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International Agreements

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Do we know anything about the Brussels Conference of 1889-90 which was, perhaps only in part, an international agreement on the use of flags at sea ?

It seems to have covered the problem of countries whose ships sailed in international waters, but didn't have a national flag. I have come across two references to it.

One in a 1937 letter about the status of North Borneo in which it was said that defaced Blue and Red Ensigns for protectorates whose native inhabitants were not British subjects were based on Sections 30 to 41 of The General Act of The Brussels Conference 1889-90.

The other was in a Government of India letter of 1917 which said that the majority of the maritime Darbars in the Presidency of Bombay flew the British flag without any authorised license as required under Article XLI of the General Act of the Brussels Conference, and that the procedure prescribed by the General Act was rarely if ever followed. This led, I think, to the introduction in 1921 of warrants for Red Ensigns defaced with the badges of thirteen Indian States.
David Prothero, 17 April 2000

Some research in the US Dept of State's Treaties and Other International Acts Series (TIAS) reveals a "General Act of Brussels," signed July 2, 1890, entered into force August 31, 1891; US ratification January 19, 1892. The purpose was to suppress the African slave trade and limit importation of munitions and liquor into Africa. The parties were (in the order printed in TIAS) the US, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Denmark, Spain, State of the Congo, United States, France, Italy, Netherlands, Persia, Portugal, Russia, Sweden-Norway, Ottoman Empire, and Zanzibar.

Chapter III of the Act governs "Repression of the Slave-trade by Sea" in a zone extending from the east coast of