Prelude to Scandal: Liberia and Fernando Po, 1880-1930 Author(s): I. K. Sundiata
Source: The Journal of African History, Vol. 15, No. 1 (1974), pp. 97-112 Published by: Cambridge University Press
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Journal of African History, xv, I (1974), pp. 97-1I2 97
Printed in Great Britain
PRELUDE TO SCANDAL:
LIBERIA AND FERNANDO PO, I880-1930
BY I. K. SUNDIATA
IN 1929-30 Liberia, a country founded by former American slaves, was accused of something akin to a modern day slave trade. Members of the ruling Americo-Liberian elite were said to be conniving at the illegal ship- ment of workers to plantations on the Spanish island of Fernando Po. In many quarters, these revelations were taken as proof of the unfitness of Liberia for self-rule. Yet the Liberian 'scandals' illumined only one end of the Liberia-Fernando Po labour trade. A League of Nations Commission of Enquiry did not explore conditions in the European colony, but con- cluded, at second hand, that 'labour conditions in Fernando Po may have been greatly improved in recent years. ..'.1 Major blame was assigned to the black republic rather than to the exploiters of black labour in Spanish Guinea. The actual nature of the Liberia-Fernando Po connexion is some- what more complex. The scandals have their genesis not in the rapacity of
certain Americo-Liberian politicians in the years 1925-30, but in the
struggles of another black elite to maintain itself in the face of labour shortage and European competition.
In 1848 Fernando Po was described as a place 'where a lazy population of liberated Africans from Sierra Leone neglected the advantages of one of the richest soils in the world'.2 In addition to its indigenous population, the Bubi,3 the island had acquired a black settler population composed of recaptured slaves (Fernandinos) landed in the years 1827-I834, along with immigrant Creoles from Sierra Leone. Although the island was a Spanish possession, the dominant cultural paradigm was English, and the Anglo- phone and Protestant settler community resided largely in the town of Clarence (afterwards Santa Isabel). For the first three-quarters of the nine- teenth century, the economic mainstay of the town was palm oil trading between Europeans and Bubi. However, when opportunities for exploit- ing the soil presented themselves, the community responded with alacrity. In the i89os a Catholic missionary complained:
The island of Fernando Po above all, has been captured by the English blacks of Sierra Leone ... and thus, the major part of the island is in the hands of these English blacks, and they have herded the Bubis, the natives of the island, into the
interior of the island, the worst part of all, where the means of subsistence are
1
League of Nations, Secretariat, Report of the Liberian Commission of Enquiry (C.658.M.272) (1930, vi), 36.
2 William Allen and Thomas Thompson, Narrative of the Expedition sent by Her
Majesty's Government to the River Niger in 184I (New York, 1967), 226.
3
hardly found and those foreign English blacks have, for the most part, the better coastal soil.4
Cocoa produced a reversal in the economic orientation of the settler
community. The crop was taken from Brazil to Sao Tome in 1822 and
thirty-two years later introduced to Fernando Po. In the i86os a Spanish
colonial functionary with a farm of 260 hectares made a trip to Sao Tome,
where, with the aid of the Spanish vice-consul, he succeeded in obtaining 400 cocoa pods.6 From Fernando Po cocoa cultivation was supposedly spread by migrant workers to the Gold Coast, Nigeria, Liberia, and other parts of West Africa.6
On Fernando Po the introduction of cocoa produced a shift from trade to agriculture. Men who had acquired a stock of capital in palm oil trading invested it in cocoa as the prospect for greater gain appeared. A good example was William Allen Vivour, a Sierra Leonean immigrant and palm oil trader. In 1871 an English merchant sold Vivour a schooner called the 'Sarah' which he used in the yam and palm oil trade.7 In 1874 Vivour was still engaged in the oil trade; within a decade he had acquired several plantations on the western side of the island. By 1886 he was Fernando Po's largest landowner. At the turn of the century, Vivour was dead, but his widow, Amelia Barleycorn Vivour, owned the largest cocoa plantation on the island-400 hectares.8
Vivour's eminence was succeeded by that of several other black planters
-Joseph Dougan, Samuel Kinson, J. W. Knox, and most notably,
Maximilian (Maximiliano) Jones. By the i88os most of the black traders of Santa Isabel, along with a few Europeans, had begun to take an active interest in cocoa cultivation. On the Montes de Oca concession near the town, cocoa, coffee and tobacco were cultivated and experiments were made with quinine, vanilla, cotton, and the vegetables and fruits of Spain. In another location, a Spaniard, Francisco Roca, planted cocoa on lands for- merly belonging to a Catholic mission; another Spaniard, V. Lopez, had a farm near the capital. The Portuguese consul, Diaz de Acunha, owned land on the eastern coast.
By the end of the i88os, a few planters had begun to trade directly with Manchester trading houses, among them Vivour. Planters prospered. In I895 the island's Primitive Methodist mission reported: 'We have, at the
moment... 58 members distant at their farms and otherwise ... Indeed,
were it not for the Church, many of our people assert that they would
4 Crist6bal Fernandez, Misiones y misioneros en la Guinea espaiola (Madrid, I962), 1o9. 5 Manuel de Teran, Sintesis geogrdfica de Fernando Pd (Madrid, I962), 84.
