378 FUTURE PROSPECTS OF BRITISH EAST AFRICA part hi 



and Brazil, etc., is 150,000, being more than double the whole 

 draught upon Africa, including the countries where it had 

 ceased, when the slave-trade controversy began ! Twice as 

 many human beings are now its victims as when Wilberforce 

 and Clarkson entered upon their noble task ; and each indi- 

 vidual of this increased number, in addition to the horrors 

 which were endured in former times, has to suffer from being 

 cribbed up in a narrower space, and on board a vessel where 

 accommodation is sacrificed to speed." To quote Alison's 

 summary of Buxton's admissions : " Thus the effect of the eman- 

 cipation of the negroes has been to ruin our own planters, stop 

 the civilisation of our own negroes, and double the slave-trade 

 in extent and quadruple it in horrors throughout the globe." ^ 



We have already twice experienced in East Africa the 

 disastrous effects of precipitate interference with slavery. The 

 revolt in the Soudan, the rise of the power of the Mahdi, the 

 massacre of Hicks Pasha's army, the loss by Egypt of the 

 whole of her equatorial provinces, and the death of Gordon, 

 are now generally recognised as the result of our attempts to 

 suppress slavery before supplying anything to take its place. 

 We tried to destroy that which was an integral part of the 

 social system of the ruling race, without realising how vast a 

 cavity would be produced and how fatal it would seem to them. 

 Similarly the guerilla warfare, which has continued in British 

 East Africa ever since the British occupation of Witu, is mainly 

 due to the same cause. It is true that the fighting began by 

 an expedition which was sent to avenge the massacre of a 

 party of German traders. But the power of the Witu rebels 

 was largely due to the secret assistance of the coast Arabs. 

 They foresaw the ruin of their plantations through a continuance 

 of British efforts to suppress slavery, emphasised as it was by 

 the action of the missionaries, who afforded shelter to runaway 

 slaves in spite of their promises to the contrary. The British 

 officials at Zanzibar and Mombasa, and especially that states- 

 manlike officer. Captain Rogers of Lamu, are fully alive to the 

 possibilities of an Arab rebellion.^ At Melindi, at Mambrui 

 and Magarini, in fact all along the coast, extensive plantations 



^ A. Alison, History of Europe, Continuation, vol. v. (1864), p. 54. 

 ^ Since this chapter was written, the simmering discontent has broken out into a 

 serious rebellion. 



