the league of nations adopts the international slavery convention

7/29/2019 The League of Nations Adopts the International Slavery Convention

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League of Nations Adopts InternationalSlavery Convention

League of Nations Adopts International Slavery

Convention

Article abstract: The 1926 International Slavery Convention was part of an effort begun by colonial nations a

century earlier to suppress slavery in all of its forms.

Summary of Event

The ancient Greeks believed in natural slavery, especially for people who did not speak Greek, who were

referred to as barbarians. With the advent of Christianity and the nation-state, a variety of justifications were

used to harmonize slavery with the teachings of the Bible. Christians, for example, justified enslaving people

who practiced cannibalism and human sacrifice.

The philosophers of the American and French revolutions did much to discredit slavery by condemning it for

destroying the natural liberty of human beings. In the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, at the Congress of

Vienna on February 8, 1815, the victorious nations declared their intention to suppress the slave trade. The

powers with colonial possessions were advised of their obligation and duty to abolish the slave trade. However,

the institution of slavery itself, in the form of plantation slavery in the British possessions and in the United

States, was virtually untouched.

None of the nations at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 was willing to trespass on the sovereignty of other

states to end any form of domestic slavery. Nevertheless, the Congress of Vienna was a major step toward

engendering an agreement among European nations to work to abolish the international traffic in slaves,

especially the trans-Atlantic trade.

Colonialism could be justified, according to Sir Frederick Lugard, who had served for many years in Africa as a

colonial administrator, only if it provided mutual advantages for the colonized natives and for the world.

Colonialism was a school to Christianize and civilize savage peoples. In return, the colony would provide

European capitalists with raw materials for their industries and markets for their manufacturers.

In 1885, European nations held the African Conference at Berlin. That conference called for the suppression of

slavery and specifically of the Negro slave trade, but the act passed by the conference applied only to the

Congo Basin. It was, however, an important development in creating a body of international law which was

militantly opposed to slavery.

Explorers, such as Henry Morton Stanley, had discovered and publicized the existence of a vast area in Africa

that was controlled by Arab slave raiders. Arab traders, such as Tippu Tib, actually posed a military threat to the

tribes of the region and even to the Belgian military. Strong military operations were necessary in the Congo and

elsewhere in Africa to defeat combative slave traders. The parties to the African Conference, in an 1886 decree,

provided for penal servitude for slave traders.


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Slave caravans penetrated the interior of Africa from the shores of the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, the Persian

Gulf, and the Indian Ocean. The traffic in slaves encompassed the modern countries of Nigeria, Sudan,

League of Nations Adopts International Slavery ConventionEthiopia, Ghana, Burundi, and Democratic Republic of the Congo, among others. Slaves brought to trading

centers in northern and eastern Africa were sold for local use or, as was more often the case, were sent to

Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and other eastern countries. Another decree in 1888 regarding labor contractsprohibited the enslavement of natives by nonnatives. The colonial powers were trying to abolish slavery

indirectly by abolishing the slave trade.

There were difficulties connected with the outright abolition of domestic slavery (that is, slavery within a colony)

and forced labor, and an international consensus did not yet exist for a frontal attack on slavery and its analogous

forms. An impressive step was taken to suppress slavery at the Second Brussels Conference of 1890. The General

Act of Brussels, signed on July 2, 1890, as a result of that conference, had more signatories than earlier

international conventions on the suppression of slavery; it also had more enforcement requirements in its articles

than did preceding conventions. The nations meeting at Brussels included all of the major European nations, as

well as the United States, Turkey, Iran, and Zanzibar. The General Act of Brussels prescribed specific measures

for the acceding nations to take against slave raiding and trading in the territory under European control.

