The End of Red Rubber: a Reassessment Author(S): Robert Harms Source: the Journal of African History, Vol

The End of Red Rubber: A Reassessment Author(s): Robert Harms Source: The Journal of African History, Vol. 16, No. 1 (1975), pp. 73-88 Published by: Cambridge University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/181099 Accessed: 10-01-2017 01:41 UTC

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This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Tue, 10 Jan 2017 01:41:30 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Journal of African History, xvi, I(I975), pp. 73-88 73 Printed in Great Britain

THE END OF RED RUBBER: A REASSESSMENT1

BY ROBERT HARMS

THE wild rubber boom which hit the African continent in the last decade of the nineteenth century and continued through the first decade of the twentieth had an impact that was both economic and political. The rubber trade gave Africans an opportunity to expand their export economies, which in many cases had been sagging in the second half of the nineteenth century. While the earlier slave and ivory trades had been the domain of heavily capitalized specialists, rubber could be gathered by common people. Therefore, the rubber boom significantly broadened the base of the export trade and brought large numbers of Africans into the international economy for the first time.2 The political impact of the rubber boom stemmed from the fact that its timing coincided with the introduction of colonial rule in many parts of Africa. Taxing the rubber trade proved a convenient way to finance colonial conquest and administration. Rubber brought in revenue through export duties and gathering licences, and gave the state the further option of taxing the income that Africans received from rubber gathering, or collect- ing taxes in rubber itself. The role of rubber in the establishment of the Congo Independent State and the French Congo comes readily to mind, but rubber played an equally important role in other areas. French Guinea, Angola, and the Gold Coast ranked with the Congo Independent State among the five leading rubber producers in the world in I900. Rubber represented over two-thirds of the value of French Guinea's exports between I898 and I9IO. In Angola, rubber was the leading export product as early as I887. The role of Gold Coast rubber production in bridging the lean years between the end of the slave trade and the rise of the cocoa and mining industries has been noted by Raymond Dumett. Less well known, however, is the importance of rubber in the Ivory Coast, which had surpassed the Gold Coast in rubber production by I9oI.3 Other parts of Africa also depended heavily on rubber. In the Western Sudan, an official circular noted in I 897 that rubber was the only product of

1 This article is based on my M.A. thesis at the University of Wisconsin. I would like to acknowledge the help and encouragement I received from Professor Jan Vansina. Any errors are my own. 2 A. G. Hopkins has made a similar point with regard to palm oil production in West Africa in An Economic History of West Africa (London, I973), I25-6. 3Jean Suret-Canale, La Republique de Guinee (Paris, I970), ioi; Gladwyn Childs, Umbundu Kinship and Character (London, I949), 208; Raymond Dumett, 'The Rubber Trade of the Gold Coast and Asante in the Nineteenth Century', . Afr. Hist., XII, I (97I), 79; Joseph Lauer, 'Economic Innovations among the Doo of Western Ivory Coast, I900- I960' (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Wisconsin, I973), 55.

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the area worth exporting. In German East Africa, the value of rubber exports surpassed that of ivory in I899, and rubber production doubled in the next three years, while ivory exports declined. Even Nigeria, which is best known for its palm oil production, experienced a rubber boom during I895-7, when its production surpassed that of Angola, the Gold Coast, and the Congo Independent State.4 The economic basis of the African rubber boom can be understood only in the context of the world economy. The development of pneumatic bicycle tyres in the I89os, along with increases in the industrial use of rubber for such items as hose, tubing, springs, washers, and diaphragms, created a rising demand,5 which accelerated further in the twentieth century with the advent of the automobile. Although prices fluctuated somewhat during this period, the general trend for African rubber was upward through I9I0. African wild rubber production increased steadily during this period in response to the rising prices. After I9I0, increasing quanti- ties of inexpensive, high-quality rubber from hevea plantations in South- east Asia began to arrive in Europe. The full force of this production hit the world market in I9I3, depressing the market for African rubber and bringing African production to a near halt wherever alternative products could be found.6 While the general framework of the world rubber market is useful in defining the broad outlines of the African rubber boom, it provides little help in understanding the important regional and local variations. In Gold Coast, Dahomey, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and the Congo Independent State, for example, rubber production dropped off around the turn of the century despite rising world prices.7 Within each of the rubber producing colonies, exports came from different areas in different years, indicating significant local variations in the rubber boom cycle. These variations were usually the result of exhaustion of the rubber supplies, which followed two main patterns, depending on whether the area practised free trade or was controlled by a concession company. Most rubber production in Africa operated under a system of free trade in which itinerant African traders bought rubber in the interior and trans- ported it to the coast. Free traders could follow the rubber supplies, and move to new areas when the old ones became depleted. Thus, while the

