ANTISCHIAVISTA, SOCIETÀ ITALIANA. – The foundation of anti-slavery societies in Europe is connected with the anti-slavery movement and with the part played in it by Leo XIII. When the Pope received in 1888 an Lavigerie (v.), archbishop of Carthage, he entrusted him with the task of initiating a campaign against the slave trade. The cardinal immediately began work in France, England, Belgium, Holland, Germany, and Spain, and promoted the establishment of groups (designated by different names) for anti-slavery action. These groups were something new, since only in London did an anti-slavery society exist (founded in 1839). Lavigerie’s propaganda concluded in Italy with conferences in Palermo, Naples, Milan, and Rome in December 1888. In January 1889, TOLOMEI (v.), a group was formed in Rome which, in April, took the name S. A. I., coordinating the action of committees already in existence and founding others in the principal Italian cities.
The possibilities for action of the anti-slavery societies were defined at the free anti-slavery congress which Lavigerie organized in Paris (September 1890), attended by delegations from the societies of Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, and Spain, as well as by that of the English society. The free congress followed the anti-slavery conference of Brussels (also in 1890), which the king of the Belgians had convened at England’s invitation and in which 19 states took part. This conference recognized the authority of religious missions, of “national associations and individual initiatives” (art. 4), and of “foundations for the refuge” of liberated women and children (art. 88), to coordinate the activity of governments. On the basis of these provisions, the societies founded by Lavigerie (organized and directed by Catholics, but open to all) established a program of action and determined the areas of vigilance according to the possessions and influence of the respective states; thus the Italian society was assigned responsibility for Tripolitania, Ethiopia, and certain routes in the Near East. The Society immediately founded a committee in Tripoli and agencies in Benghazi, Derna, Misurata, Zliten, Tobruk, Salonica, Smyrna, Pirco, and Canea. The Brussels conference authorized the society to have suspected ships inspected by the consuls of the signatory nations, to remove any slaves concealed on them, and to have them declared free.
During its first twenty-five years, the anti-slavery society was thus able to liberate more than 2,000 slaves. With the Italian conquest of Libya, it supported both the action of the government and that of the missionaries, especially by fostering the apostolate of Fr. APOLLONIO (v.). In the Benadir, the vigilance organs reported extremely serious accusations of slaveholding against an industrial enterprise and, while sensational controversies alternated, the anti-slavery society sent one of its associates, the explorer Luigi Robecchi-Bricchetti, who brought the truth to light in a documentary book (1904), and the government intervened energetically. The establishment of an apostolic prefecture was also urged; it was entrusted to the Trinitarians and erected, amid insurmountable difficulties, by Fr. Leandro dell’Addolorata. In the colony of Eritrea, the anti-slavery society ascertained that the Arabs were conducting the slave trade in the Red Sea: in one raid, 32 children were abducted and, after being freed by Italian arms, were taken in, with the society’s assistance, at Massawa, by the Capuchins and the Daughters of St. Anne.
Through its press, its national congresses (1905, 1907, 1921, 1926), and its political action, the Society made its voice heard at the Conference of Algeciras (1906), and from 1920 it followed, also through substantial scholarly contributions, the Geneva initiatives of the League of Nations and the International Labour Office. The war of 1914 led to the violation of numerous anti-slavery provisions of the Berlin Conference (1885) and of the Brussels conference; the Versailles Pact and the Convention of St-Germain (1919) restored them, but insufficiently. The League of Nations therefore established a commission to study slavery, which prepared the Geneva anti-slavery convention (1926). This effected a radical revision of the subject by undertaking the study of forced labor, considered a virtual return to slavery. These problems were studied at the anti-slavery society’s congresses of 1921 and 1926, and the solutions proposed were accepted by the Italian government.
The anti-slavery society, over which the Holy See places a cardinal protector, has always proceeded in the closest cooperation with the Catholic missions and, often, with the National Association for Assisting Italian Missionaries. The missionaries’ contribution to the education of liberated slaves and, generally, of indigenous peoples for free labor was especially valuable. To this end, the society promoted the foundation of “villages of freedom” in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan (with the Sons of the Sacred Heart) and in Ethiopia (with the Consolata Missionaries): apart from their variable structure, these were stations or schools providing agricultural and vocational instruction, and they produced excellent results. Cooperation with the Italian government—which in the society’s early years was made difficult by political suspicions—became continuous after 1900 and advanced with the development of the Italian colonies.
The anti-slavery society took part in colonial and geographical exhibitions and congresses and published the journal Antischiavismo and various monographs. It was not uninvolved in the pontifical mission entrusted to one of its associates, Fr. Genocchi (v.), whose purpose was to study the conditions of indigenous workers in the Putumayo (1911). This mission gave rise to the encyclical Profondamente commosso (7 June 1912), in which Pius X denounced horrors of slavery surpassing “the most extreme examples of pagan turpitude.” In the same regions, another associate, the explorer Fr. Giuseppe Capra, returned in 1937 and published a report. In 1935 the anti-slavery society established within itself a Committee for Colonial and Missionary Studies. The S. a. i. is the only one among those founded by Lavigerie that still survives; the others disappeared with the war of 1914.
BIBL. Bollettino antischiavista (poi rivista Antischiavismo) edito dalla S.A.I., Rome (from 1888); Atti dei Congressi Nazionali della S.A.I., 4 vols., 1905, 1907, 1921, 1926, editi dalla S.A.I., Rome. – Actes du Congrès libre antischiaviste, Paris 1891; C. Bianchetti, L'antischiavismo alla fine del sec. XIX, Turin 1893; L. Robecchi-Bricchetti, Dal Benadir, lettere illustrate alla S.A.I., Milan 1904; F. Tolli, Nel XXV della S.A.I. (ricordi), Rome 1912; G. Capra, Schiavitù e lavoro libero negli Stati del Sud America, Rome 1932; E. Martire, L'Italia contro la schiavitù (discorso), Rome 1936. Egilberto Martire