Malê Rising
- Thread starter Jonathan Edelstein
- Start date
Cuāuhtemōc
Banned
Or sending it to a publisher. I want my own copy (preferably autographed) of Male Rising.
Or sending it to a publisher. I want my own copy (preferably autographed) of Male Rising.
Kindle Single's only for finished works, isn't it? Although I guess I could release it as a multi-volume series, with the first volume ending either in 1854 (with the fall of the First Sokoto Republic and Usman's departure for Britain) or 1880 (the Oyo-Company War and the incorporation of Ilorin into the British Empire).
I could see difficulties with some of the art and the literary interludes, though; the Karl May pastiche is probably OK since the original works are in the public domain, but the Flashman pastiche may not be. I'd have to look into the legal issues, and possibly do some editing, before I released Malê Rising in either Kindle or hard-copy format.
Anyway, I've got the next East Africa update mostly written, and I hope to finish it tomorrow, but if social obligations get in the way, it should be done no later than Monday evening.
East Africa 1886-92, part 1 of 2
Ali Musisi, The Cattle Kingdoms in the Great Change (Kampala: Artesian Press, 1985)
… King Mutesa of Buganda died on March 15, 1887, and the fighting began almost before his body was cold. While the king had lived, only his strong hand prevented the religious factions at court from breaking into open warfare. Now that hand had been removed, and with more than forty surviving princes from Mutesa’s 85 wives, the factions had no shortage of figureheads. In fact, quite the opposite was the case: the Protestants, who were most numerous among the influential noblemen, were divided between three claimants to the throne, and the Muslims had two. It is hardly surprising under the circumstances that the War of the Eight Kings was an exercise in chaos.
The first phase of the war began in April 1887, as the various claimants sought to eliminate one another before they could consolidate their positions. The Protestant Prince Mwanga, who had been baptized Danieri or Daniel [1], was the first to move. He held the Lubiri Palace and, through his powerful mother, had the support of the royal regiment; using his mother as go-between, he opened negotiations with the garrison at the port of Nakawa. On April 11, Nakawa, which had been held by a rival Protestant prince, surrendered to Mwanga without a fight; the rival prince was killed in the confusion, and Mwanga had secured a vital link to the outside world.
Elsewhere, however, the nineteen-year-old prince faced much more daunting obstacles. In the east, the lately-conquered province of Busoga was held by Kiweewa, an older prince who had served as its governor during Mutesa’s reign. He had converted to Islam, giving him a pipeline to the Omani arms merchants, and his good record as governor had swayed the local population to his side. Kalema, another Muslim prince, was strong on the northern marches, as was Kikulwe, who had the support of the Catholic military officers. In the west, where tradition remained strong, the pagans, who rejected all foreign alliances, gathered under Prince Kayondo. And the final Protestant prince, Ndaula, was studying at the British school in Zanzibar, where he had cultivated relationships with influential diplomats and officers in support of his own claim to the throne.
The initial months of war were a frantic scramble for alliances and troops, with armies clashing even as their principals negotiated, and all factions seeking support from foreign backers. Kikulwe sent emissaries to France and Portugal, promising them a foothold in Central Africa from which they could outflank the British and North Germans. Mwanga and Ndaula competed for British backing while the Sultan of Oman, notwithstanding his de facto vassalage to Britain, covertly supported Kiweewa. Arms flowed into the country from all directions, and the princes sent out recruiters as far as Zanzibar and Ethiopia, bringing back soldiers with appeals to religious loyalty and promises of gold.
By the fall of 1887, Kikulwe was in the strongest position. He had eliminated one Muslim prince and formed an alliance with the other - defeating Kalema and joining forces with Kiweewa - and beaten the army that Mwanga sent to secure the north. Mwanga himself had stumbled; he offered less to Britain than Ndaula did, and the British consul at Zanzibar decided to back Ndaula’s claim rather than that of the more independent prince who held the palace. In October 1887, Ndaula landed at Nakawa with a British-armed force that had been given to him on credit, and the port changed hands for a second time; in response, Mwanga hastily called off his campaign in the north and rushed to defend his capital.
Kikulwe and Kiweewa did not immediately follow up on Mwanga’s retreat. For the time being, they were content to let the two Protestant princes fight it out while they turned on the pagans who had made gains in the west. The pagans were the most numerous but also the worst-armed: unlike the other factions, they had no foreign allies and were farthest from the trade routes to the coast. By November, Prince Kayondo’s pagan army was in retreat, and in December, after a disastrous defeat by Kiweewa’s Busoga regiments, he and the remainder of his force sought sanctuary in the neighboring kingdom of Bunyoro.
The war now shifted toward the central provinces, where Ndaula had defeated Mwanga’s field army and besieged the palace. At his mother’s urging, Mwanga saved himself the only way he could: by surrendering his throne to Kikulwe and Kiweewa, acknowledging them as joint kings, and offering his capital to them rather than to his British-allied half-brother. On January 17, 1888, Kikulwe and Kiweewa – whose armies had waited just outside the siege lines while negotiations progressed – attacked Ndaula’s forces while Mwanga sortied from the palace. By evening, their superior numbers had overcome Ndaula’s more modern armaments, and many of Ndaula’s officers, who had never taken well to the sixteen-year-old prince with foreign ways, defected to the winning side. By mid-February, Ndaula was reduced to a small enclave around Nakawa port, and it seemed that the civil war was over.
In fact, there was only to be a short respite.
The coalition between Kikulwe and Kiweewa began to unravel almost immediately after the palace was taken. Kiweewa, who was older and whose armies had borne the brunt of the fighting, felt that Kikulwe was muscling him aside, and became increasingly suspicious of the French advisors who came to assist in reordering the realm. Mwanga and his mother, relegated to the status of mere pensioners, sent entreaties to Britain, promising to succeed where Ndaula had failed. And in the meantime, the omukama of Bunyoro, who remained fiercely pagan and isolationist, watched with alarm as the French established a foothold in the region, and began to listen to Kayondo’s pleas for help in returning from exile.
The flashpoint occurred in May, when a quarrel between Kikulwe’s Catholic troops and Kiweewa’s Muslims expanded into a riot. For two days, the princes’ soldiers fought pitched battles in the streets of the capital, and when the news spread to the countryside, Kikulwe’s armies rampaged through the northern provinces and massacred every Muslim in sight. Kikulwe did not order this massacre, but matters had already progressed much too far for apologies; Kiweewa mobilized his forces and drove his half-brother from the capital, forcing him to flee to the north. Days later, Kiweewa himself had to quit the palace in the face of an uprising by Mwanga’s Protestant loyalists, and Kayondo – who had promised to restore to Bunyoro the provinces that the old king had conquered – invaded from the west with the omukama’s army at his side.
And now, as the warring princes once again set the land aflame, it was the commoners’ turn. Throughout the first part of the war, the commoners had endured patiently as the armies battened on their fields and herds and as the nobles took their sons for soldiers. But in the streets of the port cities, both Abacarist-Ibadi and Carlsenist preachers thundered against the princes, arguing that it was time to follow the example of Ankole, where a radical Christian revolution had abolished kings and nobles. In July, the people’s discontent found an outlet in the mysterious prophet known as the Eighth King.
The Eighth King’s identity is unknown; he was not any of the established preachers, and it is not even certain whether he was Christian or Muslim, as he claimed to be both at different times. He appeared suddenly on the streets of Nakawa, calling for an uprising, and the people, driven beyond endurance, answered. By nightfall the port was in the Eighth King’s hands and his impromptu army was marching west.
The Eighth King’s army had war aims only in the broadest sense: it could hardly be otherwise when the commoners’ forces included revolutionary Muslims and Christians, escaped slaves, and peasants who were simply fed up with their lands and families being despoiled. Like the Brotherhood Faith Assembly in Ankole, it sought to erase social class; like Tippu Tip’s Abacarist-Ibadism, it called upon the king to rule justly in the people’s interest; and like the Diggers that the missionaries had no doubt told them about, they believed that villages should have common title to their land.
But they did little to accomplish any of these goals: instead, scattered and haphazardly led, they roamed the southwestern part of the kingdom clashing with Kayondo’s and Mwanga’s armies, with bands of deserters, and sometimes with each other. They stood little chance against any disciplined force, but by now, after months of tramping back and forth across the countryside, the discipline and cohesion of the princes’ armies had themselves broken down. It seemed, during the summer of 1888, that for every one of the Eighth King’s companies that was defeated in battle, two more arose to take their place.
The autumn, though, would mark a turning point. As during the war’s first phase, the princes negotiated even as they fought, and by late September, another alliance had been forged: the unlikely combination of the Muslim Kiweewa and the pagan Kayondo. Such an alliance was not as unthinkable among the Buganda as it might have been elsewhere, given that both Islam and Christianity were recent religions and that the practice of both was highly syncretic, but it was nevertheless an uneasy one, opposed by both the omukama of Bunyoro and by many of Kiweewa’s mercenaries. To seal the pact, it was agreed that the kingdom would tolerate all religions and that, as Mutesa had done, the king himself would embrace them all; also, in a bid to co-opt the Eighth King’s followers, the allies promised a new compact under which one commoner of each faith would be appointed to sit on the king’s council.
By the end of November, the allied princes had divided Kikulwe’s army from Mwanga’s, and could concentrate on defeating each of them in detail. Kikulwe fled north with his remaining forces in early 1889, and Lubiri Palace fell in April. Mwanga still held Nakawa, which he had retaken from the Eighth King with British aid, and the radicals controlled a pocket of land along the Ankole border, but the fighting was over, and a peace of exhaustion settled on the Buganda kingdom.
For the neighboring lands, peace would take longer, because the losers of the war scattered in all directions and displaced others as they moved. Some of Kikulwe’s captains fought the Acholi for their grazing lands, others took service with the Ethiopian armies that were consolidating their hold on the upper Nile. Kikulwe himself, with the bulk of his army, marched west to the Ubangi-Shari, to which the North German Confederation had obtained clear title but had yet to establish effective control; in 1890, he established a capital at N'Délé and declared himself king of a new Catholic realm. [2]
Some of the Eighth King’s remnants found a home in Ankole, but others – especially the Muslims and pagans – continued into the Ituri, where they alternately preached to and fought with the refugees who had fled the rubber companies’ oppression. And many of the nobles and generals who had picked the wrong side proved unwilling to accommodate themselves to the new order, preferring to become warlords or find others to serve. Their migrations would help to shape the Great War, and with it central Africa’s twentieth century…
_______
[1] In OTL, his baptism occurred in exile, and he in fact martyred many Christians during his first reign, but the political realities of this timeline are different, and of course, he is an ATL sibling rather than the man we know.
