BERLIN CONFERENCE: OBJECTIVES, AGREEMENTS, CONSEQUENCES - HISTORY - 2025

The Berlin Conference was a set of meetings between the great European powers of the time held for three months starting in November 1884. The fundamental purpose of the participants in the negotiations was to develop an international legal framework to carry out the colonization of Africa.

France and England were the countries that proposed its celebration and Germany offered to organize it in the city that gives it its name. Until that moment, Europeans had focused on some coastal areas of the continent, without going inland.

Cartoon about Berlin conference, 1885 - Source: zz1y, Journal L'Illustration under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

Starting in the second half of the 19th century, this began to change and a race began for African territories and their riches. Tensions that already existed between the various European powers threatened to escalate due to competition for new lands. The Berlin Conference tried to give some guidelines so that the colonization was peaceful.

The immediate result was that, except for a small portion of the continent, all of Africa came to be ruled by Europeans. For the metropolises, this meant being able to obtain more raw materials and increase their power. For Africans, the result was the creation of artificial borders and the loss of their natural wealth.

Background

Despite its geographical proximity, the interior of the African continent had not been much explored by Europeans until the beginning of the 19th century. Their few attempts at colonization had focused on the coasts, without trying to enter.

From the second half of the 19th century this began to change. The explorations in the interior of the African continent followed one another and, in addition, the Second Industrial Revolution caused that the European powers had to look for raw materials for their factories.

To this we must add two other factors: on the one hand, the demographic increase in Europe and the consequent need to produce more food and, on the other, the struggle between the European powers for continental hegemony.

The race for Africa

Great Britain, home to some of the greatest explorers, was one of the first powers to begin a colonization campaign in Africa. Soon the French were united in search of not losing power after their defeat to the Prussians in 1870.

Two newly unified countries, Italy and Germany, began to compete with these two traditional powers. Finally, Belgians and Portuguese also sought to build colonial settlements on the African continent.

This first phase of the division of Africa followed a very simple method. First came the commercial companies to begin to exploit the resources. Later, the corresponding governments sent officials and the military to avoid any kind of resistance from the local population. In the end, a government administration was established.

Leopold II and the International Society of the Congo

The race for the colonization of Africa was joined by a competitor with quite peculiar characteristics: King Leopold II of Belgium. Thus, the monarch did not want his country to take control of African territories, but rather his intention was to appropriate those lands personally.

To do this, he hired the British explorer Stanley and sent him to the Congo with the excuse of introducing religion and civilization in the area. The explorer's mission was to get the tribal chiefs to agree to cede their lands to Leopold.

The Belgian king had previously created the so-called International Association of the Congo with the aim of exploiting the wealth of the area in his name, without becoming dependent on Belgium as a country.

The success of Leopold was one of the causes that led the European powers to convene the meetings in Berlin, since they did not want new actors to appear in the distribution of the continent.

goals

Before the Conference was convened, the major European powers, plus Leopold II, had already begun the colonization of Africa.

France, for example, had conquered Tunisia in 1881 and had also created colonies in the Western Congo and Guinea. For its part, England had taken control of Egypt and exclusive trade in Somalia and Sudan.

The beginning of this process caused tensions between the European countries, for which a conference was convened to establish rules that would allow peaceful colonization.

Call for the Berlin Conference

The first clashes between the colonizing countries were not long in coming. To try to avoid them, France, England and some less powerful nations, such as Portugal, requested that negotiations begin on the matter.

The German Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, offered Berlin to organize the meetings, which began on November 15, 1884 and lasted until February 26 of the following year.

Participants

The countries with the most interests in the area that attended the Berlin Conference were England, Germany, France, Portugal and Italy. Along with them, some less powerful but trying to make a profit, such as the Netherlands, Sweden, Spain, Russia and Sweden.

In addition, two empires also participated in the meetings: the Austro-Hungarian and the Ottoman. Finally, the International Association of the Congo dominated by Leopold II of Belgium completed the list of negotiators.

No African leaders were invited to the Conference, not even those from the northern countries of the continent.

Statement of intents

The inauguration of the Conference was in charge of Otto von Bismarck, who made a speech in which he explained the objectives of the same.

To begin with, the foreign minister affirmed that the countries of Europe should take control of the interior of the African continent to civilize its inhabitants, bring them Western culture and exploit the raw materials of their territories.

For the German politician, this meant turning those territories into protectorates of European countries and not just sending commercial or extractive missions.

In addition to the above, the Conference set more specific objectives. The first, to ensure free trade in the areas bathed by the Congo and Niger rivers. Likewise, the participants had to agree on what conditions the colonizing countries had to meet in order to claim a territory.

Agreements

After more than 3 months of meetings, the participants in the Berlin Conference drew up a General Act in which all the agreements were collected. This document was signed on February 26, 1885, the day on which the negotiations came to an end.

The Act contains seven different sections. They contained the agreed rules on all aspects of the colonization and partition of Africa.

Although the Conference did not go into concrete questions of sovereignty, it did set the conditions under which each European power could annex territories in Africa. In this way, it provided legal cover for the colonization of the entire continent, with the exception of Liberia and Ethiopia.