The measures enacted by the antislavery alliance were designed to spur the parties to organize the administrative,

judicial, and military services of government in their territories of Africa so that they could more effectively

regulate the slave traffic. The General Act of Brussels required the establishment of military posts in the interior,

where slave raiders collected slaves for overland transit to the coasts for shipment to eastern countries; an

increase in the use of steamships manned by soldiers on navigable waterways and lakes, thus expanding the

presence of the central government throughout the region; more operations by flying columns of soldiers to

maintain contact between various military posts; and the installation of telegraphs as a means of linking isolated

areas to the provincial capital to monitor movements of slave traders and to allow for a more rapid deployment of

military forces.

The articles of the General Act of Brussels were meaningful in setting the foundation for more expansive efforts

toward suppressing the slave trade, domestic slavery, and many of the forms of forced labor. Belgium employed

military force against slave raiders to gain control of the interior and to suppress slavery. In time, with the use

of native troops and modern weapons, the Belgians secured the interior from large-scale raids from outside the

Congo Basin, at a cost of considerable losses of Belgian soldiers. The problem of domestic slavery was left to

languish. It was difficult to differentiate between slavery, according to many European apologists, as an

acceptable social institution and slavery as a barbaric and cruel method of employment of individuals against

their will. Domestic slavery was seen as inevitable but susceptible to gradual elimination through civilizing of

native people by European colonizers. Enslavement of natives by natives was considered by Europeans to be

beyond the realm of their control, while slavery imposed by nonnatives on natives was strictly prohibited as

odious to all civilized people and was punishable by law.

World War I interrupted the international efforts to stop slavery and the continuing endeavor at enforcement of

the precepts of the General Act of Brussels. The victorious allies"Belgium, the United Kingdom, France, Italy,

Japan, Portugal, and the United States"signed a new compact at Saint-Germain-en-Laye on September 10,

1919. The new convention was formulated to complete the work started by the General Act of Brussels.

The Saint-Germain-en-Laye Convention was short-lived. It was superseded by antislavery activities of the newly

founded League of Nations. The League of Nations confirmed the previous antislavery declarations and

proclaimed its own intent to achieve the complete suppression of slavery in all of its forms and of the slave trade

by land and sea.

In 1924, the League of Nations appointed a Temporary Slavery Commission of eight experts to compile


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information on slavery, so-called domestic slavery, slave raiding, serfdom, purchase of girls as brides, simulated

adoption of children for purposes of sexual exploitation, varied forms of indenture, and compulsory

Summary of Eventlabor by state and private employers. Sir Frederick Lugard, perhaps the most influential and respected member

of the Temporary Slavery Commission, helped to craft the commissions report to the Council of the League of

Nations. Sir Fredericks broad experience and practical approach to the suppression of slavery assured thereports adoption by most of the member states of the League of Nations. His suggestions moved the members

to moderate positions while retaining the goal of the eventual end of de facto slavery through a process of

transition and the development of new modes of employment.

Paul Hymans, the Belgian delegate to the League of Nations in 1926, personified the efforts by Belgium to

establish an unambiguous posture toward the suppression of the slave trade and nonnative enslavement of

natives. He was reluctant, as were most members, to grapple with the question of forced labor and domestic

slavery. The Belgians were, to a good extent, successful in suppressing the slave trade in the Congo Basin.

The report of the Temporary Slavery Commission stated the objectives of the commission. It defined

enslavement, made proposals for regulating and punishing persons engaged in slave-raiding and the slavetrade, and addressed slave dealing and the more controversial domestic slavery issue. In an auxiliary

category, the report discussed the acquisition of girls by purchase, disguised as payment of dowry, and

adoption of children with a view to their virtual enslavement or the ultimate disposal of their persons.

The Temporary Slavery Commission was shrewdly cautious on the question of forced labor: Its abolition was

desirable but not achievable given the provisions of the Covenant of the League of Nations, which prohibited

intervention by member states into the domestic affairs of any state. In addition, the commission recognized a

need for compulsory native labor in an environment that was inhospitable to white workers. According to the

adopted Convention on Slavery, signatories recognized the need for governments to use compulsory or forced

labor for public projects but urged that such use should be transitional and should end as soon as possible.

