The Brussels Anti-Slavery Conference of 1889-1890 was held from 18 November 1889 to 2 July 1890 in Brussels and concluded with the adoption of the Brussels Conference Act of 1890 on the prohibition of slave trade and slavery in Africa. The convention favoured colonial policies, justified by the anti-slavery argument. [1] The event and its origins were shaped primarily by a narrow national interest. Governments paid lip-service to humanitarian goals in order to legitimize their imperial aims. [2]
Leopold II, the power-thirsty [3] King of the Belgians, had always regretted the restrictions of power imposed on him by his position as a constitutional monarch. [4] He therefore embarked on the project of carving out an absolute monarchy of his own in Africa, which led to the creation of the Congo Free State. [3] Leopold was able to seize the region by convincing other European states at the Berlin Conference on Africa that he was involved in humanitarian and philanthropic work and would not tax trade. [5] Via the International Association of the Congo, he was able to lay claim to most of the Congo Basin. The Congo Free State operated as a separate nation from Belgium, in a personal union with its King. It was privately controlled by Leopold II, although he never personally visited the state. [6]
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During the Scramble for Africa in the mid-1880s, despite the humanitarian promises of the Berlin Colonial Conference, the colonial powers' primary concerns were territorial and economic. This was to change in 1888. In major speeches in Paris and London, Cardinal Charles Lavigerie, who had launched a crusade against slavery, denounced the horrors of the Arab slave trade, in particular the Zanzibar slave trade. He urged immediate action in the form of an international militia of volunteers to combat the slave trade in East Africa. [1]
Leopold II followed Lavigerie's preaching tour intently. He was particularly concerned by the plans to send out a private international militia. After all, this could mean the conquest of his Congo. Such an army corps, he felt, could only be justified if it was under the leadership of the Congolese government. Leopold also feared that Lavigerie, who in his previous speeches had accused Tippu Tip of slave trading, might harm the Arab policy of his Congo Free State.
After meeting Leopold, however, Lavigerie renounced an international volunteer corps. An anti-slavery expedition was now to be organised by an exclusively national anti-slavery association in consultation with the colonial authorities concerned. In his Brussels speech, although Lavigerie pointed sharply to the rampant slave trade in Congo Free State, he attributed this to a lack of resources. [1]
Lavigerie's preaching tour did not only "breath[e] new life into the antislavery movement", [7] : 707 but also the Anti-Slavery Conference was a result. European colonisation of East and Central Africa posed a number of problems, especially with the Arabo-Swahili power. A clear example was the Arabo-Swahili rebellion that led to the blockade of the east coast of Africa by Germany and Britain. [1] [8]
Britain, after consultation with the German government, requested Belgium to convene an international conference on the slave trade. [9] Belgium had been specially chosen to allay Portuguese and French suspicions. On 18 November 1889, delegates of 17 countries met in Brussels for eight intermittent months. The conference meetings took place at the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. [10] Lambermont was appointed president of the conference. [11] The provisions of the General Act to combat the slave trade in the African interior actually amounted to a plan for more colonialism. This was based on the reasoning that anything that contributed to the expansion of European influence should limit the scope of action of the slave traders. [12]
The General Act of the Brussels Conference stipulated that the organisation of legal, religious and military services in African colonies and protectorates was the best means of combating the slave trade. An important item on the agenda was also the regulation of arms imports. The arms trade not only strengthened the power of the Arabo-Swahilis, but guns and ammunition were also the usual means of exchange to obtain slaves and vice versa. [1]
To effectively combat the slave trade at sea, there had to be extensive control of shipping. Earlier in the fight against the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, England had concluded maritime treaties with a variety of nations. This allowed the English navy to examine foreign ships for transporting slaves. England sought a global agreement at the conference that would allow the right of investigation. France, however, had always opposed that right because it made England's superior maritime the police navy, The Act represented a compromise between the two positions. [1]
Finally, the slave trade could only be completely abolished if the demand for new slaves disappeared. Thus, to eradicate the Eastern slave trade once and for all, slavery had to be abolished in the destination countries themselves. However, the conference did not go that far: only the importation of slaves was addressed. Influenced by the conference, the Ottoman Empire passed a new law that banned the import, transit and export of slaves, but left the institution of slavery untouched. Fugitive and illegally imported slaves had to be issued letters of release. [1]
Import duties were Leopold's primary concern. The Berlin Act had banned the levying of import duties in the Congo Basin for a period of 20 years. Now he wanted to undo this after only five years. [1]
