Table of Contents

OAH Magazine of History
Volume 7, No 4
Summer 1993

Copyright ©
Organization of American Historians

The Abolition of Slavery in the Western Hemisphere: Its Consequences for Africa

Edward Rossiter

Introduction
This teaching unit offers a global perspective on the abolition of slavery for standard high school American history survey courses. Too often students are left with the impression that the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment settled the issue of African slavery in the world. In fact abolition was a worldwide historical movement with powerful consequences for all nations and regions of the Atlantic world, especially Africa. With additional curricular support, American History teachers can build this global perspective into their courses without radically altering existing course formats. Teachers can address questions of motivation, perspective and historical significance as they examine this topic. Students can study American history in connection with other world areas and less in isolation from global factors. In particular, students will be reminded of the profound consequences of the abolition movement for Africa itself.

Objectives

• Examine the perception, common in the United States, that slavery ended with the Thirteenth Amendment.
• Connect African and Latin American historical experiences with U.S. history.
• Present the abolition movement in a global context.
• Introduce students to comparative history.
• Introduce the complex factors—economic, humanitarian, and political—behind the abolition movement.
• Examine the relative power of humanitarian, economic, and political motives as forces in history.
• Introduce the consequences for Africa of the abolition of slavery outside of Africa.
• Help students develop the skills to make historical hypotheses from information gathered from various sources. Encourage higher level thinking skills. Introduce complexity and intellectual controversy into the curriculum.

Historical Background
The slave trade was an unmitigated misery—a crime unredeemed by one extenuating circumstance . . . it led to an unpardonable destruction of population. During the whole period of the trade it has been estimated that somewhere between 30 and 40 million souls were lost to Africa. The victims were the most virile and active people of West Africa—the young and healthy men and women.—Adu Boahen, a Ghanaian scholar

Partly due to the sheer size of the Atlantic slave trade and the enormous volume of capital and human energy expended in maintaining the trade, the abolition movement took over a century to complete. A complex web of humanitarian, economic and political factors, each supporting the others, served to put an end to the slave trade and then to slavery itself outside of Africa by the end of the nineteenth century. Within the first decades of this century, slavery was mostly done away with in Africa too. The industrial revolution with its emphasis on a mobile labor force, technology, and the market potential of free laborers as consumers mounted a powerful case against the use of slave labor. But the relentless logic of free market economics by itself was not enough to secure abolition. Agricultural interests in the New World, dependent on single crops, such as tobacco, sugar, and cotton grown by slave labor, put up a powerful resistance to abolition. In the end, it took the great antislavery crusade, the Abolitionist Movement, allied with economic interests to stir up popular opinion for abolition to a level that forced governments to respond. Slave revolts and slave resistance also played a major role by putting great political pressure on slave societies. By the middle of the eighteenth century an uprising or disturbance in the Caribbean every few years culminated in the great triumph of Toussaint L’Ouverture in Haiti in the 1790s. The humanitarians who led the antislavery crusade—mostly reformers, preachers, writers and politicians—often had Africans working in their movement, sometimes taking leadership roles. By 1800, slavery had become a sin according to some religionists, uneconomical in business and commerce, and contrary to the right of man for those who supported the Enlightenment ideas expressed in the American and French Revolutions. In the West, except for new technological innovations like the cotton gin, it had become a dying institution.

What was the effect of the slave trade era on Africa? This is a difficult question for young students of history. After all, Africans supplied the human cargos to slave traders on the west coast of Africa by bringing captives from the interior to be sold. The same was true for slave traders on the east coast of Africa, on the Indian Ocean. Slavery was practiced in various forms in almost all African societies before the Europeans came. This meant that Africa had the necessary economic organization to enter the Atlantic slave trade. Africans simply had to adopt their own systems to the new markets, and there were profits for participants on both sides. In time, the slave trade fueled geopolitical shifts and intrigue in West Africa as nations, small and large, jockeyed for position and advantage in the trans-Atlantic System. It is possible to blame Africans for complicity in what we now see as a great crime against humanity perpetrated by the west. But it is important to emphasize that little evidence shows that most West Africans knew of or understood the brutal consequences of their actions. Yet the long term effects were devastating. Indeed the four centuries of the Atlantic slave trade can be seen as an African holocaust.