6 R. J. Harrison Church, Africa and the Islands (New York,
I964), 278. Cocoa was supposedly introduced to the Gold Coast by Tetteh Quashie, a Ga blacksmith from Christiansborg, who may have worked on Fernando Po in the late seventies or early eighties. Polly Hill, Migrant Cocoa Farmers of Southern Ghana (Cambridge, 1963), 172.
7 John Holt, Diary of John Holt (Liverpool, 1948), 178.
8 Jose A. Moreno-Moreno, Reseia histdrica de la presencia de Espana en el Golfo de
Guinea (Madrid, 1952), I18 n.
LIBERIA AND FERNANDO PO, I880-I930
SANTA ISABEL (CLARENCE)
o 5
2
99
rather live on their farms altogether ...'9 Two years later Mary Kingsley wrote of the 'Portos' (black settlers) having farms all around the island, 'collecting palm oil from the Bubi, and making themselves little cocoa plantations and bringing these products into Clarence every now and then to the white trader's factory. Then, after spending some time and most of their money in the giddy whirl of that capital, they return to their homes and recover.'10
Cocoa was king on Fernando Po; competing crops were abandoned as the race to participate in the cocoa boom continued. Coffee failed to com- pete, partly due to the duty levelled on it in Spain. The trade based on the oil palm became of secondary importance. Cocoa, 474 kilograms of which had been produced in 1889, was being produced at the rate of 1,400,398 kilograms per annum in I899. Ten years later Fernando Po was producing 2,725,000 kilograms, having become the world's tenth largest producer two years before.1l In 19II, 3,474,342 kilograms of cocoa were sent to
Spain; 12,000 went to England and 6,000 were shipped to Germany. In
1913, 5,250,000 kilograms were exported. Yet, in spite of the increase in
production, the exploitation of cocoa was halting. By the end of the nine- teenth century, only 6,500 hectares had been conceded to farmers.12 Narrow paths to the uplands made more land available, but the total amount
in cultivation remained low. In 1912, 1200 hectares were in agricultural use,
or only 3.5 per cent of the land area.13 The next year, a member of a German party noted: 'The island has never produced more than six million pounds
in the year, whereas in the year I909 the island of St. Thomas [Sao Tome]
exported over sixty million pounds. Coffee is scarcely to be reckoned as an
export, and the same may be said of palm oil.... 14
Agriculture on Fernando Po faced various impediments. African planters were often the prey of European speculators and competitors. A member of the island's Protestant mission commented on 'their (the black settlers') utter inability to forecast the future re income and expenditure; their frequent failure to meet their repayments to the merchants who are their creditors and the badgering which often results.... " The same observer said an African planter had lost his holding to one of the 'most unprincipled
Spaniards of the district... the owner, a non-Bubi, owed him [the
Spaniard] money which he had borrowed and was unable to re-pay at the
time stated'. In December I903, popular feeling among the black planters
9 Methodist Missionary Society, Primitive Methodist Mission, Fernando Po, Box 5, Boocock and W. N. Barleycorn, Yearly Report, Santa Isabel, I895.
10 Mary Kingsley, Travels in West Africa (London, i897), 71. 11 Juan Bravo Carbonell, Fernando Poo y el Muni (Madrid, 1917), I26. 12 Moreno-Moreno, Resena, 85.
13 Luis Ramos Izquierdo, Descripcidn geogrdfica . . . de las colonias espanoles del Golfo de
Guinea (Madrid, I912), 343.
14 J. Mildraed, 'Fernando Po', in From the Congo to the Niger and the Nile by Adolf
Friedrich, Duke of Mecklenburg (London, 1913), 259.
15 Methodist Missionary Society (MMS), PMM, Fernando Po, Box i, Fairley, Special
Report on San Carlos Mission... no date.
LIBERIA AND FERNANDO PO, I880-I930
was running high against the secretary of the colonial government, who was thought to have bought a farm dishonestly for a very small sum.
Producers of cocoa also found themselves yoked to a fluctuating and
unpredictable monoculture. In September 1903, 'the cocoa market, upon
which everybody is dependent', was 'steadily deteriorating and appears likely to continue so, hence the material position of most of our people is far less rosy than it was'.16 In February of the next year the people 'had been affected by 2 bad cocoa seasons and a fall in the cocoa market. It is probably not too much to say that the financial condition of the town has had no parallel in recent years.'7 Five years later a similar lament was being raised: 'All the Stations are feeling the effects of the cocoa crisis, altho the more disastrous results will come later.'18 A month later, Fernando Po's traders were 'a bit desperate owing to a falling market and to make it up are
using every endeavour to push their business...',19 Many planters
moved to their farms in an effort to save expense.