In a prior correspondence with England, Leopold had requested that all countries that had to incur expenses in the fight against the slave trade be allowed to levy a moderate import duty; there was no objection to this. Leopold therefore wanted this to be included in the conference programme, but Lambermont believed caution was needed. On 10 May Lambermont submitted the proposal to the conference. He requested the abolition of Article 4 of the Berlin Act and asked that the countries of the conventional Congo basin be allowed to levy an import duty of up to 10 per cent ad valorem, a ban or tax on alcohol was also considered, as it was closely linked to the slave trade. [13] The development of public services to support trade required new revenues. Moreover, the countries, which were on the front line against the slave trade, had to be somewhat accommodated. After all, their humanitarian task cost a lot of money. [1]
Initially, the Netherlands and the United States opposed the proposal. but after long arduous negotiations and great diplomatic skill on the part of Leopold II, both sides came to an agreement, Leopold II struck home and on 2 July, the general act and declaration of the Brussels Anti-Slavery Conference could finally be signed. [1] [14]
Briefly, the conference led to the negotiation of the first treaty abolishing the Arab slave trade, the Brussels Convention, which was adopted in 1890 and entered into force on 2 April 1892. [12]
On 10 September 1919, the Convention of Saint-Germain-en-Laye 1919 to revise the General Act of Berlin of 1885 and the General Act and Declaration of Brussels of 1890, [15] extended prohibition by securing "the complete suppression of slavery in all its forms and of the slave trade by land and sea", [16] paving the way for the UN Slavery Convention of 25 September 1926. [12]
Leopold II was the second King of the Belgians from 1865 to 1909, and the founder and sole owner of the Congo Free State from 1885 to 1908.
The Congo Free State, also known as the Independent State of the Congo, was a large state and absolute monarchy in Central Africa from 1885 to 1908. It was privately owned by King Leopold II, the constitutional monarch of the Kingdom of Belgium. In legal terms, the two separate countries were in a personal union. The Congo Free State was not a part of, nor did it belong to Belgium. Leopold was able to seize the region by convincing other European states at the Berlin Conference on Africa that he was involved in humanitarian and philanthropic work and would not tax trade. Via the International Association of the Congo, he was able to lay claim to most of the Congo Basin. On 29 May 1885, after the closure of the Berlin Conference, the king announced that he planned to name his possessions "the Congo Free State", an appellation which was not yet used at the Berlin Conference and which officially replaced "International Association of the Congo" on 1 August 1885. The Free State was privately controlled by Leopold from Brussels; he never visited it.
The Scramble for Africa was the conquest and colonisation of most of Africa by seven Western European powers driven by the Second Industrial Revolution during the era of "New Imperialism" (1833–1914). In 1870, 10% of the continent was formally under European control. By 1914, this figure had risen to almost 90%, with only Liberia, Ethiopia, and parts of present-day Libya retaining their full sovereignty.
The Berlin Conference of 1884–1885 met on 15 November 1884 and, after an adjournment, concluded on 26 February 1885 with the signature of a General Act regulating European colonization and trade in Africa during the New Imperialism period.
The Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA), communicating under the name AfricaMuseum since 2018, is an ethnography and natural history museum situated in Tervuren in Flemish Brabant, Belgium, just outside Brussels. It was originally built to showcase King Leopold II's Congo Free State in the International Exposition of 1897.
François Auguste, Baron Lambermont, was a Belgian statesman. He came of a family of small farmer proprietors, who had held land during three centuries. He was intended for the priesthood and entered the seminary of Floreffe, but his energies claimed a more active sphere.
George Washington Williams was a soldier in the American Civil War and in Mexico before becoming a Baptist minister, politician, lawyer, journalist, and writer on African-American history. He served in the Ohio House of Representatives.
The Congo Reform Association (CRA) was a political and humanitarian activist group that sought to promote reform of the Congo Free State, a private territory in Central Africa under the absolute sovereignty of King Leopold II. Active from 1904 to 1913, the association formed in opposition to the institutionalised practices of Congo Free State's 'rubber policy', which encouraged the need to minimise expenditure and maximise profit with no political constraints – fostering a system of coercion and terror unparalleled in contemporary colonial Africa. The group carried out a global publicity campaign across the Western world, using a range of strategies including displays of atrocity photographs; public seminars; mass rallies; celebrity endorsements; and extensive press coverage to lobby the Great Powers into pressuring reform in the Congo. The association partially achieved its aims in 1908 with the Belgian government's annexation of the Congo Free State and continued to promote reform until disbanding in 1913.