4 Yves Henry, Le caoutchouc dans l'Afrique occidentale franfaise (Paris, I906), 30; Rainer Tetzlaff, Koloniale Entwicklung und Ausbeutung (Berlin, I970), 7'; Cuthbert Christy, The African Rubber Industry and Funtumia Elastica (London, I9I I), Io. -'William Woodruff, The Rise of the British Rubber Industry during the Nineteenth Century (Liverpool, I958), 68-74. 6 Asian rubber also ruined the growing plantation rubber industry in German East Africa, where plantation production had surpassed wild production by I909. The ceara rubber trees in the East African plantations produced a latex which had a low dry rubber content and could not long compete with the hevea rubber from Asia. See J. F. R. Hill and J. P. Moffett, Tanganyika: A Review of its Resources and their Development (Govt. of Tanganyika, I955), 460-I; Tetzlaff, Koloniale Entwicklung, I23-30; John Iliffe, Tanganyika under German Rule I905-I9I2 (Cambridge, I969), I00-I, I40. 7Christy, Rubber Industry, 2, I0, i8; Henry, Caoutchouc, 77-8.

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Tue, 10 Jan 2017 01:41:30 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms THE END OF RED RUBBER: A REASSESSMENT 75 total rubber exports from the colony often rose and fell with world prices, the rubber would come from different parts of the colony in different years. The main source of supply generally moved inland as supplies nearer the coast became exhausted. Rubber production in the Gold Coast and the Ivory Coast illustrates this process.8 Before I885, Gold Coast exports came mainly from the southern region. Since the trees were tapped in a destructive way, these supplies had greatly diminished by I890, when Ashanti became the major producer. By I897, the best rubber-producing areas lay in the Brong states, six or seven days north of Kumasi. Gold Coast rubber exports peaked in I898-9, and Ashanti traders, seeking less exhausted forests, began to push into the eastern Ivory Coast. Between I900 and I9I2, production shifted steadily toward the west as the eastern regions of the Ivory Coast became exhausted. Yves Henry, an influential French agronomist, described a similar process in the Guinea-Sudan region, where traders moved slowly up the rivers as the supplies near the coast became exhausted. He believed that the advancement of the exhausted areas could be determined almost mathematically.9 In the French Congo and the Congo Independent State, where rubber production was largely controlled by the great concession companies, a somewhat different pattern evolved because the companies controlled fixed territories and could not move to new regions when their rubber supplies were exhausted. Companies that ran out of rubber simply went out of business. In these colonies, the depletion of the rubber supplies followed a spotty pattern instead of a steady progression. The rate of depletion of the rubber supply in any given locality was determined by a variety of factors, including the type of rubber plant, the method of tapping, and the intensity of the exploitation. African rubber plants fall into two categories: trees and vines. Production from trees generally proved more durable than production from vines. The trees, mostly of the funtumia elastica variety, were quite hearty, and could endure frequent tapping. If a tree was overtapped, it would dry up for a period of up to five years, and could then be tapped again.10 The vines, mostly of the genus landolphia, were fragile and easily killed. In areas where most of the rubber came from vines, exhaustion of supplies was a continuous threat. Rubber production in Dahomey, which came mostly from vines, reached a peak of I4.5 tons in I900, and then fell to 5-9 tons the following year, and i .6 tons the year after that as the vines disappeared from the forests. In Angola, the Cokwe began tapping the landolphia vines in the forests of Quiboco in I869. Six years later, no rubber

8 Kwame Arhin, 'The Ashanti Rubber Trade with the Gold Coast in the Eighteen Nineties', Africa, XLII (1972), 33; Dumett, 'Rubber Trade', 9I-8; Lauer, 'Economic Innovation', 54. 9 Henry, Caoutchouc, 85. 10 Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch, Le Congo au temps des grandes compagnies con- cessionnaires, I898-I930 (Paris, 1972), 424.

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Tue, 10 Jan 2017 01:41:30 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 76 ROBERT HARMS was left in the forests, and they had to migrate north to find new supplies. In the Touba region of French Guinea, an estimated four-fifths of the vines were destroyed between I899 and I905.11 Methods of tapping rubber varied greatly. In the early years of the Gold Coast rubber boom, the rubber workers simply cut down the trees to extract the latex. Later, they devised a method of climbing the trees with the aid of rope slings and stirrups, and tapping them with a series of shallow cuts along the trunk. In parts of the Ivory Coast, the local people harvested rubber carefully to avoid injuring the plants, but they complained bitterly that the plants were being destroyed by itinerant harvesters, who would extract as much rubber as possible from an area and then move on.12 The factors that influenced the intensity of the exploitation varied according to whether the region was a free trade area or a concession area. In free trade areas, the high prices encouraged traders and harvesters alike to collect as much rubber as possible. Drops in world prices were reflected by drops in production, indicating that the producers and merchants were sensitive to the world market. When supplies diminished in a certain area, the opportunity cost of production would increase to the point at which the harvesters turned to other pursuits and the traders moved to more lucrative areas. Thus the trade would decline before the area was completely exhausted. When world prices fell in I9I3, rubber production in most free trade areas quickly dropped and never recovered. Concession areas were less sensitive to world prices because the concession companies obtained rubber through coercion and did not pay current market rates. In these areas, the intensity of exploitation depended on the effectiveness of the coercion, and the freedom from interference by metropolitan politics. Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch has shown that for one post in the French Congo, the graph of rubber production corresponds to the graph of cartridges expended to force the people to bring in rubber.13 When the post was forced to adopt less violent methods, its production dropped accordingly. The intensity of exploitation differed significantly between the French Congo and the Congo Independent State. While depletion of rubber resources caused serious problems in parts of the Independent State, the French Congo apparently never suffered from lack of rubber. This was partly because the rubber in the French Congo came mostly from the hearty funtumia elastica trees, whereas the Independent State depended almost entirely on vines. But the main reason why the French Congo maintained a rubber supply was that the companies there never effectively exploited their concession areas. Lack of capital and personnel forced them