Trade freedom

The General Act of the Berlin Conference declared that the entire Congo River basin, its mouths and the countries through which it passed should remain open to trade for all concerned. The section also included the freedom of navigation on that same river and on the Niger.

At the same point, the countries that traded in that territory pledged to protect indigenous peoples, missionaries and travelers, as well as to defend religious freedom.

Prohibition of slavery and obligations of powers

The signatories agreed to the abolition of slavery in all colonized territories. Likewise, they pledged to maintain peace and increase the quality of life of the population.

Uti possidetis iure

Among the legal aspects that should regulate colonization, the most important was the recognition of the principle of uti possidetis iure or principle of effective occupation.

This legal norm established that any European country that claimed to claim sovereignty over an African territory must, first, demonstrate that it had already established an effective administration over it.

In order to prove that prior possession, the European country in question must have signed a treaty with the population of the area. In addition, it had to prove that it was already acting as a government or, failing that, having militarily occupied the area.

The intention of the European powers when declaring this legal principle was that no country would claim an African territory in which it was not present.

In practice, this triggered the organization of numerous military, commercial or diplomatic expeditions into Africa to establish settlements and, later, to be able to claim sovereignty.

Consequences

The immediate consequence of the Berlin Conference was the acceleration of the race for positions on the African continent.

Before the meetings began, Europeans only controlled 20% of Africa. In a few years, only two small African countries did not come under the rule of the different powers of Europe.

The way Europeans divided up African territory had consequences that still remain. The different metropolises drew entirely artificial borders in Africa, without taking into account the present cultures or the existing indigenous regions.

Thus, 50 new countries were created without giving them any kind of racial or cultural cohesion. In the long run, the coexistence of peoples traditionally confronted within these artificial borders has led to serious confrontations, some directly driven by the colonial powers.

Colonization

The colonizers penetrated the African continent by following the course of the great rivers. Some of them had already been explored during the previous decades, so there was some knowledge about the geography of the area.

Despite the intention of the Berlin Conference to achieve peaceful colonization, rivalries between the European powers arose in parts of Africa. An example was the territory bathed by the Congo River. The tensions that arose forced Bismarck to exercise arbitration to decide his fate. In the end, the Chancellor divided it between Leopold II and France.

The northern continental coast was divided between the English and the French, while the eastern coast was left in British and German hands. For its part, the Atlantic region was divided between the aforementioned Leopold II, France and England.

Other former powers that have fallen into decline, such as Spain, only obtained Western Sahara, Equatorial Guinea and some areas of Morocco. Portugal, for its part, ruled Angola, Mozambique and Cape Verde, in addition to other small territories.

Finally, Germany and Italy, recently unified, were left with Namibia and Somalia respectively.

Conflicts

Despite the provisions of the General Act of the Conference, colonization caused conflicts between the European powers. These were centered in the fight to control the richest or strategically important areas of the continent.

The most important confrontations occurred in North Africa, where Italy, France and England disputed the control of Tunisia, Morocco and Egypt. Later on, Germany also entered into that dispute. The tensions to obtain these territories were one of the causes of the First World War.

Consequences for the metropolises

At first, the colonization of Africa caused the metropolises to face a large economic investment. This money was necessary for the construction of infrastructures that would allow the exploitation of raw materials. However, they soon began to make a profit.

On the other hand, the colonial territories made it possible to alleviate the growing demographic pressure that the metropolises were experiencing, since emigration to them was quite high.

Politically, the colonization of Africa soon turned into a competition between European countries to strengthen their power. The more territories they controlled, the greater their strength against the other powers.

However, the control of the colonies also brought problems to the metropolises. From very early on, opposition movements emerged among the local population and the colonizers had to allocate resources to quell the revolts.

Economic consequences for the colonies

Some authors point out that the colonization of Africa had, as a positive effect, the construction of infrastructures on the continent to exploit raw materials. Thus, posts, roads, railway lines and cities were built.

The end result was the emergence of the market economy and an increase in consumption and production. All this was left to the colonizers, without the local population improving their standard of living much.

Social and cultural consequences

The arrival of the colonizers caused a great social change on the African continent. Cities appeared and the tribal structure began to break down.

One of the consequences was the appearance of a bourgeoisie made up of merchants, owners and officials. Almost all of them were white from the metropolis.

At the bottom of the social pyramid were the indigenous people, whether they were peasants and industrial workers.

The social division was reflected in the segregation within the cities, with neighborhoods totally differentiated by race and the wealth of their inhabitants.

On the other hand, colonization also caused the indigenous peoples to lose their culture. Education improved, although it only reached a small percentage of the population.

The Congo Massacre

Although the confrontations between the colonizers and the indigenous people were frequent and many caused a large number of victims, all historians highlight the case of the Congo ruled by Leopold II.

The King of the Belgians had occupied that territory before the Berlin Conference. It was one of the richest areas of the continent and it remained as a personal possession of Leopoldo and not as a colony of his country.

The result of the exploitation to which he subjected the peoples of the area was a genuine genocide. Experts estimate that some 10 million people died, many of them after being tortured.

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