WAR WITH THE FRENCH AND DUTCH

457 tion of the outbreak of hostilities. Instead it was agreed by the Dutch and British to continue at peace. The British desire for neutrality waned after the arrival of the store ship in May 1781, and though the governor wished to hold to his agreement with the Dutch, he was over-ruled by the council, and a force of volunteers from the British forts, acting in co-operation with Captain West of H.M.S. Champion who had been sent out to protect the coast, attempted the capture of one of the Dutch forts. The expedition failed, and the Dutch retaliated by a successful attack on one of the English forts. Matters became more serious when both sides attempted to strengthen their position by enlisting native support. Neither was, however, strong enough to undertake any formidable attack until reinforcements were sent from Europe. Finally in February 1782 a naval and military force arrived from England under the joint command of Captain Shirley of H.M.S. Leander and Captain Kenneth Mackenzie in command of two Independent companies; but a combined sea and land attack on the Dutch headquarters at Elmina failed, owing to lack of co-operation between the commanders; and Captain Shirley, refusing to act with Captain Mackenzie, made a naval attack on the lesser Dutch forts. Of these he captured five; four surrendered on summons, Mouree, Cormantine, Apam, Berracoe, and the fifth, Accra, after a twenty days' siege.1 Having thus to some extent covered the disgrace of the defeat at Elmina, he sailed to the West Indies and left Mackenzie to garrison the conquests. The Annual Register, never a very discriminating authority on African matters, in commenting in 1783 on the campaign pictured its results as the collapse of Dutch African power "stripped of most of their settlements on the Coast of Africa by Captain Shirley". Opinion on the coast, however, was that his operations had been badly planned, worse executed, and were of very little practical use because the Dutch headquarters had been left intact.3

During the negotiations for peace the African holdings were among the matters which caused difficulties. Vergennes declared to the English representative that France expected to get revenge for the humiliations of 1763,4 which included her African losses. In the treaty discussions, however, it was early agreed that the Senegal was to be restored to France, the Gambia continuing in British possession; but the British merchants were anxious that their right to an exclusive possession of the Gambia should be clearly recognised by France. It was a long-standing grievance that the French persisted in trading within the river and keeping a station at Albreda. Governor O'Hara had taken vigorous steps against all such attempts, considering the French as intruders, but the Board of Trade and Plantations 1 Shirley to Adm. 23 Feb. 1782 (P.R.O. AD. 1/2485).

2 Annual Register, 1783, p. 115.

3 Governor of Cape Coast Castle to Committee of Co. 6 June 1782 (P.R.O. T. 70/33). 4 Alleyne Fitzherbert to Lord Grantham, 31 July 1782 (F.O. 27/3).

had been uncertain on this point. Fitzherbert, the British representative, was instructed to secure an admission from France of the British claims, but he failed, and his correspondence suggests that he himself considered the claim unreasonable.1 The final terms left the Gambia rights undefined, and contained other matter for future quarrels. By the treaty of 1783 it was provided that France should regain the Senegal and Goree, that England should retain the Gambia, and have a right to share in the gum trade, and that the two nations might frequent the rest of the African coast as they had done in the past. Accordingly British Senegambia came to an end, the Gambia territory alone remaining of the former province. Yet the position of the rivals was not quite that of 1750, as the British right to a share in the gum trade had been recognised.

The Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 20 May 1784 provided for a mutual restitution of conquests, and the appointment of commissioners by both countries to settle a dispute concerning part of the Gold Coast. The restitution of conquests was equitable, as the burden of maintaining five additional forts would have been a useless expense at a time when the decline of the Dutch power on the coast had become evident.

A comparatively peaceful period of ten years followed the treaties of 1783 and 1784, during which certain changes in the balance of the various Powers became evident. The Dutch authority on the Gold Coast was no longer a serious menace to the English forts, and in the Senegal and Gambia region the French and English were much more evenly matched than they had been in 1750. Another interesting change that had taken place almost unnoticed during the American War indicated the passing of certain old traditions in African trade. Spain had remained without a holding on the African coasts from the time of the delimitation by the agreement of Tordesillas in 1493, but during the American War she secured from Portugal the island of Fernando Po, which with the island of Annobon became posts from which she secured a share in the slave trade.

France being now in possession of the Senegal it was essential that effective occupation should be maintained in the Gambia when it had been confirmed to England. The Province of Senegambia having ceased to exist there was no English authority expressly responsible for the government of the district. The Company of Merchants trading to Africa was still in charge of the forts and trading posts south of the Gambia, but by the Act of 1765, which was still in force, it had no powers further north. Thus there was the choice before the Government of re-establishing a Crown Colony in what remained of Senegambia, or of re-extending the boundaries of the Company of Merchants, unless it was to devise some new scheme of local government for West Africa. The cheapest and easiest course was 1 See Fitzherbert's despatches January 1783 (F.O. 27/5).

CHANGE IN BRITISH RELATIONS WITH AFRICA 459

chosen, and in 1783 an Act was passed by which the Gambia was revested in the Company of Merchants trading to Africa, which was to receive an annual grant for its upkeep.1 The administration of the forts and settlements in the Gambia and on the Gold Coast by the Company of Merchants continued until the slave trade was abolished in 1807.

