The Sahara (35 page)

One legendary British diplomat to the “Sublime Porte” in North Africa was Colonel Hanmer Warrington. Born two months after the American Declaration of independence, Warrington was an army officer for twenty years before being appointed British consul-general to Tripoli in 1814. At that time the city’s ruler, Yusuf Pasha Karamanli, had seen corsair activity curtailed by the Royal Navy.

One result of this development, Warrington understood, was that the
dey
had turned his attention southward, developing ambitions to control the Saharan slave states of Bornu and Sokoto. Warrington believed that this was a great opportunity to garner information about the interior and possible new trading partners in that direction. As a result of the close relationship between the consul and the pasha, which Warrington once boasted meant he could “do anything and everything in Tripoli,” there followed a remarkable period of British exploration, trade and anti-abolitionist agitation. If Warrington saw a conflict of interests between Britain’s anti-slavery policy and the pasha’s interest in the slaving empires of the south, he was apparently able to resolve this to his personal satisfaction.

Warrington’s relationships with representatives of other foreign powers in Tripoli were often less friendly than those with the
dey
. In part because of his closeness to Karamanli, Warrington had an inflated sense of self-importance that his western counterparts considered haughty and arrogant. Recounting the details of one diplomatic battle with a foreign colleague, he closed his report to London with the words, “I am an Englishman (thank God). He is not.”

While his own travels did not take him deep into the Sahara, he delighted in spending time with those explorers who came to see him during his 32-year tenure in Tripoli. He later became father-in-law to one of the more famous of these explorers when, in July 1825, his daughter Emma married Alexander Gordon Laing. Laing and Miss Warrington were married in a civil ceremony because there was no vicar available and Warrington insisted that the marriage remain unconsummated until an ordained priest could bless the couple.

Two days later, Laing set off for Timbuktu. He was lucky to survive one Tuareg attack en route, during which a number of his party were killed and Laing was left with 24 sword wounds to his skull and arms, resulting in the loss of one hand and an ear lobe. Laing eventually reached the famed city after an arduous journey via Ghadames and In Saleh, becoming the first European in modern times to do so. Resting in Timbuktu for about five weeks, Laing was, according to native reports, killed a few days after setting off on his homeward journey.

In spite of the Ottomans retaking direct control of the city in 1835, Warrington survived the change in political circumstances with elan, continuing to press for greater British representation in the Sahara. By persistence and force of his enormous, if flawed, personality, he convinced the Ottomans and the Foreign Office to accede to his demands, and the British established vice-consulates in Murzuq and Ghadames. As a result, Britain enjoyed unparalleled influence on trade and communications along the central Sahara routes. The vice-consul appointed to Ghadames was Charles Hanmer Dickson, grandson of the now late Consul Warrington, who died in retirement in Greece.

Dickson’s duties included observing and reporting on trans-Saharan trade, promoting British trade interests and thwarting French ones. With French influence growing in neighbouring Algeria, there was a real fear of armed clashes between the British and French, who were exploring the area with increasing frequency from their own desert outposts. Dickson’s first letter to the British foreign secretary Lord Palmerston after his arrival at Ghadames suggests he had much to learn when he wrote: “Yesterday the British flag was hoisted on my residence amid repeated volleys of Musquetry (sic) ... The establishment of the first Christian in this city, which may well be recorded as an interesting event in its annals, has given universal satisfaction.”

After the European nineteenth-century division of the Sahara the new powers were able to impose as much diplomatic representation as they chose, in many cases for the first time. In some cases these were “advisers” to the ruling potentate, in others the facade of cooperation was wholly absent. Whether before or after the gelding of local authorities, the Europeans rarely viewed the North Africans as political equals, frequently resentful if they had to negotiate with local notables at all.

With thoughts of life in the Sahara furthest from his mind, the American sea captain James Riley had the misfortune of experiencing it and slavery first-hand after his ship ran aground off the west coast of the Sahara. In the best tradition of lengthy Victorian titles, Riley’s book was published as
Sufferings in Africa: Captain Riley’s Narrative. An authentic narrative of the loss of the American brig Commerce, Wrecked on the Western Coast of Africa, in the month of August, 1815. With an account of the sufferings of her surviving officers and crew, who were enslaved by the wandering Arabs on the great African Desart (sic), or Zahahrah (sic): and observations historical, geographical, etc. made during the travels of the author while a slave to the Arab, and in the Empire of Morocco.

Riley’s tale had an enormous impact upon publication, because even though slavery would be familiar to an early nineteenth-century readership, his text turned this state of affairs upside down, with white men enslaved by black masters. The crew’s ordeal at the hands of their Saharawi captors, and those to whom they were sold, was indeed awful. Even so, the mistreatment doled out to Riley and his crew was probably not much worse than that endured by any number of the nearly four million slaves resident in America at the same time.

The crew of the
Commerce
started their captivity with a forced march through the deserts of the western Sahara and Mauritania, undergoing such indignities as being forced to drink their own and camels’ urine if they wanted to drink at all. As Riley relates, “We were placed on our camel soon after daylight, having nothing to eat, and drinking a little camel’s water, which we preferred to our own: its taste... though bitter was not salt.” While it was then commonplace for foreign captives to be ransomed off, such transactions tended to take place at Mogador (modern Essaouira) in Morocco, or on the coast at St. Louis, 1200 miles south, in Senegal. Unfortunately for the
Commerce
, it ran aground at Cape Boujadour, midway between these trading posts.

