The Political Geography of Africa before and after the War Author(s): Harry H. Johnston Source: The Geographical Journal, Vol. 45, No. 4 (Apr., 1915), pp. 273-294 Published by: geographicalj Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1780352 Accessed: 08-05-2016 05:28 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers), Wiley are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Geographical Journal This content downloaded from 134.129.182.74 on Sun, 08 May 2016 05:28:50 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms The Geographical Journal No. 4. APEIL, 1915. Vol. XLV. THE POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY OF AFRICA BEFORE AND AFTER THE WAR.* By Sir HAERY H. JOHNSTON, G.C.M.Gk, K.O.B. Fob many years preceding the outbreak of the war in 1914, a custom with the force of an nnwritten law had grown up in the Royal Geographical Society that all addresses delivered froni its rostrum should be as inter? national in outlook as possible, as devoid as might be of national preju- dice and predilections. But a new and temporary condition of things has arisen, and we have just now to remember that we deal with all phases of geography, a*nd cannot exclude political and economic geography any more than we might deprecate the intrusion of anthropology, zoography, botany, or meteorology into our discussions. Perhaps I might add that we cannot any more logically exclude (if we are to deal with political geography at all) racial questions, such as suitability of this and that land for colonization, and the position and interests of non-Caucasian peoples when the white man is invading their lands. So they perforce enter into my address of to-night. To some it may seem that, though a review of the past political geo? graphy of Africa is quite permissible, an attempt to forecast its immediate future in the present undecided issue of the great struggle going on in Europe, Asia, and Africa, is premature or presumptuous. To this I would reply that we cannot all remain silent spectators of events, in Africa especially. Day by day our Empire is impelled to fresh action against the Germans in South-west, West, Central, and East Africa, and such actions must be to a great extent guided by the ultimate results at which we are aiming. The ministers of to-day do not aspire, I imagine, to impose a secretly conceived policy of their own on an Empire containing * Boyal Geographical Society, February 24, 1915. Maps, p. 356. No. IV-April, 1915.] u This content downloaded from 134.129.182.74 on Sun, 08 May 2016 05:28:50 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 274 THE POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY OF AFRICA many millions of highly-educated people?Europeans, Canadians, Austral- asians, South Africans, Egyptians, Arabs, Indians, and Negroes?but to put on the statute book and into the Acts of a great peace Congress the well-considered wishes and opinions of this vast electorate, as well as the views of our allies. Therefore, even whilst the struggle is going on, we must be certain in our own minds what we are aiming at; so that in the ultimate settlement following the conclusion of peace the determina- tions now guiding us may, as far as possible, become accomplished facts. To all who have studied Africa it is painful to write or speak harshly of Germans; so much do we owe to them as pioneers of science in that continent?as, indeed, throughout the world. Before we discuss what is the measure of restraint which the rest of Europe?belligerent and neutral?must endeavour for its own safety to impose on the German Empire, let us glance at German achievements in African exploration, if only to enter into the frame of mind of the German people who at last demanded African colonies, and of the British statesmen and diplomatists who down to July 1914 were endeavouring to facilitate the extension of German power in the Dark Continent, perhaps as a safety valve for ebullient ambition. The Principal Areas of German Exploration in Africa. This refers in the main to pioneer work, and makes no distinction between work done purely under German auspices, and explorations undertaken by Germans at the request and the expense of British Missionary Societies or of the British Government. Beginning with North Africa, reference is made more especially to the achievements of Gerhard Eohlfs in Morocco, Tuat, Ghadames, Fezzan, Tibesti, the Libyan desert, and Kufra ; Friedrich Hornemann who crossed the Sahara in 1800, died at some Nupe town, and nearly solved the Niger mystery; Barth in