In the history of our relations with Africa the years 1784 to 1787 may be taken as the end of the period in which the promotion of the slave trade was considered the raison d'être of the English connection. The literature concerning Africa that was published in England indicates the change. Up to 1787 the bulk of the printed matter about the subject was concerned with arguments as to the best means of promoting the slave trade, or eulogies on its importance, and little else, but after 1787 there is far more variety in the topics of books or articles on Africa. The settlement for freed negroes at Sierra Leone founded in 1787, the argument about the justice of the slave trade after the beginning of the abolition campaign in the same year, and the beginning of modern scientific exploration, with the foundation in 1788 of the Society for the Promotion of the Exploration of the African interior, introduced a new age in the British connection with Africa.

1 23 George III, c. 65.

CHAPTER XVI

THE SEVEN YEARS' WAR

THE decade after the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle witnessed staggering changes in Britain's fortunes. Five quiet years, which bequeathed to history their catchwords of "no Jews, no wooden shoes" and "“give us back our eleven days", yielded at Pelham's death (March 1754) to a time of brisker motion. It seemed in 1755 that Newcastle, his brother and successor, had secured for Britain and Hanover enough sponsors among the Powers to warrant an aggressive defensive against the French. Next year, however, Newcastle's house of cards fell down, and at midsummer 1757 a seemingly ruined country turned as a last resort to William Pitt. Before the following year was out, the seas at least were safe and Hanover defended, while the Americans were expressing with the aid of 60,000 gallons of rum their relief from the Canadian menace. In every continent the stage was already set for the classic triumph of 1759. Pitt, anti-Bourbonism incarnate, had made the history of Britain seem his own.

The Seven Years' War (1756–63), indeed, which for Britain may be said to have substantially begun in April 1755, contrasts with that of the Austrian Succession (1740-8) as Pitt with Carteret, his master. Each war began as a struggle for power in the New World, and each was swiftly complicated by the conflicts of the Old. But while in each, as the history of Hanover may show, the interests of Europe proved decisive, Pitt's world-embracing vision was never dimmed by the tradition of the scribes. The threat of French invasion, all-potent in 1744 and 1756, was not suffered to disturb his plans in 1759. The people's minister thus made conquests that the people would not resign, and while imperial history recalls but faintly the peace of 1748, it commemorates no prouder trophy than the peace of 1763.

The Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, indeed, was a "mere end of war because your powder is run out", a conscious breathing-space for the unsolved problem, "France or Britain"? While Newcastle dreaded bankruptcy, Lady Yarmouth had neither the will nor the power to play the Pompadour, and her royal lover was regarded as a miser. Sober estimates in the 'fifties credited George II with a hoard of £15,000,000, while France, with a tradition of international 1 Hertz, G. B., British Imperialism in the eighteenth century, passim. 2 Williams, B., The Life of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, 1, 52. 3 Carlyle, T., History of Frederick the Great, bk xvi, chap. iii.

• Wyndham, H. P., The diary of the late George Bubb Dodington, 29 May 1754 and 3 Sept.

FRANCO-BRITISH ANTAGONISM

461

munificence to support, failed to subscribe a royal loan in half a year of peace.1 Such sordid considerations might impel the French to postpone a rupture, and Louis' preference for the excitement of dismissing ministers to the labour of selecting good ones helped to make his policy feeble, short-sighted and unpatriotic. But Britain, none the less, remained the enemy-a heretic and unmonarchic state, the leader of Europe against Louis XIV, the patron of militant Germany, and, alike in the Netherlands and by sea, the unsleeping gaoler of France; a Power always intent to divide the Bourbons, to filch away French commerce, and to cripple French dominion overseas. Thirteen years after the so-called peace and six after the renewal of strife, Stanley and Choiseul "at last agreed that the real sources of the war had been the leaving the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle imperfect and incomplete". No agreement in 1748, however, could do more than palliate the symptoms of so deep-seated a disease. A truce, even an entente between France and Britain, merely gave them time for fresh growth and tacit preparation. Only the subjugation of one or a revolution in the conception of nations as natural rivals could end their recurrent feud. And France at least was too vast, rich and well-peopled to share the fate of Portugal, Spain and Holland.

But although the Peace of 1748 had been powerless to harmonise France and Britain, it had silently registered the solution of two other great questions which the war had no less been waged to solve. Austria, it was clear, survived, and Prussia had made good her bold intrusion into the inner circle of great States. These plain facts must obviously affect Britain in the future only less powerfully than her unappeased antagonism to France. For her it had become a commonplace that France was "the only state which either Europe in general or England in particular can be endangered by". Against France she naturally sought aid from Germany, that body composed of some two hundred fragments but with a Habsburg emperor at its head. That this simple and natural arrangement, the very fulcrum of the balance of power, should give place to a dualism whereby Germany, as a counterpoise to France, was well-nigh abolished-such a revolution seemed to Newcastle and his colleagues almost beyond belief. Their perplexities were increased by the fact that Hanover lay defenceless against Prussia, with her 130,000 well-trained troops and her fortress of Wesel, convenient to admit the French across the Rhine. They found it hard to believe that, with the interest of Britain and the liberties of Europe to serve, Austria and Prussia could not be brought, as of old, into an alliance.5 Maria Theresa and her

1 F.O., France, 250, Paris, 23 April 1755.

2 Mémoires du Duc de Choiseul, 1719-85, pp. 134, 141.

F.O., France, 251, Paris, 8 June 1761.

[Mauduit, I., Considerations on the present German war (5th edn, London, 1761), p. 13. 5 Ruville, A. von, William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, 1, 384 seqq.