[2] Due to the earlier decline of the slave trade, this area is not as depopulated as OTL, although it is still much less densely settled than the lands to the west.
… King Mutesa of Buganda died on March 15, 1887, and the fighting began almost before his body was cold. While the king had lived, only his strong hand prevented the religious factions at court from breaking into open warfare. Now that hand had been removed, and with more than forty surviving princes from Mutesa’s 85 wives, the factions had no shortage of figureheads. In fact, quite the opposite was the case: the Protestants, who were most numerous among the influential noblemen, were divided between three claimants to the throne, and the Muslims had two. It is hardly surprising under the circumstances that the War of the Eight Kings was an exercise in chaos.
The first phase of the war began in April 1887, as the various claimants sought to eliminate one another before they could consolidate their positions. The Protestant Prince Mwanga, who had been baptized Danieri or Daniel [1], was the first to move. He held the Lubiri Palace and, through his powerful mother, had the support of the royal regiment; using his mother as go-between, he opened negotiations with the garrison at the port of Nakawa. On April 11, Nakawa, which had been held by a rival Protestant prince, surrendered to Mwanga without a fight; the rival prince was killed in the confusion, and Mwanga had secured a vital link to the outside world.
Elsewhere, however, the nineteen-year-old prince faced much more daunting obstacles. In the east, the lately-conquered province of Busoga was held by Kiweewa, an older prince who had served as its governor during Mutesa’s reign. He had converted to Islam, giving him a pipeline to the Omani arms merchants, and his good record as governor had swayed the local population to his side. Kalema, another Muslim prince, was strong on the northern marches, as was Kikulwe, who had the support of the Catholic military officers. In the west, where tradition remained strong, the pagans, who rejected all foreign alliances, gathered under Prince Kayondo. And the final Protestant prince, Ndaula, was studying at the British school in Zanzibar, where he had cultivated relationships with influential diplomats and officers in support of his own claim to the throne.
The initial months of war were a frantic scramble for alliances and troops, with armies clashing even as their principals negotiated, and all factions seeking support from foreign backers. Kikulwe sent emissaries to France and Portugal, promising them a foothold in Central Africa from which they could outflank the British and North Germans. Mwanga and Ndaula competed for British backing while the Sultan of Oman, notwithstanding his de facto vassalage to Britain, covertly supported Kiweewa. Arms flowed into the country from all directions, and the princes sent out recruiters as far as Zanzibar and Ethiopia, bringing back soldiers with appeals to religious loyalty and promises of gold.
By the fall of 1887, Kikulwe was in the strongest position. He had eliminated one Muslim prince and formed an alliance with the other - defeating Kalema and joining forces with Kiweewa - and beaten the army that Mwanga sent to secure the north. Mwanga himself had stumbled; he offered less to Britain than Ndaula did, and the British consul at Zanzibar decided to back Ndaula’s claim rather than that of the more independent prince who held the palace. In October 1887, Ndaula landed at Nakawa with a British-armed force that had been given to him on credit, and the port changed hands for a second time; in response, Mwanga hastily called off his campaign in the north and rushed to defend his capital.
Kikulwe and Kiweewa did not immediately follow up on Mwanga’s retreat. For the time being, they were content to let the two Protestant princes fight it out while they turned on the pagans who had made gains in the west. The pagans were the most numerous but also the worst-armed: unlike the other factions, they had no foreign allies and were farthest from the trade routes to the coast. By November, Prince Kayondo’s pagan army was in retreat, and in December, after a disastrous defeat by Kiweewa’s Busoga regiments, he and the remainder of his force sought sanctuary in the neighboring kingdom of Bunyoro.
The war now shifted toward the central provinces, where Ndaula had defeated Mwanga’s field army and besieged the palace. At his mother’s urging, Mwanga saved himself the only way he could: by surrendering his throne to Kikulwe and Kiweewa, acknowledging them as joint kings, and offering his capital to them rather than to his British-allied half-brother. On January 17, 1888, Kikulwe and Kiweewa – whose armies had waited just outside the siege lines while negotiations progressed – attacked Ndaula’s forces while Mwanga sortied from the palace. By evening, their superior numbers had overcome Ndaula’s more modern armaments, and many of Ndaula’s officers, who had never taken well to the sixteen-year-old prince with foreign ways, defected to the winning side. By mid-February, Ndaula was reduced to a small enclave around Nakawa port, and it seemed that the civil war was over.
In fact, there was only to be a short respite.
The coalition between Kikulwe and Kiweewa began to unravel almost immediately after the palace was taken. Kiweewa, who was older and whose armies had borne the brunt of the fighting, felt that Kikulwe was muscling him aside, and became increasingly suspicious of the French advisors who came to assist in reordering the realm. Mwanga and his mother, relegated to the status of mere pensioners, sent entreaties to Britain, promising to succeed where Ndaula had failed. And in the meantime, the omukama of Bunyoro, who remained fiercely pagan and isolationist, watched with alarm as the French established a foothold in the region, and began to listen to Kayondo’s pleas for help in returning from exile.
The flashpoint occurred in May, when a quarrel between Kikulwe’s Catholic troops and Kiweewa’s Muslims expanded into a riot. For two days, the princes’ soldiers fought pitched battles in the streets of the capital, and when the news spread to the countryside, Kikulwe’s armies rampaged through the northern provinces and massacred every Muslim in sight. Kikulwe did not order this massacre, but matters had already progressed much too far for apologies; Kiweewa mobilized his forces and drove his half-brother from the capital, forcing him to flee to the north. Days later, Kiweewa himself had to quit the palace in the face of an uprising by Mwanga’s Protestant loyalists, and Kayondo – who had promised to restore to Bunyoro the provinces that the old king had conquered – invaded from the west with the omukama’s army at his side.
And now, as the warring princes once again set the land aflame, it was the commoners’ turn. Throughout the first part of the war, the commoners had endured patiently as the armies battened on their fields and herds and as the nobles took their sons for soldiers. But in the streets of the port cities, both Abacarist-Ibadi and Carlsenist preachers thundered against the princes, arguing that it was time to follow the example of Ankole, where a radical Christian revolution had abolished kings and nobles. In July, the people’s discontent found an outlet in the mysterious prophet known as the Eighth King.
The Eighth King’s identity is unknown; he was not any of the established preachers, and it is not even certain whether he was Christian or Muslim, as he claimed to be both at different times. He appeared suddenly on the streets of Nakawa, calling for an uprising, and the people, driven beyond endurance, answered. By nightfall the port was in the Eighth King’s hands and his impromptu army was marching west.
The Eighth King’s army had war aims only in the broadest sense: it could hardly be otherwise when the commoners’ forces included revolutionary Muslims and Christians, escaped slaves, and peasants who were simply fed up with their lands and families being despoiled. Like the Brotherhood Faith Assembly in Ankole, it sought to erase social class; like Tippu Tip’s Abacarist-Ibadism, it called upon the king to rule justly in the people’s interest; and like the Diggers that the missionaries had no doubt told them about, they believed that villages should have common title to their land.
But they did little to accomplish any of these goals: instead, scattered and haphazardly led, they roamed the southwestern part of the kingdom clashing with Kayondo’s and Mwanga’s armies, with bands of deserters, and sometimes with each other. They stood little chance against any disciplined force, but by now, after months of tramping back and forth across the countryside, the discipline and cohesion of the princes’ armies had themselves broken down. It seemed, during the summer of 1888, that for every one of the Eighth King’s companies that was defeated in battle, two more arose to take their place.
The autumn, though, would mark a turning point. As during the war’s first phase, the princes negotiated even as they fought, and by late September, another alliance had been forged: the unlikely combination of the Muslim Kiweewa and the pagan Kayondo. Such an alliance was not as unthinkable among the Buganda as it might have been elsewhere, given that both Islam and Christianity were recent religions and that the practice of both was highly syncretic, but it was nevertheless an uneasy one, opposed by both the omukama of Bunyoro and by many of Kiweewa’s mercenaries. To seal the pact, it was agreed that the kingdom would tolerate all religions and that, as Mutesa had done, the king himself would embrace them all; also, in a bid to co-opt the Eighth King’s followers, the allies promised a new compact under which one commoner of each faith would be appointed to sit on the king’s council.
By the end of November, the allied princes had divided Kikulwe’s army from Mwanga’s, and could concentrate on defeating each of them in detail. Kikulwe fled north with his remaining forces in early 1889, and Lubiri Palace fell in April. Mwanga still held Nakawa, which he had retaken from the Eighth King with British aid, and the radicals controlled a pocket of land along the Ankole border, but the fighting was over, and a peace of exhaustion settled on the Buganda kingdom.
For the neighboring lands, peace would take longer, because the losers of the war scattered in all directions and displaced others as they moved. Some of Kikulwe’s captains fought the Acholi for their grazing lands, others took service with the Ethiopian armies that were consolidating their hold on the upper Nile. Kikulwe himself, with the bulk of his army, marched west to the Ubangi-Shari, to which the North German Confederation had obtained clear title but had yet to establish effective control; in 1890, he established a capital at N'Délé and declared himself king of a new Catholic realm. [2]
Some of the Eighth King’s remnants found a home in Ankole, but others – especially the Muslims and pagans – continued into the Ituri, where they alternately preached to and fought with the refugees who had fled the rubber companies’ oppression. And many of the nobles and generals who had picked the wrong side proved unwilling to accommodate themselves to the new order, preferring to become warlords or find others to serve. Their migrations would help to shape the Great War, and with it central Africa’s twentieth century…
_______
[1] In OTL, his baptism occurred in exile, and he in fact martyred many Christians during his first reign, but the political realities of this timeline are different, and of course, he is an ATL sibling rather than the man we know.
[2] Due to the earlier decline of the slave trade, this area is not as depopulated as OTL, although it is still much less densely settled than the lands to the west.
Another excellent, if slightly confusing, update. Good work, Jonathan! Your knowledge continues to impress me.
As long as Mwanga remains in control of Nakata port (with British help), the Muslim/pagan alliance will be largely cut off from the lucrative trade on the lake. As far as I know, there were no other remotely developed ports on the northern shore at this time. That means that they'll either have to take Nakata by force or develop a new port.
The first option is unlikely - both sides are militarily exhausted, and once the British or Omanis reinforce Nakata, which they are likely to do, then it'll be far too difficult an assault to consider in the near future.