Fernando Po had suffered neglect in the nineteenth century. Such neglect had benefited the black trading intermediaries. However, it also bequeathed the island a paucity of infrastructure needed for continued and expanding exploitation. Labour was in short supply; added to this was the difficulty of transport. The colonial regime had hardly taken an interest in linking the capital with the other centres of settlement. The agriculturists of San Carlos, for instance, had to send their produce to Santa Isabel by sea because there was no road spanning the thirty miles between the two. The colony lacked capital and organization. Many planters were, in the words of a Spanish official, constantly
enveloped in the coils of usury ... [there] existing a nucleus of small farmers representing a large part of the cocoa plantations producing a fair amount of the . . . crop imported into the Peninsula, and [who] neither command [enough] capital nor have sufficient power to protect themselves from major debt, in as much as the security that they were able to offer was not considered enough to obtain the same advantages as those enjoyed by the big agriculturists, some of whom, in spite of having proper funds and being able to withstand the con- sequences of a loan, were ruined.20
Beyond their insolvency, the nationality of many of the black planters was a factor ranged against them. Fernando Po had been a magnet for Sierra Leonean emigrants; various European voices had long questioned the wisdom of allowing these settlers to establish plantations. A Spanish official averred that their life-style led them into debt, and that
16 MMS, PMM, Fernando Po, Box 5, J. Bell to Wiles, i6 Jan. 1905.
17 MMS, PMM, Fernando Po, Box I, Wiles to General Missionary Committee, 29 Feb. 1904.
18 MMS, PMM, Fernando Po, Box 5, H. M. Cook to General Missionary Committee
i Sept. I909.
19 MMS, PMM, Fernando Po, Box 4, Banham to Guttery, 3 Dec. I909. 20 Ramos Izquierdo, Descripcidn geogrdfica, 205.
Hitherto there has been great difficulty in getting the judge to compel the com- pletion of... agreements, and money which should have been paid to the mer- chants has been squandered by these debtors in trips to Sierra Leone and Europe and the buying of luxuries such as horses, bicycles, musical boxes, etc.: to such an extent has this taken place that merchants are now in many cases not willing to advance money for development and the Island suffers in consequence.21
By the second decade of the twentieth century, a winnowing process had begun and alien blacks were its first victims. In 1913 the British consul pointed out 'that the prosperity of three British firms and several planters who are British Protected Subjects is at stake and that they cannot continue to thrive without an increased supply of labour'.22 This was true of the
island generally. A visitor of I913 noted the fate that had overtaken the
property of the greatest of the nineteenth-century planters, William Vivour. 'Since his death', it was said, 'this large property has been some- what neglected, and in the face of the present dearth of labourers it would be difficult for even the most energetic owners to keep it up.'23 The greatest burden born by the black cocoa farmer was the shortage of labour. Late in 1899, an English merchant had already noted the situation: 'Mrs. Gardner tells me it is impossible to get labour, she also adds that she had paid for boys coming here and the Government have seized them for their own farms and when asked for the expense incurred they tell her to ask God for them.'24 In June of the next year a member of the Protestant mission wrote, 'Owing to scarcity of labour on the island and the increasing diffi- culty of securing a further supply, many of the farms belonging to our people are running to bush and the crops spoiling.'25
Fernando Po's demand for workers coincided with other colonial regimes' attempts to organize labour for European use by wresting it from subsistence economies. The Spanish colony confronted the same problems as did those of the British and the French, but faced an added difficulty. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Bubi suffered rapid population decline due to venereal disease and social dislocation; corvee labour and direct taxation were used, but these expedients only aggravated the demographic and social problems of the indigenous population. Fernando Po was forced to look to the mainland for its labour supply at a time when other colonies, especially those of British West Africa, were seeking to confine scarce labour resources within colonial boundaries.26
It was evident, with the autochthonous population declining and hostile,
21 John Holt Papers, o1/6, Suggestions re Fernando Po Constitution, notes and com-
ments on Reorganization of Fernando Po and with its Powers (1904?).
22 Public Record Office, F.O. 367/353, Berays to Foreign Office, 30 Oct. 1913. 23 Mildraed in Mecklenburg, From the
Congo, 252. 24 John Holt Papers,
14/Io, Robert Hall to John Holt, 15 Dec. I899. 26
MMS, PMM, Fernando Po, Box I, Fairley, Special Report on San Carlos Mission (no date).
26 For an analysis of the problem of labour mobilization see Elliot J. Berg, 'The Develop-
ment of a Labour Force in Sub-Saharan Africa', Economic Development and Cultural Change, xiI (I964-5), 394-412.