Riley’s book is also notable as the first American bestseller. Encouraged to write his memoirs by President Monroe, the publisher of Sufferings and its sequel said it was “read by more than a million now living in these United States. Probably no book that was ever published, in either this or any other country, obtained so extensive a circulation in so short a period, as did that Narrative, and probably none ever published, made so striking and permanent an impression upon the minds of those that read it.” The book also has an important place in American history because among its one million readers was Abraham Lincoln upon whom it had such an impression that, along with the Bible and
The Pilgrim’s Progress
, it was the book he said that most influenced his life and thinking on slavery.

In many cases, Americans and Europeans who became the prisoners of local tribesmen were lucky to receive the services of British consul William Willshire. Willshire, a Londoner, lived and worked in Mogador with his wife and children from 1814 to 1844, during which time he saved hundreds of foreign seamen and others from slavery. So instrumental was he in securing Riley’s release that the grateful captain, on returning to America, founded a town in Ohio and named it Willshire.

In spite of having amassed a personal fortune through his business interests in Mogador, Willshire lost everything during a French attack, during the course of which Arabs from the interior looted the city. After the attack Willshire left the city, dying seven years later in Adrianople (today Edirne, Turkey) in a state of penury. Having fought to secure an annual pension of £100 from the Foreign Office in London, for his thirty years of loyal service in Africa and five in Adrianople, he was eventually granted his pension by Palmerston’s government on 18 August 1851. Sadly he had died on the fourth.

Sometimes diplomats were also soldiers. Such was the case with William Eaton, the US consul at Tunis under President John Adams, an army officer and adventurer, and the first American to cross Egypt’s Western Desert. A graduate of Dartmouth College, Eaton was selected for the trans-Saharan mission because so few Americans had any knowledge of North Africa. The purpose of his mission was twofold: to make contact with and reinstate Hamet Karamanli as pasha of Tripolitania, and to free Captain William Bainbridge and the 300 crew of the USS
Philadelphia
, prisoners in Tripoli because the US had stopped paying tribute to the Barbary states. (Yusef Karamanli, Hamet’s younger brother, had responded to this refusal by declaring war on the Americans.)

Eaton himself was partly responsible for the change in US government policy, writing to Secretary of State, James Madison, “The more you give, the more the Turks will ask for.” Appointed Navy Agent to the Barbary states, Eaton sailed to Alexandria and found Karamanli. Having promoted himself to the rank of general, Eaton outlined his plans to Karamanli, who warmly welcomed the American plot to return him to his throne. Leading a mixed force of 300 Arab cavalry, 70 Christian mercenaries, two sailors, eight Marines and 1000 camels, Eaton marched nearly 600 miles across the desert. Having failed to secure adequate funds or supplies for the march, the party almost starved to death during the two month journey to Derna. The ensuing Battle of Derna was the first engagement involving American forces on foreign soil, providing part of the opening line of the US Marines’ Hymn, “From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli.”

The contingent of Marines were led into battle by Lieutenant Presley O’Bannon, whose bravery so inspired Hamet Karamanli that he presented O’Bannon with his personal sword, since when a Mameluke-style sword has been traditional for Marine Corps officers’ ceremonial uniform. Unfortunately for Hamet, however, news arrived that a treaty had been made recognizing his brother the usurper. Signed by Tobias Lear V, newly created American consul-general in North African and former personal secretary to George Washington, the treaty forced Hamet, Eaton and the other non-Arabs to sail away, having fought and won a battle for no reason.

Ninety-three years after Eaton’s trek, Major Amedee-Francois Lamy of the French Army was at the head of another military column crossing the Sahara. In 1898-99 he led a French force south through French Algeria to Lake Chad. En route his force occupied the principal oases, including Tuat, Tamanrasset, Air and Zinder, which they were keen to ensure remained in French hands.

The success of the mission not only allowed the French to travel at will in the desert, but in conquering Chad Lamy connected all of France’s West Africa territories. Meeting with two other French missions - coming from Congo and Niger respectively - at Kousseri in modern Cameroon, Lamy led a force of1200 infantry and cavalry in a long-anticipated clash against the Sudanese rebel leader Rabih as-Zubayr and his forces. Having formed his own empire in the Chad Basin, as-Zubayr was the main obstacle to French domination of the region.

During the course of the battle both Lamy and as-Zubayr were killed, but when as-Zubayr’s forces were routed, the French victory meant the creation of a single French Saharan super-state, the capital of which was named Fort-Lamy in honour of the French man of the hour. In 1970 the Chadian government issued a 1000-franc gold coin to mark the tenth anniversary of independence, of which one side bore the legend “Commandant Lamy 1900” and an image of the French soldier. Three years later Fort Lamy was renamed N’Djamena, eliminating one more name from the Sahara’s short-lived, European imperial past.

Professionals

The work conducted by non-military professionals such as archaeologists is by its nature painstakingly slow, with few discoveries having any impact on the public consciousness. The single most impressive discovery in the past century is without doubt the tomb of Tutankhamen. Discovered by Howard Carter in the Valley of the Kings in 1922, the unearthing of the virtually undisturbed tomb of a Pharaoh was of peerless importance, containing as it did an incredible array of royal property including a large quantity of gold-work and precious jewellery. Carter spent numerous digging seasons living in a small house on the Theban Necropolis on the edge of the Sahara, from where he directed the digging, convinced he was going to make a significant find. By 1922 Lord Carnarvon, Carter’s financial backer, had lost faith in the project and declared that digging season would be the last he would fund.