That means that they'll have to build a new port along the northern shore of the lake. My first guess would be that they'd seek French assistance, but you mentioned that Kiweewa had grown weary of his French advisors, and in any case his pagan partner Kayondo will probably be no friendlier towards the "Most Catholic" French. That means that whatever help they get will have to be from the Ottomans, as unlikely as that seems. Or they could go it alone, but I'm not sure they have the engineering finesse necessary to dredge a good port.
Am I missing something? Or am I completely off base?
In any case, it was fun to read! Looking forward to part two!
Cheers,
Ganesha
As long as Mwanga remains in control of Nakata port (with British help), the Muslim/pagan alliance will be largely cut off from the lucrative trade on the lake. As far as I know, there were no other remotely developed ports on the northern shore at this time. That means that they'll either have to take Nakata by force or develop a new port.
The first option is unlikely - both sides are militarily exhausted, and once the British or Omanis reinforce Nakata, which they are likely to do, then it'll be far too difficult an assault to consider in the near future.
That means that they'll have to build a new port along the northern shore of the lake. My first guess would be that they'd seek French assistance, but you mentioned that Kiweewa had grown weary of his French advisors, and in any case his pagan partner Kayondo will probably be no friendlier towards the "Most Catholic" French. That means that whatever help they get will have to be from the Ottomans, as unlikely as that seems. Or they could go it alone, but I'm not sure they have the engineering finesse necessary to dredge a good port.
Am I missing something? Or am I completely off base?
In any case, it was fun to read! Looking forward to part two!
Cheers,
Ganesha
Yeah, I figured the map would be necessary for this one.
It's no more confusing - or at least not much - than what happened to the Buganda in OTL, though. Between 1884 and 1897, the Buganda kingdom changed hands six times, several of them involving kings being deposed and then restored. The court actually was divided between various Christian, Muslim and pagan factions, and there were periods of oppression, massacre and martyrdom.
The difference in TTL is that, instead of there being one hegemonic colonial power that could make or break kings, there are several powers in a position to interfere or help, and the Buganda kingdom itself is stronger. So instead of there being a succession of kings who rotate on and off the throne with British backing, TTL's religious/political conflict plays out through several princes declaring themselves king at the same time, seeking support from different quarters, and duking it out.
That, and the radical African versions of Islam and Christianity are present along with the missionary religions, which gives rise to some English Civil War-type populist armies in addition to the princes' troops.
(BTW, Mutesa I really did have 95 children, some of whom had the same names as the princes who figure in this update; however, all of them were born after the POD, and TTL's princes are different people with different personalities.)
That, or cut a deal with the British for its use. The Buganda need Nakata - small traditional boats don't require a modern port, but much of the carrying trade in TTL's Lake Victoria is on steamers by this time. And Britain certainly plans to keep the port (using Mwanga as its proxy) in order to establish a foothold and prevent France from doing likewise.
You're correct that the Muslim/pagan alliance (which also has to co-opt the Christians, who are numerous in the army and the urban population) is in no position to attack the British. TTL's Buganda kingdom is strong, but it isn't that strong, and for the time being, it's exhausted. I doubt an Ottoman alliance is in the cards either - the British can get help to the region through the Anglo-Omani empire, and France can do so through the Ethiopian-controlled upper White Nile, but the Ottomans have no easy way in.
A French alliance could potentially happen - TTL's Kiweewa has proven himself nothing if not a pragmatist, and he's willing to bury the hatchet with old enemies if there's something in it for him. What could also happen, though, is a covert alliance with the Sultan of Oman - the Sultan may be a British vassal, but he has his own agenda which includes promoting Ibadi Islam in the hinterland. Depending on what happens in the war, Kiweewa might be able to get the Sultan to put in a good word for him with the British consul, or even to send aid behind the consul's back. And there will be a change of sultans in the not-too-distant future - Thuwaini's getting old, he isn't going to last forever, and a new ruler in Zanzibar could mean new opportunities.
East Africa 1886-92, part 2 of 2
Aishwarya Trivedi, “International Congo: The First Draft,” African History Quarterly 64:328-40 (Fall 2010)
… The final act of the Brussels Conference contained an elaborate statute for the Congo’s government. The colony would answer to a board containing one member from each participating country, nominated by that country’s colonial or foreign ministry, and on which each country would have an equal vote. The board would act as legislature, cabinet and supreme court, and would have a small European civil service, based in Brussels and funded jointly by the participating countries, to help in this task. Leopold II of Belgium, the host of the Brussels Conference, was nominated as the board’s first president: in effect, the international Congo’s ceremonial head of state.
The board would, in turn, appoint a colonial governor, a kitchen cabinet of specialists in military and civil fields, and ten provincial governors (later increased to fourteen and finally twenty-four). The governor himself could appoint lower-level civil servants, up to the level of district officers and judges, but the senior executives were chosen internationally and could only be removed or disciplined by the board. The members of the board would also appoint the commander of the colonial gendarmerie, which would be staffed with locally-recruited troops and officers seconded from European armies.
This system was designed to maintain a high level of central control and oversight, in the hope that this would curb the rubber companies’ abuses and bring a uniform system of colonial government to the Congo basin. In fact, this was far easier said than done. The terrain of the Congo made centralized rule difficult, and the administrative difficulties were just as daunting. Simply put, the international community had never done something like this before: the most commonly cited analogues, the Republic of Kraków and the Free Port of Salonika, were designed to be autonomous entities with only general international oversight, while the Congo would be a much more closely-governed affair. Putting the Brussels statute into effect from a standing start resulted in many failures, compromises and half-measures.
Nominating the governing board took most of a year, with several countries vacillating about whether or not to take part. Ultimately, those countries with strategic or business interests in the Congo joined the board, while the others did not or did so only in a desultory fashion. This may well have been the international Congo’s original sin: the Brussels Conference’s goals of protecting the Congolese from abuse and ensuring that all European countries had an opportunity to exploit the Congo basin’s resources were in inherent tension, and the preponderance of countries with economic interests in the Congo helped ensure that the latter goal would most often take precedence.
The first meeting of the board, with eleven countries participating, took place in August 1887. The business of this meeting was preliminary: to establish a standing committee to nominate and vet gubernatorial candidates, and another committee to draft a code of law. The work of the nominating committee was surprisingly quick: by the end of the year, it had settled on Otto van Rees, a liberal Dutch politician with experience in colonial government, to be the first governor, and had also filled most of the colonial cabinet and the province-level positions. Friedrich Moller, a North German colonel, was named to command the international gendarmerie, with a staff of mid-ranking officers from several European nations.
The code of law was much more contentious, especially when it touched upon regulation of rubber cultivation and the status of indigenous Africans. The Brussels Conference statute envisioned that the Africans would have no part of the government of the colony, and empowered the board to regulate but not eliminate forced labor. There was little sentiment for abolition of corvée labor in any event; it was considered necessary in order to develop the colony and ensure the rubber and hardwood harvest, and the widespread view was that pre-state peoples such as the Congolese (unlike more advanced peoples like the Wolof or Malê) could only be made to do useful work by this method. Indeed, many of the board members and their aides believed that forced labor was an integral part of the colonial civilizing mission. The draft labor code and penal code thus devolved into endless debate over the limits that could be placed on forced labor, acceptable working conditions, prevention of abuses and methods of governmental oversight, resulting in only fragmentary legislation during the colony’s first five years.
This was only compounded by the realities on the ground. Few European civil servants were willing to take up hardship posts in the Congo, and although the participating countries’ armies lent a few army officers for high-ranking posts, they were much less keen to part with company-grade officers and NCOs who they actually needed. The colonial civil service and gendarmerie, especially at the provincial level, were thus highly understaffed, leading many provincial governors to rely on the “experience” of the very rubber-company executives they were supposed to oversee. Congolese government records between 1887 and 1892 contain many examples of rubber-company officials being appointed district officers or local military commanders, and their militias being co-opted into the colonial armed forces.
There were exceptions. Ramón Blanco, a Spanish brigadier and former captain-general of Navarre who was named as governor of the Lower Congo province, strictly prohibited the worst of the companies’ abuses, including mutilation and the taking of hostages, and used force against the companies that failed to comply. He was equally forceful with the Congolese, earning a mixed reputation among them, but even his enemies agreed that he was incorruptible and that he kept the rubber barons at a distance from his administration. Van Rees, too, instituted regulations prohibiting violence against workers. But in most of the colony, these rules were ignored and the rubber companies were co-opted into the government – something which reduced the amount of fighting between company militias and gave the companies a forum to resolve territorial and jurisdictional disputes, but certainly did nothing for the condition of the Congolese workers. And there were persistent rumors that King Leopold, who himself had growing business interests in the Congo, supported the appointment of officials who were friendly to the rubber companies…
… Another concern of the early colonial governors was religion. In theory, the Brussels statute supported the religious instruction of the Africans as part of the colony’s civilizing mission, but in fact, rubber barons and local officials alike often found religion troublesome. The Congolese who were educated by missionaries often developed the belief that they should have equal rights and self-rule, and the missionaries themselves were prone to report atrocities to their superiors. And still worse, from the colonialists’ standpoint, were the faiths developed by the Africans themselves, which were explicitly geared toward revolution and resistance: the Abacarist-Ibadis and Carlsenists filtering in from the east, and the Bwiti candomble of the Gabonese traders. Missionaries faced, at most, restriction and interference, but many local officials banned the African faiths outright, and treated their underground practice as rebellion. Since, in many cases, the underground churches were preparing for exactly that, the repression they faced was often harsh.
The Mormons, who had a missionary presence in southern Africa since the 1870s and who had begun to arrive in the Congo by 1885, were a curious intermediate case. They were a missionary religion rather than an African one, and they preached obedience to earthly authority – but they were also ambiguously Christian, not supported by a colonial power, and had no hesitation in ordaining Africans. Indeed, they preached that black and white men were equal holders of priesthood and prophecy, and it took almost no time for Congolese village leaders to take the mantle of prophecy on themselves and to identify the rubber companies and colonial administration with the Lamanites. The Mormons’ insistence on sobriety and clean living was welcomed by the colonial officials, but their prophetic doctrines were much less so.
