[7] For full text of the treaties with Germany, Great Britain, France, and Portugal, and the Declaration exchanged with Belgium, see Appendix.
CHAPTER IX
THE ECONOMIC RÉGIME OF THE BERLIN ACT
Early Colonial Policy.
THE Berlin Act and the economic, that is, domestic, régime which it sought to establish in the Congo Basin occupied by Germany, France, Great Britain, Portugal, and the Free State, were, with various inadequacies and experimental defects, the logical expression of the drift that political science as applied to the law of nations had assumed in Europe as early as 1874. Under the operation of the old Pacte Colonial, the policy which prevailed in the colonies of the European Powers discriminated greatly against the subjects of all save the mother country. The commercial policy of such colonies was that of the Power which governed the colonial territory, whether that was an extension of the home territory or merely a dependency.
Market, near Boma.
Some marked theoretics freighted the course of international life as the time approached when exploration had revealed all the colonising areas which the known earth contained. Europeans and their descendants already occupied, under different forms of law, as states, colonies, protectorates, leaseholds, spheres of influence, over 82 per cent. of the lands of this planet. Those who followed the evolution of the law of nations were impressed by an African situation in 1884 which offered opportunity for experimentation with new, and perhaps more elastic, economic principles for the regulation of colonial interests in regions where the character of the country, its natural features, such as waterways and coastal advantages, and the juxtaposition of several governments, tended to a conflict detrimental generally to the civilisation of such possessions and their contributions to the markets of the world.
In the Annales de l’Institut de Droit International, vols. iii. and vii., are to be found the various resolutions of Prof. Égide Arntz relative to practical and co-operative jurisdiction in the Congo Basin. These were offered on September 7, 1883, at the Munich meeting of the Institute. But long before, namely, in 1878, M. Gustave Moynier had raised the question of a concerted civilising movement and the adoption of a scheme of political regulation in the region of the Congo. M. Emile Laveleye and the late Sir Travers Twiss had, thereafter, also discussed the question before the Institute. The essays of Professor Arntz and Sir Travers Twiss, which embody their respective views on what to them at that time appeared to be a signal opportunity for applying principles of colonial government as yet unestablished by tests of practice, are fully set forth in the Report of the Committee on Foreign Relations.
Experiments of the Berlin Act.
The Berlin Conference of November 15, 1884, may be regarded as the crystallised result of the interest manifested in respect of the Mid-African situation by the learned bodies and the eminent legal authorities indicated, and also as the outcome of Germany’s tactful method of superseding the then imminent treaty between Great Britain and Portugal signed on February 26, 1884, but thereafter abrogated. As pointed out in another chapter, the British-Portuguese treaty met with active opposition in Germany and in England.