Prelude to Scandal: Liberia and Fernando Po, 1880-1930

Author(s): I. K. Sundiata
Source: The Journal of African History, Vol. 15, No. 1 (1974), pp. 97-112
Published by: Cambridge University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/180372
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Journal of African History, xv, I (1974), pp. 97-1I2

Printed in Great Britain

PRELUDE
LIBERIA

AND

97

TO SCANDAL:

FERNANDO

PO, I880-1930

BY I. K. SUNDIATA

IN 1929-30 Liberia, a country founded by former American slaves, was

accused of something akin to a modern day slave trade. Members of the
ruling Americo-Liberian elite were said to be conniving at the illegal shipment of workers to plantations on the Spanish island of Fernando Po. In
many quarters, these revelations were taken as proof of the unfitness of
Liberia for self-rule. Yet the Liberian 'scandals' illumined only one end of
the Liberia-Fernando Po labour trade. A League of Nations Commission
of Enquiry did not explore conditions in the European colony, but concluded, at second hand, that 'labour conditions in Fernando Po may have
been greatly improved in recent years. ..'.1 Major blame was assigned to
the black republic rather than to the exploiters of black labour in Spanish
Guinea. The actual nature of the Liberia-Fernando Po connexion is somewhat more complex. The scandals have their genesis not in the rapacity of
certain Americo-Liberian politicians in the years 1925-30, but in the
struggles of another black elite to maintain itself in the face of labour
shortage and European competition.
In 1848 Fernando Po was described as a place 'where a lazy population
of liberated Africans from Sierra Leone neglected the advantages of one of
the richest soils in the world'.2 In addition to its indigenous population,
the Bubi,3 the island had acquired a black settler population composed of
recaptured slaves (Fernandinos) landed in the years 1827-I834, along with
immigrant Creoles from Sierra Leone. Although the island was a Spanish
possession, the dominant cultural paradigm was English, and the Anglophone and Protestant settler community resided largely in the town of
Clarence (afterwards Santa Isabel). For the first three-quarters of the nineteenth century, the economic mainstay of the town was palm oil trading
between Europeans and Bubi. However, when opportunities for exploiting the soil presented themselves, the community responded with alacrity.
In the i89os a Catholic missionary complained:
The island of FernandoPo above all, has been capturedby the English blacksof
Sierra Leone ... and thus, the majorpart of the island is in the hands of these
Englishblacks,and they have herdedthe Bubis, the nativesof the island,into the
interior of the island, the worst part of all, where the means of subsistence are

1 League of
Nations, Secretariat, Report of the Liberian Commission of Enquiry
(C.658.M.272) (1930, vi), 36.
2 William Allen and Thomas
Thompson, Narrative of the Expedition sent by Her
Majesty's Government to the River Niger in 184I (New York, 1967), 226.
3 The Bubi are a non-iron
using Bantu-speaking people believed to have migrated to
the island in the fifteenth century.

98

I. K. SUNDIATA

hardlyfound and those foreignEnglishblackshave, for the most part, the better
coastalsoil.4
Cocoa produced a reversal in the economic orientation of the settler
community. The crop was taken from Brazil to Sao Tome in 1822 and
thirty-two years later introduced to Fernando Po. In the i86os a Spanish
colonial functionary with a farm of 260 hectares made a trip to Sao Tome,
where, with the aid of the Spanish vice-consul, he succeeded in obtaining
400 cocoa pods.6 From Fernando Po cocoa cultivation was supposedly
spread by migrant workers to the Gold Coast, Nigeria, Liberia, and other
parts of West Africa.6
On Fernando Po the introduction of cocoa produced a shift from trade
to agriculture. Men who had acquired a stock of capital in palm oil trading
invested it in cocoa as the prospect for greater gain appeared. A good
example was William Allen Vivour, a Sierra Leonean immigrant and palm
oil trader. In 1871 an English merchant sold Vivour a schooner called the
'Sarah' which he used in the yam and palm oil trade.7 In 1874 Vivour was
still engaged in the oil trade; within a decade he had acquired several
plantations on the western side of the island. By 1886 he was Fernando Po's
largest landowner. At the turn of the century, Vivour was dead, but his
widow, Amelia Barleycorn Vivour, owned the largest cocoa plantation on
the island-400 hectares.8
Vivour's eminence was succeeded by that of several other black planters
-Joseph Dougan, Samuel Kinson, J. W. Knox, and most notably,
Maximilian (Maximiliano) Jones. By the i88os most of the black traders of
Santa Isabel, along with a few Europeans, had begun to take an active
interest in cocoa cultivation. On the Montes de Oca concession near the
town, cocoa, coffee and tobacco were cultivated and experiments were made
with quinine, vanilla, cotton, and the vegetables and fruits of Spain. In
another location, a Spaniard, Francisco Roca, planted cocoa on lands formerly belonging to a Catholic mission; another Spaniard, V. Lopez, had a
farm near the capital. The Portuguese consul, Diaz de Acunha, owned
land on the eastern coast.
By the end of the i88os, a few planters had begun to trade directly with
Manchester trading houses, among them Vivour. Planters prospered. In
I895 the island's Primitive Methodist mission reported: 'We have, at the
moment... 58 members distant at their farms and otherwise ... Indeed,
were it not for the Church, many of our people assert that they would
4

Crist6bal Fernandez, Misiones y misioneros en la Guinea espaiola (Madrid, I962), 1o9.