11 Joseph Miller, 'Cokwe Trade and Conquest in the Nineteenth Century', in Precolonial African Trade, ed. Richard Gray and David Birmingham (London, I970), I86-7; Henry, Caoutchouc, 77-8, 85. 12 Dumett, 'Rubber Trade', 86, I00; Henry, Caoutchouc, 62. 13 Coquery-Vidrovitch, Le Congo, I80-3.

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to operate on a limited basis, and to exploit only parts of their concessions. Thus, when the supplies around one post were exhausted, they would close it and open a new one in another locality. Since competitors were not allowed to operate within the concession area, a company could exploit the resources at any rate it chose, without fear that someone else would get the rubber first. As a result of this method, production in most French Congo concession areas reached a plateau after three or four years instead of showing sustained growth.14 The low rate of exploitation and the relative independence from the world market enabled the French Congo concession companies to keep going long after exhaustion of supplies or low prices had brought rubber production to a halt in other parts of Africa. The companies tried to compensate for their reduced incomes by reducing their European staffs, and kept functioning. Finally, the combined effects of low profits and government pressure for reform forced the companies to relinquish their concessions, though the last of the companies held out until I928. In the Congo Independent State, the well-financed concession companies exploited their territories much more effectively, and in the process committed 'red rubber' abuses that provoked a flurry of protests in Europe. Discussions of the 'red rubber' system have focused on the role of metropolitan politics, and therefore the decline of the concession companies has generally been attributed to political pressure brought by English and Belgian reformers. Roger Louis's discussion of the Congo Reform Movement, for example, implies that the concession companies were reduced to impotence or eliminated as a result of agitation by the reformers.15 Jean Stengers attributes the end of the abuses to reforms introduced by the Congo State and the suppression of forced labour by Belgium following its takeover of the Congo in i908.16 While the reform movements had considerable political and diplomatic significance, the attention focused on them has tended to obscure what was actually going on in the concession areas during this period. Recent research"7 on events in the concession of Abir, the most notorious of the Congo concession companies, has revealed that attempts at reform in the concession area were notably unsuccessful, and that the rubber system in the Abir territory had already broken down by I906, when serious debate on the Congo question was just beginning in Europe. The cause of this breakdown had little to do with the reform movement or international diplomacy: the concession had run out of rubber.

14 Coquery-Vidrovitch, Le Congo, 288-94, 432. 15 William Roger Louis, 'The Triumph of the Congo Reform Movement', Boston University Papers on Africa (Boston, I966), II, 300. 16 Jean Stengers, 'The Congo Free State and the Belgian Congo', in Colonialism in Africa, ed. Lewis H. Gann and Peter Duignan (Cambridge, I969), I, 270-I. 17 This research has drawn on the previously untapped De Ryck Collection of Zaire Colonial Documents, housed at Memorial Library, the University of Wisconsin.

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When Abir was founded in Antwerp in I892, it received a concession which encompassed the Maringa and Lopori river valleys lying just north of the equator in central Congo, gaining the exclusive right to exploit all the products of the forest for a period of thirty years. The people of the area were to collect wild rubber for the company in lieu of paying taxes to the State. To enforce the collection, the company received rights of police and powers of bodily detention. According to the concession agreement, the State was to found posts for the company, supply guns and ammunition, and help keep order in the concession. In return, Abir gave the State half the shares and agreed to recruit soldiers and workers for the State.18

18 Heinrich Waltz, Das Konzessionswesen im Belgischen Kongo (Jena, I9I7), II, 372-3; Van Eetvelde to Lemaire, I2/2/I892, in Emile Vandervelde, La Belgique et le Congo (Paris, I9II), 44. Abir was founded as the Anglo-Belgian India Rubber and Exploration Company, and commonly used the abbreviation A.B.I.R. When the company was reorganized in I898, all British capital was withdrawn and the company dropped the name 'Anglo-Belgian India Rubber and Exploration Company', taking instead the shorter name 'Abir', which was simply a name and no longer an abbreviation. In this article I have consistently used the spelling 'Abir'.

