A History of the Colonization of Africa by Alien Races by Harry Johnston

It has been already related in the preceding chapter how the geographical ardour of the King of the Belgians resulted in the sending of Stanley with an important expedition to explore the Congo. Previous to this enterprise, however, King Leopold II had shown himself deeply interested in the fate of Central Africa. Following on the successful crossing of the continent from the Zanzibar to the Benguela coast by Commander V. L. Cameron, R. N., and his revelation of the richly endowed territories of the Southern Congo basin, King Leopold had summoned to Brussels under his own presidency a conference of geographers, which created an International Association for the Exploration and Civilization of Central Africa and for the abolition of the Slave Trade which then was really ravaging that region. This International Association soon separated into a number of National Committees; that of Belgium was founded in November, 1876, and in 1877-79 Belgian Expeditions were sent out _via_ Zanzibar to Tanganyika. By August, 1879, Capitaine Cambier (an excellent pioneer), had founded the station of Karema on the south-east Coast of Tanganyika. Captain E. Storms established himself here (together with the White Fathers' Catholic Mission) in 1880, and set to work to unite the Tanganyika tribes in self-defence against the Arab slave raiders. Storms became quite a hero after beating off the Arab forces with merely native material, hastily drilled as soldiers. By 1885, he had become recognized as the great White Chief and Protector of southern Tanganyika.

In 1879 from out of the Belgian branch of the African International Association there grew the Comité d'Études du Haut Congo, which projected the idea of Stanley's concluding in its name treaties with the paramount chiefs of the Congo region, treaties by means of which these chiefs should agree to join in a sort of confederation for purposes of mutual support, while at the same time they admitted into their territories the traders who would be sent out by the Committee, which was in some sort to become the suzerain of this Congo Federation. Mr Stanley appears to have been under the impression that the final protectorate over the central Congo would be a British one; until 1884 few people seemed to think that the King of the Belgians would make himself the sovereign of the Congo. In the early eighties a kind of Anglo-French duel had taken place on the Congo, De Brazza representing the French cause and Stanley the British. When it began to dawn on the British Government that the King of the Belgians was working for purely Belgian interests, it occurred to them that there was no reason why England and Portugal might not come to terms, at any rate about the Lower Congo. So the abortive treaty of 1884 was drawn up, but not ratified. Believing that this was a preliminary to a British Protectorate of the Congo, France and Germany joined hands; and a Conference on African affairs was convened at Berlin, the first of a long series of actions taken jointly by the other states of Europe to check the extension of British influence.