The “War of the Hoe-Handles” proved to be a turning point. In 1891, a Mormon convert in Bandundu called upon his congregation to take up hoes – which he claimed to have blessed in a way that would make them immune to bullets – and kill the rubber officers and their hired militias. The provincial governor, whose corps of gendarmes was understrength and whose military budget was heavily in arrears, was able to put down the rebellion only with difficulty, and many of the rebels melted away to carry on the fight in the jungle. [1] The rubber militias, whose assistance the provincial governor had had to enlist, killed hundreds of Mormons, and afterward, van Rees banned Mormon missionaries from preaching in the Congo. The surviving Mormons fled to the eastern provinces, where they took up their faith again in defiance of the decree…
… One of the unambiguous successes of the early international period was the suppression of the warlord states in the east. Several European, Arab and Swahili warlords who had been driven out of Anglo-Omani Tanganyika during Tippu Tip’s campaigns had found new homes on the west side of the Great Lakes. Three in particular – Jan Biermann, Emile Janssen and Ali Jumbe – formed virtual kingdoms, recruiting sizable armies and raiding the neighboring peoples for slaves to sell to the rubber barons. [2]
By the late 1880s, the east was in great turmoil, with an influx of refugees from both the wars in the Great Lakes and the depredations of the rubber companies on the lower and middle Congo. Many of these refugees would fall victim to the warlords, but others would help to defeat them. Dietmar Köhler, the governor of Kivu province, was an exceptionally pragmatic and ruthless man, and recruited the refugees into the gendarmerie, allowing their leaders to hold officer rank. In 1889 and 1890, Köhler led his forces – the only full-strength regiments in the colony – against the warlord kingdoms. Janssen and Jumbe were defeated and their armies broken up; Biermann surrendered on condition that he be allowed to return to Europe with his fortune intact.
One of the unlikely heroes of this war was the exiled king of Ankole, who had enlisted in Köhler’s militia as the captain of a company consisting of his former nobles and bodyguards. His troops distinguished themselves in the fighting against Janssen, and in recognition of his services, Köhler named him district officer of the territory that had been Janssen’s Land. This was strictly against the Brussels’ statute’s regulations, but in the east, the rules were ignored even more than elsewhere in the Congo. The exiled king became, in effect, an African colonialist, installing his troops as cattle-herding aristocrats over a subject population of farmers and rubber gatherers.
Köhler’s activities were not universally admired by his fellow governors, several of whom accused him of building a private empire and requested that the executive board impeach him. Van Rees, who distrusted Köhler’s ruthlessness and suspected him of corruption, laid formal charges before the board in 1892, alleging that he had exceeded his authority and that he was planning to intervene privately in the ongoing struggle for control of Katanga. But by that time, relations between the member countries had deteriorated to the point where the colonial administrators, both in Brussels and in the Congo itself, were actively undermining each other…
Dimitri Negassie, The Remaking of Ethiopia (New Moscow: Icon Press, 1978)
… Ethiopia's campaign in the Nile lowlands, unlike its Somali adventure, was an unqualified success. By 1888, everything between the southern border of Egyptian Sudan and the northern limits of the Great Lakes cattle kingdoms belonged to Ethiopia, with many of the Nile Valley peoples pledging fealty to Yohannes IV without a fight.
Although Ethiopia is often considered a colonial power due to its conquest of the upper White Nile, it treated its new territories more as tributary provinces than as colonies. The emperor appointed governors, settled colonies of veterans at strategic points along the Nile and sent Orthodox priests to preach to the conquered peoples. But at the same time, the Nilotic chiefs who were Christian were raised to the rank of prince and encouraged to send their sons to the emperor’s court for education. Yohannes certainly hoped to exploit the herds and mines of the upper Nile, but it also saw the Nilotic peoples as a potentially loyal population that could be Christianized and used to balance the Muslim princes in Ethiopia proper.
In the meantime, Yohannes and his chief minister Ras Mikael once again turned their attention to Somalia. This campaign fared better than the war against the Geledi sultanate, and in September 1890, the Ethiopian armies seized the port of Hargeisa. Yohannes’ tolerance of Muslim officials outside the core Amharic provinces would now prove a blessing, as he was able to co-opt the local clan chiefs with promises of honors and high rank. Within a year, nearly all of them had acquiesced to Yohannes’ rule, and Ethiopia finally had a seaport.
Hargeisa, however, was easier seized than used; it was a small and undeveloped port without road connections to the Ethiopian capital. To build the roads and improve the harbor, Yohannes turned to his Russian patrons, hiring many Russian engineers to supervise the work and accepting others as a gift from the Tsar.
By this time, however, relations between Ethiopia and Russia were becoming increasingly fraught. The source of the tension was the Brussels Conference, at which Russia had spoken for Ethiopian interests but which had designated the areas in which Ethiopia hoped to expand as Russian spheres of influence. The other colonial powers recognized Ethiopia’s control of the upper White Nile and Somaliland only as a client of Russia, and the more expansionist elements in the Tsar’s court sought to formalize that relationship by designating Ethiopia as a Russian vassal and protectorate. Yohannes had no interest in such a relationship – as far as he was concerned, the Russians in Eritrea were his feudal vassals, not the other way around – and he rebuffed the emissaries who offered a treaty.
This rejection caused little immediate damage: the Tsar himself and many of his courtiers were still willing to deal with Ethiopia as an ally. But there were complications: both the Ottoman consul in Gondar and the British governor of Aden declared that, since Ethiopia had rejected Russian patronage, it had no valid claim to Hargeisa and that northern Somaliland was open to colonization by other powers. At a time when tensions over colonial borders had almost reached the breaking point, this was an unmistakable threat, and added to the pressure on Yohannes to accept some form of vassalage to Russia.
And other things were also coming from Aden. The Ethiopian Muslim princes who had returned to the fold after serving the Sultan of Oman remained traditional in their faith, with little sign of being influenced by the radical currents that swept Islam elsewhere in the Omani realm. But the Hadhrami traders from the north, who flocked to Hargeisa to take advantage of the newly opened Ethiopian market, brought with them the works of Abacar, and the desert Belloism that the Bedouins had leavened with Wahhabi borrowings…
_______
[1] Something very similar to this actually happened in the Central African Republic in 1928.
[2] See post 787 for a map showing these kingdoms.
Aishwarya Trivedi, “International Congo: The First Draft,” African History Quarterly 64:328-40 (Fall 2010)
… The final act of the Brussels Conference contained an elaborate statute for the Congo’s government. The colony would answer to a board containing one member from each participating country, nominated by that country’s colonial or foreign ministry, and on which each country would have an equal vote. The board would act as legislature, cabinet and supreme court, and would have a small European civil service, based in Brussels and funded jointly by the participating countries, to help in this task. Leopold II of Belgium, the host of the Brussels Conference, was nominated as the board’s first president: in effect, the international Congo’s ceremonial head of state.
The board would, in turn, appoint a colonial governor, a kitchen cabinet of specialists in military and civil fields, and ten provincial governors (later increased to fourteen and finally twenty-four). The governor himself could appoint lower-level civil servants, up to the level of district officers and judges, but the senior executives were chosen internationally and could only be removed or disciplined by the board. The members of the board would also appoint the commander of the colonial gendarmerie, which would be staffed with locally-recruited troops and officers seconded from European armies.
This system was designed to maintain a high level of central control and oversight, in the hope that this would curb the rubber companies’ abuses and bring a uniform system of colonial government to the Congo basin. In fact, this was far easier said than done. The terrain of the Congo made centralized rule difficult, and the administrative difficulties were just as daunting. Simply put, the international community had never done something like this before: the most commonly cited analogues, the Republic of Kraków and the Free Port of Salonika, were designed to be autonomous entities with only general international oversight, while the Congo would be a much more closely-governed affair. Putting the Brussels statute into effect from a standing start resulted in many failures, compromises and half-measures.
Nominating the governing board took most of a year, with several countries vacillating about whether or not to take part. Ultimately, those countries with strategic or business interests in the Congo joined the board, while the others did not or did so only in a desultory fashion. This may well have been the international Congo’s original sin: the Brussels Conference’s goals of protecting the Congolese from abuse and ensuring that all European countries had an opportunity to exploit the Congo basin’s resources were in inherent tension, and the preponderance of countries with economic interests in the Congo helped ensure that the latter goal would most often take precedence.
The first meeting of the board, with eleven countries participating, took place in August 1887. The business of this meeting was preliminary: to establish a standing committee to nominate and vet gubernatorial candidates, and another committee to draft a code of law. The work of the nominating committee was surprisingly quick: by the end of the year, it had settled on Otto van Rees, a liberal Dutch politician with experience in colonial government, to be the first governor, and had also filled most of the colonial cabinet and the province-level positions. Friedrich Moller, a North German colonel, was named to command the international gendarmerie, with a staff of mid-ranking officers from several European nations.
The code of law was much more contentious, especially when it touched upon regulation of rubber cultivation and the status of indigenous Africans. The Brussels Conference statute envisioned that the Africans would have no part of the government of the colony, and empowered the board to regulate but not eliminate forced labor. There was little sentiment for abolition of corvée labor in any event; it was considered necessary in order to develop the colony and ensure the rubber and hardwood harvest, and the widespread view was that pre-state peoples such as the Congolese (unlike more advanced peoples like the Wolof or Malê) could only be made to do useful work by this method. Indeed, many of the board members and their aides believed that forced labor was an integral part of the colonial civilizing mission. The draft labor code and penal code thus devolved into endless debate over the limits that could be placed on forced labor, acceptable working conditions, prevention of abuses and methods of governmental oversight, resulting in only fragmentary legislation during the colony’s first five years.
This was only compounded by the realities on the ground. Few European civil servants were willing to take up hardship posts in the Congo, and although the participating countries’ armies lent a few army officers for high-ranking posts, they were much less keen to part with company-grade officers and NCOs who they actually needed. The colonial civil service and gendarmerie, especially at the provincial level, were thus highly understaffed, leading many provincial governors to rely on the “experience” of the very rubber-company executives they were supposed to oversee. Congolese government records between 1887 and 1892 contain many examples of rubber-company officials being appointed district officers or local military commanders, and their militias being co-opted into the colonial armed forces.
There were exceptions. Ramón Blanco, a Spanish brigadier and former captain-general of Navarre who was named as governor of the Lower Congo province, strictly prohibited the worst of the companies’ abuses, including mutilation and the taking of hostages, and used force against the companies that failed to comply. He was equally forceful with the Congolese, earning a mixed reputation among them, but even his enemies agreed that he was incorruptible and that he kept the rubber barons at a distance from his administration. Van Rees, too, instituted regulations prohibiting violence against workers. But in most of the colony, these rules were ignored and the rubber companies were co-opted into the government – something which reduced the amount of fighting between company militias and gave the companies a forum to resolve territorial and jurisdictional disputes, but certainly did nothing for the condition of the Congolese workers. And there were persistent rumors that King Leopold, who himself had growing business interests in the Congo, supported the appointment of officials who were friendly to the rubber companies…
… Another concern of the early colonial governors was religion. In theory, the Brussels statute supported the religious instruction of the Africans as part of the colony’s civilizing mission, but in fact, rubber barons and local officials alike often found religion troublesome. The Congolese who were educated by missionaries often developed the belief that they should have equal rights and self-rule, and the missionaries themselves were prone to report atrocities to their superiors. And still worse, from the colonialists’ standpoint, were the faiths developed by the Africans themselves, which were explicitly geared toward revolution and resistance: the Abacarist-Ibadis and Carlsenists filtering in from the east, and the Bwiti candomble of the Gabonese traders. Missionaries faced, at most, restriction and interference, but many local officials banned the African faiths outright, and treated their underground practice as rebellion. Since, in many cases, the underground churches were preparing for exactly that, the repression they faced was often harsh.