LIBERIA AND FERNANDO PO, I880-I930
that the traditional prop of Fernando Po's economy, migrant labour, was vital if the colony were to yield expanding economic benefit to its metro- pole. Liberian migrant labour was siphoned off to the plantations of Fer- nando Po in large and increasing numbers. This was true especially after
900o when, because of persistent rumours of labour abuse, labour migra-
tion from British West Africa was cut off. Planters were deprived of many Mende and other workers from Sierra Leone, and labour from the Liberian
coast assumed the greatest importance.27 In I90o there were already 933
Liberian labourers on the island.28 Plantations on the island would send African recruiters into the Liberian interior, give them money, promise them a large bonus for every labourer brought back, and give them a pas- sage order to be presented to the captain of any outward-bound steamer. The African recruiter would proceed inland and arrange with the local chiefs for a labour contingent, bring the labourers to Monrovia, and, when a steamer arrived, smuggle them aboard just before departure (thus cir- cumventing paying head money to the Liberian government).29
Completely laissez faire recruitment had been curtailed in the nineties, when the Liberian government gave recruiting rights to a German, August Humplmayr. After the expiration of the Humplmayr concession, a
Liberian act of I6 January I897 demanded that contractors of labour
should post a $I50 bond for the labourer's return, and imposed a fine of
$ioo for each labourer who might die while away from Liberia.30 In his
message of 1902, the president of Liberia warned his countrymen: 'I trust
you will see the importance of discouraging any proposal looking to the removal of labour out of the country.'31 The following year the Liberian legislature forbade recruiting unless the recruiter bought a license costing
$250 and made a deposit of $150 guaranteeing each labourer's return; no labourer under 21 could be sent and a fee of $5 per labourer was levied.32
It was soon evident these terms could be avoided. On 14 March 1903,
the Liberian government signed an agreement with the German firm of Wiechers and Helm. The posting of a bond, as required by law, was waived. In return the company promised to send labourers only to individuals or firms 'that have given them satisfactory guarantees to promptly return the boys at the expiration of their contract'.33 Under no circumstances were workers to be permitted to remain on Fernando Po for more than two years, and the labourers were to be registered before the colonial authorities
27 Kru from the Liberian coast had long sought free employment along the West
African littoral and had been first employed on Fernando Po in I827. For a discussion of the development of Kru migrant labour, see George E. Brooks, The Kru Mariner in the Nineteenth Century (Newark, Delaware, 1972). 28 De Teran, Sintesis, 65.
29 F.O. 47/36, F.O. Draft (W. F. Erskind?) to John Holt and Co.,
13 June, 1904. 30 F.O. 47/36, Thomas H. Barker, Secretary of the African Trade Section, Liverpool
Chamber of Commerce to the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 7 Sept., I903. 31
Raymond Buell, The Native Problem in Africa, Ii (New York, 1928), 277, citing
Liberia, Acts, 1905, 5. 32 Ibid. citing Liberia, Acts, I903, 4I.
33 F.O. 47/36, W. Ring to the Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 20 May,
I903.
on their arrival; the planter and agent of the Spanish government, Miguel Chac6n, promised adequate registration would be made. In case of the death or desertion of a worker, a proper certificate, signed by the Spanish authorities, was to be presented to the Liberian government.
The Wiechers and Helm agreement was not allowed to stand alone.
On I8 June I903, a similar agreement was signed with Woermann and
Company.34 The bond of $I50 per labourer was waived; Woermann was
left paying a shipping license of $250 for each port of entry, plus a fee of $5 for each man shipped. The chief difference between the Woermann agreement and its predecessor was that the Woermann agreement permitted the shipment of labourers anywhere, not only to Fernando Po.
The labourers recruited by Wiechers and Helm and by Woermann for Fernando Po were nearly all from Montserrado Country and were basically from the Vai, Mandingo and Pessy peoples.35 Workers from Kru, Basso, Gibi and Greboe groups in Grand Bassa, River Cess, Sinoe, Cape Palmas and Cavally usually did not go to Fernando Po because they liked to be paid in British coin.36 The recruiting methods of both companies were similar. They would send for the headman of a village and inform him they required a number of labourers; they would have already received an indent from some firm for this number of workers. After a time, the headman would arrive at the company's office with a work gang and a list of their names would be made. The Liberian labourers would then be housed and fed until the arrival of a Spanish steamer. On the vessel's arrival, the Liberian migrant workers were given an advance note (which means that it was only paid after the departure of the steamer, the shipper being satisfied the workers had not deserted). The note was an advance equivalent to three months wages or $i2; the sum was paid half in cash and half in goods. It was doubtful if the workers going to Fernando Po ever received any part of the advance; it probably went to the headman or the man who intro- duced the headman to the shippers.37 The advance paid in goods was part of the profit the shippers made; goods were supplied from their stores and a profit from Ioo to 150 per cent made. Even then, the advance was hardly
what it should have been: 'Of the I2 dollars or three months advance,
8 dollars worth are paid in goods to somebody by the shipping agents out of their stores. The other 4 dollars go, or are supposed to go, to the headman who brings in the labourer, probably also paid in goods.'38 Thus, the labourer found himself working for the period of the advance, three months, as unpaid labour.
34 F.O. 47/36, John Holt to F. H. Villiers, 27 Aug. 1903.
35 F.O. 47/36, British Consul Errol MacDonell to Principal Secretary of State for
Foreign Affairs, 27 Nov. 1903.
36 F.O. 47/36, Acting Consul W. Ring, to Principal Secretary of State for Foreign
Affairs, 20 May, I903.