Manuel de Teran, Sintesis geogrdfica de Fernando Pd (Madrid, I962), 84.
6 R.
J. Harrison Church, Africa and the Islands (New York, I964), 278. Cocoa was
supposedly introduced to the Gold Coast by Tetteh Quashie, a Ga blacksmith from
Christiansborg, who may have worked on Fernando Po in the late seventies or early
eighties. Polly Hill, Migrant Cocoa Farmers of Southern Ghana (Cambridge, 1963), 172.
7 John Holt, Diary of John Holt (Liverpool, 1948), 178.
8 Jose A. Moreno-Moreno,
Reseia histdrica de la presencia de Espana en el Golfo de
Guinea (Madrid, 1952), I18 n.
5

LIBERIA

AND FERNANDO

99

PO, I880-I930

SANTA ISABEL
(CLARENCE)

o
2

IO

IOO

I. K. SUNDIATA

rather live on their farms altogether ...'9 Two years later Mary Kingsley
wrote of the 'Portos' (black settlers) having farms all around the island,
'collecting palm oil from the Bubi, and making themselves little cocoa
plantations and bringing these products into Clarence every now and then
to the white trader's factory. Then, after spending some time and most of
their money in the giddy whirl of that capital, they return to their homes
and recover.'10
Cocoa was king on Fernando Po; competing crops were abandoned as
the race to participate in the cocoa boom continued. Coffee failed to compete, partly due to the duty levelled on it in Spain. The trade based on the
oil palm became of secondary importance. Cocoa, 474 kilograms of which
had been produced in 1889, was being produced at the rate of 1,400,398
kilograms per annum in I899. Ten years later Fernando Po was producing
2,725,000 kilograms, having become the world's tenth largest producer
two years before.1l In 19II, 3,474,342 kilograms of cocoa were sent to
Spain; 12,000 went to England and 6,000 were shipped to Germany. In
1913, 5,250,000 kilograms were exported. Yet, in spite of the increase in

production, the exploitation of cocoa was halting. By the end of the nineteenth century, only 6,500 hectares had been conceded to farmers.12
Narrow paths to the uplands made more land available, but the total amount
in cultivation remained low. In 1912, 1200 hectares were in agricultural use,
or only 3.5 per cent of the land area.13The next year, a member of a German
party noted: 'The island has never produced more than six million pounds
in the year, whereas in the year I909 the island of St. Thomas [Sao Tome]
exported over sixty million pounds. Coffee is scarcely to be reckoned as an
14
export, and the same may be said of palm oil....
Agriculture on Fernando Po faced various impediments. African planters
were often the prey of European speculators and competitors. A member of
the island's Protestant mission commented on 'their (the black settlers')
utter inability to forecast the future re income and expenditure; their
frequent failure to meet their repayments to the merchants who are their
creditors and the badgering which often results.... " The same observer
said an African planter had lost his holding to one of the 'most unprincipled
Spaniards of the district... the owner, a non-Bubi, owed him [the
Spaniard] money which he had borrowed and was unable to re-pay at the
time stated'. In December I903, popular feeling among the black planters
9 Methodist Missionary Society, Primitive Methodist Mission, Fernando Po, Box 5,
Boocock and W. N. Barleycorn, Yearly Report, Santa Isabel, I895.
10
Mary Kingsley, Travels in West Africa (London, i897), 71.
11 Juan Bravo Carbonell, Fernando Poo y el Muni (Madrid, 1917), I26.
12
Moreno-Moreno, Resena, 85.
13
Luis Ramos Izquierdo, Descripcidn geogrdfica . . . de las colonias espanoles del Golfo de
Guinea (Madrid, I912), 343.
14
J. Mildraed, 'Fernando Po', in From the Congo to the Niger and the Nile by Adolf
Friedrich, Duke of Mecklenburg (London, 1913), 259.
15 Methodist
Missionary Society (MMS), PMM, Fernando Po, Box i, Fairley, Special
no date.
Report on San Carlos Mission...

