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Fighting the Slave Hunters in Central Africa

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Fighting the Slave Hunters in Central Africa CASS LIBRARY OF AFRICAN STUDIES MISSIONARY RESEARCHES AND TRAVELS No.8 General Editor: ROBERT I. ROTBERG FIGHTING THE SLAVE-HUNTERS IN CENTRAL AFRICA A RECORD OF TWENTY-SIX YEARS OF TRAVEL AND ADVENTURE ROUND THE GREAT LA~ES and of The Overthrow of Tip-Pu-Tib, Rumaliza and other great Slave-Traders BY ALFRED J. SWANN SECOND EDITION With a new Introduction by NORMAN R. BENNETT FRANK CASS & CO. LTD. Published by FRANK CASS AND COMPANY LIMITED This edition published by Routledge - 2012 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business First edition 1910 Second edition 1969 Transferred to Digital Printing 2005 ISBN: 978-0-203-04241-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-136-25681-3 (hbk) TO THE MEMORY OF BRAVE MEN & WOMEN OF ALL NATIONS WHO HAVE LOST THEIR LIVES IN AFRICA THAT AFRICANS MIGHT LIVE GENERAL EDITOR'S PREFACE LFRED J. SWANN of the London Missionary Society was A a lay missionary who spent most of his time on or in the environs of Lake Tanganyika. He sailed the Society's small ships and sought to spread the Gospel to the peoples who lived on islands in the lake or around its shores. And like so many other late nineteenth-century missionaries, he had secular commitments to which he tended to devote much of his time. He was particularly well-acquainted with the more important Arab merchants based on or near Lake Tanganyika, and his knowledge of them and their problems was full. S"vann dealt with them on behalf of the Society, gained their confidence, and later acted to curb their influence during the growth of European hegemony in East Africa. Despite his institutional affiliations, he served the interests of British imperialism loyally, and later became a colonial administrator. The importance of this, Swann's only book, indeed stems more from his secular involvements with the Arabs and the forces of imperialism than from any portrayal of evangelical developments. Professor Norman R. Bennett of Boston University is an authority on nineteenth century East Africa. He has published numerous articles on Arabs and missionaries in the interior and has here provided a fresh and exhaustive introduction both to this book and to the period about which Swann wrote. 4 December 1967 R.I.R. INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION URING the years between 1885 and 1894 the regions D around Lake Tanganyika became the centre of a peaceful but acrimonious struggle among Europeans ofseveralnationalities, and of actual hostilities between Europeans and Arabs. Alfred J. Swann, mariner and lay missionary for the London Missionary Society, participated in the activity, developing a particular relationship to the Arabs and their leader, ~Iuhammad bin Khalfan (or Rumaliza), that led him to play an equivocal role in the events leading to the final European domination of Lake Tanganyika's shores. Swann's society, the London Missionary Society, had decided in 1876 to take up what they considered the legacy of Livingstone and to establish a station at Ujiji, the scene of the meeting between Livingstone and Stanley, as a centre for missionary endeavour around the lake.! The first missionary expedition reached Ujiji in August 1878; among the party was Edward C. Hore, destined to be the dominant member of the mission, and a predominant influence upon Swann, until he left Africa in 1888. 2 The chosen location for L.M.S. activities, Ujiji, was then the principal centre of Arab3 settlement on the lake shores, with the indigenous Ha people accepting and profiting from the Arab presence. 4 The resulting powerful Arab influence did not make Ujiji a very suitable choice for Christian endeavour-Hore described the town as a place for" only Arabs, Wangwana, and their slaves & hangers on "-but initial Arab hostility to the VIII NEW INTRODUCTION removal of the unwanted Europeans from under their scrutiny kept the missionaries there. 5 They ,vere soon joined, in January 1879, by rival Christians, the French Roman Catholic White Fathers. Hore optimistically observed, "I do not think they ,vill hinder us much," later concluding that the White Fathers were " quite unfit and unprovided for this work." Nevertheless the French missionaries remained to become formidable rivals of the L.M.S.6 The two groups generally managed to live on outwardly friendly terms, but the subsequent active role of the White Fathers in opposing the Arabs later became a main stimulus to Swann's opposite conception of the proper European reaction to Arab strength around Lake Tanganyika. The lake region where the British and French missionaries operated was then becoming an area of increasing activity for the Arabs. The principal