ABSTRACT
Hardly a page from the history of central Africa can be turned without finding something about slaves. Europeans encountered slavery everywhere they went. By the time Henry M. Stanley arrived in central equatorial Africa there had been many years of agitation for the abolition of slavery in western states. Antislavery propaganda played such an important role in drumming up political, economic, and missionary support for what was going on in central Africa, it is not surprising that some steps were taken in French and Belgian territories to 'abolish' slavery. Continental involvement in the antislavery movement was achieved at the Congress of Vienna in 1814, when the principle was acknowledged that the slave trade should be abolished as soon as possible. Muslim traders were providing Belgians with slaves whom the latter indentured as workers before the State decided to eliminate their hegemony. The belief in cannibalism has to be accepted as a fact of colonialism.