The Brussels Conference Act of 1890 was a collection of anti-slavery measures signed in Brussels on 2 July 1890 to, as the act itself puts it, "put an end to Negro Slave Trade by land as well as by sea, and to improve the moral and material conditions of existence of the native races".
The International Association of the Congo, also known as the International Congo Society, was an association founded on 17 November 1879 by Leopold II of Belgium to further his interests in the Congo. It replaced the Belgian Committee for Studies of the Upper Congo which was part of the International African Association front organisation created for the exploitation of the Congo. The goals of the International Congo Society was to establish control of the Congo Basin and to exploit its economic resources. The Berlin Conference recognised the society as sovereign over the territories it controlled and on August 1, 1885, i.e. four and half months after the closure of the Berlin Conference, King Leopold's Vice-Administrator General in the Congo, announced that the society and the territories it occupied were henceforth called "the Congo Free State".
Lieutenant-general Baron Jules-Marie-Alphonse Jacques de Dixmude, often known as General Jacques, was a Belgian military figure of World War I and colonial advocate.
The Congo Arab war or Arab war was a colonial war fought between the Congo Free State and Arab-Swahili warlords associated with the Arab slave trade in the eastern regions of the Congo basin between 1892 and 1894.
There was a worldwide media propaganda campaign waged by both King Leopold II of Belgium and the critics of the Congo Free State and its atrocities. Leopold was very astute in using the media to support his virtual private control of the Congo. British campaigner Edmund Dene Morel successfully campaigned against Leopold and focused public attention on the violence of Leopold's rule. Morel used newspaper accounts, pamphlets, and books to publish evidence from reports, eye-witness testimony, and pictures from missionaries and others involved directly in the Congo. As Morel gained high-profile supporters, the publicity generated by his campaign eventually forced Leopold to relinquish control of the Congo to the Belgian government.
Émile Pierre Joseph Storms was a Belgian soldier, explorer, and official for the Congo Free State. He is known for his work between 1882 and 1885 in establishing a European presence in the regions around Lake Tanganyika, during which he supported the White Fathers missionaries and attempted to suppress the East African slave trade. He is remembered for his ruthless fight against slavery and the capture and subsequent execution of the slave trader Lusinga.
Léopold Louis Joubert was a French soldier and lay missionary. He fought for the Papal States between 1860 and 1870 during the Italian unification, which he opposed. He later assisted the White Fathers missionaries in East Africa and played an important role in the suppression of the slave trade between 1885 and 1892. He married a local woman and settled by the shore of Lake Tanganyika, where he lived until his death at the age of eighty five.
Karema is a settlement in Tanzania, on the east shore of Lake Tanganyika, once the location of a White Fathers mission station.
The Colonial Charter on the Belgian annexation of the Congo Free State was approved by the Belgian Parliament on 18 October 1908. On 15 November 1908, Belgium assumed sovereignty over the territories comprising the Congo Free State, officially making the Belgian Congo a colony of Belgium.
The Belgian Anti-Slavery Society was a 19th-century organization, with the goal of putting an end to the Arab slave trade in the African continent. The Belgian Anti-Slavery Society was founded in 1888, mainly by catholic intellectuals, led by count Hippolyte d'Ursel. The founders were inspired by the preaching of Charles Lavigerie, a French Cardinal, held at the Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula in August 1888. By January 1889 the society counted 700 members and had a working capital of 300.000 francs at its disposal. The abolitionist ideology of the Anti-Slavery Society was, however, closely linked with imperialism. From 1890 to 1899 the Société antiesclavagiste de Belgique organized and funded four military expeditions, sent to fight the Arab/Zanzibari slavers of the eastern Congo Free State regions.
The Committee for Studies of the Upper Congo, or in French the Comité d'études du Haut-Congo, was formed in 1878 on behalf of Leopold II, King of the Belgians, as part of the Scramble for Africa.
The Temporary Slavery Commission (TSC) was a committee of the League of Nations, inaugurated in 1924.
Léopold II s'était lancé dans l'entreprise coloniale pour assouvir sa soif de pouvoir et donner une importance stratégique à son pays.[Leopold II had embarked on the colonial enterprise in order to quench his thirst for power and to give strategic importance to his country.]