37 F.O. 47/36, Consul Errol MacDonell to Principal Secretary of State for Foreign
Affairs, 27 Nov., 1903.
38 F.O. 47/36, John Holt to F. H. Villiers, 6 Feb. 1904.
LIBERIA AND FERNANDO PO, I880-I930
The British government was opposed to monopolies in Liberian labour since Liberian migrants were supplementary workers in its own colonies. It also opposed the posting of a bond for the return of migrants. A new
labour law was enacted in I904, after the British consul had spoken to the
Liberian Secretary of State (who submitted the request to both houses of the legislature). However, the new law was not a great improvement on the
old, as it still asked for the posting of a bond of $I50 for each labourer.39
In September I905, the Liberian and Spanish governments entered into
a labour agreement. A convention was signed between the Secretary of State of Liberia and Sanchez Arevalo, representative of the Spanish West African territories; Spain ceased paying I50 pesos to each labourer con- tracted and, instead, paid 50 or ioo pesos in gold to the Liberian treasury.40 In spite of this accord, the labour shortage continued. The situation did
not improve in I908, when a Liberian act forbade altogether the shipment
of labourers from Montserrado or Grand Bassa counties to any foreign
country.41 Early in I909, two Spanish officials made a tour of Spanish
West Africa, visiting the president of Liberia during their journey. As could be expected, the labour famine was discussed, the two officials doing their best to cajole the Monrovia government into a more favourable stance.
The British embargoed the export of labour from their colonies and
sought to have the Liberians pursue a similar policy. In 1913 the British
consul-general in Monrovia informed the Liberian government that 'It is reported that Liberians have recently been taken into slavery in other parts of Africa, Krumen being shipped by steamers on the Liberian Coast and landed without their consent at Fernando Po where they find themselves forced to work on plantations'. The British confidently warned: 'The attention of the Spanish government has been called to the matter and His Majesty's Government is carefully watching any British ships which may be suspected of conniving at the practice, but it is hoped that the Liberian Government will themselves consider what steps can be taken to prevent labourers leaving the country without contracts or some other means of watching over them.'42
In June I913, Joseph J. Sharp, Liberian Secretary of State, arrived on Fernando Po to inspect conditions, which at the time were causing the British grave concern. In spite of British hopes, Sharp later informed the British representative in Monrovia that no further restriction on labour shipment to Fernando Po was contemplated.43 At the end of the year, the British consul-general in Monrovia described the traffic which it was feared might sap British West Africa of its manpower: 'Reports continue to
39 F.O. 43/36, MacDonell to Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 14 Feb. 1904.
40 Abelardo Unzueta, Geografia histdrica de Fernando Pdo (Madrid, I948), 198. 41 Buell, The Native Question, II, 777.
42 Ibid.
43 F.O. 367/1960, Joseph J. Sharp to Acting Consul-General Parks, 29 Mar. I914.
be received relative to the shipment from the western portion of the Liber- ian Republic of British native subjects from Sierra Leone to the Spanish and Portuguese Islands in the Gulf of Guinea.... This Consulate General might undoubtedly do much to discourage this constant leakage of British subjects if it possessed adequate means of water transit .. .44
The British attitude toward the Fernando Po labour traffic was condi- tioned by various factors. In addition to fear of the 'constant leakage of British subjects', segments of the British public were increasingly voicing criticism of African labour conditions. There were several exposes, the most notable being that of the Congo Reform Association led by E. D. Morel.45 Concern for reform also reached the cocoa producing islands of the Bight of Biafra, although not concentrating on Fernando Po. The Portuguese on Sao Tome and Principe were charged with forcibly recruiting labourers (servifaes) from Angola, and a British campaign was launched, supported by a cocoa boycott.4 The reverberations of the protest against conditions in the Portuguese colonies were felt in Spanish Guinea. In the years immedi- ately preceding the First World War, British officials made tours of in-
spection which resulted in the promulgation of a new labour code in I913.
The new labour code, with its more stringent demands upon employers, only intensified the economic problems of the small planters, most of whom were African. 'The extinction of the small planters, if it really happens', said the Foreign Office, 'will be an unexpected result of our efforts and in some respects an unfortunate one. If, however these men can only keep their farms going by giving their labourers less than is now thought neces- sary, I am afraid there is nothing for it but that they must go under.'47
Ignoring continuing British uneasiness, Governor-General Angel Barrera and President D. E. Howard of Liberia signed a new labour agree- ment in May 1914. The agreement was the expedient of a penurious govern- ment nearing economic exhaustion. Liberia was chronically in need of
funds, a situation which international loans in I87I and I906 had not
remedied. A new loan, negotiated in I912, made the republic subject to an
International Receivership responsible for managing revenue. The First World War injured the German-dominated Liberian economy, and attempts to reach financial agreements with the Bank of British West Africa and the
44 F.O. 458/39, Report upon the General Situation in Liberia as at the end of I913, p. 11,
enclosure in Mr Maugham's despatch No. 74 of i April 1914.
