THE STOKES AFFAIR AND THE ORIGINS OF THE ANTI-CONGO CAMPAIGN, 1895-1896
When Charles Stokes was hanged by an officer of the Congo State, Captain Lothaire, in January 1895, he is said to have died crying « my country will avenge me ! » An Irish ivory trader settled in German East Africa, Stokes was also a British subject. Echoes of Palmerston's « Civis Romanus sum », exclamations of « Don Pacif ico » and shouts of « Captain Jenkins' wounded ear» reverberated through the British press. A British trader had been hanged, and the press with virtual unanimity demanded that justice be meted out to the hangman.
The British response to Stokes' hanging was caused however by more than the historic tradition of demonstrating that an Englishman could not be murdered with impunity. In a broad sense the violent language of the press was perhaps intensified during the affair by the humiliation of the Jameson raid and the Kruger telegram, and it perhaps reflected the growing sense of insecurity felt by Englishmen in the 1890's. In a narrower sense the immoderate attack on the « judicial farce » that preceded Stokes' summary execution revealed that the British public felt betrayed by the Congo government and mocked by the caricature of noble principles on which Leopold II, King of the Belgians, had founded the Congo State.
King Leopold's motives were already under suspicion because of his efforts to «jump Wadelai» — to extend his kingdom into the Nile valley, which had caused the Congo State to collide with both France and Britain. Far from having become a province of the British Empire, as some of King Leopold's English champions such as Sir William Mackinnon had envisaged in 1883-1885, the Congo State emerged in the 1890's as a highly dangerous competitor for the Nile valley. Nor was this the only reason why the British government began to give King Leopold short shrift. From British missionary reports as well as from occasional consular despatches and complaints from Lagos, rumors persistently reached London of maltreatment of British West African subjects in the Congo State's service. These rumors only complemented other disquieting evidence that seemed to British eyes to indicate that the Congo administration was bringing more barbarism than civilization to the peoples of the Congo. Cannibal tribes were reported to be impressed in the Congo service to « pacify» turbulent districts ; equal trading rights were suppressed ; and the Congo State's agents were running amuk in search for the ivory of the eastern Congo.
Avarice for ivory and the attempt to divert the flow of trade from east Africa to the Congo was perhaps the basic cause of the Stokes incident.