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Abir established its first post at Basankusu in 1893 and began to advance up the Maringa and Lopori rivers and their tributaries. Since earlier State activities in the western half of the concession had made Europeans very unpopular, and since the Manyema Arabs controlled the eastern half, the advance was slow, accompanied by heavy fighting. By I900 Abir had stretched its control to the limits of the concession. During the next three years it established a series of new posts, filling in the gaps between the earlier ones. Once a post was established, the rubber agent made a list of all the men in the villages under his control, giving each man a quota of four kilos of dry rubber (eight kilos of liquid rubber) per fortnight.19 To oversee the collection he placed armed sentries, who were often former slaves, in the villages. The sentries, who lived in luxury at the expense of the villagers, made sure that each man collected his quota. They flogged, imprisoned, or shot villagers who fell behind. Sentries whose villages fell behind were in turn punished or fired. Abir apparently had little difficulty containing resistance during the first decade of its rule. Each post kept a force of about eighty men armed with modern Albini rifles to put down resistance or punish villages that lagged behind in their quotas. To crush large scale rebellions, the State kept a large force at Basankusu which could reach any part of the Abir territory by river steamer within a few days after being called by a rubber agent. The Abir system was designed to maximize production. Each agent received a quota upon being assigned to a post. He served a two-year term, receiving a small base salary plus a two per cent commission on all the rubber he collected. If his production fell below the quota, the value of the missing rubber was subtracted from his commission.20 The numerous applicants in Europe for positions with Abir gave the company the luxury of hiring new agents on condition that they increase production at their posts by one-half to two tons per month.21 Production could be increased either by bringing more villages under the control of the post or by raising the quotas on the rubber-gathering villages, forcing the women and child- ren to gather rubber also. Both methods were used, resulting in greater numbers of people falling under Abir control. In the peak year of I903 Abir exported nearly a thousand tons of rubber. By I906, Abir's register books listed 47,ooo rubber gatherers.22 With the price of rubber doubling between I894 and I905, Abir made such large profits that Plas and Pourbaix observed that 'such a result is

19 Frost to Morel, in E. D. Morel, King Leopold's Rule in Africa (London, 1904), 434; Special Congo Supplement to the West African Mail (Jan. I905), 239. 20 Roger Casement, Correspondence and Report from His Majesty's Conisul at Boma Respecting the Administration of the Independent State of the Congo (Africa No. I, I904), 45; Congo Supplement (Feb. I905), 25I; Abir circular no. 36, in Pierre Mille, Le Congo Ldopoldien (Paris, I906), I65. 21 Regions Beyond (1894), I87-8; letters from missionaries printed in Morel, Rule, I6i, 437, 440. 22 Mouvement Geographique (I906), 542; Archives africaines, Brussels, IRCB (722), 73/I.

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perhaps without precedent in the annals of our industrial companies'.23 The State had a strong interest in the prosperity of Abir. Since it owned half the shares, it received half of the total dividends paid out by the company, which figured in the State's annual budget under 'produit de porte- feuille'. In addition, the State collected a yearly tax equal to 2 per cent of Abir's profits, and an export duty of 0-50 francs per kilo on rubber.24 Calculations for the year I900 show that Abir paid a total of 2,567,880o50 francs to the State in dividends, duty, and taxes. This represented roughly io per cent of the total State revenue for that year.25 Abir maintained some rather curious ties with the State and with other concession companies. Abir's main stockholder was Alexandre de Browne de TiZege, the Antwerp banker with whom the State had contracted over five million francs worth of fictitious loans, which were ultimately repaid by the Belgian government. As an Abir stockholder, he held sixty shares in his own name and a thousand shares as a proxy of the Congo State. In addition, he was president of the Societe Anversoise, a large Congo concession company in which he held I,000 out of 3,400 shares. The second largest Abir stockholder was the Societe Anversoise itself, which held I50 shares. The increasing production in the Abir concession took its toll on the rubber supplies. The lowland forests of the Congo basin had few rubber trees, so Abir's rubber came mostly from the landolphia owariensis gentilii vines. These vines, which grow up to six inches in diameter at the base, climb up tall trees and then snake along the branches through neighbouring trees. They were relatively scarce, generally fewer than one per acre.26 The rubber was preferably gathered by making incisions in the vine and placing earthen pots below the incisions to catch the latex. In order to tap the more inaccessible sections of the vine, workers would often cut it off. Cutting or frequent tapping of the vine caused it to die, forcing the gatherer to search for another. Due to heavy usage, the areas near the centres of population quickly became depleted of rubber. All the rubber within a iO kilometer radius of