Inevitably abolition in the west meant many African states, hitherto dependent on the slave trade, faced severe economic disruption (see handout 3). One result was that slavery in Africa actually increased in the nineteenth century. But, as a result of the industrial revolution, Europe and the Americas began seeking “legitimate” trade with Africa, and it quickly became clear that before Africa could join the new world markets, the Africans would have to give up their own system of slavery. There was simply no place for slave labor in the new social and economic institutions, and so the West turned to outright colonization as the only way to force Africa into the new industrial economy. Ironically, however, many Africans would later complain that European patterns of coerced labor resembled slavery in all but the name (see handout 4).

Teaching this unit requires students to address some difficult and fundamental questions about Africa about which scholars still disagree. The first and most important question is how African slavery differed from slavery in the West (see handout 2). There is general agreement that the differences were substantial. Two scholars, Miers and Kopytoff, question whether the word slavery even applies to Africa, and suggest the terms “acquired persons” or “marginalized person,” living on the fringes of society, as more accurate. In another publication, Miers and Roberts offer a more thorough explanation of African bondage (see handout 2). It is important to stress that humanitarianism and the concept of personal individual liberty are western ideas. In Africa, having the rights offered by society meant belonging to a group. The lineage or kinship group, the attachment to a tribe or a clan, conferred upon the individual the same advantages as individual liberty did in the West: full membership in society. As to whether the African system was “kinder and gentler,” as Equiano suggests, one must emphasize that while there were vast differences in the varieties and thus the harshness of African slavery, there was considerable variation in the Americas as well.

A second question addresses the effects of the abolition of slavery in Africa on African societies. Again the picture is very unclear. At first the European powers were slow to press for abolition, fearing it might cause too much disruption and disorder. But as the European colonization of the continent advanced, so did the laws implementing abolition (See map). Still, it was well into the twentieth century before the last traces of slavery were made illegal. The system of forced labor or contract labor put into effect by the Europeans under the colonial system can be seen as a modernized form of slavery (see handout 4). This is an important question to address.

Historians do agree upon African societies’ resiliency and toughness in the face of successive shocks over the centuries of the slave trade and its abolition. The endurance of these societies as they underwent these relentless perpetrations from the west is admirable. Students can reflect on how well Africa survived the disruptions of exploitation during these several centuries.

There are certainly many more questions than answers in this material. The object of the lesson is to get students thinking about a very complicated and morally difficult subject.

Some final reminders: Students often get confused by the distinction between the slave trade and the practice of slavery itself. It is important to keep these distinctions clear as discussion progresses. Also try to make fair and consistent comparisons when teaching about Africa. For example, when discussing African slavery, make comparisons with slave systems in the Americas and elsewhere. Discuss how other societies outside of Africa have treated women and children in the past. Point out that Africans did not enslave their own people. Captives were taken from other tribes and ethnic groups who were seen as different. Is there anything in European and American politics and history that might resemble what might be called tribalism?

Implementing the Lesson
Pass out the handouts and the map to students. Taking each handout in order, have the students respond to the questions. They may work in small groups or individually. For homework, students might look up one or more of the individual topics or events covered here and report them to the class.

Bibliography
Boahen, Adu. Topics in West African History. London: Longman, 1979.

Crowder, Michael. West Africa Under Colonial Rule. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1968.

Curtin, Philip. Africa Remembered: Narratives by West Africans from the Era of the Slave Trade. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin, 1967.

Curtin, Philip et. al. African History. New York: Longman, 1989.

Davis, David Brion. The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1966.

Foner, Laura and Eugene D. Genovese, eds. Slavery in the New World: A Reader in Comparative History. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1969.

Gann, Lewis H. and Peter Duignon. Africa and the World. New York: Chandler Publishing Company, 1972.

Gates, Henry Lewis. The Classic Slave Narratives. New York: Penguin, 1987.

Gide, Andre. Travels in the Congo. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1957.

Grant, Douglas. The Fortunate Slave: An Illustration of African Slavery in the Early Eighteenth Century. New York: Oxford University Press, 1968.

Harris, Joseph. Africans and Their History. New York: Penguin, 1987.

Manmning, Patrick. Slavery and African Life. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Miers, Suzanne. Britain and the End of the Slave Trade. New York: Longman, 1975.

Miers, Suzanne and Igor Kopytoff, eds. Slavery in Africa: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1977.

Miers, Suzanne and Richard Roberts, eds. The End of Slavery in Africa. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988.

