Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

A Global History of Anti-slavery Politics in the Nineteenth CenturyThe Anti-slave Trade Campaign in Europe, 1888–90

A Global History of Anti-slavery Politics in the Nineteenth Century: The Anti-slave Trade... [The Brussels Conference Act of 1890 is a footnote in nineteenth-century imperial history. Its proclaimed aims—to eradicate the slave trade, to prohibit the importation of arms, and to regulate the consumption of liquor in Africa—seem either cynical or naïve when viewed in the context of the violent wars, brutal labour regimes, and economic exploitation which characterized the European conquest of Africa. Given that its promises and spirit were honoured more in the breach than in the observance, the gathering of the diplomats from Europe, the United States, and leading Muslim powers in Brussels in late 1889 and 1890 appears to have been little more than a talking shop. Yet the event in Brussels was significant in that it was the first diplomatic meeting of the major European powers devoted solely to the suppression of the slave trade. Diplomats recognized that the conference had a different character to the other great diplomatic set-pieces of the late nineteenth century: the Congress of Berlin in 1878 and the conference on the partition of Africa in Berlin in 1884/5.1 The Brussels Conference resulted from a brief, but intense, popular anti-slave trade campaign in Europe in 1888 and 1889. Its legacy in putting anti-slavery issues on the international political agenda was evident in the 1926 League of Nations Slavery Convention, which noted that the “signatories of the General Act of the Brussels Conference declared that they were equally animated by the firm desire to put an end to the traffic in African slaves”.] http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

A Global History of Anti-slavery Politics in the Nineteenth CenturyThe Anti-slave Trade Campaign in Europe, 1888–90

Editors: Mulligan, William; Bric, Maurice
Mulligan, William
Springer Journals — Oct 24, 2015
Download PDF
21 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/springer-journals/a-global-history-of-anti-slavery-politics-in-the-nineteenth-century-F02RyByWTa
Publisher
Palgrave Macmillan UK
Copyright
© Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited 2013
ISBN
978-1-349-44116-7
Pages
149 –170
DOI
10.1057/9781137032607_9
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

[The Brussels Conference Act of 1890 is a footnote in nineteenth-century imperial history. Its proclaimed aims—to eradicate the slave trade, to prohibit the importation of arms, and to regulate the consumption of liquor in Africa—seem either cynical or naïve when viewed in the context of the violent wars, brutal labour regimes, and economic exploitation which characterized the European conquest of Africa. Given that its promises and spirit were honoured more in the breach than in the observance, the gathering of the diplomats from Europe, the United States, and leading Muslim powers in Brussels in late 1889 and 1890 appears to have been little more than a talking shop. Yet the event in Brussels was significant in that it was the first diplomatic meeting of the major European powers devoted solely to the suppression of the slave trade. Diplomats recognized that the conference had a different character to the other great diplomatic set-pieces of the late nineteenth century: the Congress of Berlin in 1878 and the conference on the partition of Africa in Berlin in 1884/5.1 The Brussels Conference resulted from a brief, but intense, popular anti-slave trade campaign in Europe in 1888 and 1889. Its legacy in putting anti-slavery issues on the international political agenda was evident in the 1926 League of Nations Slavery Convention, which noted that the “signatories of the General Act of the Brussels Conference declared that they were equally animated by the firm desire to put an end to the traffic in African slaves”.]

Published: Oct 24, 2015

Keywords: Common Humanity; French Revolution; Slave Trade; European Government; Catholic Church

There are no references for this article.