23 J. Plas and Victor Pourbaix, Les Socie'tes Commerciales Belges et le Regime Economique et Fiscal de l'Etat Indipendant du Congo (Brussels, I899), 136-7. 24 Casement, Report, 45; Plas and Pourbaix, Societes Commerciales, 71. 25 Abir's dividends and profits for i900 are given in Felicien Cattier, Etude sur la situation de l'Etat Independant du Congo (Brussels, I906), 194. Abir's rubber exports for that year were calculated from notices appearing irregularly in Mouvement Geographique. I arrived at Abir's contribution to the State by adding the State's share of Abir's dividends to the two per cent tax on Abir's profits and 0-50 franc duty per kilo of rubber exported. The total State income is difficult to calculate accurately. The figures that I used were budgetary estimates listed in the Bulletin Officiel, not actual income. Jean Stengers has shown that actual revenue generally exceeded the estimates (William Roger Louis and Jean Stengers, E. D. Morel's History of the Congo Reform Movement (Oxford, I968), 261-2). The estimated revenue for I900, about twenty-six million Belgian francs, included a two million franc advance from the Belgian treasury, a million francs from King Leopold II, and 700,000 francs from the Domaine de la Couronne. 26 Guy Burrows, The Curse of Central Africa (London, 1903), 78-80.

6 AH XVI

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Tue, 10 Jan 2017 01:41:30 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 82 ROBERT HARMS the Basankusu post, for example, was exhausted after less than a year and a half of operation.27 When the people had to go farther into the forest to find rubber, they began to adopt faster methods such as cutting the vines into sections and placing the ends together in a pot, or peeling off the bark. The scarcer the rubber became the more pressed for time the people were, and the more rubber vines they destroyed. Some of the vines were also destroyed on purpose by people who believed that when the rubber was exhausted the company would go away. The Congo State was aware of the problem, but its measures against it were ineffective. Orders issued in I892 against gathering rubber by any method other than incision were ignored. The sentries could not watch everybody, so they generally remained in the village while the villagers were out gathering rubber. The agents, who wanted to make money as fast as possible and then return home, did not care how the rubber was gathered as long as production increased. A new order against cutting vines issued in I904 was as ineffective as the earlier one.28 State action to replace depleted supplies fared slightly better. In I896 the State ordered each concession company to plant I50 rubber trees or vines for every ton of rubber collected. In I902 it increased the amount to 500. Abir made efforts to comply with these regulations. When Roger Casement visited Bongandanga in I903, he estimated that the rubber plantation there had over a million plants. That same year the town of Baringa was levelled to make room for a rubber plantation. By I904, the average Abir post employed about a hundred workmen on its plantation.29 The project ultimately failed because the agents had little interest in keeping up plantations that could only benefit their successors. In the Lulonga concession in I905, only two-thirds of the required vines had been planted. State forestry agents consistently noted that Abir plantations were defective, insufficient, or even non-existent. The workers in the Abir plantations often planted vines that looked like landolphia, but did not produce rubber. Abir therefore switched to the more easily recognized clitandra vine, which needed more care and did not produce rubber for at least eight years. Most of the vines probably never reached maturity, for there is no evidence of these plantations ever producing.30 As long as there remained virgin patches of forest in which to gather rubber, the company noticed no bad effects. But over the years the depleted areas grew larger till in I904 they began to merge. Since many of

27 Van Eetvelde to Abir, 28 Oct. I893, in Waltz, Konzessionswesen, II, 373. 28 Plas and Pourbaix, Societes Commerciales, I7; Mouvement Geographique (I905), i6. 29 M. J. B. Allart, Etat Independant du Congo, I898-I9OI. Extrait du Recueil Consulaire Belge (Brussels, I903), 25; Mouvement Geographique (I902), 326; Peter Singleton-Gates and Maurice Girodias, The Black Diaries. An Account of Roger Casement's Life and Times with a Collection of His Diaries and Public Writings (New York, I959), I63; Congo Supple- ment (Feb. I905), 257-60. 30 Proces-Verbal of 25 Oct. I904, in Zaire Colonial Documents: De Ryck collection of material on general administration, Equateur, Kivu, and Ruanda- Urundi (Memorial Library, University of Wisconsin), file 6/I/4.