46 See William Roger Louis and Jean Stengers, E. D. Morel's History of the Congo
Reform Movement (Oxford, 1968) and S. J. S. Cookey, Britain and the Congo Question
x885-1913 (New York, 1968).
46 The protest against labour abuse in the Portuguese islands received the very important
support of William Cadbury, a Quaker chocolate manufacturer, who visited the islands in
1908 and subsequently boycotted their cocoa. For opposing sides in the debate over con-
ditions in the Portuguese territories, see H. W. Nevinson, A Modern Slavery (London, I9o6) and Francisco Mantero, Portuguese Planters and British Humanitarians, the Case for
S. Thome (Lisbon, 91 I).
47 F.O. 367/353, Foreign Office minute, 23 Oct. 1913 to letter, Bernays to Grey, 20 Sept. 1913.
LIBERIA AND FERNANDO PO, 1880-1930
American government produced no permanent results.48 By 1922 Liberia was faced with the prospect of bankruptcy, an ominous situation in light of the republic's fears for its independence.
Labour was one of the few available sources of revenue for a govern- ment apparently plunging towards a financial nadir. The accord with Spain offered obvious benefits and promised safeguards. The agreement provided that there should be a Liberian consul in Santa Isabel. It author- ized labour recruitment in selected Liberian ports by agents under the supervision of the Spanish consul in Monrovia.49 Liberia would select four recruiting agents and planters from Fernando Po who could go to Monrovia to make arrangements with the Liberian authorities. Copies of the labour contracts would be given to the Liberian customs, the Liberian Secretary of State and the Liberian consul-general on Fernando Po. Each statement would contain the name, county, town, district, tribe, chief and period of contracted labour of the worker. The statement was to be presented to the labour agent in Liberia three days before the transportation of the labourer to Fernando Po. The maximum period of a contract was two years and the minimum was one year; workers were to be refused to employers not approved by the governor of Fernando Po and the Liberian authorities. Labour was to be refused to insolvent farmers; contracts would not be subject to extension and wages were to be paid in English money, one half on Fernando Po and one half through the Spanish consul upon the worker's return to Liberia. The labour agreement itself was subject to termination by either country at six months' notice.
For the agriculturists of Fernando Po the agreement was irksome. Liberian workers could hardly be secured for less than ?I sterling per month. This, plus their ration of rice, salted fish and fruit, medical care,
the sixty to Ioo pesetas exchange value for the
?,
and the passage to andfrom Fernando Po, amounted to nearly
L2
per month.50 Besides this, pay-ment had to be made in English gold. However, as long as the agreement did deliver labour, the black and white planters of Fernando Po stood to
gain. Several thousand labourers were shipped under the 1914 convention;
between 1919 and 1926 a known 4,268 were recruited and employed on
the island.51 It is calculated that, averaging 600 a year, the total number
from 1914 to I927 was at least 7,268.
Imported labour was dear, especially for the smaller producers. In 1915
the Primitive Methodist Mission reported that conditions were acute and that 'the cost of each worker has increased alarmingly during the recent years both in Government demands and standard of wage, together with
48 M. B. Akpan, 'Liberia and the Universal Negro Improvement Association: The
Background to the Abortion of Garvey's Scheme for African Colonization', J. Afr. Hist. xiv, I (I973), I2I.
49 Unzueta, Geografia, I99.
50 Ramos-Izquierdo, Descripcidn geogrdfica, 259.
51
League of Nations, Secretariat, Report of the Liberian Commission of Enquiry (C.658.
M.272) (I930, vi), 36.
increase in rations'.52 A few years later the mission commented, 'Boys from Liberia cost more than boys from Bata [Rio Muni]. There is much more passage to pay and they require a higher standard of wages.'53 Workers from Liberia cost L6-?8 sterling per month, while workers from Rio Muni (mainland Spanish Guinea) were paid about z2-?3 sterling or less.
The labour convention of 1914 was not without its repeated difficulties.
The exigencies of the First World War threatened the shipment of lab-
ourers from the Liberian ports. A decree of I5 July I918 authorized the
re-engagement for two more years of workers who had completed their contracts.54 The end of the war brought renewed charges of labour abuse. In 1920 the British consul noted 'That the law is carried out in a very slack way.. ..55 Criminal offences were supposedly punished with excessive cruelty and police brutality was allegedly rampant. An act of the Liberian legislature in 1921 directed the Liberian president to give six months notice that shipment of labourers from Montserrado County and the territories of Grand Cape Mount and Marshall was to be prohibited.56
In 1922 the renewal of the full-scale labour traffic to Fernando Po was
obtained, but the supply of labour continued to be sporadically interdicted.