Signatories were allowed to accept all or only some of the provisions of the convention, significantly weakening

its impact. It was more moral suasion than enforceable law, but it represented a goal to be striven for by many

members of the League of Nations.

Impact of Event

The 1926 Slavery Convention defined slavery as the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the

powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised. The convention required the former colonies of

Germany and the Ottoman Empire, now mandates of the League of Nations, to suppress slavery and to prepare

the people of the mandates for active participation in their own political affairs.

Ethiopia was denied entry into the League of Nations until it formulated a definite plan to eliminate all forms ofslavery, which it finally accomplished to a limited extent in the official abolition of slavery in 1942. Liberia, the

other recalcitrant slave state, was pressured by the League of Nations to outlaw intertribal slavery and to abolish

some other forms of servitude.

The most significant impacts of the 1926 Slavery Convention were on slave raiding and the de jure abolition of

slavery in Ethiopia and Liberia. The mandate system also gave the League of Nations moral clout and some

circumscribed political leverage in suppressing domestic slavery and specific forms of forced labor.

It was the transition from slavery to certain forms of servile labor, including debt bondage and contract labor,

that undermined the effects of emancipation of slaves around the world. Two strategies emerged to replace de

facto slavery. One was to entice new labor from other areas by means of indentures, or contracts to work for

specific periods of time. This system often involved the accumulation of debts by the laborer. The other form,


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emerging in the aftermath of emancipation, was peasant bondage, which used former slaves on small land holds

and on large projects, such as road building and railroad construction. Peasant bondage was a form of

Impact of Eventvirtual slavery in which workers were paid in the form of training or provisions. Both systems, in many

variations, are indirect forms of slavery, or servitude. In the United States, servile labor took the form of

sharecropping and share tenancy, in which workers paid part of their harvest as rent. In the Caribbean, it was in

the form of contracted labor from India and the Middle East.

The 1926 International Slavery Convention had an important impact, in laying the foundation for continuing

struggle against de jure slavery and in establishing continual international opposition to all forms of slavery. It

did not, however, immediately end all forms of exploitive labor arrangements.

Further Reading:

Barnes, Anthony J. Captain Charles Stuart: Anglo-American Abolitionist. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State

University Press, 1986. A solid biography of a relatively obscure militant abolitionist. His attack on

gradualists in the movement convinced people like William Lloyd Garrison to take a more militant stance.

Drescher, Seymour. Capitalism and Antislavery: British Mobilization in Comparative Perspective. London:

Macmillan, 1986. This revisionary account of black slavery in the Americas and in Africa is convincing.

Dreschers assessment of the historiography on slavery is broad and powerfully written. Drescher explains

English law and slavery.

Ennew, Judith. Debt Bondage. London: Anti-Slavery Society, 1981. A survey of contemporary debt bondage

throughout the world. This report shows graphically the persistence of contract labor and the little progress

being made to end it.

Koger, Larry. Black Slaveowners: Free Black Slave Masters in South Carolina, 1790-1860. London:

McFarland, 1985. There have been several works on free blacks owning slaves in the antebellum South. This is

the first study to show that free black masters behaved similarly to white slave owners. Both exploited slaves

for profit.

Ostrower, Gary B. The League of Nations, from 1919-1929. Edited by George J. Lankevick. Garden City Park,

N.Y.: Avery Publishing Group, 1996. This interesting and readable volume covers the first ten years of the

League of Nations. Illustrated, with a comprehensive chronology and a bibliography.

Watson, Alan. Roman Slave Law. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987. The author

maintains that in a strict sense there was scarcely any such thing as Roman slave law; rather, every

category of the law was affected by the fact of being a slave.

Source: Great Events from History II: Human Rights Series, 1992 Salem Press, Inc.. All Rights Reserved.

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the league of nations adopts the international slavery convention

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