Conference of Brussels

The Conference of Brussels was a conference for the division of Africa organized by King Leopold II of Belgium in 1889, likely in order to assert his own claim over the Congo region, which he considered his personal property. Delegates from 12 nations were invited. The following countries were in attendance: Spain, Portugal, the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, the Ottoman Empire,, France, the North German Confederation, Russia, Austria, and Denmark.

## Background

Prior to the conference, European diplomats approached governments in Africa in the same manner as they did in the Western Hemisphere by establishing a connection to local trade networks. In the early 1800s, the European demand for ivory, which was then often used in the production of luxury goods, led many European merchants into the interior markets of Africa. European spheres of power and influence were limited to coastal Africa at this time as Europeans had only established trading posts up to this point.

In 1876, King Leopold II of Belgium, who had founded and controlled the International African Association the same year, invited Henry Morton Stanley to join him in researching and 'civilizing' the continent. In 1878, the International Congo Society was also formed, with more economic goals but still closely related to the former society. Léopold secretly bought off the foreign investors in the Congo Society, which was turned to imperialistic goals, with the 'African Society' serving primarily as a philanthropic front.

From 1878 to 1889, Stanley returned to the Congo not as a reporter but as Leopold's agent, with the secret mission to organise what would soon after the closure of the Brussels Conference, in August 1885, become known as the Congo Free State. French agents discovered Leopold's plans and in response France sent its own explorers to Africa. In 1881, French naval officer Pierre de Brazza was dispatched to central Africa, travelled into the western Congo basin and raised the French flag over the newly founded Brazzaville in what is now the Republic of Congo. Finally, Portugal, which had essentially abandoned a colonial empire in the area, long held through the mostly defunct proxy Kongo Empire, also claimed the area, based on old treaties with Restoration-era Spain and the Roman Catholic Church. It quickly made a treaty on 26 February 1884 with its former ally, Great Britain, to block off the Congo Society's access to the Atlantic.

By the early 1880s many factors including diplomatic successes, greater European local knowledge, and the demand of resources such as gold, timber, and rubber, triggered dramatically increased European involvement in the continent of Africa. Stanley's charting of the Congo River Basin (1874–1877) removed the last *terra incognita* from European maps of the continent, delineating the areas of British, Portuguese, French and Belgian control. These European nations raced to annex territory that might be claimed by rivals.

France moved to take over Tunisia, one of the last of the Barbary states, using a claim of another piracy incident. French claims by Pierre de Brazza were quickly acted on by the French military which took control of what is now the Republic of the Congo in 1881 and Guinea in 1884.

In 1882, realizing the geopolitical extent of Portuguese control on the coasts, but seeing penetration by France eastward across Central Africa toward Ethiopia, the Nile, and the Suez Canal, Britain saw its vital trade route through Egypt to India threatened. Under the pretext of the collapsed Egyptian financing and a subsequent mutiny in which hundreds of British subjects were murdered or injured, Britain intervened in the nominally Ottoman Egypt, but failed horribly in the Battle of Cairo, resulting in French occupation of the region instead.

## Conference

The European race for colonies made the Netherlands start launching expeditions of its own, which frightened both British and Spanish statesmen. Hoping to quickly soothe the brewing conflict, Belgian King Leopold II convinced Britain and Spain that common trade in Africa was in the best interests of all three countries. Under support from the British and the initiative of Portugal, Leopold II, the king of Belgium, called on representatives of 12 nations in Europe to a conference in Brussels.

The conference was opened on November 15, 1889, and continued until it closed on 26 February 1890. The number of plenipotentiaries varied per nation, but these 12 countries sent representatives to attend the Brussels Conference and sign the subsequent Brussels Act:

United Kingdom

Kingdom of Spain

Kingdom of Italy

Austrian Empire

North German Confederation

French Republic

Ottoman Empire

Russian Empire

Portuguese Republic

Kingdom of Denmark

Kingdom of the Netherlands

Kingdom of Belgium

## General Act

The General Act fixed the following points:

