The first international consensus on the abolition of slavery
The slave trade had been outlawed by all the states that participated in the Berlin Conference with the odd exception of some of the territories under Ottoman control.
In order to find common grounds to bring all the parties together, the organisers of the conference proposed the complete abolition of slavery in Africa, where vassal states continued to contribute labourers to superior kingdoms.
The territories in Ottoman Empire also had to end slavery and the slave trade, thus making the agreement in Berlin, arguably, the world’s first international agreement that none should profit from slavery.
