The Secretary of State to the Belgian Minister.
Washington, January 11, 1909.
Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your note of the 4th of November last,1 transmitting a copy of the Moniteur Beige in which is published the law approving the treaty by which Belgium takes over the sovereignty of the Independent State of the Kongo, and stating the Belgian authorities in the colony will hereafter transact business with consular officers, to whom new exequaturs will be issued if their Governments so desire.
The Government of the United States has observed with much interest the progress of the negotiations looking to such a transfer, in the expectation that under the control of Belgium the condition of the natives might be beneficially improved and the engagements of the treaties to which the United States is a party, as well as the high aims set forth in the American memoranda of April 7 and 16, 1908, and declared in the Belgian replies thereto, might be fully realized.
The United States would also be gratified by the assurance that the Belgian Government will consider itself specifically bound to discharge the obligations assumed by the Independent State of the Kongo in the Brussels convention of July 2, 1890, an assurance which the expressions already made by the Government of Belgium in regard to its own course as a party to that convention leave no doubt is in entire accordance with the sentiments of that Government. Among the particular clauses of the Brussels convention which seem to the United States to be specially relevant to existing conditions in the Kongo region are the clauses of Article II, which include among the objects of the convention—
To diminish intestine wars between tribes by means of arbitration; to initiate them in agricultural labor and in the industrial arts so as to increase their welfare; to raise them to civilization and bring about the extinction of barbarous customs, * * *
To give aid and protection to commercial enterprises; to watch over their legality by especially controlling contracts for service with natives, and to prepare the way for the foundation of permanent centers of cultivation and of commercial settlements.
The United States has been forced to the conclusion that in several respects the system inaugurated by the Independent State of the [Page 401] Kongo has in its practical operation worked out results inconsistent with these conventional obligations and calling for very substantial and even radical changes in order to attain conformity therewith. The operation of laws requiring the natives who have little or no money to pay taxes in labor appears to have resulted in reducing the natives in certain large portions of the territory of the Independent State of the Kongo to a condition closely approximating actual slavery. The granting of concessions to various private corporations and associations, giving to them exclusive rights of exploitation of very large tracts of territory, and the inclusion of a very great part of the remaining territory of the country in the domain declared to be owned in severalty, and described in various official acts as domaine privé, domaine public, domaine national, and domaine de la couronne, has the practical effect of excluding the greater part of the territory of the State from the possibility of purchase and of rendering nugatory the provisions of the declaration of 1884, under which the International Association of the Kongo granted “to foreigners settling in their territories the right to purchase, sell, or lease lands and buildings situated therein, establish commercial houses, and to there carry trade upon the sole condition that they shall obey the laws,” and the similar provisions of the treaty of January 24, 1891, between the Independent State of the Kongo and the United States of America assuring to the citizens of the United States the right to freely exercise their industry or their business in the whole extent of the territories of the Independent State, and the right to erect there religious edifices and to organize and maintain missions and the provisions of the Brussels convention of July 2, 1890, imposing upon the Independent State of the Kongo the duty to prepare the way for the foundation of permanent stations of cultivation and of commercial settlements, and to protect the missions which were then or might thereafter be established. The effect of these dispositions of territory has been to withdraw from sale, and therefore from occupancy for the purposes described, the greater part of the area of the Independent State and prevent the exercise of the rights conferred by the conventional stipulations referred to.
The effect of the same preemption of territory has also been to withdraw from the natives in a great degree the enjoyment of those benefits which they formerly derived from their customary tribal rights over large tracts. In a country where there has been no ownership of land in severalty by the natives, but only communal ownership of rights over extensive tracts, to allot to the Government and its concessionaires ownership in severalty to all the lands not already owned and held in severalty is in effect to deprive the natives of their rights to the soil, and this has been in a great measure the effect of the system which has been followed in the Independent State of the Kongo.
The Government of the United States is much gratified to know that since the American memoranda of April 7 and April 16, 1908, the Government of Belgium has expressed its purpose to extend the area of the lands to be assigned to the natives for their cultivation and traffic pursuant to the royal decree of June 3, 1906, and it confidently expects that the restoration of land to the natives will be [Page 402] commensurate with the value of the communal rights of which they have been deprived hitherto, and will put the natives in a position by means of adequate provision out of their own territory to realize the benefits which were contemplated by the arrangement under which the title and control over the territory of the Independent State of the Kongo was vested in that State for the humanitarian purpose of improving the condition of the natives and securing to them the blessings of civilization.
It should always be remembered that the basis of the sovereignty of the Independent State of the Kongo over all its territory was in the treaties made by the native sovereigns who ceded the territory for the use and benefit of free states established and being established there under the care and supervision of the International Association, so that the very nature of the title forbids the destruction of the tribal rights upon which it rests without securing to the natives an enjoyment of their land which shall be a full and adequate equivalent for the tribal rights destroyed.
It may be timely to revert in this relation to the hope expressed in the American memorandum of April 16, 1908, that the Belgium Government may see its way clear to accept frankly and promptly the proposition to refer to arbitration all purely commercial and economic questions, as being a procedure entirely in accordance with the rapidly growing practice of civilized nations; and to the statement in the Belgian memorandum in reply, dated July 24, 1908, that the Belgian Government finds no difficulty in declaring that if, after annexation, it were invited to refer to the tribunal of The Hague, as a last resort, a difference arising from a divergence of appreciation in the interpretation of the treaties which bind the States of the Kongo, it would examine the proposition with special benevolence and be inspired by the broad views which guided it in the drafting of the arbitration treaties concluded by Belgium.
The scope of this declaration would, however, seem to be abridged by the considerations which follow it in the Belgian memorandum reply. These seem to limit the applicability of such eventual arbitration to questions under the collective act of Berlin; to require the joining in the arbitration of other powers holding possessions in the Kongo basin; and to advocate, in place of a recourse to arbitration, the attainment of a direct understanding for the settlement of disputes “in the commercial basin of the Kongo among all the powers holding territories in that region.” It is not to be lost sight of that the United States has a direct commercial interest in the particular territory of the Independent State of the Kongo by reason of its treaty with that State of January 21, 1891, which, besides pledging specified rights of commerce and intercourse, gives to the United States, as well as to its citizens, the right to the treatment of the most-favored nation. This consideration may seem to have been overlooked in the Belgian memorandum reply, which, in conclusion, answers the expectation of the United States that, in virtue of its existing treaties, it will obtain all the privileges, commercial and otherwise, accorded in the Kongo to other nations by the statement that “when it annexes the possessions of the Independent State, Belgium will inherit its obligations as well as its rights; it will be able to fulfill all the engagements made with the United States by the declarations [Page 403] of April 22, 1884.” It would be gratifying to the United States to know that the last clause of the statement just quoted is not intended to confine the rights of the United States in the Independent State to the declarations of the Commercial Association which preceded the creation of the Kongo State as a sovereign power, but includes the conventional rights conferred upon the United States by the treaty concluded with the Independent State immediately after its recognition.
In the absence of a fuller understanding on all these points, I confine myself for the present to acknowledging your note of the 4th of November last and taking note of the announcement therein made.
Be pleased to accept, sir, the assurance of my high consideration.