On November 13, the Cabinets of Berlin, London and Lisbon had agreed upon coercive measures against slave-traders on the East Coast of Africa. Meantime, on September 17, 1888, the British Government had appealed, through the Belgian Foreign Office, to King Leopold to take the initiative in assembling a Conference at Brussels to consider the subject. In conveying this invitation to the King of the Belgians, the British Minister to the Belgian Court stated that:
The change which has occurred in the political condition of the African Coast to-day calls for common action on the part of the Powers responsible for the control of that Coast. That action should tend to close all foreign slave-markets, and should also result in putting down slave-hunting in the interior.
Government Waggons.
The great work undertaken by the King of the Belgians, in the constitution of the Congo State, and the lively interest taken by His Majesty in all questions affecting the welfare of the African races, lead Her Majesty’s Government to hope that Belgium will be disposed to take the initiative in inviting the Powers to meet in Conference at Brussels, in order to consider the best means of attaining the gradual suppression of the slave trade on the Continent of Africa and the immediate closing of all the outside markets which the slave trade daily continues to supply.
On August 24, 1889, King Leopold deferred to this wish and called a Conference of the Powers for November 18, 1889, to determine upon a course of action for the gradual suppression of slave-hunting on the African Continent and the immediate closing of all markets supplied from that source, and “to put an end to the crimes and devastation wrought by the slave trade, and effectively to protect the native populations in Africa.”
Thus, after thirteen years of arduous labour, and the vicissitudes which attend the progressive pioneer in savage lands, where the mission and the plough follow the white man’s trail, the Belgians were again called upon to lead in a war against the most degrading of human conditions.
FOOTNOTES:
[12] Times, London, August 1, 1888.