last, on March 3rd, 1892, Government proposed in Parliament a vote for £20,000 for the Uganda Railway Survey. This was earned by a combined Liberal and Conservative majority the division showing 211 for the vote and 113 against. Mr. Gladstone and Sir William Harcourt maintained strong opposition to the proposal, though it had been under the former's Government in 1885 that the idea of a railway from the coast to Victoria Nyanza had originated. Lord Granville, then Foreign Secretary and his colleagues had then " proposed to develop that portion of Central Africa, especially by making a railway which would run from the coast to the Victoria Nyanza," subject only to the distinct delimitation of the spheres of influence of Great Britain and Germany. This delimitation had been effected in 1886, and the same political party now had the chance of proceeding in the matter. While this debate was going on, the survey, as a matter of fact, was approaching completion, the necessary funds having been advanced by the Imperial Company. By August 7th, 1892, the survey party was at Kikuyu on its way back to the coast with its work completed.

A Liberal Government had assumed power in the autumn of 1892 and, faced with the prospect of the Company's withdrawal at the end of that year, had offered to finance the Company's establishment in Uganda for a further three months, until March 31st, 1893. On November 15th, 1892, the Permanent Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs made a proposal to Sir William Mackinnon that the Company should consider the continued occupation of Uganda, with Government assistance, beyond the date, March 31st, 1893, then fixed for the evacuation. Nothing resulted from this, and five days later the Government decided to send an independent Commissioner of their own to Uganda and not to interfere with the evacuation by the Company. Sir Gerald Portal was selected for this mission. His expedition started from the coast on January 2nd, 1893, and reached Kampala in Uganda on March 17th, 1893.1 (! The Mission to Uganda, by Sir Gerald Portal.   (Edward Arnold, 1894.) ) On March 31st, 1893, the Company's flag at Kampala was hauled down and the Union Jack hoisted. On June 18th, 1893, a Protectorate was declared over Uganda.

This Protectorate included only the country ruled over by King Mwanga of Uganda. Its area was about 22,000 square miles. The remainder of these vast territories was still left to the Company, although it was unable for the time being to maintain effective administration further inland than its station of Dagoreti.

The attitude of Government towards the Imperial Company became increasingly harsh, and after some wearisome negotiations the Company was constrained to accept £250,000 for its possessions and improvements and to surrender its Charter.2 (2 See Blue Book, Africa No. 4 (1895), for the correspondence on the subject 01 the settlement.) Arbitration as to the sum to be paid was bluntly refused by Government, and no recompense was made in respect of the Company's having acquired and held Uganda.

The Imperial British East Africa Company therefore ended its career in commercial failure, but with a proud record of achievement which entitles its founders and directors, and also the bulk of its officers in Africa, to the appreciative regard of students of history to-day. Lord Salisbury paid a tribute on more than one occasion to the Company. " It would hardly be just," he said, " to describe it as a purely commercial body, for it is notorious that the majority of, if not all, the subscribers are actuated rather by philanthropic motives than by the expectation of receiving any adequate return for their outlay. ... Its object, I believe, has been to deal a deadly blow at the slave trade, the destruction of which has been, along with our own commercial and material progress, the animating impulse of English policy in these regions for nearly a century. . . . Through it, large sums of money have been risked and lost, and great energies and much devotion have been expended in carrying British dominion, civilization and Christianity into those countries." Certainly no other trading corporation has ever commanded the vigorous and practical support of missionary circles in Great Britain that was accorded to this Company. It set, in some respects, a higher standard in its treatment of native peoples than the British Government subsequently maintained. On the withdrawal of the Company from the Protectorate of Witu on the coast, that area was placed by the Foreign Office under the administration of the Sultan of Zanzibar. When the Company had assumed the administration of Witu in 1892, the Indian Codes of law had been applied, the status of slavery had been abolished and a time limit set for the final extermination of slavery, to terminate in May 1896. The action of the Foreign Office virtually restored the legal status of slavery and removed any prospect of complete emancipation in 1896. The Anti-Slavery Society in London recorded a protest "that a British Government, having full knowledge of the circumstances, should consent to put back into an enslaved condition a population which had already attained its freedom." This retrograde step was not officially corrected even when the Protectorate of Witu was merged in a larger East Africa Protectorate " in 1896. Sir Gerald Portal's Report had emphasized insistently " the all-important and overshadowing question of transport and communications." 1 (1 Africa No. 2 (1894), Cd. 7303, p. 37.) It urged the necessity for a railway from the coast to the Victoria Nyanza, if the country was to be administered effectively and economically. A Conservative Government had returned to power in July 1895, and Parliament authorized the construction of the Uganda Railway. It was to start at Mombasa, pass into the Uganda Protectorate at the point, some 360 miles from the coast, where rails would descend from the high Kikuyu Escarpment into the Great Rift Valley, and would then terminate on the shores of the Victoria Nyanza, that great lake of some 26,800 square miles in area, on the Western shore of which lay the Kingdom of Uganda. This railway was constructed between the years 1895 and 1902, entirely from British Government funds, to the total amount of £5,244,000, raised under the Uganda Railway Acts of 1896, 1900 and 1902. Interest and sinking fund on the capital cost of the line were paid throughout by the British taxpayer until November 15th, 1925, when payments ceased. By that time the total amount of loan, interest and sinking fund amounted to close upon £8,000,000. There has been a proposal, but never any agreement, that these sums should be recouped to the British Treasury from increased land-values accruing in a zone alongside the railway. Sir Edward Grigg, K.C.V.O., C.M.G., D.S.O., M.C., the Governor of Kenya in 1926, has suggested that the Colony may possibly refund, in 1934, a sum not exceeding £4,000,000 in part repayment of this gift.2 (2 Address to Legislative Council at Mombasa, August 10th, 1926, pp. 9 10. (Government Press, Nairobi.)) The stage that has now been reached therefore leads naturally to a consideration of land questions in British East Africa, a topic which presents many astonishing features.