This paper,
which was originally
read to a meeting of the Sierra Leone Society on 8th June, 1954, is
based on the records of the Aborigines and Native Affairs Departments
in the Sierra Leone archives. There are eleven large copy-books of
Lawson’s letters and memoranda (cited here as G(overnment)
I(nterpreter’s) L(etter) B(ook); nine similar volumes consisting
mainly of Parkes’ correspondence and minutes (these I cite as N(ative)
A(ffairs) L(etter) B(ook), even for the years 1888—1890, when it was
still, strictly speaking, the Aborigines Department); two separate
Minute Books for 1890—1902; seven copy-books containing Governors’
letters to chiefs, etc., 1862—1889; nine Arabic letter-books; and a
large collection of letters received and Minute Papers (M.P.), which
are not in all cases sorted for use. I have examined this material
selectively, reading perhaps 10 per cent of the whole. Once again I
must acknowledge my debt to Mr. C. H. Fyfe, who from his
unrivalled
knowledge of the archives has supplied me with some valuable
references.
It is perhaps anomalous to discuss
the institutions through which the
Colonial government conducted its relations with the interior in the
later nineteenth century without examining the policy which those
institutions were intended to carry out, for each helps to shape the
other. But on the formulation and execution of that policy much
research still needs to be done—in London even more than in Freetown.
My more modest purpose here is to comment, on the basis of documentary
evidence, on methods and machinery evolved for dealing with what,
throughout the nineteenth century, remained essentially strange and
unfamiliar problems.
We speak as if methods and machinery were freely evolved by
governments. Yet often, in studying the early institutions of a
tropical dependency, one feels that their general shape has been very
largely predetermined. After taking into account the invariable
shortage of revenue, the almost equally general ignorance of the
colonizers about the way indigenous societies really work, and the sort
of people available for recruitment as public servants—well, the
historian may then conclude that the policy-makers were left with less
freedom of action than they imagined. It may be in the working, rather
than the planning, of a department that personalities are most
important; certainly the one discussed here could illustrate the adage,
“an institution is but the lengthened shadow of a man.”
Before, as well as after, the British Parliamentary
Committee of 1865, governmental policy in the interior of Sierra Leone
had
pragmatic and limited purposes. The rights and wrongs of the
interminable intertribal wars and raids were complex, unfamiliar, and
in themselves of little direct interest to the Colony. Some Governors,
of martial tendency, might be tempted to launch out and secure justice
for the oppressed, territory for the Colony, or glory for themselves;
but the general rule was of non-intervention and Olympian impartiality.
“I cannot interfere in the disputes
between yourselves and the Soosoos,” wrote Governor Blackall to an
unnamed Temne chief on 23rd May, 1864; “but,” he added, with a
shrewdly-phrased benevolence, “I trust that God will give the Victory
to the Right.”
But this aloofness had frequently to be modified if colonial interests
in the interior were to be protected. First of these interests was the
protection of the British subjects, trading on the lower reaches of
every navigable river from the Nunez to the Mano, from the interference
brought by tribal wars; and the desire to bolster the precarious
colonial revenue by developing new trade- routes towards Kankan, Ségou,
Timbuctou, and other great trading cities of the Soudan. Falaba, though
too remote to be reached without a long organized expedition, had an
especial importance as long as it seemed the key to the Soudan; though
when the routes from Falaba to Kambia and Port Loko were closed by
tribal war, as in 1876, attention was switched to the alternative
route, from Timbo by way of Mellacourie. Very occasionally—as in Koya
and the Sherbro in 1861, as might have happened in the Mellacourie in
18651—concern
for established trade-routes might compel a reluctant extension of
Imperial jurisdiction. But the normal answer of the Colonial Government
to an outbreak of war in the interior was a letter of warning or
admonition to the Chief concerned; an exchange of presents, with a
guarded offer of “good offices”; sometimes a mission to the scene by
the Governor or some senior official, which might end with the
signature of treaties of trade and friendship; in extreme cases, a
naval expedition or the landing of a small military force. Even these
restricted means could rarely be used more than a score of miles from
the river-heads. To the commitment implied in any establishment of
permanent residents in the interior, the climate of British opinion was
strongly opposed.
1Chamberlayne to Cardwell, 66, 22nd June, 1865.
Cardwell to Chamberlayne, 613, 22nd November, 1865.
