Example I

Text 1

Emile de Laveleye, ‘The Division of Africa’, Forum (January 1891), 479–96

African affairs have recently been settled by a series of strange events hitherto unexampled in the domain of international law and diplomacy. First, we have seen the spontaneous generation of a state five times the size of France; secondly, the founding in the very heart of Africa of a neutral zone, stretching from shore to shore of the dark continent, where the humane principles of philanthropy, from which Europe is farther and farther receding, are successfully practiced; thirdly, mutual grants of immense expanses of territory made to one another by several European states under the novel name of ‘spheres of influence,’ over which the contracting parties had no right whatever, and on which, in fact, no European had ever set foot, as Lord Salisbury himself, the principal author of this remarkable arrangement, ironically remarked. We have witnessed an ingenious and economical application of the maxim ‘Do ut des’—one giving another what is not his to bestow—as was the case in the recent Anglo-German treaty, when Berlin and London allotted themselves shares, not only of the region near the great lakes, but even of some possessions of the Sultan of Zanzibar, who was most courteously deprived of his sovereignty over them.

This system of international treaties, till now quite unknown, has been the result of long and difficult negotiations which must be followed step by step.