An upswing in the Liberian economy in the latter part of 1923 made it
possible for Monrovia to adopt a more critical attitude. Tariff revenues were up and the import-export balance began to shift in the republic's favour.57 In addition to these indications of better economic health, the Lib- erian government could look forward to the investment of foreign capital on an unprecedented scale. The government began to negotiate with an American, Harvey S. Firestone, for the lease of land for rubber plantations; by 1926 Firestone's plans called for an investment of $ioo million and the
employment of 350,000 Liberians.58 The promise of new sources of revenue no doubt lessened the state's desire to encourage labour migration, especi- ally when opportunities for employing labour at home presented themselves. Tropical exploitation within Liberia became a major consideration, and the Firestone Company quite clearly stated: 'We desire to point out to the [Liberian] Government again that the success of our development in Liberia is largely dependent upon the organization of a permanent and contented labour force.'59
In 1924 the Liberian legislature prohibited the shipment of labourers
from the county of Grand Bassa. Nevertheless, labour shipments continued from other areas; the Fernando Po planters continued to cajole labour from
52
MMS, PMM, Fernando Po, Box 3, File: Fernandian Cocoa Report: H. Markham Cook to General Missionary Committee, io June, 1915.
63 MMS, PMM, Fernando Po, Box 3, File: Fernando Po Papers, Reports, etc.: Report
on Island Conditions, p. 2.
54
Unzueta, Geografia, 199.
55 F.O. 371/5562, A. C. Reeve to Consul-General, Loanda, 4 July 1920. 56 Buell, The Native Question,
II, 780.
67 Akpan, 'Liberia and the Universal Negro Improvement Association', 12I. 58
J. H. Mower, 'The Republic of Liberia', Journal of Negro History, xxxII, 3 (July I947), 288. 59 Alfred Lief, The Firestone Story (New York, 1951), I65.
LIBERIA AND FERNANDO PO, I880-I930
Liberia with the consent of certain Liberian politicians. In February I925,
this symbiotic and exploitative relationship was ruptured when the Lib- erian consul on Fernando Po was arrested and the labour trade came to a halt. As an upshot of the detention of its consul, Liberia demanded ?500
sterling, one half of which was to be paid by i8 July 1925. The island's
planters themselves collected the indemnity and gave it to their government for transmission to Liberia. The affair played havoc with the island's
precarious economy. No labourers were sent to Fernando Po in I925 and
only forty were sent in the first six months of I926.60
In June I926, the governor-general of Spanish Guinea ordered the
military subgovernors in Rio Muni to intensify the recruitment of Fang workers for service on the island.61 These workers, recruited for a period of two years, averted agricultural disaster. External labour was urgently needed if lands already in cultivation were to be maintained and if expan-
sion, even on a limited scale, was to continue. In I927 only 80,000 of the
island's 2,5000,000 hectares were under cultivation and it was estimated that 40,000 Fang would be needed to put the maximum amount of land
into cocoa production.62 In I928 the majority of the workers on Fernando
Po were from Rio Muni.63 However, the supply of labour was not assured, due to a declining birth-rate occasioned by the absence of the men from home and to the increased demand for labour within Rio Muni itself.
Liberian labour was still wanted; however, pronouncements from Mon- rovia gave little indication of a willingness to co-operate in the old way. In
March of I926 the president of Liberia visited the island and explained to
the Camara Agricola (planters' association) that Liberia was about to embark on a vast programme of internal development, a message amplified in an address to the Liberian legislature the following October. The president's pronouncements implied a future termination of the traffic; again the island faced the prospect of uncollected harvests and financial ruin. However, the officials in Santa Isabel were able to bid for time. Within Liberia itself there were still those ready to meet the demand for 'boys'. Rivalries within the Liberian ruling elite and abuses connected with the recruitment of labour in the Liberian hinterland grew, as did the need for labour on
Fernando Po. In late I927, as a result of these pressures, the Liberian
secretary of state terminated the labour agreement of I914 without six
months' notice.64
The rupture, like its predecessors, caused consternation in Spanish Guinea. Liberia apparently had the island at its mercy and, before agreeing to a new convention, sought a preferential tariff for its coffee and other produce. The planters of Fernando Po hung on tenaciously in defence of
60
Buell, The Native Question, II, 781.
61 Juan Bravo Carbonell, Territorios espanoles del Golfo de Guinea (Madrid, I929), 95.
62 Ibid. 103.
63 F.O. 37/12759, Vice-Consul C. H. Chew, Santa Isabel to Consul-General, Mon-
rovia, 9 Nov. I928.
