In Full Flower 321Multilateral conventions were not invariably about war. Rules regarding
undersea electric telegraph cables, for example, were concluded in 1884. A
conference in Berlin in 1884– 85 dealt with various issues in the colonization
of Africa. Among the achievements of the conference was the establishment
of some general rules over future acquisitions of territory in Africa by the
imperial powers. Contrary to the belief of many, however, the conference
did not actually allocate identifi ed areas to par tic u lar states.
Slave trading was another subject that (eventually) came under multilat-
eral scrutiny. Th ere had been a general declaration on the subject at the
Congress of Vienna, although it had had no great practical eff ect. Th e Brit-
ish government acted against the Atlantic slave trade by concluding bilateral
treaties with various countries, allowing its naval vessels to visit and search
foreign ships suspected of transporting slaves (and then liberating any slaves
found). But concrete action at the multilateral level only came in 1889– 90, at
a conference in Brussels. Th e Final Act established an International Mari-
time Offi ce in Zanzibar and endorsed the visit- and- search practice.
A host of other walks of life came to be subjected to international regula-
tion of one form or another. In 1890, the major continental Eu ro pe an states
concluded a convention on railway freight traffi c. In 1904, a group of ten
E u r o p e a n s t a t e s d r a ft ed a treaty for dealing with the anarchist menace.
Th ere were treaties, too, about the white slave trade, the safety of life at sea,
various aspects of public sanitation, and regulation of production and trade
in sugar. In addition, there were two treaties providing for humane treat-
ment of workers: one barring the use of white phosphorus in the production
of matches and the other prohibiting night work for women. An interna-
tional convention on automobile movement, concluded in 1909 by the major
Eu ro pe an states, included such requirements as license plates indicating
state of origin. Th e formation of various international organizations in the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries has already been noted.
Th e Debate over Codifying International Law
Th e question of the codifi cation of international law exposed some impor-
tant divisions within the international legal profession. In general, lawyers
of the positivist stripe inclined against it, on several diff erent grounds. Some
objected to codifi cation as a conservative, stultifying force. It would have