APPENDIX GENERAL ACT OF THE BRUSSELS CONFERENCE RELATIVE TO THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE Signed at Brussels, July 2, 1890, on behalf of Great Britain, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Denmark, Spain, the Congo, United States of America, France, Italy, Netherlands, Persia, Portugal, Russia, Sweden and Norway, Turkey, and Zanzibar, and came into force April 2, 1892. CHAPTER I SLAVE TRADE COUNTRIES-MEASURES TO BE TAKEN IN Article I The Powers declare that the most effective means for counteracting the Slave Trade in the interior of Africa are the following :- 1. Progressive organisation of the administrative, judicial, religious, and military services in the African territories placed under the sovereignty or protectorate of civilised nations. 2. The gradual establishment in the interior, by the responsible Power in each territory, of strongly occupied stations, in such a way as to make their protective or repressive action effectively felt in the territories devastated by man-hunts. 3. The construction of roads, and in particular of railways, connecting the advanced stations with the coast, and permitting easy access to the inland waters, and to the upper reaches of streams and rivers which are broken by rapids and cataracts, so as to substitute economical and speedy means of transport for the present means of portage by men. 4. Establishment of steam-boats on the inland navigable waters and on the lakes, supported by fortified posts established on the banks. VOL. II. M M 5. Establishment of telegraphic lines assuring the communication of the posts and stations with the coast and with the administrative centres. 6. Organisation 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 assure the security of roadways. 7. Restriction of the importation of fire-arms, at least of modern pattern, and of ammunition, throughout the entire extent of the territories infected by the Slave Trade. Article II The stations, the cruisers organised by each Power in its inland waters, and the posts which serve as ports for them shall, independently of their principal task, which is to prevent the capture of slaves and intercept the routes of the Slave Trade, have the following subsidiary duties :— 1. To serve as a base and, if necessary, as a place of refuge for the native populations placed under the sovereignty or the protectorate of the State to which the station belongs, for the independent populations, and temporarily for all others in case of imminent danger; to place the populations of the first of these categories in a position to co-operate for their own defence; to diminish intestine wars between tribes by means of arbitration; to initiate them in agricultural works and in the industrial arts, so as to increase their welfare; to raise them to civilisation and bring about the extinction of barbarous customs, such as cannibalism and human sacrifices. 2. To give aid and protection to commercial undertakings; to watch over their legality, especially by controlling contracts of service with natives; and to lead up to the foundation of permanent centres of cultivation and of commercial establishments. 3. To protect, without distinction of creed, the Missions which are already or may hereafter be established. 4. To provide for the sanitary service, and to grant hospitality and help to explorers and to all who take part in Africa in the work of repressing the Slave Trade. Article III The Powers exercising sovereignty or protectorate in Africa, in order to confirm and give greater precision to their former declarations, undertake to proceed gradually, as circumstances permit, either by the means above indicated, or by any other means which they may consider suitable, with the repression of the Slave Trade; each State in its respective possessions and under its own direction. Whenever they consider it possible they will lend their good offices to the Powers which, with a purely humanitarian object, may be engaged in Africa upon a similar mission. Article IV The Powers exercising sovereignty or protectorate in Africa may, however, delegate to Chartered Companies all or a portion of the engagements which they assume in virtue of Article III. They remain, nevertheless, directly responsible for the engagements which they contract by the present General Act, and guarantee the execution thereof. The Powers promise to receive, aid, and protect national Associations and enterprises due to private initiative which may wish to co-operate in their possessions in the repression of the Slave Trade, subject to their receiving previous authorisation, which is revocable at any time; subject also to their being directed and controlled, and to the exclusion of any exercise of rights of sovereignty. Article V The contracting Powers undertake, unless this has already been provided for by laws in accordance with the spirit of the present Article, to enact or propose to their respective Legislatures, in the course of one year at latest from the date of the signature of the present General Act, a Law applying, on the one hand, the provisions of their penal laws concerning grave offences against the person, to the organisers and abettors of man-hunts, to perpetrators of the mutilation of adults and male infants, and to all persons who may take part in the capture of slaves by violence; and, on the other hand, the provisions relating to offences against individual liberty, to carriers, transporters, and dealers in slaves. Accomplices and accessories of the different categories of slave captors and dealers above specified, shall be punished with penalties proportionate to those incurred by the principals. Guilty persons who may have escaped from the jurisdiction of the authorities of the country where the crimes or offences have been committed, shall be arrested either on communication of the incriminatory evidence by the authorities who have ascertained the violation of the law, or on production of any other proof of guilt by the Power on whose territory they may have been discovered, and shall, without other formality, be held at the disposal of the Tribunals competent to try them. The Powers will communicate to each other with the least possible delay the Laws or Decrees already in existence or promulgated in execution of the present Article. Article VI Slaves liberated in consequence of the stoppage or dispersal of a convoy in the interior of the continent, shall be sent back, if circum stances permit, to their country of origin; if not, the local authorities shall help them as much as possible to obtain means of subsistence, and, if they desire it, to settle on the spot. Article VII Any fugitive slave claiming on the continent the protection of the signatory Powers shall obtain it, and shall be received in the camps and stations officially established by them, or on board Government vessels plying on the lakes and rivers. Private stations and vessels are only permitted to exercise the right of asylum subject to the previous sanction of the State. Article VIII The experience of all nations who have intercourse with Africa having shown the pernicious and preponderating part played by firearms in slave-trade operations, as well as in intestine wars between native tribes; and this same experience having clearly proved that the preservation of the African populations, whose existence it is the express wish of the Powers to safeguard, is a radical impossibility if restrictive measures against the trade in fire-arms and ammunition are not established; the Powers decide, in so far as the present state of their frontiers permits, that the importation of fire-arms, and especially of rifles and improved weapons, as well as of powder, balls, and cartridges, is, except in the cases and under the conditions provided for in the following Article, prohibited in the territories comprised between the 20th parallel of north latitude and the 22nd parallel of south latitude, and extending westward to the Atlantic Ocean, and eastward to the Indian Ocean and its dependencies, comprising the islands adjacent to the coast as far as 100 nautical miles from the shore. Article IX The introduction of fire-arms and ammunition, when there shall be occasion to authorise it in the possessions of the signatory Powers which exercise rights of sovereignty or of protectorate in Africa, shall be regulated in the following manner in the zone laid down in Article VIII., unless identical or more rigorous regulations have been already applied : All imported fire-arms shall be deposited, at the cost, risk, and peril of the importers, in a public warehouse placed under the control of the Administration of the State. No withdrawal of fire-arms or imported ammunition shall take place from such warehouses without the previous authorisation of the Administration. This authorisation shall, except in cases hereinafter specified, be refused for the withdrawal of all arms of precision, such as rifles, magazine guns, or |