Brussels Conference
During the 1889–1890 Brussels Conference, the first comprehensive agreement to stop the African slave trade was signed. Although the Atlantic slave trade had stopped by this point, slave raids and trade were still common in Africa, and slaves were still taken to European colonies on false pretenses of contract labor or shipped to the Muslim world.
The British established a network of distinct treaties with the colonial and maritime powers, as well as with Asian and African governments and peoples, after outlawing their own slave trade. These treaties granted the right to search and established guidelines for the arrest and conviction of slavers.
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Theoretically, these rights were frequently reciprocal, but only the British consistently exercised them, and other powers believed the British were attempting to obstruct their trade and colonial expansion. These treaties were outdated by the 1880s, when the “Scramble” for Africa was well underway, and there was no treaty with France.
Resistance was sparked by the colonial advance led by missionaries, traders, prospectors, and adventurers. Swahili/Arab traders and their African allies were bringing in large amounts of weapons and tearing up vast swaths of land where slaving and raiding were common, endangering British settlers on the shores of Lake Malawi, French missionaries near Lake Tanganyika, and King Leopold II of Belgium’s Congo Independent State’s posts in the far interior.
The imperial powers had to disarm them in order to enforce their control. The hitherto unimpressed home support for colonial endeavors was suddenly mobilized by the antislavery movement. Cardinal Lavigerie, the French founder of the missionary organization of the Society of Our Lady of Africa, or White Fathers, toured European capitals in 1888, urging volunteers to battle the slavers after David Livingstone’s earlier calls to stop the trade had inspired the British people.
King Leopold was asked to call a meeting of the European colonial powers to establish a new treaty against the export of slaves because the British wanted to maintain their position as leaders of the antislavery movement and were worried about the chaos that the cardinal’s “crusaders” would cause.
An invitation from London was more likely to raise suspicions than one from Brussels, and the notion was well-liked in Britain. At first, the British only aimed to keep competing nations—especially the French—from luring trade partners. By supporting the slave trade and the profitable armaments trade that fueled it, countries might also encourage trade in the interior at the expense of more moral neighbors.
In order to serve the interests of his fledgling realm, King Leopold was adamant about extending the planned treaty. Aside from the other signatories of the Berlin Act (Holland, Belgium, Russia, Austria, Sweden, Denmark, and the United States), all of the African colonial powers (Britain, France, Germany, Portugal, the Congo, Italy, and Spain) had to be invited in order to accomplish these goals.
To avoid giving the impression that it was starting a Christian “crusade,” the Ottoman Empire—which possessed colonies in Africa and Asia and imported slaves—was included. Persia was chosen since it was a Muslim nation thought to be working against the slave trade, and Zanzibar was requested to appease its ruler.
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According to the General Act for the Repression of the African Slave Trade of 1890, also referred to as the Brussels Act, the treaty that was hammered out stated that the colonial powers could best combat the slave trade by setting up their administrations, improving communications, safeguarding missionaries and trading companies, and enlisting Africans in the “industrial arts” and agricultural labor.
The signatories agreed to halt wars, cease the trade and raiding of slaves, prohibit the castration of men, and repatriate or relocate fugitive and freed slaves after establishing the exploitation of Africa as an antislavery policy.
They decided to restrict the movement of weapons between latitudes 20° north and 22° south. Slave imports and exports, the mutilation of men, and the release, repatriation, or care of illegally imported slaves were all prohibited by the Ottoman Empire, Zanzibar, and Persia.
The British agreed to limit their current search powers to ships weighing less than 500 tons and to limit their searches to a certain “slave trade zone,” which comprised a portion of the Persian Gulf, Madagascar, the Red Sea, and the Indian Ocean.
Signatories were to strictly regulate passenger movements and the issuance of flags to indigenous vessels in this area. Rules for the search and arrest of suspects were established in order to reduce conflicts. Although the French introduced legislation that essentially incorporated the ability to check and verify the flag, they declined to approve these elements.
A bureau in Brussels was to gather data on the steps taken to implement the pact and provide statistics on the trafficking of slaves, weapons, and alcohol, while another in Zanzibar was to distribute information that could result in the arrest of slavers.
The Berlin Act saw two changes. Liquor traffic between 20° north latitude and 22° south latitude was to be subject to duties where it already existed and to be completely prohibited in still “uncontaminated” areas in order to appease British temperance and missionary societies and assist the Royal Niger Company in maintaining control over trade on the Niger.
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Similarly, a proclamation permitting import charges to be applied in the Congo’s traditional basin was inserted to the pact to help King Leopold fight off competing traders. In 1892, the Brussels Act became operative. The victorious allies, which included the United States, France, Belgium (now in control of the Congo), Portugal, Italy, Japan, and Britain, repealed it together with the Berlin Act in 1919. Although it ceased to exist in practice, it remained in effect for the other signatories in theory.
Three conventions that incorporated some of the arms, spirits, and economic sections were signed in 1919 at St. Germain-en-Laye, replacing the two acts. Only one piece mentioned the slave trade, which is said to have died out.
This obligated signatories to protect the welfare of indigenous peoples and ensure the total abolition of slavery in all its manifestations, including the slave trade. Reducing the slave trade was aided by a number of factors, including the Brussels Act.
It did not address the different means by which the European powers exploited Africans, such as contract and forced labor, and it lacked an enforcement mechanism. However, once their administrations were put in place, the colonial rulers’ interests in suppressing slave raiding, extensive slave trade, and slave exporting came to a stop.
Petty slave trafficking and a limited export business persisted in some regions until the end of colonial control, while slavery itself—which was not included by the act—was accepted for many years.
Although the act benefited the colonial powers, it forced them to repress the slave trade after the Brussels convention brought its faults to the public’s attention. Humanitarians saw it as a victory and a significant development in the trusteeship philosophy. Its tenets were transmitted to the League of Nations and, eventually, to the United Nations.
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