Tripoli, Fezzan, Air, Agades, Timbuktu, the Middle Niger, the Komadugu, and the Upper Benue; Overweg on Lake Chad ; Vogel on the Bahr-el-Ghazal of Chad and in Wadai; Dr. E. Eiippel in Abyssinia and Sennar ; Ferdinand Werne and Ignatius Knoblecher on the White Nile; and von Heuglin, Kiezelbach, Munzinger, and Steudner elsewhere in the Egyptian Sudan and Western Abyssinia; the great Georg Schweinfurth, who revealed to us much of the geography of the west and south-west Bahr-el-Ghazal (Egyptian Sudan) and the river Ubangi-Welle in its upper waters, and whose subsequent services as an explorer of the flora of the Egyptian deserts, the Eed Sea coasts, Abyssinia, and West Arabia have been of inestimable value; Sigismund Koelle of Sierra Leone and Western Liberia, one of the greatest of African philologists; W. H. I. Bleek, the founder of Bantu and Bushman studies ; Dr. Wilhelm Peters, the explorer of the fauna, flora, and languages of Portuguese East Africa; Adolf Bastian of Loango, and Hildebrandt of the Comoro islands ; Ludwig Krapf and Johann Rebm^nn, who discovered Kenya and Kilimanjaro, and first circulated This content downloaded from 134.129.182.74 on Sun, 08 May 2016 05:28:50 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms BEFORE AND AFTER THE WAR. 275 definite stories of the great Nyanzas; von der Decken, who explored much of the Zanzibar coast and southern Somaliland, and made the first accurate survey of Kilimanjaro ; Albert Roscher, who died on the south- east coast of Lake Nyasa, and almost forestalled Livingstone in 1859 in the discovery of that lake; C. Hugo Hahn and other German missionary explorers of Damaraland ; and Karl Mauch (Zimbabwe) and Eduard Mohr in Southern Rhodesia and Portuguese South-east Africa. Coming nearer to modern times there have been the productive journeys of von Bary to Ghat, and of Nachtigal in Tripoli, the Tibesti Highlands, Wadai and Darfur; of G. A. Krause in the regions of the Volta rivers behind the Gold Coast; of Pechuel-Loesche in Loango; of Emin Pasha (E. Schnitzer) in the Nile-Congo water-parting; Dr. Franz Stuhlmann in the same region; Count von Goetzen, who discovered the Equatorial volcanoes of the Mufumbiro region and Lake Kivu, and Dr. Kandt of the same region; von Wissmann, Dr. Pogge, von Francois, and Ludwig Wolff of the southern basin of the Congo?more especially the Kasai and its great affluents; Paul Kollmann, of the South Victoria Nyanza; Captain Berenger, who first proved the existence of the gorilla in East Equa? torial Africa; G. A. Flegel, of the middle Niger; and Dr. ZintgratT, Lieuts. Morgen, Kund, Tappenbeck, von Stettin, and UechtritZj Dr. Passarge, Lieut. Hutter, Dr. Hoesemann, and von Danckelmann of the Cameroons Hinterland, Gunter Tessmann of the Fang 'countries, and Dr. Leonhard Schultz of Namakualand, the Duke Adolphus of Mecklenburg* and Hans Schomburgk of Liberia and Northern Rhodesia. I ought also to include for the geographical value of their work: Carl Meinhof, the Bantu grammarian; Dr. A. Seidel and Bernhard Struck, brilliant exponents of African philology; together with Professor E. Fraas, the palseontologist; Dr. Fiilleborn, the anthropologist; and Professor von Luschan, the ethnologist; and even now I have only mentioned a selection, and have quite possibly omitted the inclusion of the names of many Germans who have assisted to put Africa on the map, and, more than that, have provided the world with first-hand information of far-reaching importance, on the geology, fauna, flora, peoples, and languages of Africa. My own acquaintance with Africa, and with what Germany was doing and desiring in regard to Africa, goes back to the year 1879, when I first landed on the coast of Algeria. In 1880,1 spent eight months in Tunis, and between 1897 and 1911, I have visited much else of North Africa be? tween Tripoli and Morocco. In these journeys of the eighties and nineties I became aware of the presence of numerous German agents at the head of mysterious scientific expeditions; encountering them quite unexpectedly in Berber towns in the south of Tunis, in Western Algeria, or south of the Atlas mountains in Morocco. Undoubtedly the reports of these agents encouraged the German Government to believe that once it got a foothold anywhere in North Africa, either in Tripoli on the east, or Morocco on the west, it would very soon be able to push the French out of North v 2 This content downloaded from 134.129.182.74 on Sun, 08 May 2016 05:28:50 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 276 THE POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY OF AFRICA Africa.