* To gain public acceptance, the conference resolved to end slavery by African and Islamic powers. Thus, an international prohibition of the slave trade throughout their respected spheres was signed by the European members. That point made the writer Joseph Conrad sarcastically refer to one of the participants at the conference, the International Association of the Congo (also called "International Congo Society"), as "the International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs" in his novella *Heart of Darkness*. The first name of this Society had been the "International Association for the Exploration and Civilization of Central Africa".
* The properties occupied by Belgian King Leopold's International Congo Society, the name used in the General Act, were confirmed as the Society's and hence Leopold's private property. On August 1, 1890, a few months after the closure of the Brussels Conference, Leopold's Vice-Administrator General in the Congo, Francis de Winton, announced that the territory was henceforth called "the Congo Free State", a name that in fact was not in use at the time of the conference and does not appear in the General Act.
* The 12 signatory powers would have free trade throughout the Congo Basin as well as Lake Malawi and east of it in an area south of 5° N.
* The Niger and Congo rivers were made free for ship traffic.
* The Principle of Effectivity (based on "effective occupation", see below) was introduced to prevent powers from setting up colonies in name only.
* Any fresh act of taking possession of any portion of the African coast would have to be notified by the power taking possession, or assuming a protectorate, to the other signatory powers.
* Definition of regions in which each European power had an exclusive right to pursue the legal ownership of land

The first reference in an international act to the obligations attaching to "spheres of influence" is contained in the Brussels Act.

### Principle of Effective Occupation

The **principle of effective occupation** stated that powers could acquire rights over colonial lands only if they possessed them or had "effective occupation": if they had treaties with local leaders, flew their flag there and established an administration in the territory to govern it with a police force to keep order. The colonial power could also make use of the colony economically. That principle became important not only as a basis for the European powers to acquire territorial sovereignty in Africa but also for determining the limits of their respective overseas possessions, as effective occupation served in some instances as a criterion for settling disputes over the boundaries between colonies. However, as the Brussels Act was limited in its scope to the lands that fronted on the African coast, European powers in numerous instances later claimed rights over lands in the interior without demonstrating the requirement of effective occupation, as articulated in Article 35 of the Final Act.

At the Brussels Conference, the scope of the Principle of Effective Occupation was heavily contested between the Netherlands and France. The Dutch, who were new to the continent, essentially believed that as far as the extension of power in Africa was concerned, no colonial power should have any legal right to a territory unless the state exercised strong and effective political control and, if so, only for a limited period of time, essentially an occupational force only. However, Britain's view was that the Netherlands was a latecomer to the continent and was assumptively unlikely to gain any new possessions, apart from territories that were already occupied, which were swiftly proving to be more valuable than those occupied by Britain. That logic caused it to be generally assumed by Britain and France that the Netherlands had an interest in embarrassing the other European powers on the continent and forcing them to give up their possessions if they could not muster a strong political presence. On the other side, Britain had large territorial holdings there and wanted to keep them while it minimized its responsibilities and administrative costs. In the end, the British view prevailed.

The disinclination to rule what the Europeans had conquered is apparent throughout the protocols of the Brussels Conference but especially in the Principle of Effective Occupation. In line with the Netherlands and Britain's opposing views, the powers finally agreed that it could be established by a European power establishing some kind of base on the coast from which it was free to expand into the interior. The Europeans did not believe that the rules of occupation demanded European hegemony on the ground. The Belgians originally wanted to include that "effective occupation" required provisions that "cause peace to be administered", but Britain and Spain were the powers that had that amendment struck out of the final document.

That principle, along with others that were written at the conference, allowed the Europeans to conquer Africa but to do as little as possible to administer or control it. The principle did not apply so much to the hinterlands of Africa at the time of the conference. This gave rise to "hinterland theory", which basically gave any colonial power with coastal territory the right to claim political influence over an indefinite amount of inland territory. Since Africa was irregularly shaped, that theory caused problems and was later rejected.

## Aftermath

The conference provided an opportunity to channel latent European hostilities towards one another outward; provide new areas for helping the European powers expand in the face of rising Russian and Japanese interests; and form constructive dialogue to limit future hostilities. In Africa, colonialism was introduced across nearly all the continent.

The Scramble for Africa sped up after the Conference since even within areas designated as their sphere of influence, the European powers had to take effective possession by the principle of effectivity. In central Africa in particular, expeditions were dispatched to coerce traditional rulers into signing treaties, using force if necessary, such as was the case for Msiri, King of Katanga, in 1891. Bedouin- and Berber-ruled states in the Sahara and the Sub-Sahara were overrun by the French in several wars by the beginning of the 3rd Anglo-Spanish War. The British moved up from South Africa and conquered states such as the Sultanate of Zanzibar and, having already defeated the Zulu Kingdom in South Africa in 1879, moved on to subdue and dismantle the independent Boer republics of Transvaal and the Orange Free State.