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• 1 media/Thumb129.png 2024-11-08T11:57:13-05:00 "In Africa" 33 European states fight to dominate Africa. plain 2024-12-28T10:56:57-05:00 Translation:(Excerpt from Le Soleil of 30 August)
  
  The attention of all of the peoples and of all of the governments of Europe are turning more and more toward Africa. In spite of so many hardy explorers, enterprises and discoveries, the Black continent has not yet revealed all of its secrets; but the greedy nations are not waiting for it to be fully known before they start arguing over its possession.
  
  In Africa, conflicts can erupt that shake up Europe: Egypt, Tripolitania, Tunisia, Morocco, have been or will soon be apples of discord between powers; the Senussian sect will someday enflame Muslim fanaticism against the Christian conquerors. Africa is the object of all of the important diplomatic incidents, and of a series of treated that have succeeded one another at short intervals in recent months; the Anglo-German treaty of 1890, the Anglo-French treaty of 5 August, the Anglo-Portuguese treaty of 20 August. Finally, all commercial and adventurous ambitious that were once directed at America are now focused on Africa.
  
  America, first monopolized almost entirely by the Spanish, was, during the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth century, the goal of fruitful schemes, of audacious dreams, of violent appetites.
  
  Today, America is closed to chivalrous expeditions; it will also soon be closed to European commercial operations. But Africa is opening before them; they're jumping at it at every opportunity. As is always the case in contests of greed, England is coming out on top; its Companies, formed with enormous capital, based on the model of the old East India Company, have shared between themselves, on their own authority, the most vast and the richest regions of the African continent. When they have come up against rivals, the metropole has supported them. They dealt with the Germans by giving them real compensations; they defied the French by giving them illusory compensations; the brutally silenced the Portuguese by the ultimatum of last January.
  
  But it is not a perfect success; the disadvantages of too vast and too absorbing a domination are everywhere the same. In America, the Spanish empire saw no end of rebellions, of incursions of English and French corsairs, and of the brigandage of filibusters. In Africa, the English empire will not be able to avoid similar vicissitudes. the hatred that it has provoked in its foundation will not allow it to develop and consolidate in peace.
  
  Already, in their fight against the Boers of Transvaal, a few years ago, the English have encountered the effect of free men exacerbated by injustice. It was a descendant of French emigrants, General Joubert, who is in Paris these day, who inflected their bloody failure in Majuba.
  
  Now it is the Portuguese who have been pushed to the brink by the appetites of British egoism. The Portuguese have seen themselves for centuries as All Powerful in Africa; they have created immense establishments there; they have renewed in our day ancient rights by acts. Violently dispossessed of what they considered their patrimony, they must have felt a just resentment against this offence One singular fact reveals it: a lieutenant of the Portuguese navy, the former governor of Shiré, submitted his resignation and became a pirate. Against English domination, he will renew the exploits of the Filibusters against Spanish domination; to start, he and his crew captured a steamboat of the British Lakes Company.
  
  The heroic times will return, and the descendants of are worthy to resuscitate it; the descendants of Albuquerque are worthy to resuscitate it; while at one end of Africa, Lieutenant Azvedo Coutinho was distinguishing himself as the champion of Portuguese honour, at the other, his comrade Lieutenant Santos risked his life to protect the persons and the goods of the French who had fallen to the power of the King of Dahomey. These are brave men, and the small nation that produced them must be respected as one of the greatest.
  
  Urbain Gohier
  
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• 1 media/Thumb 154.png 2024-12-03T13:23:40-05:00 "Deliberations of the Anti-Slavery Congress" 24 Summary of the proceedings of the Congress plain 2024-12-13T12:43:13-05:00
  

  First Session

  Monday 22 September
  
  The delegates of different antislavery Committees gathered, at 9 o'clock in the morning, in the hall of the Geography Society, 184 Boulevard St-Germain, under the chairmanship of His Eminence Cardinal Lavigerie, for the constitution of the definitive board and the setting of the agenda.
  
  Mr. Keller, the former deputy and president of the Directory Council of the Antislavery Society, was elected to preside over the Congress, and the Count of Resbecq, as secretary general.
  
  Haiti, the first independent Black State, not yet having an antislavery committee, did not have a representative at the Congress. We shared our regrets with Mgr. Brincat who, with with a haste for which we are grateful, was happy to submit the case before His Eminence Cardinal Lavigerie. On the request of the prelate, the Congress unanimously admitted us as Haitian representative.
  
  In this first session, Messrs. the members of the Congress examined if it was appropriate:
  1. To publicly adhere to the dispositions of the general act of the Brussels Conference, as it was adopted by the powers.
  2. To decide that the Antislavery Campaign should remain divided into fully independent national committees, according to the nation to which each belongs, and to specify, by consequence, the sphere of action that each of these committees should adopt with regard to Africa.
  3. It if was appropriate for each of these national Committees to offer their active support to the respective Governments in the sphere of territorial influence of each of them, primarily for the creation of a corps of volunteers chosen from among the men who spontaneously offered their services to the Committees.
  ===

  At 3 o'clock in the afternoon 

  Public Session

  Cardinal Richard, archbishop of Paris, who had intended to preside over this session, found himself suddenly indisposed, and asked Mgr Livinhac to replace him. Mgr. Brincat read out the letter by which the prelate had excused himself.
  