There were also matters of a more specific nature to which the Colonial
Government had to attend. British subjects up-country would claim the
protection of the Crown in cases of damage inflicted on their property
or their persons, or the imposition by chiefs of levies on trade; the
chiefs in turn might complain of the lawless or unfriendly behaviour of
British subjects. Such cases increased in mumber as the river trade
passed more and more completely from the hands of European merchants,
working on a moderately large scale and relatively amenable to the
supervision of the government, into those of an increasing number of
small-scale Creole traders; and as these latter mover moved further
afield.1 Then there were allegations to be investigated
that free persons had been enslaved on British soil--balanced on the
side of the chiefs by complaints that British subjects (not encouraged
by the government 2) were encouraging domestic slaves to
enter the Colony to claim their freedom.
In addition to these problems, which could not in any case
have been ignored, there had since 1836 at least (and probably earlier)
been a deliberate policy of extending a degree of official hospitality
to Mohammedan traders, or "caravans", coming to Freetown from the
interior. The purpose seems to have been threefold; to encourage the
traders to return, to build up a good reputation for the Colony among
the Mohammedan peoples of the interior, and to obtain information about
trade-routes, trade prospects, and the political situation generally,
in these almost totally unknown regions.3 The success of
this policy was reflected in the figures which were maintained about
these "caravans"--figures, incidentally, which will be a valuable
source to the brave man who tries
1 GILB. Lawson's report of a journey to
Magbele and Rokel, 30th June, 1873.
2 GILB. Lawson to Bai Mauro, N. Bullom, 30th December, 1874
(cf. to Col. Sec., 6th December, 1873). "You know yourself that it is
not the policy of this Government to induce or encourage any of the
Chief's subjects to desert them and when any of such deserters incline
to return themselves this Government never interfere, but by the
Queen's law, as you know yourself, they or any other person are not to
be forced or taken out of the Queen's territory against their will...
Much precaution should be observed--but if that man and woman choose to
return back to their country of their own will, nobody would prevent
their doing so."
3 GILB. Lawson Memo., 9th October, 1873. This contains an
interesting sidelight on the vagueness of contemporary knowledge of the
interior; an Arab returning to Fez through Kankan and Timbuctou was
asked to make careful inquiries for news of Dr Livingstone.
to write the internal history of West Africa in the nineteenth century.
After 1852, the man on whom the conduct of such business
centred was Thomas George Lawson, who in that year, after six years in
temporary Government service, was appointed “Government Messenger and
Interpreter” at an annual salary of £100. Lawson was horn in 1814, son
of the chief of Little Popo in modern Togoland
(where he was for a time
regarded as the legitimate chief2). About 1825 he was sent
to Freetown for education in the care of Mr. John MacCormack, European
merchant and member of Council, who during his fifty years in West
Africa (1814—1864), travelled widely between the Senegal and the Volta,
but especially in Temne country. Young Lawson frequently accompanied
him as his servant.3 In Koya he seems to have married, for
his son subsequently put forward claims to the chieftaincy and acted
for a time as Regent. Lawson thus acquired a thorough knowledge of
these territories and their people; and at the same time a fervent
personal loyalty to the British Crown, and a conviction that an
extension of British rule would be in the best interests of all
Africans. With this went a fervent Protestantism; he succeeded
MacCormack
1These
returns were classified by tribes, and included only people from beyond
Falaba. The bulk of those recorded in 1875 were Mandinka or Fula; they
included six “Shereefs” and one native of Timbuctou. The following
abstract of some of these returns illustrates the extent of the effects
of outbreaks of tribal war at the crucial points :— 1874
1875 1876 1877
1878 1879 1880
1881
(May—Dec.) (Jan.—Mar.) 3110
2741 1200 8698
10095 1805 253
1556
[
Ab. Misc., 4;vii.78
] [
GILB. ]
1882 1883
1884 1885 1886 1887
N.A. 6082 11000 5993 1699 5247 GILB.—reprinted R. Gazette, 31st
January, 1888. 2 Hill to Ncwcastle,
74, 20th April, 1861; Lawson to Hill, 5th November, 1862 (encl. in
Granville to Kennedy, 70, 19th May, 1869). 3MacCormack to Hill,
21st October, 1862, encl. in Granville to Kennedy, 70, 19th May, 1869;
Memo. encl. in Rowe to Carnarvon, conf., 3rd October, 1877; Rowe to
Hicks-Beach, 64, 3rd March 1879. 4See, for example, the
letter to Hill of 5th November, 1862, cited above; the petition that
the Crown should take over Little Popo, in Hill to Newcastle, 74, 20th
April, 1861; GILB. to Bai Sherbro of Kaffu Bullom, 8th July, 1876:
"...
the English law under which I am, and under which I desire to be, has
no respect of persons with the rich or poor, high or low (thank God for
this).”
as lay pastor in charge of the Church
of God in Circular Road, and also established a mission up-country.
