On this day in 1884, the “Berlin Conference” began when delegations from nearly every Western European country and the U.S. met in Germany to develop a set of protocols for the seizure and control of African resources.

The conference, which had no African representatives, was the first international conference ever on the subject of Africa, and dealt almost soley with the matter of its exploitation.

At the time, approximately 80% of African land and resources were under domestic control; the influence of Europeans was most strongly exerted on the coast. Following it, colonial powers began seizing resources further inland.

As a result of the conference, which continued into 1885, a “General Act” was signed and ratified by all but one of the 14 nations at the table, the U.S. being the sole exception. The Act’s main features were the establishment of a regime of free trade stretching across the middle of Africa, the development of which became the rationale for the recognition of the short-lived “Congo Free State”, the abolition of the overland slave trade, and the principle of “effective occupation”.

The Conference’s rapacious intentions for Africa were noted by outsiders: socialist journalist Daniel De Leon described the conference as “an event unique in the history of political science…Diplomatic in form, it was economic in fact.”

Before the Conference ended, the Lagos Observer declared that “the world had, perhaps, never witnessed a robbery on so large a scale.” Theodore Holly, the first black Protestant Episcopal Bishop in the U.S., condemned the delegates as having “come together to enact into law, national rapine, robbery and murder”.

Berlin 1884: Remembering the conference that divided Africa

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