The Mormons, who had a missionary presence in southern Africa since the 1870s and who had begun to arrive in the Congo by 1885, were a curious intermediate case. They were a missionary religion rather than an African one, and they preached obedience to earthly authority – but they were also ambiguously Christian, not supported by a colonial power, and had no hesitation in ordaining Africans. Indeed, they preached that black and white men were equal holders of priesthood and prophecy, and it took almost no time for Congolese village leaders to take the mantle of prophecy on themselves and to identify the rubber companies and colonial administration with the Lamanites. The Mormons’ insistence on sobriety and clean living was welcomed by the colonial officials, but their prophetic doctrines were much less so.
The “War of the Hoe-Handles” proved to be a turning point. In 1891, a Mormon convert in Bandundu called upon his congregation to take up hoes – which he claimed to have blessed in a way that would make them immune to bullets – and kill the rubber officers and their hired militias. The provincial governor, whose corps of gendarmes was understrength and whose military budget was heavily in arrears, was able to put down the rebellion only with difficulty, and many of the rebels melted away to carry on the fight in the jungle. [1] The rubber militias, whose assistance the provincial governor had had to enlist, killed hundreds of Mormons, and afterward, van Rees banned Mormon missionaries from preaching in the Congo. The surviving Mormons fled to the eastern provinces, where they took up their faith again in defiance of the decree…
… One of the unambiguous successes of the early international period was the suppression of the warlord states in the east. Several European, Arab and Swahili warlords who had been driven out of Anglo-Omani Tanganyika during Tippu Tip’s campaigns had found new homes on the west side of the Great Lakes. Three in particular – Jan Biermann, Emile Janssen and Ali Jumbe – formed virtual kingdoms, recruiting sizable armies and raiding the neighboring peoples for slaves to sell to the rubber barons. [2]
By the late 1880s, the east was in great turmoil, with an influx of refugees from both the wars in the Great Lakes and the depredations of the rubber companies on the lower and middle Congo. Many of these refugees would fall victim to the warlords, but others would help to defeat them. Dietmar Köhler, the governor of Kivu province, was an exceptionally pragmatic and ruthless man, and recruited the refugees into the gendarmerie, allowing their leaders to hold officer rank. In 1889 and 1890, Köhler led his forces – the only full-strength regiments in the colony – against the warlord kingdoms. Janssen and Jumbe were defeated and their armies broken up; Biermann surrendered on condition that he be allowed to return to Europe with his fortune intact.
One of the unlikely heroes of this war was the exiled king of Ankole, who had enlisted in Köhler’s militia as the captain of a company consisting of his former nobles and bodyguards. His troops distinguished themselves in the fighting against Janssen, and in recognition of his services, Köhler named him district officer of the territory that had been Janssen’s Land. This was strictly against the Brussels’ statute’s regulations, but in the east, the rules were ignored even more than elsewhere in the Congo. The exiled king became, in effect, an African colonialist, installing his troops as cattle-herding aristocrats over a subject population of farmers and rubber gatherers.
Köhler’s activities were not universally admired by his fellow governors, several of whom accused him of building a private empire and requested that the executive board impeach him. Van Rees, who distrusted Köhler’s ruthlessness and suspected him of corruption, laid formal charges before the board in 1892, alleging that he had exceeded his authority and that he was planning to intervene privately in the ongoing struggle for control of Katanga. But by that time, relations between the member countries had deteriorated to the point where the colonial administrators, both in Brussels and in the Congo itself, were actively undermining each other…
*******
Dimitri Negassie, The Remaking of Ethiopia (New Moscow: Icon Press, 1978)
… Ethiopia's campaign in the Nile lowlands, unlike its Somali adventure, was an unqualified success. By 1888, everything between the southern border of Egyptian Sudan and the northern limits of the Great Lakes cattle kingdoms belonged to Ethiopia, with many of the Nile Valley peoples pledging fealty to Yohannes IV without a fight.
Although Ethiopia is often considered a colonial power due to its conquest of the upper White Nile, it treated its new territories more as tributary provinces than as colonies. The emperor appointed governors, settled colonies of veterans at strategic points along the Nile and sent Orthodox priests to preach to the conquered peoples. But at the same time, the Nilotic chiefs who were Christian were raised to the rank of prince and encouraged to send their sons to the emperor’s court for education. Yohannes certainly hoped to exploit the herds and mines of the upper Nile, but it also saw the Nilotic peoples as a potentially loyal population that could be Christianized and used to balance the Muslim princes in Ethiopia proper.
In the meantime, Yohannes and his chief minister Ras Mikael once again turned their attention to Somalia. This campaign fared better than the war against the Geledi sultanate, and in September 1890, the Ethiopian armies seized the port of Hargeisa. Yohannes’ tolerance of Muslim officials outside the core Amharic provinces would now prove a blessing, as he was able to co-opt the local clan chiefs with promises of honors and high rank. Within a year, nearly all of them had acquiesced to Yohannes’ rule, and Ethiopia finally had a seaport.
Hargeisa, however, was easier seized than used; it was a small and undeveloped port without road connections to the Ethiopian capital. To build the roads and improve the harbor, Yohannes turned to his Russian patrons, hiring many Russian engineers to supervise the work and accepting others as a gift from the Tsar.
By this time, however, relations between Ethiopia and Russia were becoming increasingly fraught. The source of the tension was the Brussels Conference, at which Russia had spoken for Ethiopian interests but which had designated the areas in which Ethiopia hoped to expand as Russian spheres of influence. The other colonial powers recognized Ethiopia’s control of the upper White Nile and Somaliland only as a client of Russia, and the more expansionist elements in the Tsar’s court sought to formalize that relationship by designating Ethiopia as a Russian vassal and protectorate. Yohannes had no interest in such a relationship – as far as he was concerned, the Russians in Eritrea were his feudal vassals, not the other way around – and he rebuffed the emissaries who offered a treaty.
This rejection caused little immediate damage: the Tsar himself and many of his courtiers were still willing to deal with Ethiopia as an ally. But there were complications: both the Ottoman consul in Gondar and the British governor of Aden declared that, since Ethiopia had rejected Russian patronage, it had no valid claim to Hargeisa and that northern Somaliland was open to colonization by other powers. At a time when tensions over colonial borders had almost reached the breaking point, this was an unmistakable threat, and added to the pressure on Yohannes to accept some form of vassalage to Russia.
And other things were also coming from Aden. The Ethiopian Muslim princes who had returned to the fold after serving the Sultan of Oman remained traditional in their faith, with little sign of being influenced by the radical currents that swept Islam elsewhere in the Omani realm. But the Hadhrami traders from the north, who flocked to Hargeisa to take advantage of the newly opened Ethiopian market, brought with them the works of Abacar, and the desert Belloism that the Bedouins had leavened with Wahhabi borrowings…
_______
[1] Something very similar to this actually happened in the Central African Republic in 1928.
[2] See post 787 for a map showing these kingdoms.
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"Malê Rising, the African/world timeline that puts Africa 40 years ahead of OTL!"
With, one hopes and trusts, some fundamental and irrevocable divergences mostly for the better.
I think Jonathan is scheming to corner the much neglected but promising Northern Nigerian-Central African-Zanzibar Alt-History market
Well, for certain values of "ahead." Brian Titley, in his biography of Bokassa (pages 6-7) tells us that the 1920s were a period of regression in what would become the CAR, with teh French concessionaire companies wanting to make up the exploitation time lost during WW1. Discussions of the CAR during that period are notable not so much for the atrocities as for the casual way they were carried out in retribution for very minor things. French Equatorial Africa, as it then was, was probably one of the worst-run colonies in Africa, and that's saying a lot.
In any event, I think TTL's Africa will mostly end up a better place, at least for values of "better" to which most of us subscribe. But it won't be uniformly so at all places and times, and when corporate colonialism meets a world war and a Central African Mfecane, matters in the affected regions will be pretty bad for a while.
Thanks! I admit to being curious about what the tropers would do with this timeline - if you set up such a page, please let me know.
Don't forget Bornu and Gabon. I definitely think there's a niche out there for Gabonais timelines.
(Actually, Gabon doesn't get nearly enough attention - there was a lot going on there during the 19th and early 20th centuries on both the European and African side, and you can't ask for better AH fodder than the Bwiti faith. But I digress.)
Yeah, it was founded with the best of intentions (or at least reasonably good intentions by late Victorian standards) but it's pretty much a mess - the rubber barons were there first, so they have a built-in advantage in dealing with the inexperienced and underfunded international administration. Where there's a forceful provincial governor, things are different, but in most places the companies have infiltrated the government to the point where they have nearly as much freedom of action as before. And just wait until the Great War breaks out.
Things will get better eventually - the postwar second draft of the international administration will run things a bit more professionally - but it will take quite a while, and will get worse first.
Well, for certain values of "ahead." Brian Titley, in his biography of Bokassa (pages 6-7) tells us that the 1920s were a period of regression in what would become the CAR, with teh French concessionaire companies wanting to make up the exploitation time lost during WW1. Discussions of the CAR during that period are notable not so much for the atrocities as for the casual way they were carried out in retribution for very minor things. French Equatorial Africa, as it then was, was probably one of the worst-run colonies in Africa, and that's saying a lot.
In any event, I think TTL's Africa will mostly end up a better place, at least for values of "better" to which most of us subscribe. But it won't be uniformly so at all places and times, and when corporate colonialism meets a world war and a Central African Mfecane, matters in the affected regions will be pretty bad for a while.
Thanks! I admit to being curious about what the tropers would do with this timeline - if you set up such a page, please let me know.
Don't forget Bornu and Gabon. I definitely think there's a niche out there for Gabonais timelines.
(Actually, Gabon doesn't get nearly enough attention - there was a lot going on there during the 19th and early 20th centuries on both the European and African side, and you can't ask for better AH fodder than the Bwiti faith. But I digress.)