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Tue, 10 Jan 2017 01:41:30 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms THE END OF RED RUBBER: A REASSESSMENT 83 the new posts built between I90I and I903 were built in gaps between other posts, they served only to hasten the depletion of the rubber supplies. The rubber production, which in I904 was only about half that in I903, continued to plummet downward till the State took over the concession in i906. Until the time when the rubber began to run out, the missionaries of the Congo Balolo Mission had remained on good terms with Abir.3' Although they had complained a few times about Abir abuses, they generally kept whatever criticisms they had to themselves. The first public disclosure of Abir's methods came in I90I when several Belgian newspapers published reports by a former Abir agent about atrocities in the concession.32 When a State judge came to Bongandanga to investigate these charges, the missionaries took advantage of the situation to report other abuses. Abir took punitive action against the missionaries for this breach of silence. It not only stopped carrying mission mail on Abir steamers, but often halted mission canoes to confiscate the letters they carried. Abir also forbade the missionaries to buy food from the local population, forcing them to depend on the good will of the company for supplies.33 In the wake of a report by the British Consul, Roger Casement, con- demning the Abir system, the State dispatched Judge Boscow in the spring of I904 to investigate Casement's charges. The missionaries brought witnesses before the judge to testify to killings by Abir sentries, who defended themselves by saying that they had been ordered to kill by the European agents. Although Judge Boscow believed that the charges had been adequately proved, he made no arrests because his powers were limited to writing a report. Mission-Abir relations worsened throughout the summer of I904 and finally reached the point at which Van Caelken, an Abir agent, tried to shoot one of the missionaries. In August the missionaries began to send letters about Abir atrocities to E. D. Morel who printed them in the West African Mail. While the protests in England had to this point caused no improvements within the Abir concession, they did force King Leopold II to send out a Commission of Inquiry. The Commission visited the Abir concession from i December I904 to 5 January I905. Although the company tried to keep potential witnesses from testifying, the commissioners heard enough to convince them of the evils of the Abir system. Before leaving the concession, the Commission laid down new interpretations of previous legislation. First, no person was to work more than forty hours a month. Second, the people had the option of paying their taxes either in rubber or in other commodities since rubber was becoming scarce. Third, Abir had

31 Details of mission-State relations up to I903 can be found in David Lagergren, Mission and State in the Congo (Uppsala, I970). 32 E. D. Morel, -Affairs of West Africa (London, I902), 338. 33 Casement, Report, 5I-2; Casement to Vice Governor-General, 4 Sept. I903, in Congo Supplement (July, I904), I05-6.

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no power to send armed sentries into the villages.34 Two months later, the Royal High Commissioner, Malfeyt, arrived in the Abir territory under orders from Leopold II to see that the interpretations of the Commission were carried out, and to effect all necessary reforms. The powerlessness of the reformers became apparent when the Abir director, Delvaux, told Malfeyt to his face that Abir would ignore the pro- posed reforms. Malfeyt was apparently in no position to impose reforms on the company, for none were ever instituted. The case of Lontulu, a headman who accused Commandant Hagstr6m of crimes in the Baringa area, illustrates the ineffectiveness of much of the testimony before the Com- mission. After the Commission left, Hagstrom was promoted to be the chief State officer in the Abir concession; Lontulu was arrested.35 One positive effect of the Commission's visit was to place two deputy public prosecutors in the Abir concession. Smets, placed at Baringa, spent his time investigating the missionaries instead of the company. Governor- General Wahis had instructed him to hire five local informers to gather information that would discredit the missionaries, and to undermine their influence whenever possible.36 The other deputy public prosecutor, Vogt, did investigate charges against Abir sentries and agents, but most of them never came to trial. While the investigations and reform decrees had important effects on the political manoeuvering in Europe, their effect on the course of events in the Abir territory was minimal. The reforms were ignored because at that time they would have ruined the rubber company. Since both the company and the State had strong interests in keeping up the rubber production, the reformers posed no real threat to Abir. The real danger, depletion of rubber, was already becoming apparent in 1904. An observer noted that the rubber was almost exhausted within a fifty-mile radius of all but a few Abir posts. At the same time Rev. Harris reported seeing not a single worthwhile rubber vine during a five-day trip through the forest. One villager in the Baringa area described the desperate search for rubber as follows: 'We went seeking rubber until we met the people of the Tshuapa, and then we went towards the Ikelemba, and then the white man told us to cut the vines, and we cut them, and now what is there left?'37 The search for rubber often led people beyond the boundaries of the land claimed by their lineages. The people living south of Baringa found themselves in a state of perpetual warfare over rubber with the people

34 Congo Reform Association (henceforth C.R.A.), Evidence Laid before the Com- mission of Inquiry (Liverpool, I905), 70. 35 Stannard to Morel, 4 April I905, in C.R.A., Evidence, 7I; Harris to Morel, in Official Organ of the Congo Reform Association (Jan. I906), ii; Stannard to Morel, in Congo Supplement (Oct. I905), 405. 36 Wahis to Smets, I9 Jan. I906 and 26 Jan. I906, Zaire Colonial Documents, file 6/I/4. 3 Congo Supplement (Jan. I905), 236; Harris testimony, in C.R.A., Evidence, 22; Padfield to Morel, in Official Organ (Jan. I906), 2.