64 F.O. 37I/I2758, Consul-General Rule, Monrovia, to Foreign Office, 23 Dec. I927.
their interests. Two representatives of the island's planters, one black and one white (Edward Barleycorn and Emanuel Gonezrosa), were sent to Monrovia to arrange for the continuance of the labour flow. Desperate for labour, they were willing to pay well, a fact appreciated by Samuel Ross, a Liberian politician who had already been active in the export of labour from Sinoe, Liberia. A private agreement was entered into between a group calling itself the Syndicato Agricola de Guinea and a group of Liberian citizens headed by Ross. The Syndicato promised to pay the Liberian
recruiting agents (Ross and his colleagues) for 3,000 labourers at ?9
sterling each.65
Ross was not the only Liberian politician to see the benefit of such agree- ments. In the autumn of I928, Allen Yancy, future vice-president of Lib- eria, obtained a special recruiting licence which permitted him to ship labourers from Cape Palmas to Fernando Po. Between that time and 31
December I929, 2,43I workers were sent to the island: I,005 from Cape
Palmas and 1,426 from Sinoe.66 In I930, when the shipments were under
international attack by the League of Nations, shipments from Maryland County to Fernando Po were still in progress. The League's investigation brought about the cession of the traffic at a time when the island was already beginning to feel the effects of the world-wide economic depression. The League of Nations investigation, which arose out of American representations to the Liberians, raised questions in some minds about Africans' capacity for self-rule. Liberia's defenders were quick to accuse the enquiry as being nothing more than a blind for the interest of the Fire- stone Rubber Company, which demanded that Liberian labour should be exploited in Liberia.67 The Spanish dismissed the international outcry as an attempt to sabotage the development of Spanish Guinea, and pointed to the international silence on abuses elsewhere.
From an analysis of the development of Liberian labour migration, two facts emerge: abuse of labour existed not only in its recruitment and trans- port, but also in its employment on Fernando Po; the interdiction of the Liberian labour trade proceeded not solely from outside humanitarianism, but also from an effort to conserve supplies of African manpower.68 The
900o embargo on labour migration from British West Africa aimed at
keeping the available migrant labour in British hands. Liberia was accused of being a conduit for the leakage of Sierra Leonean labour, and attacks on labour practices centred on Fernando Po itself. Only gradually did the emphasis shift to Liberia. Yet, even at the time of the American inspired investigation, labourers expressed not only resentment against forced
65 League of Nations, Report of the Liberian Commission of Enquiry, 36.
66 Ibid.
67 George Padmore, American Imperialism Enslaves Liberia (Moscow, I931).
68 The 1929 expression of American concern also reflects the belief that the threat of withdrawal of United States diplomatic support from a diplomatically isolated Liberia would be an important lever to use against a frequently recalcitrant regime. Raymond Bixler, The Foreign Policy of the United States in Liberia (New York, 1957), 88.
LIBERIA AND FERNANDO PO, I880-I930
labour recruitment, but also a special dread of conditions on Fernando Po. The conditions which produced labour abuse were not improving in the
late I920s. Indeed, the increasing unreliability of the labour force produced
continued cases of the detention of labourers beyond the terms of their contracts.
The complaints of labour abuse and the resulting international attention were in part the continuing products of the desperate plight of the black planters. By the second decade of the twentieth century, Fernando Po had ceased to be the exclusive agricultural preserve of a miniscule black settler elite. The exiguous European presence of the previous era had been replaced with a mounting number of Portuguese and Spanish agriculturists
and entrepreneurs. By I930 it was obvious that a shift had taken place;
I8,ooo hectares had been conceded to Africans, while some 2I,ooo hectares had gone to Europeans, a situation which remained legally frozen.69 The dearth of labour caused the government to prohibit the granting of new concessions, a ban which remained in effect until 1948.70
The world-wide economic depression made even more apparent the
trough into which the community had fallen. In December I930, the
Fernandinos were appealed to in the pages of La Guinea espanola, the voice of the Catholic mission. The community was urged to reflect on its decline and reminded: 'Your parents made a fortune, that all have recognized.... Through the substitution of vagrancy for constant work, vain consumption for seriousness, and the life of the bar and saloon for the intimacy of family life, has come the socio-economic disaster that we deplore.'71 Unfortun- ately, the socio-economic changes to which the black elite had been subject were beyond the power of individual or group probity to rectify. They had been brought on by the fumbling, but nevertheless tightening, grip of European imperialism, and the attachment of a colonial monoculture to a system of unstable international commerce.
The rise of metropolitan commercial interest ran counter to certain trends in the colony. The Spanish desired to exploit Fernando Po as the Portuguese exploited their African islands, but were frustrated by the declining population. The problem could not be overcome by the influx of migrants from other Spanish territories; the mainland portion of Spanish Guinea, Rio Muni, proved too small to play the part taken by Angola vis a vis Sao Tome and Principe. Liberia provided an escape from the dilemma presented by Spain's colonial situation. The cessation of the Liberian labour traffic was, therefore, as momentous for the island as were its political consequences in the black republic.
Failure to obtain manpower constituted a failure to mould Fernando Po in the image of its neighbours. The island stagnated, only emerging from
69 Juan Bravo Carbonell, 'Posibilidades econ6micas de la Guinea espaiola', Boletin de la
Sociedad Geogrdfica Nacional, LXXXIII (Aug. 1933), 525. 70 De Teran, Sintesis, 87.
71
Ruiaz, 'Aio Negro', La Guinea espanola (2I Dec. 1930), 386.
III
112 I. K. SUNDIATA
its torpor in the period following the Second World War. Fernando Po, the largest island in the Bight of Biafra, remained one of the least exploited
and least known-an insular anomaly subject to an underdeveloped
metropole.
SUMMARY
In 1923-30 the League of Nations investigated the shipment of migrant labour between Liberia and the Spanish island colony of Fernando Po. Although the
League concentrated its attention on Liberia, a closer examination reveals labour