LIBERIA

AND FERNANDO

PO, I880-I930

IOI

was running high against the secretary of the colonial government, who
was thought to have bought a farm dishonestly for a very small sum.
Producers of cocoa also found themselves yoked to a fluctuating and
unpredictable monoculture. In September 1903, 'the cocoa market, upon
which everybody is dependent', was 'steadily deteriorating and appears
likely to continue so, hence the material position of most of our people is
far less rosy than it was'.16 In February of the next year the people 'had
been affected by 2 bad cocoa seasons and a fall in the cocoa market. It is
probably not too much to say that the financial condition of the town has
had no parallel in recent years.'7 Five years later a similar lament was being
raised: 'All the Stations are feeling the effects of the cocoa crisis, altho the
more disastrous results will come later.'18 A month later, Fernando Po's
traders were 'a bit desperate owing to a falling market and to make it up are
using every endeavour to push their business...',19
Many planters
moved to their farms in an effort to save expense.
Fernando Po had suffered neglect in the nineteenth century. Such neglect
had benefited the black trading intermediaries. However, it also bequeathed
the island a paucity of infrastructure needed for continued and expanding
exploitation. Labour was in short supply; added to this was the difficulty of
transport. The colonial regime had hardly taken an interest in linking the
capital with the other centres of settlement. The agriculturists of San
Carlos, for instance, had to send their produce to Santa Isabel by sea
because there was no road spanning the thirty miles between the two. The
colony lacked capital and organization. Many planters were, in the words of
a Spanish official, constantly
enveloped in the coils of usury ... [there] existing a nucleus of small farmers
representinga large part of the cocoa plantationsproducinga fair amount of the
. . . crop imported into the Peninsula, and [who] neither command [enough]
capital nor have sufficient power to protect themselves from major debt, in as
much as the security that they were able to offer was not consideredenough to
obtain the same advantagesas those enjoyed by the big agriculturists,some of
whom, in spite of having proper funds and being able to withstand the consequences of a loan, were ruined.20
Beyond their insolvency, the nationality of many of the black planters
was a factor ranged against them. Fernando Po had been a magnet for
Sierra Leonean emigrants; various European voices had long questioned
the wisdom of allowing these settlers to establish plantations. A Spanish
official averred that their life-style led them into debt, and that
16
17

MMS, PMM, Fernando Po, Box 5, J. Bell to Wiles, i6 Jan. 1905.

MMS, PMM, Fernando Po, Box I, Wiles to General Missionary Committee, 29 Feb.

1904.

18 MMS, PMM, Fernando Po, Box 5, H. M. Cook to General Missionary Committee

i Sept. I909.
19 MMS, PMM, Fernando Po, Box 4, Banham to
Guttery, 3 Dec. I909.
20 Ramos
Izquierdo, Descripcidn geogrdfica, 205.

102

I. K. SUNDIATA

Hitherto there has been great difficultyin getting the judge to compel the completion of... agreements,and money which should have been paid to the merchantshas been squanderedby these debtorsin trips to SierraLeone and Europe
and the buying of luxuriessuch as horses, bicycles, musical boxes, etc.: to such
an extent has this taken place that merchantsare now in many cases not willing
to advancemoney for developmentand the Island suffersin consequence.21
By the second decade of the twentieth century, a winnowing process had
begun and alien blacks were its first victims. In 1913 the British consul
pointed out 'that the prosperity of three British firms and several planters
who are British Protected Subjects is at stake and that they cannot continue
to thrive without an increased supply of labour'.22 This was true of the
island generally. A visitor of I913 noted the fate that had overtaken the
property of the greatest of the nineteenth-century planters, William
Vivour. 'Since his death', it was said, 'this large property has been somewhat neglected, and in the face of the present dearth of labourers it would
be difficult for even the most energetic owners to keep it up.'23The greatest
burden born by the black cocoa farmer was the shortage of labour. Late in
1899, an English merchant had already noted the situation: 'Mrs. Gardner
tells me it is impossible to get labour, she also adds that she had paid for
boys coming here and the Government have seized them for their own
farms and when asked for the expense incurred they tell her to ask God for
them.'24 In June of the next year a member of the Protestant mission
wrote, 'Owing to scarcity of labour on the island and the increasing difficulty of securing a further supply, many of the farms belonging to our
people are running to bush and the crops spoiling.'25
Fernando Po's demand for workers coincided with other colonial
regimes' attempts to organize labour for European use by wresting it from
subsistence economies. The Spanish colony confronted the same problems
as did those of the British and the French, but faced an added difficulty. In
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Bubi suffered rapid
population decline due to venereal disease and social dislocation; corvee
labour and direct taxation were used, but these expedients only aggravated
the demographic and social problems of the indigenous population.
Fernando Po was forced to look to the mainland for its labour supply at a
time when other colonies, especially those of British West Africa, were
seeking to confine scarce labour resources within colonial boundaries.26
It was evident, with the autochthonous population declining and hostile,
21 John Holt
Papers, o1/6, Suggestions re Fernando Po Constitution, notes and comments on Reorganization of Fernando Po and with its Powers (1904?).
22 Public Record
Office, F.O. 367/353, Berays to Foreign Office, 30 Oct. 1913.
23
Mildraed in Mecklenburg, From the Congo, 252.
24 John Holt
Papers, 14/Io, Robert Hall to John Holt, 15 Dec. I899.
26
MMS, PMM, Fernando Po, Box I, Fairley, Special Report on San Carlos Mission
(no date).
26
For an analysis of the problem of labour mobilization see Elliot J. Berg, 'The Development of a Labour Force in Sub-Saharan Africa', Economic Development and Cultural
Change, xiI (I964-5), 394-412.

