Allies withdraw the proposal to neutralise the Congo basin

A British chronology of the war records under 20 November 1914 that the governments of Great Britain, Belgium and France withdrew the proposal to neutralise the African free-trade zone “in view of the altered situation”. The entry closes a matter that had dragged on since August. No joint act of the three governments of that date could be found in the available documents. Best attested is the British reply, which the United States ambassador in London forwarded to Washington in a telegram of 23 November.

The zone of the Berlin Act

The matter concerned the so-called conventional basin of the Congo, a vast area of Central and East Africa in which the Berlin Conference had established freedom of trade. It included the Belgian Congo, parts of the French and British possessions, as well as German East Africa and part of Kamerun. Article 11 of the conference’s General Act provided that in the event of war the powers with colonies there could, by common consent, place them under neutrality, and that the other signatories should assist with their good offices.

Belgium wanted to make use of this possibility as early as August. At its urging France even asked Spain for its good offices, but quickly withdrew the request. Great Britain had no intention of giving up attacks on the German colonies, ports and wireless stations. When the plan collapsed, Germany came forward on 22 August with a similar proposal. It asked for the mediation of the United States, which at first refused, because it had not ratified the Berlin Act. Only on 23 September did the State Department, stressing that it was acting merely as an intermediary, pass the German proposal on to the governments of Great Britain, France and Belgium.

The replies

France replied as early as 28 September in a note sent from Bordeaux. It stated that it was Germany that had first attacked French and Belgian possessions in the Congo basin, and that Article 11 could therefore no longer be invoked to neutralise the colonies of the belligerents. The British reply came much later. The Foreign Office judged the proposal impracticable in view of the fighting already under way on both sides. It cited German attacks on British East Africa, on British Central Africa, that is the Nyasaland protectorate, where there had been fighting at Karonga in September, and on Albertville, today’s Kalemie, a Belgian port on Lake Tanganyika. London asked the Americans to pass this reply on to Berlin, which they did on 25 November. The content of the Belgian reply could not be found. From the autumn, however, the government in Le Havre was cooperating in Africa with the Allies, who in September had guaranteed the integrity of its colony.

The altered situation

By November 1914 the neutralisation of Central Africa was no more than an empty formula. The Allies had occupied Togoland and Duala in Kamerun, and on the borders of the Congo, Rhodesia and Nyasaland there were clashes with German troops. At the beginning of November a British-Indian force suffered a heavy defeat at Tanga in German East Africa. The war in this part of the continent was to last until November 1918.