e illegality
of the slave-trade, and imposed upon annexing powers the duty of
helping to suppress it; this provision was made much fuller and more
definite by a second conference at Brussels in 1890, on the demand of
Britain, who had hitherto contended almost alone against the traffic in
human flesh. But no attempt was made to define native rights, to
safeguard native customs, to prohibit the maintenance of forces larger
than would be necessary for the maintenance of order: in short, no
attempt was made to lay down the doctrine that the function of a ruling
power among backward peoples is that of a trustee on behalf of its
simple subjects and on behalf of civilisation. That the partition of
Africa should have been effected without open war, and that the
questions decided at Berlin should have been so easily and peacefully
agreed upon, seemed at the moment to be a good sign. But the spirit
which the conference expressed was not a healthy spirit.

After 1884 the activity of the powers in exploration, annexation and
development became more furious than ever. Britain now began seriously
to arouse herself to the danger of exclusion from vast areas where her
interests had hitherto been predominant; and it was during these years
that all her main acquisitions of territory in Africa were made:
Rhodesia and Central Africa in the south, East Africa and Somaliland in
the East, Nigeria and the expansion of her lesser protectorates in the
West. To these years also belonged the definite, and most unfortunate,
emergence of Italy as a colonising power. She had got a foothold in
Eritrea in 1883; in 1885 it was, with British aid, enlarged by the
annexation of territory which had once been held by Egypt, but had been
abandoned when she lost the Soudan. But the Italian claims in Eritrea
brought on conflict with the neighbouring native power of Abyssinia. In
spite of a sharp defeat at Dogali in 1887, she succeeded in holding her
own in this conflict; and in 1889 Abyssinia accepted a treaty which
Italy claimed to be a recognition of her suzerainty. But the
Abyssinians repudiated this interpretation; and in a new war, which
began in 1896, inflicted upon the Italians so disastrous a defeat at
Adowa that they were constrained to admit the complete independence of
Abyssinia--the sole native state which has so far been able to hold its
own against the pressure of Europe. Meanwhile in 1889 and the following
years Italy had, once more with the dire