LIBERIA

AND FERNANDO

PO,

I880-I930

I03

that the traditional prop of Fernando Po's economy, migrant labour, was
vital if the colony were to yield expanding economic benefit to its metropole. Liberian migrant labour was siphoned off to the plantations of Fernando Po in large and increasing numbers. This was true especially after
900o when, because of persistent rumours of labour abuse, labour migration from British West Africa was cut off. Planters were deprived of many
Mende and other workers from Sierra Leone, and labour from the Liberian
coast assumed the greatest importance.27 In I90o there were already 933
Liberian labourers on the island.28 Plantations on the island would send
African recruiters into the Liberian interior, give them money, promise
them a large bonus for every labourer brought back, and give them a passage order to be presented to the captain of any outward-bound steamer.
The African recruiter would proceed inland and arrange with the local
chiefs for a labour contingent, bring the labourers to Monrovia, and, when
a steamer arrived, smuggle them aboard just before departure (thus circumventing paying head money to the Liberian government).29
Completely laissez faire recruitment had been curtailed in the nineties,
when the Liberian government gave recruiting rights to a German,
August Humplmayr. After the expiration of the Humplmayr concession, a
Liberian act of I6 January I897 demanded that contractors of labour
should post a $I50 bond for the labourer's return, and imposed a fine of
$ioo for each labourer who might die while away from Liberia.30 In his
message of 1902, the president of Liberia warned his countrymen: 'I trust
you will see the importance of discouraging any proposal looking to the
removal of labour out of the country.'31 The following year the Liberian
legislature forbade recruiting unless the recruiter bought a license costing
$250 and made a deposit of $150 guaranteeing each labourer's return; no
labourer under 21 could be sent and a fee of $5 per labourer was levied.32
It was soon evident these terms could be avoided. On 14 March 1903,
the Liberian government signed an agreement with the German firm of
Wiechers and Helm. The posting of a bond, as required by law, was waived.
In return the company promised to send labourers only to individuals or
firms 'that have given them satisfactory guarantees to promptly return the
boys at the expiration of their contract'.33 Under no circumstances were
workers to be permitted to remain on Fernando Po for more than two
years, and the labourers were to be registered before the colonial authorities
27 Kru from the Liberian coast had
long sought free employment along the West
African littoral and had been first employed on Fernando Po in I827. For a discussion of
the development of Kru migrant labour, see George E. Brooks, The Kru Mariner in the
28 De Teran, Sintesis, 65.
Nineteenth Century (Newark, Delaware, 1972).
29 F.O.
47/36, F.O. Draft (W. F. Erskind?) to John Holt and Co., 13 June, 1904.
30 F.O.
47/36, Thomas H. Barker, Secretary of the African Trade Section, Liverpool
Chamber of Commerce to the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 7 Sept., I903.
31
Raymond Buell, The Native Problem in Africa, Ii (New York, 1928), 277, citing
32 Ibid. citing Liberia, Acts, I903, 4I.
Liberia, Acts, 1905, 5.
33 F.O. 47/36, W. Ring to the Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 20 May,

I903.

I04

I. K. SUNDIATA

on their arrival; the planter and agent of the Spanish government, Miguel
Chac6n, promised adequate registration would be made. In case of the
death or desertion of a worker, a proper certificate, signed by the Spanish
authorities, was to be presented to the Liberian government.
The Wiechers and Helm agreement was not allowed to stand alone.
On I8 June I903, a similar agreement was signed with Woermann and
Company.34 The bond of $I50 per labourer was waived; Woermann was
left paying a shipping license of $250 for each port of entry, plus a fee of
$5 for each man shipped. The chief difference between the Woermann
agreement and its predecessor was that the Woermann agreement permitted
the shipment of labourers anywhere, not only to Fernando Po.
The labourers recruited by Wiechers and Helm and by Woermann for
Fernando Po were nearly all from Montserrado Country and were basically
from the Vai, Mandingo and Pessy peoples.35 Workers from Kru, Basso,
Gibi and Greboe groups in Grand Bassa, River Cess, Sinoe, Cape Palmas
and Cavally usually did not go to Fernando Po because they liked to be paid
in British coin.36 The recruiting methods of both companies were similar.
They would send for the headman of a village and inform him they required
a number of labourers; they would have already received an indent from
some firm for this number of workers. After a time, the headman would
arrive at the company's office with a work gang and a list of their names
would be made. The Liberian labourers would then be housed and fed
until the arrival of a Spanish steamer. On the vessel's arrival, the Liberian
migrant workers were given an advance note (which means that it was only
paid after the departure of the steamer, the shipper being satisfied the
workers had not deserted). The note was an advance equivalent to three
months wages or $i2; the sum was paid half in cash and half in goods. It
was doubtful if the workers going to Fernando Po ever received any part
of the advance; it probably went to the headman or the man who introduced the headman to the shippers.37 The advance paid in goods was part
of the profit the shippers made; goods were supplied from their stores and
a profit from Ioo to 150 per cent made. Even then, the advance was hardly
what it should have been: 'Of the I2 dollars or three months advance,
8 dollars worth are paid in goods to somebody by the shipping agents out of
their stores. The other 4 dollars go, or are supposed to go, to the headman
who brings in the labourer, probably also paid in goods.'38 Thus, the
labourer found himself working for the period of the advance, three months,
as unpaid labour.
F.O. 47/36, John Holt to F. H. Villiers, 27 Aug. 1903.
F.O. 47/36, British Consul Errol MacDonell to Principal Secretary of State for
Foreign Affairs, 27 Nov. 1903.
36 F.O. 47/36,
Acting Consul W. Ring, to Principal Secretary of State for Foreign
Affairs, 20 May, I903.
37 F.O.
47/36, Consul Errol MacDonell to Principal Secretary of State for Foreign
Affairs, 27 Nov., 1903.
38 F.O.
47/36, John Holt to F. H. Villiers, 6 Feb. 1904.
34
35