Patterson, Orlando. Freedom in the Making of Western Culture. New York: Harper Collins, 1991.

Robinson, David and Douglas Smith. Sources of the African Past: Case Studies of Five Nineteenth-century African Societies. New York: Africana, 1979.

Wiley, Bell, ed. Slaves No More: Letters from Liberia, 1833-1869. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1980.

Williams, Eric. From Columbus to Castro: The History of the Caribbean, 1492-1969. New York: Harper & Row, 1970.

1732 The Bretheren, a German Evangelical Christian sect, establish the first overseas mission in Africa. They call for an end to slavery.

1733 The British Parliament passes the Molasses Act imposing prohibitive duties on imports of sugar, rum and molasses into British territory from any foreign territory. This is the first sign that the British West Indian sugar colonies, based on slave labor, are hurting economically.

1760 A major slave uprising in Jamaica, called Tacky’s Revolt, unsettles the slave owning plantation establishment in the Caribbean.

1772 The Somerset judgment in England, handed down by the Lord Chief Justice, abolishes domestic slavery in England, but not in the colonies. Fourteen thousand slaves are freed.

1772 and 1774 King George of England fails to approve bills in the Jamaican, Massachusetts and Virginia colonial assemblies, seeking to limit or abolish the slave trade.

1774-1783 American Revolution severely hurts British sugar plantations in the Caribbean, further eroding the need for slaves in the sugar colonies and boosting the sugar economies of other European countries especially France, at Britain’s expense. Thomas Jefferson’s first draft of a Declaration of Independence for the thirteen North American colonies challenges slavery on moral grounds. This portion is omitted in final version.

1787 Publication of Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species by Ottobah Cugoano, an educated Fanti ex-slave. Formation in London of the Society for Abolition of the Slave Trade by William Wilberforce with the support of Prime Minister of England William Pitt. Sierra Leone founded as British colony by an Abolitionist, Granville Sharp, for purposes of settling freed slaves from England and America. Emphasizing the colony’s purpose, the main town is named Freetown which is the capital city of Sierra Leone today.

1788 Formation in England of the Africa Association with the goal of replacing the slave trade with legitimate trade with Africa. An association report states the hope that “the people of the inland regions of Africa may soon be united with Europe in that great bond of commercial fellowship which the mutual wants and different productions of other continents have happily established.” An increasing demand for palm oil—both to make soap and to lubricate the new machines of the industrial revolution in Europe—leads to more emphasis on “legitimate trade” as opposed to slave trading. Later railroads will vastly increase a demand for palm oil for lubrication. Exports of palm oil from West Africa increase from 1000 tons in 1810 to 40,000 tons in 1855.

1789 William Wilberforce introduces into the British House of Commons a motion calling for an end to the slave trade. In the debate, an opponent claims abolition “would render the City of London one scene of bankruptcy and ruin.” Publication in London of Equiano’s Travels by Olaudah Euquiano (slave name Gustavus Vasa), a freed slave born an lbo in Benin (now Nigeria). He was freed in the late 1760s and wrote this story of his life. This publication and that of Cugoano’s (above), and the work of their authors travelling and speaking against slavery, form a major African influence on the abolition movement. Both are still in print.

1792 The French Revolution abolishes slavery. It is later reinstated by Napoleon who then abolishes it again during the Hundred Days after he escapes from Elba. Yet again revived after Naopleon, it takes another Revolution, the rising of 1848, before France finally abolishes slavery in all French territory. The French go a step further making all inhabitants of French colonies citizens of France.

1794 Successful slave revolt occurs in the French colony of Haiti; it was led by a slave coachman, Toussaint L’Ouverture. Haiti becomes the first black independent country outside of Africa. Fear grows in England of a similar event in a British Caribbean colony.

1808 Britain and the United States abolish their slave trades. In the U.S., the action was mandated by article 1, section 9 of the Constitution. The British send a naval squadron to West Africa to secure enforcement. Denmark had been the first to abolish its slave trade in 1802.

1815 The Vienna Treaty, marking the end of the Napoleonic wars, condemns the world slave trade. In separate treaties with Portugal, Spain and the Netherlands, in many cases supported by cash payments and financial concessions, Britain secures the abolition of the slave trade in those countries to prevent them from gaining an economic advantage. Britain had already abolished her slave trade. Worldwide enforcement is left almost entirely to the British Navy, and illegal slave trading and smuggling persist. Between 1800 and the late 1870s, over three million Africans were shipped across the Atlantic as slaves.

