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Manifeste de la Société antiesclavagiste de Bruxelles

Bibliothèque Nationale de France

Manifesto Antislavery Abolition Belgium Brussels Society Lavigerie Crusade Catholic Europe Leopold Congo Cologne

Anti-slavery societies in France, Belgium, Germany and Switzerland were founded in the late 1880s, in response to Cardinal Lavigerie's anti-slavery public speaking tour in summer 1888. This new abolitionist movement was seen as a collaboration primarily between European Catholics (Lavigerie also attempted to set up committees in Italy and Spain). British abolitionist interest was also solicited. This manifesto was published in the journal of the French anti-slavery society, and it lays out the founding principles of the committee in Brussels. It calls on Belgian Catholics to financially support the "liberating", "civilizing" (75) expedition to the Congo, described as part of the European "crusade" (74) against slavery. Belgium's place is said to be "in the first ranks of this liberation movement" (77). The manifesto also refers to central figures of European abolitionism in the late nineteenth century, such as Lavigerie, Livingstone and Leopold II of Belgium.

In Bulletin de la Société antiesclavagiste de France, I (October 1888), 74-78. This issue of the Bulletin also contains letters of support from the Pope and the French bishops to Lavigerie, a traveller's account of slave trading in East Africa, which was published in the Cologne Gazette, and an announcement from the anti-slavery committee at Cologne (where an anti-slavery meeting was held in October 1888).