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living near the Tshuapa. An incursion by a group living west of Baringa into a neighbouring territory caused a war that raged along the riverbanks for thirty miles and lasted three weeks.38 Similar events were reported in other areas. Abir regularly got into conflict with other concession companies as people crossed boundaries looking for rubber. The rubber crisis brought a sense of desperation to everybody. The agents did not know what to do except become harsher; the people in the villages began to despair. One village headman told Rev. Harris, 'Tell them (the rubber agents) that we cannot and therefore will not find rubber; we are willing to spend our strength at any work possible, but the rubber is finished. If we must either be massacred or bring rubber, well, let them finish us off, then we suppose they will be satisfied.'39 These people had abandoned their village and were living hidden in the forest for fear the sentries would kill them. Under these conditions many groups began to migrate out of the concession; others rebelled. Abir reported I42 sentries killed and wounded during the first six months of I905 .4 The events around three Abir posts, Baringa, Mompono, and Bon- gandanga, illustrate the way in which the lack of rubber plunged the area into chaos between I904 and I906. Baringa was the first to feel the pinch of the rubber shortage. The post, which had probably gathered several tons of rubber per month during its peak years, received only 95 2 kilos of rubber in October I904, and only 45 kilos in November.41 When Abir began a campaign to bring the production back to up normal, the people refused, saying they would rise in mass against the company. A number of sentries were speared. The rubber-producing villages in the interior attacked the villages near Baringa which supplied food to the post in order to cut off the company's food supply as a prelude to an attack on the post. Many people took advantage of the chaos to flee toward the Tshuapa. When Abir forces failed to bring the area under control after fighting throughout the spring and summer of I905, the company called in State forces. Three European officers with contingents of soldiers began to tour the area, stopping at each village and threatening to return and destroy it if the people did not bring in rubber. Sometimes the officers took prisoners whom they planned to hold until the rubber production went up again. Pleas that there was no rubber were ignored. The main effect of these expeditions was to force the people to flee into the forest. The missionaries regularly reported finding abandoned towns. The attempt to get rubber proved futile. Neither Baringa nor the neighbouring posts of Lifindu and Samba produced any rubber at all in I905 and i906.42 38 Harris and Padfield to Morel, in E. D. Morel, Great Britaini and the Congo (London, I909), IOI. 39 Harris to Vice Governor-General, I7 Jan. I905, in C.R.A. Evidence, 67. 40 'Rapport de la Commission d'Enquete', Bulletin Officiel (I905), 200. 41 Tableau des Impositions Rentrees, Zaire Colonial Documents, file 6/i15. 42 Details of these events can be found in Congo Supplement (July I905), 344; Official Organ (Dec. I905), i9; (Jan. I906), 2, 7-9, ii; (Feb. I906), 7; Regions Beyonld (IgO6), 256; Tableau.

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Events around Mompono followed a similar pattern. Among the many groups that fled toward the Tshuapa at this time was the Yunji, a group that numbered about three thousand people living in eight large villages. In 1903 the Yunji brought in about 2,000 kilos of rubber per month. In 1904, after their monthly production had dropped to 550 kilos, the people began to flee toward the Tshuapa to escape punishment, causing the production to fall to I20 kilos a month in 1905. By February I906 about half of the Yunji had fled the area. After some villagers killed a sentry, the remaining people fled for fear of an Abir counterattack. The Yunji finally settled in the Boende area near the Tshuapa.43 So many people were fleeing the Mompono area that Abir forced those who remained to move closer to the Mompono post where they could be more easily controlled. By December I906 most of the villages in the area had been relocated.44 At Bongandanga, on the Lopori river, the agent tried to stave off a general rebellion by telling the people to bring in rubber every three weeks instead of every two. Although this appeased the people for a while, they soon rebelled, burning the Abir outpost at Sungamboyo. Rubber production at Bongandanga, which had reached a peak of seven tons per month in 1903 and then fallen to one ton per month in 1904, fell to 250 kilos per month in July 1905 and remained at that level till November when Abir apparently regained control of some rebellious areas and pushed production up to 400 kilos.45 Similar events occurred throughout the Abir concession during that period. When Viscount Mountmorres visited the Abir concession in 1905, he found that villages had been abandoned all over the territory. The people were living in rude leaf shelters built in the thickest parts of the forest. In March, I906, the Abir director admitted that the situation was out of control, and quietly suggested a state take-over of the concession.46 The declining rubber production brought the troubles in the Abir territory home to Europe far more forcefully than did the protests of the reformers. From a peak production of 951 tons in 1903, Abir's production fell to 487 tons in 1904 and 358 tons in 1905. The effect of this decline can be seen in the value of Abir shares. They were worth 13,000 francs apiece in 1904, but when word of the declining production got out, they fell to 6,700 francs in 1905.47 Not wanting to admit the depletion of the rubber supplies, Abir blamed the decrease on rebellions fomented by the missionaries. 43 Abir to State Prosecutor, 20 May I906, Zaire Colonial Documents, file 6/I/4; Regions Beyond (I906), 289, 294; E. Boelaert, L'Abir (typescript), 29, in Zaire Colonial Documents, file 6/i/i. 44 Regions Beyond ( I906), 3 I 9. 45 Ruskin to Morel, in Official Organ (Dec. I905), I4; Tableau; Casement, Report, 49. 46 Viscount Mountmorres, The Congo Independent State. A Report on a Voyage of Enquiry (London, I906) 46; Archives africaine, IRCB (722) 73/I. 47 Mouvement Geographique (I906), 542; Felicien Cattier, Etude sur la situation de l'Etat Independant du Congo (Brussels, I906), I94.