1822 Republic of Liberia is established for freed American slaves in West Africa by the American Colonization Society. Denmark Vesey leads a slave rising in South Carolina.

1831 Nat Turner’s slave insurrection in Virginia.

1833 Britain abolishes slavery in the Empire. Slave owners are compensated for their loss at a cost to the British taxpayer of twenty million pounds.

1852 Legitimate trade grows as Gambia exports 150,000 pounds sterling worth of peanuts (called grounds nuts in Africa).

1865 The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution ends slavery in the United States.

1874 Britain abolishes slavery in the Gold Coast of Africa.

1884-1885 The Berlin Conference begins the “Scramble for Africa.” Partitioning Africa into “spheres of influence,” the European powers begin rapid colonization of the continent, thus ending the “Back to Africa” trends in European and American culture. “Back to Africa” interest was not revived until the 1920s.

1888 Brazil is the last nation in the Western Hemisphere to abolish slavery.

1890 An international conference in Brussels, attended by seventeen western nations, produces a treaty abolishing the slave trade within Africa. No African states are present at the conference; most of the continent has been colonized.

1905 A French government decree makes illegal any measure having as its object “the alienation of a third party” in French West Africa. The French government at that time estimates that up to two million inhabitants of French West Africa were “non libres.” France continues to allow Africans loyal to France to take “captifs” from enemy villages.

1925 Thirty eight percent to 12,000 laborers, laying the railways for the British in northern Nigeria, were forcibly recruited by their chiefs. The new League of Nations in Geneva takes up the continuing problem of the persistence of slavery in Africa, the Muslim world and Asia.

1926 The League of Nations implements the Slavery Convention of 1926, which establishes the International Labor Organization to investigate the persistence of slavery and forced labor in the world.

1928 Legal status of slavery in Sierra Leone is abolished by the British colonial government.

1992 Time reports on the problem of various forms of domestic slavery, mainly involving women and children, in Asia and the Arab World. In January, 1993, the Boston Globe runs an article under the headline: Report raps Mauritania, Sudan for fostering modern-day slavery. The report is the work of the International Labor Organization, set up in 1926, and now an agency of the United Nations. It also points to the existence of slave or indentured labor in Pakistan, India, Brazil, Peru and several other nations.

Olaudah Equiano, an ex-slave educated in the West, comments on African slavery in the eighteenth century

From what I can recollect of these battles, they appears to have been irruptions of one little state or district into another, to obtain prisoners or booty. Perhaps they were incited to this by those traders, who brought amongst us the European goods which I mentioned. Such a mode of obtaining slaves in Africa is common; and I believe more are procured in this way, and by kidnapping, than in any other. When a trader wants slaves, he applies to a chief for them, and tempts him with his wares. It is not extraordinary, if on this occasion he yields to the temptation with as little firmness, and accepts the price of his fellow-creature’s liberty with as little reluctance as the enlightened merchant. Accordingly he falls on his neighbours, and a desperate battle ensues.

(After battle) The spoils were divided according to the merit of the warriors. Those prisoners which were not sold or redeemed we kept as slaves: but how different was their condition from that of the slaves in the West Indies! With us they do no more work than other members of the community, than even their master; their food, clothing, and lodging, were nearly the same as theirs, except that they were not permitted to eat with those who were free-born; and there was scarcely any other difference between them than a superior degree of importance, which the head of a family possesses in our state, and that authority which, as such, he exercises over every part of his household. Some of these slaves have even slaves under them, as their own property, and for their own use.

Cited in Henry Louis Gates, ed., The Clasic Slave Narratives (New York: Penguin, 1987), 18-19.

Two contemporary scholars attempt to define African slavery:

Slavery in Africa was a complex system of labor use, of the exercise of rights in persons, and of exploitation and coercion, tempered by negotiation and accommodation. Its form varied over time and place. Slaves might be menial field workers, downtrodden servants, cherished concubines, surrogate kin, trusted trading agents, high officials, army commanders, (or) ostracized social groups dedicated to a deity. . . . Owners might be corporate kin groups or individuals of either sex. A minority of individual owners and a majority of first-generation slaves were women, valued for their productive as well as their reproductive capacities, since women did much of the agricultural work in sub-Saharan Africa. Most slaves had families, and some accumulated possessions, even slaves, of their own. Slavery might involve merely small numbers of slaves, living in or near their owners’ households, whose daily lives were virtually indistinguishable from those of the free, or it could be a sophisticated system of labor organization in which slaves and owners were divided by social, economic, political, and legal barriers and sometimes lived in separate settlements. Different forms of slavery could coexist in the same society.

