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The London-based NGO Anti-Slavery was founded in 1839. For almost all its history, it remained a small group, working primarily through informal links to British parliamentarians. Pressure from the group made a significant though indirect impact on the 1926 League of Nations Slavery Convention and the 1956 United Nations Supplementary Convention. Anti-Slavery's focus has shifted from chattel slavery to contemporary forms of slavery, which remain poorly defined in international law. This article examines both the evolution of Anti-Slavery and the League's and United Nations failure to establish an effective monitoring group, which Anti-Slavery has consistently pressed for, albeit unsuccessfully.

Within five years, some of the cadets to whom these remarks were addressed helped overthrow Kwame Nkrumah. Despite the warning, 'Politics are not for soldiers', the armed forces in Ghana – as in 14 other African states – assumed full political control. The military thus changed in Africa from relatively insignificant relics of colonial administration into prime arbiters of political disputes – settling arguments, in many instances, by the direct seizure of power. Praetorianism had reached south of the Sahara.

Direct military intervention, aimed at unseating civilian governments and replacing them with ruling councils drawn largely from the army, is a relatively recent phenomenon in Africa. With the exception of the Sudan, where officers led by General Ibrahim Abboud seized control in November 1958, no supplanting of civilian authority by a military junta occurred until 19 June 1965 (Algeria). Then, in rapid succession, the Governments of Congo-Kinshasa (25 November 1965), Dahomey (22 December 1965), Central African Republic (1 January 1966), Upper Volta (4 January 1966), Nigeria (15 July 1966), Ghana (24 February 1966), Nigeria once again (29 July, 1966), Burundi (28 November 1966), Togo (13 January 1967), and Sierra Leone (23 March 1967) fell victims tocoups d'état.