Yeah, it was founded with the best of intentions (or at least reasonably good intentions by late Victorian standards) but it's pretty much a mess - the rubber barons were there first, so they have a built-in advantage in dealing with the inexperienced and underfunded international administration. Where there's a forceful provincial governor, things are different, but in most places the companies have infiltrated the government to the point where they have nearly as much freedom of action as before. And just wait until the Great War breaks out.
Things will get better eventually - the postwar second draft of the international administration will run things a bit more professionally - but it will take quite a while, and will get worse first.
I am not a troper, I just enjoy reading the site. But I know that many guys here write on TV Tropes.
Communist MPs
Just joined the forum to comment on this great timeline - I love the depth of your research
Several posts ago you implied that a Malê politician might be elected to Parliament - could I suggest my own home constituency of Battersea North?
It's in SW London, but between the wars it was a hotbed of Communism, having one of only two communist MPs - what's more he was an Indian - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shapurji_Saklatvala
Just a suggestion
Just joined the forum to comment on this great timeline - I love the depth of your research
Several posts ago you implied that a Malê politician might be elected to Parliament - could I suggest my own home constituency of Battersea North?
It's in SW London, but between the wars it was a hotbed of Communism, having one of only two communist MPs - what's more he was an Indian - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shapurji_Saklatvala
Just a suggestion
Just joined the forum to comment on this great timeline - I love the depth of your research
Several posts ago you implied that a Malê politician might be elected to Parliament - could I suggest my own home constituency of Battersea North?
It's in SW London, but between the wars it was a hotbed of Communism, having one of only two communist MPs - what's more he was an Indian - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shapurji_Saklatvala
Just a suggestion
I'm honored that you joined the forum for my sake.
Battersea North is a good choice, but it didn't exist in OTL until the Representation of the People Act 1918. During the 1890s and 1900s, the constituency was Battersea and Clapham, which was also left-leaning (John Burns held it as a Lib-Lab MP from 1892 through 1918).
I actually had the Chatham borough constituency in mind - it leaned Conservative during the late Victorian era, but it went Labour in a big way in 1906, and it will have a somewhat different electorate in TTL. (I'd also thought of Finsbury North, where Dadabhai Naoroji was elected in 1892 in OTL, but that will be his seat in TTL too.) Nothing's written in stone yet, though, and I may change my mind.
Welcome to the board.Just joined the forum to comment on this great timeline - I love the depth of your research
Several posts ago you implied that a Malê politician might be elected to Parliament - could I suggest my own home constituency of Battersea North?
It's in SW London, but between the wars it was a hotbed of Communism, having one of only two communist MPs - what's more he was an Indian - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shapurji_Saklatvala
Just a suggestion
Kaiphranos
Donor
This article seems to hold some potential material for alternate literary trends in this timeline...
Wow, that's some fascinating stuff. Nineteenth-century African-American lost world novels? Sotho magical realism featuring Shaka? Hausa heroic fantasy from the pulp era? You know stuff like that will feature in TTL, and I swear I didn't know about it when I wrote the Honório Yaji passage.
I'm ashamed to say I'd only heard of one of those authors, and not as a writer of fiction. Any day I learn something is a good day, especially when it's something like this.
Literary interlude: Red rubber and prophecy
*******
“There is a difference,” said Ngbabesi, “between privilege and power.”
“Is there a difference between nonsense and babbling?” asked Bekalola. He’d asked many such questions since Ngbabesi started reading books.
“We are privileged,” Ngbabesi went on, not deigning to answer. “We carry guns and not machetes. You never see us covered in latex and scrabbling in the jungle for the last vine to meet our quota. No one is holding our wives and daughters in the stockade as surety…”
“We hold theirs,” Bekalola said.
“That’s precisely my point.”
“How so?” asked Nzouba. As sergeant, he was supposed to discourage these conversations: the captain had told him that serious talk in the barracks-room could lead to disaffection. As tirailleur, he didn’t care what a toubab captain thought.
“What would happen,” asked Ngbabesi, “if we stopped holding the village women? What if we let them go?”
“Ah,” Nzouba said.
“Yes,” Ngbabesi finished. “Privilege can be given and taken away. If you can take it, you have power.”
“You are a soldier,” said Baende, the headman.
So much for making them forget. “I was,” Nzouba answered.
“You’re still wearing your uniform.”
“I got drunk and hit the captain,” Nzouba said, naming one of his secret desires, “and they flogged me and dismissed me from the army. This is all the clothing I have.”
“So you joined the brotherhood?” asked Baende. He’d been flogged too, no doubt; headmen were beaten if their villagers ran away, or if they didn’t gather sufficient rubber, or if they displeased the district officer. Nzouba had done it himself, the times when the captain had made the troops help the rubber company’s guards.
“Let me see.”
Nzouba obeyed, taking off his tattered uniform jacket and letting the headman see the fresh lash-marks that Ngbabesi had given him.
“Maybe you’re telling the truth, then. I’ll find out.” He would, in time, but by then, Nzouba hoped to be long gone. “But then, why are you here? When your kind is cast out, you go back home, or you find work as a rubber-guard. What do you want from me?”
“I want to know where Mario is. He’ll need men.”
Nzouba could see the tension exit the headman’s muscles. Mario was the trader from Gabon, the one whose father was from Brazil, and it made sense that a cashiered Gabonais sergeant would seek him out. He would need guards, yes, maybe even an apprentice.
“He’s upriver at Lisala. Go north and you’ll find him.”
In Ikonongo, there was a man who sold news: not one who passed on rumors the way that everyone did, but one who collected news for sale. Those who came there knew that he would pay them for their stories, because words too could be sold at a profit.
“Mario, I see,” he said. “And with an old soldier. Tell me, soldier, have you seen this?” He handed Nzouba a broadsheet in French, with the imprint of a seal: a decree from the governor.
The sergeant scanned it quickly, and his eyes widened. It was a labor regulation. There was to be no taking of women and children as hostages. No mutilation. No use of the lash unless ordered by a magistrate…
“Look at the date.”
Nzouba looked down to the bottom of the page. The decree was six months old.
“Did your captain tell you, when you were still a soldier?” The news-seller didn’t wait for an answer. “The governor orders, and the soldiers don’t know?”
Nzouba tried to imagine the governor, issuing orders in his office and fondly believing they would be followed. How many district officers stood between the governor and the rubber barons? How many were rubbermen themselves, or in their pay?
“The governor,” he heard himself say, “has more privilege than power.”
“That’s as may be, soldier. But we know. They’re laughing at your governor, all up and down the river. Maybe they’re even laughing at his soldiers.”
“It doesn’t matter to me any more,” said Nzouba.
“M’ba knows. Maybe that will matter.”
“M’ba?”
He had a name. And thirty of Mario’s francs later, he also had a place.
There was a small river nearby, and a Luba trader’s boat to ferry him down it for a fee. At nightfall the river found its confluence with the great Congo, and the boat was moored for the night.
If Nzouba went downriver in the morning, he would reach his barracks in three days. Captain Villiers would be expecting him, and would be anxious to hear his report. But what would he say?
The words of the vision came back to him. To whom much is given, of him much shall be required. Privilege without responsibility – privilege without power – was a sin. The privileged must take power and use it for good, or they must forsake their privilege. If the governor would not do so, then others must – sergeants, maybe, or even soldiers who read books.
“Nothing is wrong,” he practiced. He would say those words to the captain, because nothing was – nothing, certainly, when compared to the things the captain and men like him were paid to tolerate.
Three armies would meet soon: M’ba’s, the rubber-baron’s, and the international one which Nzouba had been sent to serve. He would need to make sure his army fought on the right side.
Mamadou Camara, Le fleuve des armées (1889)
Mamadou Camara (1839-95), along with Laurent N’Diaye, is one of the two nineteenth-century Wolof writers most widely known to francophone audiences. [1] Born to a subsistence-farming family outside the French settlement of St. Louis, he joined one of the original Senegalese tirailleur regiments at sixteen, a year younger than the minimum allowed. He saw action during the 1856 campaign against the Toucouleur, and served afterward in the Côte d’Ivoire and Guinea garrisons where his regiment was posted.
In 1862, after distinguishing himself in defense of an inland French fort, he was promoted to sergeant, and took advantage of the education that was provided free to noncommissioned officers. His regiment served in Brazil during the Third Platine War, where he won several medals; at war’s end, he was permitted to take the examinations for officer rank. He would serve as a lieutenant in the Franco-Prussian War before being posted to Guinea again, and then to Gabon and to the French-claimed territory on the north bank of the Congo.
Camara began to write in the early 1870s, when he commanded a coastal garrison at Kaloum [2]; at the time, this was a sleepy post that provided a respite from the battles of the previous decade. The first of his fourteen novels, Le soldat errant, was published under a pseudonym in June 1873. It, and its two successor novels, told the story of a Wolof soldier who served in various overseas posts before finally becoming a shopkeeper in Marseilles. These works portrayed military life in a generally positive light, although they were, for their time, shockingly realistic in their depiction of battle and its aftermath.
The “soldier novels” were well received and were notable for featuring an African viewpoint character, but were also criticized for their “sensational” portrait of warfare and their sympathetic description of animist rituals. Much the same reception greeted Une princesse du Mali (1878), a historical romance loosely based on the chronicles of Ibn Battutah, and Oumar Tall (1880), in which a fictionalized biography of the Toucouleur jihadist was interwoven with Wolof and Fulani legend. The latter, especially, was condemned by the right-wing press for valorizing an enemy of France, although it was told from the point of view of a Bambara servant and presented Tall as a flawed hero.
Camara’s most controversial works, however, were his three “Congo novels:” Le fleuve de larmes (1885), Le fleuve de sang (1887) and Le fleuve des armées (1889). These works, which drew heavily from his experience as a tirailleur officer in the French Congo and later in the international zone, chronicled the conquest and exploitation of a riverside village in the middle Congo. The three novels cover partially-overlapping time frames and are told from different points of view: the action in “The River of Tears” is shown through the eyes of the Mongo villagers, “The River of Blood” through a naïve Frenchman who takes a job as a camp doctor for a rubber company, and “The River of Armies” through Pascal Nzouba, a Gabonais tirailleur seconded as sergeant to a locally-recruited detachment under international command.
The Congo novels were graphic and scathing in their portrayal of colonial atrocities, and were pilloried by the right-wing government of their time, which mounted an intense effort to learn the identity of their author. At the same time, they were enormously influential in bringing the rubber barons’ abuses to a wider European audience, and “The River of Tears” was part of the impetus for the Brussels Conference’s creation of an international administration for the Congo basin. The latter two novels continued to keep the Congo in the public attention and castigated the ineptitude and corruption of the international authorities, and were likewise condemned in the right-wing press and on the floor of the Corps législatif.