route from the coast to the eastern Congo went through Ujiji, the principal lake port, with, from the mid­ 1860's, growing numbers of Arabs and their followers passing on their way to gain the plentiful ivory ofthe politically ,veak peoples to the west. Other Arabs, most of \vhom ackno,vledged the leadership of Mwinyi Kheri, who dominated the Ujiji community and the northern shores of the lake, remained in the profitable, but less exploited, lake region, some raiding and trading for ivory and slaves, others supplying the caravans passing to and from the Congo. The African groups around the lake offered a good field for the relatively small Arab community of Ujiji. Only to the north, in Burundi, was there an African state successfully able, at least away from the lake, to withstand Arab incursions. Most of the other African peoples did not have centralized governments; this, added to the continual hostilities among the Africans themselves, allowed an increasing role for Arab raiders. It is often asserted that the trade route serving Lake Tan­ ganyika and the Congo was not a primary route for the exporta­ tion of slaves; it "yas rather the principal ivory-exporting route for East-Central Africa. Although it is certainly true that the Ujiji route ,vas the principal ivory road, and that the routes leading across southern Tanzania to Kilwa and other nearby ports carried most of the slaves exported, the role that slaves NEW INTRODUCTION IX played on the route from Ujiji should not be underestimated. 7 The British representative in Zanzibar, John (later Sir John) Kirk, could report in 1876 that slaves from Lake Tanganyika, Manyema, and Urua (the Baluba country) were not known in Zanzibar,8 but there were sufficient reasons for their absence. Slaves taken around the lake and in the Congo were bartered to Africans for ivory along the route to the coast; there were also local slave markets, such as at Tabora and Ujiji. 9 Once Euro­ peans became settled on the routes to the coast, frequent reports confirmed a minor, but busy, slave business.!o Kirk recognized this fact, while still affirming that most slaves did not reach Zanzibar since those not traded along the route were absorbed into the Arab-run plantation economy around the northern Tanzanian coastal centres.!l Reports of the 1890's indicate that many more- slaves must have arrived in Zanzibar, and especially in Pemba, than were noted,l2 while Hore at the lake earlier indicated that there was a larger local slave trade than he had originally reported.l3 In any case, raiding for slaves did go on around Lake Tanganyika; it increased during the years ofSwann's missionary career, thus providing a clear indication that the markets from the lake to Zanzibar absorbed the growing numbers of slaves taken from the area of Swann's missionary endeavours. The raiding for slaves naturally meant that the Europeans were in a potentially dangerous position, practising their work in a region increasingly dominated by Arabs. Both the French and the British, however, recognized their lack of power and concen­ trated on their own missionary work, leaving to the future the suppression of the slave trade. Within this context there was at first little direct missionary rivalry, the two societies, according to the L.M.S., even concluding a rough sphere-of-influence agreement that gave to the White Fathers the area to the north of a line drawn across the lake from Ujiji to Mtowa in Uguha.!4 Both missionary groups maintained good relations with the third European organization on Lake Tanganyika, the International African Association, founded in 1876 at Bruxelles under the direction of Leopold II of Belgium. The first Association expedition to East Africa had founded a station at Karema, to x NEW INTRODUCTION the south of Ujiji, in 1878, and its officers were soon in regular contact with the missions.15 As one L,M.S. missionary said: " The philanthropic efforts of these gentlemen are very praise­ worthy, and without being too widely separated we shall be one united power to civilize the tribes to the west of the Tanganyika."16 Meantime, to the south on Lake Nyasa (now Lake Malawi), other mission stations had been founded by the Free Church of Scotland and the established Church of Scotland. To help the spread of Christianity in the great lakes' region, James Stevenson of the Free Church in 1878 founded the African Lakes Company to carry supplies to the missionaries and to introduce a legitimate trade for the ivory ofthe Arabs. In 1881 Stevenson went further, offering £4,000 for the development of a road between Lakes Nyasa and Tanganyika, with guarantees of regular communica­ tions between the two by the Company, on the condition that the L.M.S. and the Free Church open stations on the route.17 The original plan of the L.M.S.
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