  Mr. Keller eloquently read the proceedings of slavery as "contrary to natural law and Christian law."
  
  After having welcomed the representatives of foreign committees and sang the praises of Great Britain's colonial conduct, he gave a warm appeal to all those who have an interest in humanity. For the fight against the ferocious slavers, missionaries and resources are needed; schools must be founded that will give the Blacks the taste for work, hospitals, etc. It was to assure the means to attain this goal that the Congress was convened.
  
  Then, Mr. Descamps David, member of the steering committee of Brussels, spoke brilliantly about the providential characteristics of the anti-slavery movement in the nineteenth century and on the opportunity of an active campaign.
  
  Next, Brother Alexis, the well known geographer, gave an interesting lecture on the shared policy in Africa, following on the latest diplomatic conventions.
  
  ===

  Second Session

  Tuesday 23 September, at 9 o'clock in the morning
  1. We researched a simple and practical method for procuring annual resources for the charitable work in Africa and the missions that the Act of the Brussels Conference called for and promised to protect.
  2. We examined terms in which the question of free labourers could be resolved without harming the interests of European colonists, nor the liberty of the Blacks.
  3. We deliberated on the practical means of resolving the question of African Mohammedan fanaticism (Madhism, Senussianism, etc.) without provoking accusation of religious persecution.
  4. On the necessity of immediately electing, from among the National Committees, a Jury to judge the open contest for the composition of the popular work most able to boost, in popular opinion, the cause of the abolition of African slavery, and to specify the conditions of this contest.
  A supplementary meeting was held at two o'clock to clarify the latter points. And it was decided to continue acting on public opinion by way of anti-slavery Bulletins and communications made to the press, in order to ensure the strict execution of the decisions adopted by the Powers.

  Public and Solemn Closing Session

  The attendance was much greater at this second and last session of the Congress, a considerable crowd filled the place. Well before 3 o'clock the whole vast hall: they had to hear His Eminence the Cardinal.
  
  It was the Baron d'Avril, former minister plenipotentiary of France in Valparaiso, who first took the stand. An expert in geography, he traced on Brother Alexis's map of Africa an ingenious railroad project, going from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean through the Sahara, for which the posts of the missionaries, soldiers and merchants formed a triple barrier, and effective fortification for the better part of the Soudan, for the Niger and the Algerian lands, against the shameful plague of slavery. The speaker then describe the vast establishment, created by Cardinal Lavigerie at Biskra and currently in great prosperity, "where young people ripped from the slave traders are cared for, educated, regenerated by Christianity. The results obtained have already reduced to nothing the assertions of those who see the Black race as inferior to ours."
  
  Although the session started at the appointed time, the Cardinal had not yet arrived. The Marquis of Vogüé, rapporteur of the Congress, nevertheless began reading the wishes expressed by the private morning session, when the arrival of Mgr. Lavigerie was announced. It was the eminent prelate, indeed, who, smiling and resplendent, made his entrance.
  
  Before beginning a casual and touching chat, which was interrupted many times by applause from the audience, Cardinal Lavigerie read a telegram from Leo XIII, "from the pope taking in hand the defence of slaves throughout the world from the depths of the prison of the Vatican," thanking the delegates from the good wishes they had sent to him, asking that they report on the slaves in Africa. Then the prelate said a few words on the role played by Mgr. Livinhac, his student and his son, "the first missionary in Africa," a man of science and a slave to his faith, laureate of the Academy of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres and liberator, at the risk of his life, of unfortunate children destined for torment, "the bishop who bears at once the palms of the martyr and the palms of the Institute."
  
  Mgr. Livinhac is about forty years old, of overage height; his face, looking both fine and energetic, is enveloped in a brown beard. He speaks, in a think Gascon accent, a French that he has hardly had the chance to use in the past twelve years in Africa. The fourteen young Blacks—the converts he brought with him—obey his slightest gesture with remarkable docility.
  
  He first invented them—in their language, as not one of them speaks French—to thank the cardinal who had just blessed them; and all falling to their knees and smiling while murmuring a thanksgiving, which gives the most picturesque rhythm to the cadenced swaying of the bodies and the oblique clapping of joined hands. Among these young people, there are martyrs whose heroism is reminiscent of that of the first Christians.
  
  The bishop told us their story. He called two over to him; one, very young, had seen his father flayed and burnt; another, instead of an ear had nothing but a hole on his head. It had been cut off. "Why did you have your ear cut off?" Mgr Lavigerie asked him. "Because they wanted to stop me from praying." Cardinal Lavigerie drew them near to him to embrace them. And in the hall, among those who had just been laughing at the spiritual embellishments of the cardinal, I could see men who were crying.
  
  But time was passing. Once again the Marquis of Vogüé took the stand and announced the closing of the Congress and read the wishes expressed by the delegates.
  
  At five o'clock, Mr. de Vogüé's reading is finished. The English delegate, Mr. Charles H. Allen, addressed in the name of the foreigners a compliment of farewell to Mgr. Lavigerie who, after embracing him, turned toward the assembly on his knees and blessed it.
  
  And the Congress was over. Outside, a small crowd was waiting for the prelate and greeted him respectfully.
  
  This splendid event—unique in its type—ended with a banquet in which the delegates took part, and which took place at the Hôtel Continental, under the chairmanship of Mr. Keller.
  
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