Underlying this faith was a moral integrity that won the highest praise
from some Governors who were not easy to satisfy; but also that
pugnacious stubbornness, common among the Elcct, which sometimes
allowed his prejudices to affect his official judgments. (In 1876, for
example, political and religious loyalties combined in a manner
extremely embarrassing to the government, when he was instrumental in
persuading the chiefs of Port Loko not to receive a French Roman
Catholic mission.1)
Apart from oral interpretation, writing letters, and receiving
strangers in Freetown, Lawson was
frequently called to travel into the
interior as representative of the Government. Disputes and complaints
would frequently arise to which neither the Governor nor any senior
member of Council could attend personally—because of duties elsewhere,
the rainy season, or simple disinclination for the rigours of hammock
travel—and which were not of sufficient importance to justify any
special appointment. On such missions, Lawson’s instructions might
prescribe the conveyance of presents, as expressions of goodwill; the
holding of assemblies of chiefs, often in order to try and compose
their disputes; the investigation of charges of enslavement, and
complaints by, or against, British subjects. He might also fulfill
other incidental duties, such as reporting on the season’s trade
prospects. As contacts with the. interior became wider and more
permanent, these responsibilities clearly became too much for one man.
In 1869 Winwood Reade, the brilliant but restless and
erratic young English explorer, who once described himself as “the
first young man about town to make a bona
fide tour in Western Africa “,
1
Lawson wrote to these chiefs on 15th November, 1876, advising them
(not, he later explained, as a government officer, but as their
countryman) not to grant land to the Catholic mission “ . . .
inasmuch as I know that what they would teach your children is contrary
to the word of God contained in the Holy Bible placed in our hands by
the British and Foreign Bible Society and the Church Missionary
Society.” He was subsequently admonished by the Colonial Secretary for
writing such a letter, and G. M. Macaulay was sent to Port Loko with an
official letter of explanation. Actually, Lawson seems to have feared
French political penetration at this vital centre even more than he
distrusted Papist heresy (GILB. to Col. Sec., 17th November; to
Governor, 2, 6th December); and it was fear of introducing French
influence, and the methods by which they were said to have dealt with a
chief in Rio Nunez, which caused the Port Loko chiefs to reject the
Mission’s application. (GILB., Memo by Macaulay, 2nd December, 1876;
cf. M.P. 750/1877.)
was encouraged by Governor Kennedy to
travel to Falaba and beyond to try and open the road for direct trade
with the peoples near the sources of the Niger. (He had come to Sierra
Leone independently, but received financial aid from some Freetown
merchants as well as from the Government.1) In his report,
Reade submitted some interesting general recommendations about policy
in the interior. The “stipend system “, he thought, offered a sound
basis for relations with the tribes, provided the payments, and the
contacts thereby entailed, were kept up. (The Limba chief
Sankelli had
been entitled to a stipend for twenty years, but as the letter of
entitlement was written in English, he had never drawn it.) Relations
with the “caravans” in Freetown, a subject on which Lawson seems to
have tended to be complacent, Reade found less satisfactory, for the
itinerant traders, according to his information, were systematically
exploited by their fellow-countrymen, resident in Freetown, who acted
as their landlords, interpreters, and general intermediaries. Reade
suggested the creation of an “Office of the Interior “, which would
control a government lodging-house in Freetown and whose officers would
include an “Inquisitor of Strangers” and an Arabic writer.2
The two latter appointments were fairly quickly made. In
January, 1871,
Kennedy appointed G. M. Macaulay “Assistant Interpreter and Protector
of Strangers”; besides looking after the welfare of caravans in
Freetown he would sometimes deputize for Lawson on missions inland.
Next year Governor Hennessy appointed as Arabic Writer an able young
educated Mohammedan, Mohammed Sanusi, an appointment which he was to
hold well into the
twentieth century. But Reade’s faith in the stipend system was more
debatable. In 1871 the famous West Indian scholar, Dr. E. W. Blyden,
arrived in Sierra Leone and, gratuitously but eloquently, began to
press upon the government the case for more active attempts to explore
the Western Soudan and bring it under British influence. Kennedy was
impressed by Blyden, and in January, 1872, appointed him to go to
Falaba on a mission similar to Reade’s, with authority to press on, if
possible, to the Niger sources. On return Blyden strongly urged that
1 C.0. 267/300
(Public Record Office, London). Kennedy to Granville, 209,
15th April, 1869. 2 C.O. 267/301. Kennedy to Granville, 133, 23rd June, 1869.
(For Lawson’s complacency about treatment of "strangers” in Freetown,
see M.P. 68/1886.)