First Pan-African Congress meets in Paris

The Spanish government brought legal slavery in Cuba to an end after a gradual transition that had included an apprenticeship-like regime. The delay reflected the political power of plantation...

Brazil’s Lei Áurea formally abolished slavery, making it the last country in the Americas to do so. The law followed sustained resistance by enslaved people, mass escapes, abolitionist mobilization,...

The Brussels General Act created measures for suppressing African slave trading, including controls on arms and movement in designated regions. It was shaped by African resistance and anti-slavery...

Organized by Trinidadian lawyer Henry Sylvester Williams, this meeting brought activists from Africa, the Caribbean, Britain, and the United States into a shared political forum. It challenged...

The congress debated racial equality and imperial power in an era when colonial rule was presented as a civilizing mission. Du Bois and other Black intellectuals used the international meeting to...

The ILO constitution made labor conditions an international concern in the postwar order. Its early framework coexisted with colonial forced labor and unequal representation; workers and...

The treaty entered into force, bringing the League of Nations into being and creating an international body that addressed slavery and forced labor. The new order remained dominated by empires and did...

At its 1920 convention in New York, the UNIA adopted a declaration asserting political, civil, and economic rights for Black people worldwide. Its mass membership connected Caribbean migrants, African...

The convention committed states to suppress slavery and the slave trade and defined slavery in international law. Its adoption marked a major diplomatic recognition, but colonial forced labor and...

Convention No. 29 required ratifying states to suppress forced or compulsory labor, but permitted exceptions including some colonial public works. The colonial exception exposes how international...