LIBERIA

AND FERNANDO

PO,

I880-I930

I05

The British government was opposed to monopolies in Liberian labour

since Liberian migrants were supplementary workers in its own colonies.
It also opposed the posting of a bond for the return of migrants. A new
labour law was enacted in I904, after the British consul had spoken to the
Liberian Secretary of State (who submitted the request to both houses of
the legislature). However, the new law was not a great improvement on the
old, as it still asked for the posting of a bond of $I50 for each labourer.39
In September I905, the Liberian and Spanish governments entered into
a labour agreement. A convention was signed between the Secretary of
State of Liberia and Sanchez Arevalo, representative of the Spanish West
African territories; Spain ceased paying I50 pesos to each labourer contracted and, instead, paid 50 or ioo pesos in gold to the Liberian treasury.40
In spite of this accord, the labour shortage continued. The situation did
not improve in I908, when a Liberian act forbade altogether the shipment
of labourers from Montserrado or Grand Bassa counties to any foreign
country.41 Early in I909, two Spanish officials made a tour of Spanish
West Africa, visiting the president of Liberia during their journey. As
could be expected, the labour famine was discussed, the two officials doing
their best to cajole the Monrovia government into a more favourable
stance.
The British embargoed the export of labour from their colonies and
sought to have the Liberians pursue a similar policy. In 1913 the British
consul-general in Monrovia informed the Liberian government that 'It is
reported that Liberians have recently been taken into slavery in other parts
of Africa, Krumen being shipped by steamers on the Liberian Coast and
landed without their consent at Fernando Po where they find themselves
forced to work on plantations'. The British confidently warned: 'The
attention of the Spanish government has been called to the matter and His
Majesty's Government is carefully watching any British ships which may
be suspected of conniving at the practice, but it is hoped that the Liberian
Government will themselves consider what steps can be taken to prevent
labourers leaving the country without contracts or some other means of
watching over them.'42
In June I913, Joseph J. Sharp, Liberian Secretary of State, arrived on
Fernando Po to inspect conditions, which at the time were causing the
British grave concern. In spite of British hopes, Sharp later informed the
British representative in Monrovia that no further restriction on labour
shipment to Fernando Po was contemplated.43 At the end of the year, the
British consul-general in Monrovia described the traffic which it was
feared might sap British West Africa of its manpower: 'Reports continue to
39

F.O. 43/36, MacDonell to Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 14 Feb.

1904.
40

41
42
43

Abelardo Unzueta, Geografia histdrica de Fernando Pdo (Madrid, I948), 198.

Buell, The Native Question, II, 777.

Ibid.

F.O. 367/1960,

Joseph J. Sharp to Acting Consul-General Parks, 29 Mar. I914.

Io6

I. K. SUNDIATA

be received relative to the shipment from the western portion of the Liberian Republic of British native subjects from Sierra Leone to the Spanish
and Portuguese Islands in the Gulf of Guinea.... This Consulate General
might undoubtedly do much to discourage this constant leakage of British
subjects if it possessed adequate means of water transit .. .44
The British attitude toward the Fernando Po labour traffic was conditioned by various factors. In addition to fear of the 'constant leakage of
British subjects', segments of the British public were increasingly voicing
criticism of African labour conditions. There were several exposes, the most
notable being that of the Congo Reform Association led by E. D. Morel.45
Concern for reform also reached the cocoa producing islands of the Bight
of Biafra, although not concentrating on Fernando Po. The Portuguese on
Sao Tome and Principe were charged with forcibly recruiting labourers
(servifaes) from Angola, and a British campaign was launched, supported by
a cocoa boycott.4 The reverberations of the protest against conditions in
the Portuguese colonies were felt in Spanish Guinea. In the years immediately preceding the First World War, British officials made tours of inspection which resulted in the promulgation of a new labour code in I913.
The new labour code, with its more stringent demands upon employers,
only intensified the economic problems of the small planters, most of whom
were African. 'The extinction of the small planters, if it really happens',
said the Foreign Office, 'will be an unexpected result of our efforts and in
some respects an unfortunate one. If, however these men can only keep
their farms going by giving their labourers less than is now thought necessary, I am afraid there is nothing for it but that they must go under.'47
Ignoring continuing British uneasiness, Governor-General Angel
Barrera and President D. E. Howard of Liberia signed a new labour agreement in May 1914. The agreement was the expedient of a penurious government nearing economic exhaustion. Liberia was chronically in need of
funds, a situation which international loans in I87I and I906 had not
remedied. A new loan, negotiated in I912, made the republic subject to an
International Receivership responsible for managing revenue. The First
World War injured the German-dominated Liberian economy, and attempts
to reach financial agreements with the Bank of British West Africa and the
44 F.O. 458/39, Report upon the General Situation in Liberia as at the end of I913,
p. 11,
enclosure in Mr Maugham's despatch No. 74 of i April 1914.
46 See William Roger Louis and Jean Stengers, E. D. Morel's History of the Congo
Reform Movement (Oxford, 1968) and S. J. S. Cookey, Britain and the Congo Question

x885-1913

(New York, 1968).

