Africa

Lugard was successful in distancing all his French competitors by several

days, reaching Nikki on the 5th of November 1894 and concluding a treaty

with the king and chiefs. The French expeditions, which were in great

strength, did not hesitate on their arrival to compel the king to execute

fresh treaties with France, and with these in their possession they

returned to Dahomey. Shortly afterwards a fresh act of aggression was

committed. On the 13th of February 1895 a French officer, Commandant

Toutee, arrived on the right bank of the Niger opposite Bajibo and built a

fort. His presence there was notified to the Royal Niger Company, who

protested to the British government against this invasion of their

territory. Lord Rosebery, who was then foreign minister, at once made

inquiries in Paris, and received the assurance that Commandant Toutee was

``a private traveller.'' Eventually Commandant Toutee was ordered to

withdraw, and the fort was occupied by the Royal Niger Company's troops.

Commandant Toutee subsequently published the official instructions from the

French government under which he had acted. It was thought that the

recognition of the British claims, involved in the withdrawal of Commandant

Toutee, had marked the final abandonment by France of the attempt to

establish herself on the navigable portions of the Niger below Bussa, but

in 1897 the attempt was renewed in the most determined manner. In February

of that year a French force suddenly occupied Bussa, and this act was

quickly followed by the occupation of Gomba and Illo higher up the river.

In November 1897 Nikki was occupied. The situation on the Niger had so

obviously been outgrowing the capacity of a chartered company that for some

time before these occurrences the assumption of responsibility for the

whole of the Niger region

The Franco-British settlement of 1898.

by the imperial authorities had been practically decided on; and early in

1898 Lugard was sent out to the Niger with a number of imperial officers to

raise a local force in preparation for the contemplated change. The advance

of the French forces from the south and west was the signal for an advance

of British troops from the Niger, from Lagos and from the Gold Coast

protectorate. The situation thus created was extremely serious. The British

and French flags were flying in close proximity, in some cases in the same

village. Meanwhile the diplomatists were busy in London and in Paris, and

in the latter capital a commission sat for many months to adjust the

conflicting claims. Fortunately, by the tact and forbearance of the

officers on both sides, no local incident occurred to precipitate a

collision, and on the 14th of June 1898 a convention was signed by Sir

Edmund Monson and M. G. Hanotaux which practically completed the partition

of this part of the continent.

The settlement effected was in the nature of a compromise. France

withdrew from Bussa, Gomba and Illo, the frontier line west of the Niger

being drawn from the 9th parallel to a point ten miles, as the crow flies,

above Giri, the port of Illo. France was thus shut out from the navigable

portion of the middle and lower Niger; but for purely commercial purposes

Great Britain agreed to lease to France two small plots of land on the

river-the one on the right bank between Leaba and the mouth of the Moshi

river, the other at one of the mouths of the Niger. By accepting this line

Great Britain abandoned Nikki and a great part of Borgu as well as some

part of Gando to France. East of the Niger the Say-Barrua line was modified

in favour of France, which gained parts of both Sokoto and Bornu where they

meet the southern edge of the Sahara. In the Gold Coast hinterland the

French withdrew from Wa, and Great Britain abandoned all claim to Mossi,

though the capital of the latter country, together with a further extensive

area in the territory assigned to both powers, was declared to be equally

free, so far as trade and navigation were concerned, to the subjects and

protected persons of both nationalities. The western boundary of the Gold

Coast was prolonged along the Black Volta as far as latitude 11 deg. N.,

and this parallel was followed with slight deflexions to the Togoland

frontier. In consequence of the acute crisis which shortly afterwards

occurred between France and Great Britain on the upper Nile, the

ratification of this agreement was delayed until after the conclusion of

the Fashoda agreement of March 1899 already referred to. In 1900 the two

patches on the Niger leased to France were selected by commissioners

representing the two countries, and in the same year the Anglo-French

frontier from Lagos to the west bank of the Niger was delimited.

East of the Niger the frontier, even as modified in 1898, failed to

satisfy the French need for a practicable route to Lake Chad, and in the

convention of the 8th of April 1904, to which reference has been made under

Egypt and Morocco, it was

Further concessions to France.

agreed, as part of the settlement of the French shore question in

Newfoundland, to deflect the frontier line more to the south. The new

boundary was described at some length, but provision was made for its

modification in points of detail on the return of the commissioners engaged

in surveying the frontier region. In 1906 an agreement was reached on all

points, and the frontier at last definitely settled, sixteen years after

the Say-Barrua line had been fixed. This revision of the Niger-Chad

frontier did not, however, represent the only territorial compensation

received by France in West Africa in connexion with the settlement of the

Newfoundland question. By the same convention of April 1904 the British

government consented to modify the frontier between Senegal and the Gambia

colony ``so as to give to France Yarbutenda and the lands and landing-

places belonging to that locality,'' and further agreed to cede to France

the tiny group of islands off the coast of French Guinea known as the Los

Islands.

Meantime the conclusion of the 1898 convention had left both the British

and the French governments free to devote increased attention to the

subdivision and control of their West African possessions. On the 1st of

January 1900 the imperial authorities assumed direct responsibility for the

whole of the territories of the Royal Niger Company, which became

henceforth a purely commercial undertaking. The Lagos protectorate was

extended northwards; the Niger Coast protectorate, likewise with extended

frontiers, became Southern Nigeria; while the greater part of the

territories formerly administered by the company were constituted into the

protectorate of Northern Nigeria—all three administrations being directly

under the Colonial Office In February 1906 the administration of the

Southern Nigerian protectorate was placed under that of Lagos at the same

time as the name of the latter was changed to the Colony of Southern

Nigeria, this being a step towards the eventual

Organization of the British and French protectorates.

amalgamation of all three dependencies under one governor or governor-

general. In French West Africa changes in the internal frontiers have been

numerous and important. The coast colonies have all been increased in size

at the expense of the French Sudan, which has vanished from the maps as an

administrative entity. There are carved out of the territories comprised in

what is officially known as French West Africa five colonies—Senegal,

French Guinea, the Ivory Coast, Dahomey and the Upper Senegal and Niger,

this last being entirely cut off from the sea—and the civil territory of

Mauritania. To the colony of the Upper Senegal and Niger is attached the

military territory of the Niger, embracing the French Sahara up to the

limit of the Algerian sphere of influence. Not only are all these divisions

of French West Africa connected territorially, but administratively they

are united under a governor-general. Similarly the French Congo territories

have been divided into three colonies—the Gabun, the Middle Congo and the

Ubangi-Shari-Chad—all united administratively under a commissioner-general.

There are, around the coast, numerous islands or groups of islands, which

are regarded by geographers as outliers of the

Ownership of the African Islands.

African mainland. The majority of these African islands were occupied by

one or other of the European powers long before the period of continental

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