Camara’s identity was discovered soon after the publication of “The River of Armies,” and he was immediately cashiered from the army. He traveled to Paris to challenge his dismissal in court and, represented by celebrated advocate Edgar Demange, won one of the outstanding free-speech victories of nineteenth-century France: in May 1890, the cour de cassation, a bastion of Bonapartist liberalism, restored his commission and ruled that a soldier or government employee could not be dismissed for lawful speech. However, Camara – then a major – was denied further promotion, and retired in 1892. He died three years later, at the age of fifty-six, in his house in the Dakar medina, which has since become a museum.
Although the Congo novels were treated as political works during the nineteenth century, they are still read today for their literary merit and for their theme of moral compromise, which is treated much more forthrightly than in most works of the time. In one sequence near the midpoint of “The River of Armies,” for instance, the worldly-wise viewpoint character becomes caught in a web of conflicting imperatives…
In 1862, after distinguishing himself in defense of an inland French fort, he was promoted to sergeant, and took advantage of the education that was provided free to noncommissioned officers. His regiment served in Brazil during the Third Platine War, where he won several medals; at war’s end, he was permitted to take the examinations for officer rank. He would serve as a lieutenant in the Franco-Prussian War before being posted to Guinea again, and then to Gabon and to the French-claimed territory on the north bank of the Congo.
Camara began to write in the early 1870s, when he commanded a coastal garrison at Kaloum [2]; at the time, this was a sleepy post that provided a respite from the battles of the previous decade. The first of his fourteen novels, Le soldat errant, was published under a pseudonym in June 1873. It, and its two successor novels, told the story of a Wolof soldier who served in various overseas posts before finally becoming a shopkeeper in Marseilles. These works portrayed military life in a generally positive light, although they were, for their time, shockingly realistic in their depiction of battle and its aftermath.
The “soldier novels” were well received and were notable for featuring an African viewpoint character, but were also criticized for their “sensational” portrait of warfare and their sympathetic description of animist rituals. Much the same reception greeted Une princesse du Mali (1878), a historical romance loosely based on the chronicles of Ibn Battutah, and Oumar Tall (1880), in which a fictionalized biography of the Toucouleur jihadist was interwoven with Wolof and Fulani legend. The latter, especially, was condemned by the right-wing press for valorizing an enemy of France, although it was told from the point of view of a Bambara servant and presented Tall as a flawed hero.
Camara’s most controversial works, however, were his three “Congo novels:” Le fleuve de larmes (1885), Le fleuve de sang (1887) and Le fleuve des armées (1889). These works, which drew heavily from his experience as a tirailleur officer in the French Congo and later in the international zone, chronicled the conquest and exploitation of a riverside village in the middle Congo. The three novels cover partially-overlapping time frames and are told from different points of view: the action in “The River of Tears” is shown through the eyes of the Mongo villagers, “The River of Blood” through a naïve Frenchman who takes a job as a camp doctor for a rubber company, and “The River of Armies” through Pascal Nzouba, a Gabonais tirailleur seconded as sergeant to a locally-recruited detachment under international command.
The Congo novels were graphic and scathing in their portrayal of colonial atrocities, and were pilloried by the right-wing government of their time, which mounted an intense effort to learn the identity of their author. At the same time, they were enormously influential in bringing the rubber barons’ abuses to a wider European audience, and “The River of Tears” was part of the impetus for the Brussels Conference’s creation of an international administration for the Congo basin. The latter two novels continued to keep the Congo in the public attention and castigated the ineptitude and corruption of the international authorities, and were likewise condemned in the right-wing press and on the floor of the Corps législatif.
Camara’s identity was discovered soon after the publication of “The River of Armies,” and he was immediately cashiered from the army. He traveled to Paris to challenge his dismissal in court and, represented by celebrated advocate Edgar Demange, won one of the outstanding free-speech victories of nineteenth-century France: in May 1890, the cour de cassation, a bastion of Bonapartist liberalism, restored his commission and ruled that a soldier or government employee could not be dismissed for lawful speech. However, Camara – then a major – was denied further promotion, and retired in 1892. He died three years later, at the age of fifty-six, in his house in the Dakar medina, which has since become a museum.
Although the Congo novels were treated as political works during the nineteenth century, they are still read today for their literary merit and for their theme of moral compromise, which is treated much more forthrightly than in most works of the time. In one sequence near the midpoint of “The River of Armies,” for instance, the worldly-wise viewpoint character becomes caught in a web of conflicting imperatives…
“There is a difference,” said Ngbabesi, “between privilege and power.”
“Is there a difference between nonsense and babbling?” asked Bekalola. He’d asked many such questions since Ngbabesi started reading books.
“We are privileged,” Ngbabesi went on, not deigning to answer. “We carry guns and not machetes. You never see us covered in latex and scrabbling in the jungle for the last vine to meet our quota. No one is holding our wives and daughters in the stockade as surety…”
“We hold theirs,” Bekalola said.
“That’s precisely my point.”
“How so?” asked Nzouba. As sergeant, he was supposed to discourage these conversations: the captain had told him that serious talk in the barracks-room could lead to disaffection. As tirailleur, he didn’t care what a toubab captain thought.
“What would happen,” asked Ngbabesi, “if we stopped holding the village women? What if we let them go?”
“Ah,” Nzouba said.
“Yes,” Ngbabesi finished. “Privilege can be given and taken away. If you can take it, you have power.”
_______
“I need to talk to you, Nzouba,” said Captain Villiers.
It occurred to Nzouba, not for the first time, that Villiers often said unnecessary things: if not to talk, why had he summoned Nzouba to his office? But Nzouba had been schooled by long years in the army, and said only “Yes, sir” – a phrase, he’d learned, that could mean nearly anything.
“Danforth, the American rubber man, has been complaining – says the natives are acting unusually, that they’re too quiet. He’s starting at shadows, probably. He always does. But he’s the district officer’s pet and I need to keep him happy. Go find out what’s going on.”
“Me, sir?”
“Who else would do it? Me? You’re from Gabon, your kind’s been coming around here for thirty years. They’ll talk to you.”
“They’ve seen me in uniform, sir.”
“Then make them forget it.”
It occurred to Nzouba, not for the first time, that Villiers often said unnecessary things: if not to talk, why had he summoned Nzouba to his office? But Nzouba had been schooled by long years in the army, and said only “Yes, sir” – a phrase, he’d learned, that could mean nearly anything.
“Danforth, the American rubber man, has been complaining – says the natives are acting unusually, that they’re too quiet. He’s starting at shadows, probably. He always does. But he’s the district officer’s pet and I need to keep him happy. Go find out what’s going on.”
“Me, sir?”
“Who else would do it? Me? You’re from Gabon, your kind’s been coming around here for thirty years. They’ll talk to you.”
“They’ve seen me in uniform, sir.”
“Then make them forget it.”
_______
“You are a soldier,” said Baende, the headman.
So much for making them forget. “I was,” Nzouba answered.
“You’re still wearing your uniform.”
“I got drunk and hit the captain,” Nzouba said, naming one of his secret desires, “and they flogged me and dismissed me from the army. This is all the clothing I have.”
“So you joined the brotherhood?” asked Baende. He’d been flogged too, no doubt; headmen were beaten if their villagers ran away, or if they didn’t gather sufficient rubber, or if they displeased the district officer. Nzouba had done it himself, the times when the captain had made the troops help the rubber company’s guards.
“Let me see.”
Nzouba obeyed, taking off his tattered uniform jacket and letting the headman see the fresh lash-marks that Ngbabesi had given him.
“Maybe you’re telling the truth, then. I’ll find out.” He would, in time, but by then, Nzouba hoped to be long gone. “But then, why are you here? When your kind is cast out, you go back home, or you find work as a rubber-guard. What do you want from me?”
“I want to know where Mario is. He’ll need men.”
Nzouba could see the tension exit the headman’s muscles. Mario was the trader from Gabon, the one whose father was from Brazil, and it made sense that a cashiered Gabonais sergeant would seek him out. He would need guards, yes, maybe even an apprentice.
“He’s upriver at Lisala. Go north and you’ll find him.”
_______
Now Nzouba was dressed in patterned cloth, his uniform adorning the villager to whom he had sold it. Beside him, Mario struck a bargain with the headman of Lisala. They were speaking the traders’ tongue, the Bangi laced with French, Portuguese and Mitsogo that was common currency on this part of the river. [3]
Nzouba had hoped that, as Mario’s guard, he might hear if there were rumors of anything being planned. If this headman knew anything but the price of goods, he wasn’t saying, and it was the same in the next village and the one after that.
But Mario noticed what Nzouba had not. “I’m getting better prices than I should,” he said one night, “and they’re buying more than they usually do. They must be planning to sell things on.”
“And if they are?”
“Then if I can find the buyer, I can go to him directly.”
“Can you find that out?”
Mario lifted his purse and shook it so that the coins rattled. “I think I can.”
Nzouba had hoped that, as Mario’s guard, he might hear if there were rumors of anything being planned. If this headman knew anything but the price of goods, he wasn’t saying, and it was the same in the next village and the one after that.
But Mario noticed what Nzouba had not. “I’m getting better prices than I should,” he said one night, “and they’re buying more than they usually do. They must be planning to sell things on.”
“And if they are?”
“Then if I can find the buyer, I can go to him directly.”
“Can you find that out?”
Mario lifted his purse and shook it so that the coins rattled. “I think I can.”
_______
In Ikonongo, there was a man who sold news: not one who passed on rumors the way that everyone did, but one who collected news for sale. Those who came there knew that he would pay them for their stories, because words too could be sold at a profit.
“Mario, I see,” he said. “And with an old soldier. Tell me, soldier, have you seen this?” He handed Nzouba a broadsheet in French, with the imprint of a seal: a decree from the governor.
The sergeant scanned it quickly, and his eyes widened. It was a labor regulation. There was to be no taking of women and children as hostages. No mutilation. No use of the lash unless ordered by a magistrate…
“Look at the date.”
Nzouba looked down to the bottom of the page. The decree was six months old.
“Did your captain tell you, when you were still a soldier?” The news-seller didn’t wait for an answer. “The governor orders, and the soldiers don’t know?”
Nzouba tried to imagine the governor, issuing orders in his office and fondly believing they would be followed. How many district officers stood between the governor and the rubber barons? How many were rubbermen themselves, or in their pay?
“The governor,” he heard himself say, “has more privilege than power.”