Cited in Suzanne Miers and Richard Roberts, eds., The End of Slavery in Africa (Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988), 3-5.

‘Now,’ said the king, after a pause. ‘I have another palaver, and you must help me to talk it. A long time ago the great king liked plenty of trade, more than now; then many ships came, and they bought ivory, gold, and slaves; but now he will not let the ships come as before, and the people buy gold and ivory only. This is what I have in my head, so now tell me truly, like a friend, why does the king do so?’ ‘His majesty’s question,’ I replied, ‘was connected with a great palaver, which my instructions did not authorise me to discuss. I had nothing to say regarding the slave trade.’ ‘I know that too, retorted the king; ‘because, if my master liked that trade, you would have told me so before. I only want to hear what you think as a friend: this is not like the other palavers.’ I was confessedly at a loss for an argument that might pass as a satisfactory reason, and the sequel proved that my doubts were not groundless. The king did not deem it plausible, that this obnoxious traffic should have been abolished from motives of humanity alone; neither would he admit that it lessened the number either of domestic or foreign wars.

Taking up one of my observations, he remarked, ‘the white men who go to council with your master, and pray to the great God for him, do not understand my country, or they would not say the slave trade was bad. But if they think it bad now, why did they think it good before. Is not your law an old law, the same as the Crammo law? Do you not both serve the same God, only you have different fashions and customs? Crammos are strong people in fetische, and they say the law is good, because the great God made the book; so they buy slaves, and teach them good things, which they knew not before. This makes every body love the Crammos, and they go every where up and down, and the people give them food when they want it. Then these men come all the way from the great water, and from Manding, and Dagomba, and Killinga; they stop and trade for slaves, and then go home. If the great king would like to restore this trade, it would be good for the white men and for me too, because Ashantee is a country for war, and the people are strong; so if you talk that palaver for me properly, in the white country, if you go there, I will give you plenty of gold, and I will make you richer than all the white men.’

N.B. The author is transcribing English as the chief spoke it.

Crammo=Muslim, Great King=King of England, Great Water=Niger River.

Cited in David Robinson and Douglas Smith, Sources of the African Past: Case Studies of Five Nineteenth-century African Societies (New York: Africana, 1979), 189-190.

Being equally actuated by the firm intention of putting an end to the crimes and devastations engendered by the traffic in African slaves, of efficiently protecting the aboriginal population of Africa, and of securing for that vast continent the benefits of peace and civilization;

Have resolved, in pursuance of the invitation addressed to them by the Government of His Majesty the King of the Belgians, in agreement with the Government of Her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, Empress of India, to convene for this purpose a conference at Brussels, and have named as their plenipotentiaries . . . Who, being furnished with full powers, which have been found to be in good and due form, have adopted the following provisions:

Article I

The powers declare that the most effective means of counteracting the slave-trade in the interior of Africa are the following:

1. Progressive organization for the administrative, judicial, religious, and military services in the African territories placed under the sovereignty or protectorate of civilized nations.

2. The gradual establishment in the interior, by the powers to which the territories are subject, of strongly occupied stations, in such a way as to make their protective or repressive action effectively felt in the territories devastated by slave hunting.

3. The construction of roads, and in particular of railways, connecting the advance stations with the coast, and permitting easy access to the inland waters, and to such of the upper courses of the rivers and streams as are broken by rapids and cataracts, with a view to substituting economical and rapid means of transportation for the present system of carriage by men.

4. Establishment of steam-boats on the inland navigable waters and on the lakes, supported by fortified posts established on the banks.

5. Establishment of telegraph lines, insuring the communication of the posts and of the stations with the coast and with the administrative centers.

6. Organization of expeditions and flying columns, to keep up the communication of the stations with each other and with the coast to support repressive action, and to insure the security of high roads.

7. Restrictions of the importation of fire-arms, at least of those of modern pattern, and of ammunition throughout the entire extent of the territory in which trade is carried on.

