Survival and Penalty of the Slave Trade from Gabon Until the Congo in 1840–1880

Book excerpt: In this Volume III, we will continue the second part of the book (that is to say, Repression and the Impact of the Treaty on Ogooue, Loango, Congo and Surrounding Societies) that we have already begun in Volume II. We will try to carefully consider the suppression of this inhuman trading on the shores of Gabon, who were under French sovereignty. In Gabon, as elsewhere in Loango and especially in Congo, the slave buying and selling was sometimes in disguised forms. It is carried in the domestic qualification between the coast of Africa and Brazil and the blacks who were subsequently sold as slaves mercilessly. However, a tolerance granted to boarding the blacks as such (that is to say, by way of domestic, whatever their numbers elsewhere, and especially their species) was, therefore, not regarded as any other than the implicit tolerance of the slave trader, which, of course, was not slow to manifest itself openly. The still was transported under the qualification free emigrants (with employment contracts), considerable quantities of Negroes. We were brought in the new world. All these operations raised a great outcry from international opinion. First, without really giving the impression to tackle this or that nation who practiced these operations, we made people understand that the mortality raging in the boats, making this covert deals too high. After, it openly attacked the nations who were involved in these practices.