ABSTRACT
It is clear from Leopold's conduct of his campaign to secure international recognition of the Association Internationale du Congo (AIC) that he well understood that it would not be enough for him to insist that there were good legal precedents for recognising the AIC as a sovereign state. The key aspect of the American recognition of the AIA/AIC is not, however, that it was accompanied by so much misunderstanding, whether deliberately induced or not, but that it enshrined an undertaking by Leopold to permit free trade in the Congo. This was not the first time that Leopold had made use of the concept, since he had earlier asked Kirk and Mackinnon to put it forward in the course of the campaign against the Anglo-Portuguese Treaty. Simultaneously with the signature of the agreement with the United States, Leopold took a further decisive step, with the conclusion of an agreement with France, giving the latter a 'right of preference' to the Congo.
