A picture worth 1000 words

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Look below at the image of the Berlin conference of 1884– 1885. It was a conference about Africa, but happening in a room in Berlin, Germany. There were zero Africans, and only two of the attendees had ever stepped foot on that continent. The conference included European men representing 12 countries in Europe, plus one representative from America and one from the Ottoman Empire. The room was dominated by a gigantic map of Africa. The men at the conference had decided it was their job, and their right, to divide up Africa between their countries.

Leopold’s big swindle

The immediate reason for the conference was the jealousy of King Leopold II of Belgium. The king was jealous of his cousin, Queen Victoria of Great Britain. King Leopold II of Belgium considered himself to be an important man. However, in the 1870s, the only territory Leopold ruled was the small state of Belgium. Queen Victoria was the Queen of Great Britain and, also, the Empress of India. She had a whole empire.

Leopold set out to get an empire. Leopold pretended to be a humanitarian and an abolitionist. He tricked Africans and Europeans. He claimed a huge territory in Central Africa, and called it the “Congo Free State,” declaring that he would allow free trade and eliminate slavery there. Instead, he built a state that worked the local population for his own profit.

Although Leopold deceived most Europeans for a while, his fellow rulers caught on. The French sent out expeditions to claim the territory to the north. The British convinced Portugal to expand their claims to the territory to the south in order to block Leopold.

The race for control in the Congo region was just one of many in the 1880s, as Europeans sought to violently conquer African societies. Soon they fought each other. The German Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, believed that this threatened his plans for Europe. He invited European leaders to come to Berlin in 1884. The goal was to work out a policy for Europe’s expansion in Africa.

The Conference

The Berlin Conference took place from November 15, 1884, to February 26, 1885. It resulted in an act that did three things. The first thing it did was recognize the territory that King Leopold claimed as his private property. The second thing it did was recognize other existing territorial claims in Africa. 

The third result of the conference was a process for Europeans to claim territory in Africa. European countries set up a plan that would send out explorers. These explorers would offer treaties to local African leaders claiming that their respective European countries would offer “protection.” Leaders would sign these treaties, which were actually deceptions. The explorers submitted the treaty to their European governments. The government of each country negotiated with other European states to recognize that this “protection” meant ownership of the territory.

This was all a scam. The treaties were often meaningless. They were usually printed in English or French, and often the local leaders didn’t know what they said. Sometimes, the explorers would get anyone to sign the treaty, including leaders who didn’t really have the power to sign them. The whole process was based on racist ideas: that this land was “unclaimed,” and that local societies could not rule themselves.

Menelik in the middle

One African leader who figured this out early was Menelik II, the future Emperor of Ethiopia. In 1884, Menelik was an important leader of Ethiopia. He knew about the conference, although neither he nor any other African leader had been invited.

Menelik wrote a letter to the states at the conference, asking them to take Ethiopia seriously as a military and political power. He wrote, “I have no intention at all of being an indifferent spectator, if the distant Powers hold onto the idea of dividing up Africa… Since the All-Powerful has protected Ethiopia up until now, I am hopeful that he will keep and enlarge it also in the future, and I do not think for a moment that He [God] will divide Ethiopia among the other Powers.”¹

Menelik was in an interesting position. Ethiopia was a powerful state that was looking to build an empire of its own in the surrounding territory. However, they knew that Europeans were dividing up the continent and they feared being divided themselves. The Ethiopians could clearly see that Italy, Britain, and France all wanted to claim nearby territory. Ethiopian leaders wanted to claim that territory for themselves.

Menelik’s letter was largely ignored. Although Ethiopia escaped “protection,” the Europeans went about chopping up the rest of the continent among themselves.

Continuity and change

How important was the Berlin Conference? To what degree did it lead to change, including the colonization of Africa? Historians and legal scholars who study these questions don’t all agree on the answers. Look at the two maps below. They show different ways to answer the question.

The map on the left shows that many regions of Africa had already been claimed by Europeans by 1880, four years before the conference. In North Africa, France had conquered Algeria. Italy was already partially controlling Libya. Britain had a great deal of power over Egypt. In the West, there are small colonies like French Senegal and British Gold Coast and Sierra Leone. In southern Africa, there are Portuguese territories of Angola and Mozambique. Even further south is the Cape Colony, ruled by Britain. On the one hand, lots of colonization was already happening prior to the Berlin Conference.

These colonies were still small, though. Contrast this with the map of Africa in 1913. In this second map, all of Africa’s nearly twelve million square miles is colonized by European states, except for Ethiopia and the tiny state of Liberia. This vast territory was acquired after the conference.

The Berlin Conference established the legal claim by Europeans that all of Africa could be occupied by whoever could take it. It also established a process for Europeans to cooperate, rather than fight amongst themselves. This cooperation played a huge role in the division and conquest of Africa. It was a form of legal violence exercised upon the whole continent. In this way, the Berlin Conference was a significant event in world history.

1 A. Adu Boahen, African Perspectives on Colonialism, (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), 25.