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above, but also because the mere existence of such a Commission could enlighten world public opinion as to the position in regard to slavery in the world and would foster the growth of a movement of opinion which must be expected to produce favourable results for the dis- appearance of slavery in all its forms. Paragraphs 74 to 77 of the present report set forth the suggestions concerning the constitution, character, operation, programme of work and methods of this Commission,
As to the last question namely, what measures the Committee could suggest to induce States which have not yet done so to ratify the Convention of 1926 or accede thereto the Committee has no suggestions to make except that, during the meetings of the Assembly, attention should be drawn to the existence of that Convention and to the desirability for all Members of the League, even though slavery does not exist in the territories under their authority, to ratify or accede to this Convention, thereby lending their moral support to the campaign against slavery started so long ago.
CHAPTER I.
II.
REPORT TO THE COUNCIL.
STATUS AND LEGAL STATUS OF SLAVES.
A. Survey of the Situation.
(Signed) GOHR.
I. The Report of the Temporary Slavery Commission contained a summary enumeration of the States in which slavery in the strict sense of the term no longer existed legally and of those in which it was still an institution sanctioned by law.
According to this report, in the year 1924 all Christian countries except Abyssinia had abolished the legality of the status of slavery in their colonies and territories under their control. On the other hand, though the great States of the Far East--in particular, China--had taken similar action, the status of slavery was still recognised by law in some Asiatic States, such as Thibet, Nepal and most of the Moslem States of the East.
The 1925 report, however, proved to be not entirely accurate, since a judgment in 1927 by a Sierra Leone court gave a rather unexpected interpretation of the local ordinances-viz., that a master was not acting illegally when he resorted to a reasonable degree of force in order to re-capture an escaped slave. This judgment, however, was immediately followed by an ordinance of the Sierra Leone Government expressly abolishing the legal status of slavery in that British dependency. Other British colonial Governments have followed the example of Freetown, with a view to obviating the possibility of any doubt as to the interpretation of the law. The Governments referred to are those of Gambia, the Gold Coast, Ashanti, Nyasaland, Northern Rhodesia and Somaliland.
2. The present Committee notes with great satisfaction the appreciable progress to which the documents received by it bear testimony. Apart from Afghanistan and Iraq, which abolished the legal status of slavery in 1923 and 1924 respectively, the Maharajah of Nepal in 1926, Kelat in November 1926, Transjordan in 1929, and Persia in February 1929 abolished slavery as a legal institution. In China, the abolition of the status of slavery was again confirmed as regards the province of Canton by an edict promulgated on March 1st, 1927, by the Cantonese Government. According to the documents placed at the Committee's disposal, an edict to the same effect seems also to have been published by the Government of Nanking, but, as in many other cases, the Committee was unable to ascertain the exact scope of this edict. Afghanistan also confirmed the abolition of the status of slavery by a law dated October 30th, 1931. Lastly, in the Bahrein Archipelago, the Government courts refuse to recognise the status of slavery.
the
In short, unless slavery is still a legal institution in Tibet and in Central Asia, countries regarding which the documentary material at the disposal of the Committee has no confirmation, slavery is now recognised only in the Hejaz and Nejd, in the Sultanates of Hadhramuth, in Oman, and in the Sultanate of Koweit.
Yemen, in Undoubtedly slavery also exists in Abyssinia, but, as will be seen later in this report, the Government of that country has taken measures to prevent any further enslavement, to reduce gradually the number of slaves and to prepare for the abolition of the status within the more or less near future.
3. The abolition of the legal status of slavery differs from compulsory emancipation. It means that in the eye of the law no slaves exist. Thus no court or administrative authority can allow a claim to exercise over a human being any of the rights that may be held over a thing; but the abolition of the legal status does not prevent the former slave from remaining with his master if that is the desire of both of them.
Most Governments have only abolished the legal status. They have not proceeded immediately to compulsory manumission. The reasons for this attitude are as follows: Why impose freedom on a person who accepts his or her condition of servitude ? Is there not some danger that the
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action of the authorities may be prejudicial to the persons compulsorily liberated, exposed as they will henceforth be to deprivation, against their will, of the benefits they received from their former masters? Moreover, would not immediate and wholesale liberation bring about a sudden change in the social structure, which it would admittedly be desirable to accomplish by evolution as rapidly as possible, but which, in the interest of all, should not be allowed to assume a revolutionary character.