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The value of Abir was thus decreasing at a time when the State was spending increasing amounts of money to put down rebellions in the Abir territory. The company had been formed at Leopold's request at a time when the State lacked the capital to develop the area itself. By I906 the State could afford to take over the exploitation of the area in return for a greater share of the profits. Furthermore, revelations about Abir atrocities were causing acute embarrassment to the State. Thus Leopold believed that the State could both better its financial position and mollify its critics by taking over the Abir territory. In making this calculation, Leopold made the mistake of believing that there was still rubber in the territory which could be exploited once the rebellions had been put down. Abir, which by this time understood the rubber situation, was glad to get rid of the concession before production stopped altogether. After a series of secret negotiations, the State signed an agreement with Abir on I2 September I906 in which the company turned over to the State all income resulting from its concession. The State promised to take over the collection of rubber and pay Abir 4.50 francs per kilo for all rubber exported from the concession until 1952.48 This price was subject to periodic revision. The State apparently planned to collect rubber in the same manner as Abir. Believing that he had made a good deal, King Leopold confidently told Abir shareholders in 1907 that he planned to have production up to normal within two years.49 In April of that year, twelve European officers and 650 soldiers under the command of Inspector Gerard set out to restore rubber production. Gerard fought in the Abir territory for fourteen months without bringing all of it under control. When he left he confirmed that there was almost no rubber left in the territory. As a result the quota in the region was reduced to 6 kilos per man per year. Yet missionaries reported that some people were hard-pressed to find even that much.50 Leopold's takeover of Abir thus proved a boon for the company and a disaster for the State. The State bore the heavy expenses of taking over and administering the troubled area, but got little in return. Abir, on the other hand, was freed from its mounting expenses, but still received 4.50 francs per kilo on whatever rubber the State managed to collect. The pattern of decline outlined here for Abir was apparently shared by other concession companies as well. The Societe Anversoise, which was founded in the same year as Abir, and taken over by the State on the same day, went into a similar decline between 1903 and 1905, when its production fell from 526 tons to go tons. In the Lulonga concession west of the Abir territory, where Roger Casement observed in 1903 that the rubber supplies were almost exhausted, production fell from 39 tons in 1903 to 48 Bulletin Officiel (I906), 345. At that time rubber commanded I3.5 francs per kilo at Antwerp. See Mouvement Geographique (I907), 8. 49 Official Organ (June, I 907), i i 8. 50 Boelaert, L'Abir, 30; Regions Beyond (I909), 82; Official Organ (June, I907), 25; Emile Vandervelde, Les Derniers Jours de L'Etat du Congo (Mons, I909), I67.

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7 tons in 1905.51 These concession companies thus went into decline before the cries of the reformers were being taken seriously in Europe. By i9io, the rubber vines were so depleted in all of the exploited areas of the forest that the government made it legal to cut down the remaining vines and extract the latex by grinding the bark.52 It was only after the rubber situation had degenerated to this point that the new colonial government finally declared an end to the concession system and the hated rubber tax.

SUMMARY

The African rubber boom, which lasted from I890 to I9I3, had a significant economic and political impact on many parts of Africa. While the broad outlines of the boom were determined by the world market, the numerous local and regional variations were influenced more by the depletion of the rubber supplies. The factors that influenced the depletion varied according to whether the region in question was a free trade area or a concession area. The end of the notorious concession companies in the Congo Independent State has generally been attributed to the efforts of English and Belgian reformers. Recent research on Abir, a major Congo concession company, has revealed that attempts at reform were ineffective, and that exhaustion of the rubber supplies had caused the rubber system in the Abir concession to break down by I906, when serious debate on the Congo question was just beginning in Europe. The article shows how the Abir system, which was designed to constantly increase production, led to depletion of the rubber resources. When the depleted areas merged, the territory passed into a period of crisis during which Abir lost control and production plummeted. Production figures for other Congo concession companies suggest that events in their territories followed a similar pattern.

61 Waltz, Konzessionswesen, II, 350-372; Mouvemnent Geographique (I906), 542; Case- ment, Report, 44. 52 Marcel Van Den Abeele and Rene Vandenput, Les Principales Cultures du Congo Belge (Brussels, I951), 384. At about the same time, plantations of hevea trees imported from Southeast Asia were being established in Oriental Province, Equator Province, and the Sankuru region by various private groups. Although these plantations produced rubber that could compete favourably with the Asian product, their production did not become significant until the I940s.

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