A Modern Slavery by Henry Woodd Nevinson - HTML preview

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Commander Cameron describes the town and its chief, Mona Peho, in Across Africa, p. 426 (1876).

[2] The King of Italy’s award on the disputed frontier between British Barotzeland and Portuguese Angola was not published, in fact, till July, 1905. Great Britain received only part of her claim, and the Hungry Country, together with the whole of the slave route, remains under Portuguese misgovernment.

[3] Properly speaking, vapeka is the plural of upeka, a slave, but in Bihé apeka is used.

[4] Since this was written, the arbitration has been published (July, 1905), but by the new frontier I think none of the Chibokwe will be brought under British influence.

[5] It must be a little difficult to teach arithmetic to a race whose word for “seven” is “six and two” (epandu-vali), or “six over again.” Or to teach dates where the word for “to-morrow” (hena) is the same as the word for “yesterday.”

[6] I am not quite sure how this was discovered—whether an indiscreet friend “gave me away,” or whether an indiscreet letter was opened in the post, or the traders were simply guided by conjecture and a guilty conscience. At all events, one of the principal slave-dealers in Bihé discovered it, and took the pains to publish reports against me, that reached as far as Mossamedes. The English and American missions were actually warned to have nothing to do with me because I was a Jesuit in disguise, and had come to destroy their work! Further on I may have to refer to the plots to assassinate me on the coast during the voyage home, but I mention these little personal matters only to show that the slave-traders had been put on their guard and would naturally try to conceal as much as they could of their traffic’s horror, and that is the chief reason why I met no gangs of slaves in chains.

[7] See Commander Cameron’s description of the same view in 1876: Across Africa, p. 459.

[8] Cameron visited King Congo there in 1876: Across Africa, p. 460.

[9] The official numbers of slaves exported to San Thomé for the first four months of 1905 are: January, 369; February, 349; March, 366; April, 302—a rate which would give a total of 4158 for the year. In June I travelled by a ship which took 273 slaves to San Thomé and Principe, and there are two slave-ships a month.

[10] Cameron called it “The Devil’s Finger”: Across Africa, p. 464.

[11] I find that the latest published Consular Report on San Thomé and Principe (1902) actually repeats the hypocritical fiction about the redemption of slaves. After speaking of the “enormous mortality” on the two islands, the Report continues: “So large a death-rate calls for constant fresh supplies of laborers from Angola, the principal ports from which they are obtained being Benguela, Novo Redondo, and Loanda, where they are ransomed from the black traders who bring them from the far interior.” Mr. Consul Nightingale, who wrote the Report, was, of course, perfectly aware of the truth, and no doubt he wrote in irony. But English people do not understand irony—least of all in an official document.

[12] There is a well-known carriers’ song with the refrain, “She has crossed Ondumba ya Maria,” that being the name of a dry brook on this road from Katumbella to Benguela. It means, “She has gone into slavery to be sold for San Thomé”—“Gone to the devil,” or, “Gone to glory,” as we say, almost indifferently.

[13] See note on page 185.

[14] An English resident at San Thomé estimates the serviçaes alone at forty thousand.

[15] London’s death-rate in 1903 was 15.7 per 1000 against Principe’s 206.7 per 1000. Liverpool had the highest death-rate of English cities. It was 20.5 per 1000, or almost exactly one-tenth of the death-rate among the serviçaes in Principe. The total death-rate for England and Wales in 1902 was 16.2 per 1000.