Article II

2. To give aid and protection to commercial enterprises; to watch over their legality by especially controlling contracts for service with natives, and to prepare the way for the foundation of permanent centres of cultivation and of commercial settlements. (Numerous additional articles follow).

29 October
At Bambio, on September 8, ten rubber-gatherers . . . belonging to the Goundi gang, who work for the Compagnie Forestiere—because they had not brought in any rubber the month before (but this month they brought in double, from 40 to 50 kilogrammes)—were condemned to go round and round the factory under a fierce sun, carrying very heavy wooden beams. If they fell down, they were forced up by guards flogging them with whips.

The “ball” began at eight o’clock and lasted the whole day, with Messrs. Pacha and Maudurier, the company’s agent, looking on. At about eleven o’clock a man from Bagouma, called Malongue, fell to get up no more. When M. Pacha was informed of this, he merely replied: ‘Je m’enf-’ and ordered the “ball” to go on. All this took place in the presence of the assembled inhabitants of Bambio and of all the chiefs who had come from the neighbouring villages to attend the market.

The chief spoke to us also of the conditions reigning in the Boda prison; of the wretched plight of the natives and of how they are fleeing to some less accursed country. My indignation against Pacha is naturally great, but the Compagnie Forestiere plays a part in all this, which seems to be very much graver, though more secret. For, after all, it—its representatives, I mean—knew everything that was going on. It (or its agents) profited by this state of things. Its agents approved Pacha, encouraged him, were his partners. It was at their request that Pacha arbitrarily threw into prison the natives who did not furnish enough stuff: etc . . .

30 October
Impossible to sleep. The Bambio “Ball” haunted my night. I cannot content myself with saying, as so many do, that the natives were still more wretched before the French occupation. We have shouldered responsibilities toward them which we have no right to evade. The immense pity of what I have seen has taken possession of me. I know things to which I cannot reconcile myself. What demon drove me to Africa? What did I come out to find in this country? I was at peace? I know now. I must speak.

From Handout 1—Chronology and Map
1. Which events in this list can be considered humanitarian, economic or political?
2. How do these events interact and support each other to form a single historical movement?
3. Why do you suppose that, having abolished their own slave trade, the British wanted everyone else to abolish theirs?
4. How do these events draw Africa into the global economy? In what ways is Africa affected today by global economic forces?

From Handout 2—African Slavery
1. Which of these documents is a primary source and which is a secondary source? What is the difference? Does the excerpt from the scholarly work support Equiano’s assertions? Are Equiano’s comments trustworthy and valid? Why or why not?
2. Are there examples in the treatment of women and children, prisoners of war, migrants and subject peoples in western history which compare to African slavery?
3. What reasons might Equiano have for comparing West Indian and African slavery?
4. Consider a village where ten percent of the inhabitants are enslaved in the various ways described in these comments. Make a list of the ways outside forces might disrupt life by the involuntary ending of this system by outside forces. Compare this situation with the American South in the late 1860s after the Civil War.

From Handout 3—The African response to the abolition of the slave trade
1. What seems to be troubling the king in this reading?
2. Why do neither King Osei Bonsu nor Equiano condemn or seem troubled by the institution of slavery in their societies? How are their respective views of African slavery different?
3. Does the king seem to have a good understanding of the West, particularly England?
4. How does the king try to play off Muslim against Christian? Why does he do this?

From Handout 4—The Brussels Conference of 1890
1. Why are no African states present at this conference?
2. Does it appear that the European powers might have other interests in this treaty besides the abolition of slavery? What specifically do you think the treaty means when it mentions “the benefits of peace and civilization” in the opening statement?
3. Do nations have a right to interfere in each other’s affairs for humanitarian reasons? Consider this issue in the case of Somalia today.

From Handout 5—Andre Gide travels to French Equatorial Africa
1. What are the differences between slavery and contract or forced labor? What is meant by the term “wage slavery?” Compare this system of labor with that of migrant farm workers in North America and with factory working conditions in some of the newly emerging countries of South Asia today.
2. How can the abolition of slavery in Africa be seen in the context of the needs of the world economy?
3. What does the description of “the Ball” say about the effectiveness of the Brussels treaty of 1890? How would the French owners of this company have responded to this question?
4. What conclusions might you make from this reading about the consequences for Africa of the abolition of slavery in the western world?

Edward Rossiter is Department Head of History and Social Sciences at Newton North High School, Newton, Massachusetts.