On 24 September 1897, Henry Sylvester Williams had been instrumental in founding the African Association (not to be confused with the Association for Promoting the Discovery of the Interior Parts of Africa), in response to the European partition of Africa that followed the 1884-5 Congress of Berlin. The formation of the association marked an early stage in the development of the anti-colonialist movement, and was established to encourage the unity of Africans and people of African descent, particularly in territories of the British empire, concerning itself with injustices in Britain's African and Caribbean colonies