The protest against labour abuse in the Portuguese islands received the very important
support of William Cadbury, a Quaker chocolate manufacturer, who visited the islands in
1908 and subsequently boycotted their cocoa. For opposing sides in the debate over conditions in the Portuguese territories, see H. W. Nevinson, A Modern Slavery (London,
I9o6) and Francisco Mantero, Portuguese Planters and British Humanitarians, the Case for
46

S. Thome (Lisbon,
47

Sept.

91
I).

F.O. 367/353, Foreign Office minute, 23 Oct. 1913 to letter, Bernays to Grey, 20
1913.

LIBERIA

AND FERNANDO

PO, 1880-1930

107

American government produced no permanent results.48 By 1922 Liberia

was faced with the prospect of bankruptcy, an ominous situation in light of
the republic's fears for its independence.
Labour was one of the few available sources of revenue for a government apparently plunging towards a financial nadir. The accord with
Spain offered obvious benefits and promised safeguards. The agreement
provided that there should be a Liberian consul in Santa Isabel. It authorized labour recruitment in selected Liberian ports by agents under the
supervision of the Spanish consul in Monrovia.49 Liberia would select four
recruiting agents and planters from Fernando Po who could go to Monrovia
to make arrangements with the Liberian authorities. Copies of the labour
contracts would be given to the Liberian customs, the Liberian Secretary
of State and the Liberian consul-general on Fernando Po. Each statement
would contain the name, county, town, district, tribe, chief and period of
contracted labour of the worker. The statement was to be presented to the
labour agent in Liberia three days before the transportation of the labourer
to Fernando Po. The maximum period of a contract was two years and the
minimum was one year; workers were to be refused to employers not
approved by the governor of Fernando Po and the Liberian authorities.
Labour was to be refused to insolvent farmers; contracts would not be
subject to extension and wages were to be paid in English money, one half
on Fernando Po and one half through the Spanish consul upon the worker's
return to Liberia. The labour agreement itself was subject to termination
by either country at six months' notice.
For the agriculturists of Fernando Po the agreement was irksome.
Liberian workers could hardly be secured for less than ?I sterling per
month. This, plus their ration of rice, salted fish and fruit, medical care,
the sixty to Ioo pesetas exchange value for the ?, and the passage to and
from Fernando Po, amounted to nearly L2 per month.50 Besides this, payment had to be made in English gold. However, as long as the agreement
did deliver labour, the black and white planters of Fernando Po stood to
gain. Several thousand labourers were shipped under the 1914 convention;
between 1919 and 1926 a known 4,268 were recruited and employed on
the island.51 It is calculated that, averaging 600 a year, the total number
from 1914 to

I927

was at least 7,268.

Imported labour was dear, especially for the smaller producers. In 1915
the Primitive Methodist Mission reported that conditions were acute and
that 'the cost of each worker has increased alarmingly during the recent
years both in Government demands and standard of wage, together with
48

M. B. Akpan, 'Liberia and the Universal Negro Improvement Association: The

Background to the Abortion of Garvey's Scheme for African Colonization', J. Afr. Hist.
xiv, I (I973), I2I.
49 Unzueta, Geografia, I99.
50 Ramos-Izquierdo, Descripcidn geogrdfica, 259.
51League of Nations, Secretariat, Report of the Liberian Commission
of Enquiry (C.658.
M.272)

(I930,

vi), 36.

Io8

I. K. SUNDIATA

increase in rations'.52A few years later the mission commented, 'Boys from
Liberia cost more than boys from Bata [Rio Muni]. There is much more
passage to pay and they require a higher standard of wages.'53 Workers
from Liberia cost L6-?8 sterling per month, while workers from Rio
Muni (mainland Spanish Guinea) were paid about z2-?3 sterling or less.
The labour convention of 1914 was not without its repeated difficulties.
The exigencies of the First World War threatened the shipment of labourers from the Liberian ports. A decree of I5 July I918 authorized the
re-engagement for two more years of workers who had completed their
contracts.54The end of the war brought renewed charges of labour abuse.
In 1920 the British consul noted 'That the law is carried out in a very slack
way.. ..55 Criminal offences were supposedly punished with excessive
cruelty and police brutality was allegedly rampant. An act of the Liberian
legislature in 1921 directed the Liberian president to give six months notice
that shipment of labourers from Montserrado County and the territories of
Grand Cape Mount and Marshall was to be prohibited.56
In 1922 the renewal of the full-scale labour traffic to Fernando Po was
obtained, but the supply of labour continued to be sporadically interdicted.
An upswing in the Liberian economy in the latter part of 1923 made it
possible for Monrovia to adopt a more critical attitude. Tariff revenues
were up and the import-export balance began to shift in the republic's
favour.57In addition to these indications of better economic health, the Liberian government could look forward to the investment of foreign capital
on an unprecedented scale. The government began to negotiate with an
American, Harvey S. Firestone, for the lease of land for rubber plantations;
by 1926 Firestone's plans called for an investment of $ioo million and the
employment of 350,000 Liberians.58The promise of new sources of revenue
no doubt lessened the state's desire to encourage labour migration, especially when opportunities for employing labour at home presented themselves.
Tropical exploitation within Liberia became a major consideration, and
the Firestone Company quite clearly stated: 'We desire to point out to the
[Liberian] Government again that the success of our development in Liberia
is largely dependent upon the organization of a permanent and contented
labour force.'59
In 1924 the Liberian legislature prohibited the shipment of labourers
from the county of Grand Bassa. Nevertheless, labour shipments continued
from other areas; the Fernando Po planters continued to cajole labour from
52
MMS, PMM, Fernando Po, Box 3, File: Fernandian Cocoa Report: H. Markham
Cook to General Missionary Committee, io June, 1915.
63 MMS, PMM, Fernando Po, Box 3, File: Fernando Po Papers, Reports, etc.: Report
on Island Conditions, p. 2.
54
Unzueta, Geografia, 199.
55 F.O. 371/5562, A. C. Reeve to Consul-General, Loanda, July
4
1920.
56
Buell, The Native Question, II, 780.
67 Akpan, 'Liberia and the Universal Negro Improvement Association', 12I.
58
J. H. Mower, 'The Republic of Liberia', Journal of Negro History, xxxII, 3 (July I947),
288.
59 Alfred Lief, The Firestone Story (New York, 1951), I65.