“That’s as may be, soldier. But we know. They’re laughing at your governor, all up and down the river. Maybe they’re even laughing at his soldiers.”
“It doesn’t matter to me any more,” said Nzouba.
“M’ba knows. Maybe that will matter.”
“M’ba?”
He had a name. And thirty of Mario’s francs later, he also had a place.
_______
M’ba was masked, but Nzouba recognized him. The mask itself told the story; that and the spots of white painted on his body, the necklace of cowrie shells, and the civet’s tail worn as a fetish at the waist. Anyone from Gabon would know that dress, even one who, like Nzouba, had grown up in the church. That was the clothing of a nganga, a Bwiti priest.
He looked down now at Mario’s goods, spread out on the floor of the hut. “We can do business,” he said, “if I can trust you.”
Nzouba knew full well that he could not. Ever since he’d been led into the village, he’d marked its people’s martial demeanor, its stockpiles of food and clothing, the noise of its smithies. The fields by the jungle verge were tended, not neglected in the mad scramble for rubber vines. This place, at least for now, existed apart from both the law and the lawlessness that was the government.
There were other places like that. They lasted until they were found.
“No one can trust anyone, can we?” he said in a measured voice. “But we all do, because we must.”
“You can’t say ‘must’ to me, soldier,” M’ba answered. “I have power here. Trust is a privilege in my giving.”
“What do you want from us, then?”
“Truth.”
He looked down now at Mario’s goods, spread out on the floor of the hut. “We can do business,” he said, “if I can trust you.”
Nzouba knew full well that he could not. Ever since he’d been led into the village, he’d marked its people’s martial demeanor, its stockpiles of food and clothing, the noise of its smithies. The fields by the jungle verge were tended, not neglected in the mad scramble for rubber vines. This place, at least for now, existed apart from both the law and the lawlessness that was the government.
There were other places like that. They lasted until they were found.
“No one can trust anyone, can we?” he said in a measured voice. “But we all do, because we must.”
“You can’t say ‘must’ to me, soldier,” M’ba answered. “I have power here. Trust is a privilege in my giving.”
“What do you want from us, then?”
“Truth.”
_______
“You have heard of the naissance pascale,” M’ba said. [4] He pointed to two wooden crosses which his men had erected next to the hut. “Go to them.”
Nzouba had heard, yes. He’d heard it preached against in church, when he was a child: an obscene parody of the crucifixion, a blasphemous rite of the devil. He could undergo it only at the risk of its soul.
“You’re an unbeliever, I know. But the naissance brings unbelievers to truth as well.” Six of M’ba’s men forced Nzouba and Mario to the crosses, tying their arms outstretched. Others brought bowls of tea which carried the bitter smell of iboga bark.
“This will take you to the orixás and the saints, to the revered ancestors,” M’ba said as they drank. “You will face evil and conquer it. You will learn who you are, and I will learn if I can trust you.”
Around him, people were chanting and playing on a stringed instrument, but both the chants and M’ba’s words became increasingly indistinct. Nzouba felt a surpassing thirst, and the shape of the cross filled his consciousness, a symbol of the Savior to which he clung as the drug gripped his mind.
He recited the words of Jesus, and they were written in front of him. Behind them, other visions took the shape of faces, and from all around came a cacophony of sounds. A cacophony of screams.
He saw the men being lashed when they came back with less rubber than the barons wanted. He saw runaways caught and dragged back to where the rubber-guards waited with their machetes: a finger the first time, two more the second, a hand the third. He saw the tears of the women as they were taken and locked away as surety, and saw their tears a second time when they were raped. He saw men hack desperately at the men of the next village, the only cause for war being the rubber that the next village had and they did not. He saw men shot, hanged, branded, beaten.
None of this was new to him. What he hadn’t seen, he’d heard of; some he had even done, and Jesus’ words lashed him for it. But it was before him now, all his life in one place and time, and as the vision assaulted him, he felt a pain akin to theirs.
“To whom much is given,” said one, “of him much will be required.” The man who said that was from the deepest jungle, and had doubtless lived and died without hearing of Jesus, but he said it again and again.
And then Nzouba awoke to find himself next to Mario, clad in white, on the floor of a darkened room.
A few minutes later, the heavy cloth that covered the doorway was rolled up, and sunlight streamed in past M’ba’s unmasked figure. “Come out of the tomb,” he said. “You have died and risen again.”
Nzouba stood – an appallingly difficult act – and stumbled out into the day. He accepted a gourd filled with water.
“Who did you see, soldier?” asked M’ba. “Ogum, the orixá of war? St. James? Your great-grandfather?”
“A man known to me,” Nzouba answered.
“Well enough. And can I trust you?”
“I…” he began, and then stopped. “I don’t know.”
“A good answer, man who was a soldier. If you’d said yes, then I’d have known I couldn’t. But if you’re brave enough to be honest, maybe I can.” He turned to Mario. “We’ll look at your goods now, merchant. I’ll need more of them, in due time.”
Nzouba had heard, yes. He’d heard it preached against in church, when he was a child: an obscene parody of the crucifixion, a blasphemous rite of the devil. He could undergo it only at the risk of its soul.
“You’re an unbeliever, I know. But the naissance brings unbelievers to truth as well.” Six of M’ba’s men forced Nzouba and Mario to the crosses, tying their arms outstretched. Others brought bowls of tea which carried the bitter smell of iboga bark.
“This will take you to the orixás and the saints, to the revered ancestors,” M’ba said as they drank. “You will face evil and conquer it. You will learn who you are, and I will learn if I can trust you.”
Around him, people were chanting and playing on a stringed instrument, but both the chants and M’ba’s words became increasingly indistinct. Nzouba felt a surpassing thirst, and the shape of the cross filled his consciousness, a symbol of the Savior to which he clung as the drug gripped his mind.
He recited the words of Jesus, and they were written in front of him. Behind them, other visions took the shape of faces, and from all around came a cacophony of sounds. A cacophony of screams.
He saw the men being lashed when they came back with less rubber than the barons wanted. He saw runaways caught and dragged back to where the rubber-guards waited with their machetes: a finger the first time, two more the second, a hand the third. He saw the tears of the women as they were taken and locked away as surety, and saw their tears a second time when they were raped. He saw men hack desperately at the men of the next village, the only cause for war being the rubber that the next village had and they did not. He saw men shot, hanged, branded, beaten.
None of this was new to him. What he hadn’t seen, he’d heard of; some he had even done, and Jesus’ words lashed him for it. But it was before him now, all his life in one place and time, and as the vision assaulted him, he felt a pain akin to theirs.
“To whom much is given,” said one, “of him much will be required.” The man who said that was from the deepest jungle, and had doubtless lived and died without hearing of Jesus, but he said it again and again.
And then Nzouba awoke to find himself next to Mario, clad in white, on the floor of a darkened room.
A few minutes later, the heavy cloth that covered the doorway was rolled up, and sunlight streamed in past M’ba’s unmasked figure. “Come out of the tomb,” he said. “You have died and risen again.”
Nzouba stood – an appallingly difficult act – and stumbled out into the day. He accepted a gourd filled with water.
“Who did you see, soldier?” asked M’ba. “Ogum, the orixá of war? St. James? Your great-grandfather?”
“A man known to me,” Nzouba answered.
“Well enough. And can I trust you?”
“I…” he began, and then stopped. “I don’t know.”
“A good answer, man who was a soldier. If you’d said yes, then I’d have known I couldn’t. But if you’re brave enough to be honest, maybe I can.” He turned to Mario. “We’ll look at your goods now, merchant. I’ll need more of them, in due time.”
_______
There was a small river nearby, and a Luba trader’s boat to ferry him down it for a fee. At nightfall the river found its confluence with the great Congo, and the boat was moored for the night.
If Nzouba went downriver in the morning, he would reach his barracks in three days. Captain Villiers would be expecting him, and would be anxious to hear his report. But what would he say?
The words of the vision came back to him. To whom much is given, of him much shall be required. Privilege without responsibility – privilege without power – was a sin. The privileged must take power and use it for good, or they must forsake their privilege. If the governor would not do so, then others must – sergeants, maybe, or even soldiers who read books.
“Nothing is wrong,” he practiced. He would say those words to the captain, because nothing was – nothing, certainly, when compared to the things the captain and men like him were paid to tolerate.
Three armies would meet soon: M’ba’s, the rubber-baron’s, and the international one which Nzouba had been sent to serve. He would need to make sure his army fought on the right side.
_______
[1] Camara and the Congo novels were mentioned in post 638. I’ve had to adjust a couple of dates in his biography due to subsequent developments in the timeline. Where there’s a difference, this update takes precedence.
[2] OTL Conakry.
[3] Compare OTL Lingala.
[4] See post 411.
[2] OTL Conakry.
[3] Compare OTL Lingala.
[4] See post 411.
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A few notes inadvertently omitted from the previous update:
1. The excerpts of Camara's novel are not consecutive, and are separated by florid nineteenth-century descriptions of the setting and the appearance of characters. The author has a spare prose style by nineteenth-century standards, especially with dialogue, but (as can be seen from the parts of the story where visions are depicted) he likes to paint a picture when describing what the characters see.
2. The author is Muslim - raised in the Tijaniyyah school, but casual about religion - while the viewpoint character is Christian. Camara personally experienced a Bwiti initiation while stationed in Gabon, but his knowledge of Christian doctrine and symbolism is part secondhand and part imagined.
3. Re-experiencing significant life events is a documented effect of an iboga trance, which can last for most of a day. The viewpoint character, naturally, sees the events that have dominated his personal landscape for the past few years and which are the source of his moral conflict.
4. No, the novel doesn't end well for anyone concerned. It's the Congo in the 1880s - nearly everyone loses.
1. The excerpts of Camara's novel are not consecutive, and are separated by florid nineteenth-century descriptions of the setting and the appearance of characters. The author has a spare prose style by nineteenth-century standards, especially with dialogue, but (as can be seen from the parts of the story where visions are depicted) he likes to paint a picture when describing what the characters see.
2. The author is Muslim - raised in the Tijaniyyah school, but casual about religion - while the viewpoint character is Christian. Camara personally experienced a Bwiti initiation while stationed in Gabon, but his knowledge of Christian doctrine and symbolism is part secondhand and part imagined.
3. Re-experiencing significant life events is a documented effect of an iboga trance, which can last for most of a day. The viewpoint character, naturally, sees the events that have dominated his personal landscape for the past few years and which are the source of his moral conflict.
4. No, the novel doesn't end well for anyone concerned. It's the Congo in the 1880s - nearly everyone loses.