4. In point of fact, this evolution is proceeding rapidly as a result of the refusal of the public authorities to recognise masters' rights over slaves and also as a result of the influence of evange- lisation and of education and, in some States or certain colonies, the grant of land to the slaves.
A powerful factor of emancipation is also the possibility for slaves to find means of subsistence or even of improving their lot by engaging themselves as wage-earners in industrial or commercial undertakings.
When they have this possibility, slaves no longer have any inducement to remain with their old masters. The ideas of liberty which prevail in the environment in which they are now placed and also the payment of wages into the slaves' own hands very soon have the effect of finally breaking the bonds which existed between the slave and his former master.
Compulsory or voluntary military service and police service are also an important factor of emancipation. Among primitive peoples, a man who has to some extent participated in the exercise of governmental authority, and especially the soldier or policeman, acquires a feeling of superiority, or at any rate of independence, with regard to those to whom he was traditionally subject.
For wage-earners, as for the soldier, the ties which bound them to their former masters become extremely slight. When they persist, they hardly amount to more than a feeling of traditional deference towards his master by the former slave, or than the belief that the latter retains at least a moral right to receive either part of the former slave's earnings in his new situation or some compensation for the loss of his services as a slave.
Needless to say, the progressive disappearance of women slaves proceeds much more slowly. As regards China, although the state of slavery has been abolished it seems that the Chinese Government has experienced some difficulty in putting it into effect, for a regulation issued on March 1st, 1927, by the Government of the province of Canton instructs the authorities to make a thorough enquiry regarding slavery within their administrative areas, and orders the liberation of peasant slaves, whatever appellation may have been given to them. On the other hand, the Chinese delegate to the 1931 Assembly protested against the assertion in the course of the Sixth Committee's work 1 that slavery still existed in China in any form whatever.
5. In some cases, however, the policy of relying on evolution to achieve the disappearance of slavery may not everywhere meet the requirements of the case; at all events, certain Govern- ments have adopted a more positive attitude.
Some Governments, after abolishing the legal status of slavery, prohibit its existence de facto- in other words, they make it an offence to possess a slave or to treat a human being as if he were a chattel.
Certain other Governments have even found it necessary to take administrative action for the liberation of all slaves by separating them individually from their masters. In some cases, the State compensates the former owner; in others, it does not. For instance, the Maharajah of Nepal paid £275,250 as the price of liberating 52,000 slaves, whom he freed in or about the year 1926. The Governments of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan and of Burma have both freed considerable numbers of slaves in fact as well as in law, and that at the cost, not only of heavy expenditure, but also of the lives of some of their officials, who were killed owing to the resistance offered by slave- owners to these measures. All honour is due to these Governments for the sacrifices they have made in freeing slaves, and to their officers who gave up their lives in the performance of their duty. In the case of Nepal, Burma and the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, it does not seem that this compulsory liberation has caused any permanent trouble either from the political or the economic point of view. These Governments have had no reason to regret their action, contrary to what has been the case in the British West Indies and in some French colonies.
6.
7. A number of colonial countries have entrusted judicial power to courts consisting solely of natives. Contrary to what might be feared, this system lias not hindered the abolition of slavery, of the legal status of slavery, or even of the de facto status, by reducing it to a purely theoretical prohibition in possessions or protectorates in which slavery was upheld by custom. In point of fact, the Power in control ensures respect for the principle of abolition of the status of slavery, either by withdrawing slavery questions at least provisionally from the jurisdiction of the native courts, or by granting European courts a right to have cases transferred to another court or a right of revision for all matters subject to the native courts.
8.
As regards Abyssinia, the present legislation, as far as can be judged from the various texts known to us, though it does not immediately abolish the status of slavery, at all events prohibits further enslavement and is gradually bringing about a reduction in the number of such slaves as may still remain. For instance, an edict dated September 15th, 1923, punishes with death
1 See Minutes of the Sixth Committee of the twelfth Assembly, 1931, page 19.
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