LIBERIA

AND FERNANDO

PO, I880-I930

I09

Liberia with the consent of certain Liberian politicians. In February I925,

this symbiotic and exploitative relationship was ruptured when the Liberian consul on Fernando Po was arrested and the labour trade came to a
halt. As an upshot of the detention of its consul, Liberia demanded ?500
sterling, one half of which was to be paid by i8 July 1925. The island's
planters themselves collected the indemnity and gave it to their government
for transmission to Liberia. The affair played havoc with the island's
precarious economy. No labourers were sent to Fernando Po in I925 and
only forty were sent in the first six months of I926.60
In June I926, the governor-general of Spanish Guinea ordered the
military subgovernors in Rio Muni to intensify the recruitment of Fang
workers for service on the island.61These workers, recruited for a period of
two years, averted agricultural disaster. External labour was urgently
needed if lands already in cultivation were to be maintained and if expansion, even on a limited scale, was to continue. In I927 only 80,000 of the
island's 2,5000,000 hectares were under cultivation and it was estimated
that 40,000 Fang would be needed to put the maximum amount of land
into cocoa production.62 In I928 the majority of the workers on Fernando
Po were from Rio Muni.63 However, the supply of labour was not assured,
due to a declining birth-rate occasioned by the absence of the men from
home and to the increased demand for labour within Rio Muni itself.
Liberian labour was still wanted; however, pronouncements from Monrovia gave little indication of a willingness to co-operate in the old way. In
March of I926 the president of Liberia visited the island and explained to
the CamaraAgricola (planters' association) that Liberia was about to embark
on a vast programme of internal development, a message amplified in an
address to the Liberian legislature the following October. The president's
pronouncements implied a future termination of the traffic; again the island
faced the prospect of uncollected harvests and financial ruin. However, the
officials in Santa Isabel were able to bid for time. Within Liberia itself
there were still those ready to meet the demand for 'boys'. Rivalries
within the Liberian ruling elite and abuses connected with the recruitment
of labour in the Liberian hinterland grew, as did the need for labour on
Fernando Po. In late I927, as a result of these pressures, the Liberian
secretary of state terminated the labour agreement of I914 without six
months' notice.64
The rupture, like its predecessors, caused consternation in Spanish
Guinea. Liberia apparently had the island at its mercy and, before agreeing
to a new convention, sought a preferential tariff for its coffee and other
produce. The planters of Fernando Po hung on tenaciously in defence of
60

Buell, The Native Question, II, 781.

Juan Bravo Carbonell, Territorios espanoles del Golfo de Guinea (Madrid, I929), 95.
62 Ibid.
103.
63 F.O. 37/12759,
Vice-Consul C. H. Chew, Santa Isabel to Consul-General, Monrovia, 9 Nov. I928.
64 F.O.
Consul-General Rule, Monrovia, to Foreign Office, 23 Dec. I927.
37I/I2758,
61

I. K. SUNDIATA

II0

their interests. Two representatives of the island's planters, one black and
one white (Edward Barleycorn and Emanuel Gonezrosa), were sent to
Monrovia to arrange for the continuance of the labour flow. Desperate for
labour, they were willing to pay well, a fact appreciated by Samuel Ross,
a Liberian politician who had already been active in the export of labour
from Sinoe, Liberia. A private agreement was entered into between a group
calling itself the Syndicato Agricola de Guinea and a group of Liberian
citizens headed by Ross. The Syndicato promised to pay the Liberian
recruiting agents (Ross and his colleagues) for 3,000 labourers at ?9
sterling each.65
Ross was not the only Liberian politician to see the benefit of such agreements. In the autumn of I928, Allen Yancy, future vice-president of Liberia, obtained a special recruiting licence which permitted him to ship
labourers from Cape Palmas to Fernando Po. Between that time and 31
December I929, 2,43I workers were sent to the island: I,005 from Cape
Palmas and 1,426 from Sinoe.66 In I930, when the shipments were under
international attack by the League of Nations, shipments from Maryland
County to Fernando Po were still in progress. The League's investigation
brought about the cession of the traffic at a time when the island was
already beginning to feel the effects of the world-wide economic depression.
The League of Nations investigation, which arose out of American
representations to the Liberians, raised questions in some minds about
Africans' capacity for self-rule. Liberia's defenders were quick to accuse
the enquiry as being nothing more than a blind for the interest of the Firestone Rubber Company, which demanded that Liberian labour should be
exploited in Liberia.67 The Spanish dismissed the international outcry as
an attempt to sabotage the development of Spanish Guinea, and pointed to
the international silence on abuses elsewhere.
From an analysis of the development of Liberian labour migration, two
facts emerge: abuse of labour existed not only in its recruitment and transport, but also in its employment on Fernando Po; the interdiction of the
Liberian labour trade proceeded not solely from outside humanitarianism,
but also from an effort to conserve supplies of African manpower.68 The
900o embargo on labour migration from British West Africa aimed at
keeping the available migrant labour in British hands. Liberia was accused
of being a conduit for the leakage of Sierra Leonean labour, and attacks on
labour practices centred on Fernando Po itself. Only gradually did the
emphasis shift to Liberia. Yet, even at the time of the American inspired
investigation, labourers expressed not only resentment against forced
65 League of Nations, Report of the Liberian Commission of Enquiry, 36.
66
67

