Zoning Control: Revisiting the Brussels Conference Act of 1890 and Its Legacy into the Twentieth Century

Abstract

One hundred and thirty years ago, governments convened in Brussels to discuss a new treaty that would address the trades in slaves, firearms and liquors in Africa. This treaty - the Brussels Conference Act (BCA) - came just five years after the Berlin Conference and Act and has largely been overshadowed by its predecessor. In many ways, though, for colonial governments the BCA was both the necessary counterpart and the logical, as well as legal, successor to the Berlin Conference and Act. If Berlin politically carved up the continent of Africa, Brussels provided the legal justification for doing so. The BCA did this through creating a series of zones, within which European states empowered themselves to act in ways that would facilitate, and at times mandate, colonialism in the guise of humanitarian ideals. These zones covered much of sub-Saharan Africa and the waters off its eastern coast. While the BCA itself lasted until the end of the First World War, the idea of these zones had greater longevity, with special zones proposed in discussions on slavery and the arms trade both during the League of Nations era and into the early years of the United Nations. This article explores the ways in which the idea of this zone within the BCA enabled colonialism and how this idea persisted into the middle of the twentieth century. In doing so, it seeks to consider zones of control not only a matter of legal history, but also as a way to better understand and make more visible the structures upon which international law is built today.