Ibid.

George Padmore, American Imperialism Enslaves Liberia (Moscow, I931).

68 The 1929 expression of American concern also reflects the belief that the threat of
withdrawal of United States diplomatic support from a diplomatically isolated Liberia
would be an important lever to use against a frequently recalcitrant regime. Raymond
Bixler, The Foreign Policy of the United States in Liberia (New York, 1957), 88.

LIBERIA

AND FERNANDO

PO,

III

I880-I930

labour recruitment, but also a special dread of conditions on Fernando Po.

The conditions which produced labour abuse were not improving in the
late I920s. Indeed, the increasing unreliability of the labour force produced
continued cases of the detention of labourers beyond the terms of their
contracts.
The complaints of labour abuse and the resulting international attention
were in part the continuing products of the desperate plight of the black
planters. By the second decade of the twentieth century, Fernando Po had
ceased to be the exclusive agricultural preserve of a miniscule black settler
elite. The exiguous European presence of the previous era had been
replaced with a mounting number of Portuguese and Spanish agriculturists
and entrepreneurs. By I930 it was obvious that a shift had taken place;
I8,ooo hectares had been conceded to Africans, while some 2I,ooo hectares
had gone to Europeans, a situation which remained legally frozen.69 The
dearth of labour caused the government to prohibit the granting of new
concessions, a ban which remained in effect until 1948.70
The world-wide economic depression made even more apparent the
trough into which the community had fallen. In December I930, the
Fernandinos were appealed to in the pages of La Guinea espanola, the voice
of the Catholic mission. The community was urged to reflect on its decline
and reminded: 'Your parents made a fortune, that all have recognized....
Through the substitution of vagrancy for constant work, vain consumption
for seriousness, and the life of the bar and saloon for the intimacy of family
life, has come the socio-economic disaster that we deplore.'71 Unfortunately, the socio-economic changes to which the black elite had been subject
were beyond the power of individual or group probity to rectify. They had
been brought on by the fumbling, but nevertheless tightening, grip of
European imperialism, and the attachment of a colonial monoculture to a
system of unstable international commerce.
The rise of metropolitan commercial interest ran counter to certain
trends in the colony. The Spanish desired to exploit Fernando Po as the
Portuguese exploited their African islands, but were frustrated by the
declining population. The problem could not be overcome by the influx of
migrants from other Spanish territories; the mainland portion of Spanish
Guinea, Rio Muni, proved too small to play the part taken by Angola
vis a vis Sao Tome and Principe. Liberia provided an escape from the
dilemma presented by Spain's colonial situation. The cessation of the
Liberian labour traffic was, therefore, as momentous for the island as were
its political consequences in the black republic.
Failure to obtain manpower constituted a failure to mould Fernando Po
in the image of its neighbours. The island stagnated, only emerging from
69
Juan Bravo Carbonell, 'Posibilidades econ6micas de la Guinea espaiola', Boletin de la
Sociedad Geogrdfica Nacional, LXXXIII (Aug. 1933), 525.
70 De Teran, Sintesis, 87.
71
Ruiaz, 'Aio Negro', La Guinea espanola (2I Dec. 1930), 386.

AH XV

112

I. K. SUNDIATA

its torpor in the period following the Second World War. Fernando Po, the
largest island in the Bight of Biafra, remained one of the least exploited
and least known-an insular anomaly subject to an underdeveloped
metropole.
SUMMARY

In 1923-30 the League of Nations investigatedthe shipment of migrantlabour

between Liberia and the Spanish island colony of FernandoPo. Although the
League concentratedits attentionon Liberia,a closer examinationrevealslabour
abuse as very much the product of conditionson FernandoPo itself. In the last
quarterof the nineteenthcentury,black planterson the islandshifted from palm
oil trading to cocoa cultivation.Dependence on migrant labour and increasing
competitionfrom Europeansresulted in economic crisis in the first years of the
twentieth century,with detention of labour and the nonpaymentof contractsas
the outcome. The eventualinvestigationof the trade was the product of a desire
to conserve Liberian labour for use on the African mainland, rather than an
attempt to relieve its abuse.