EUROPE - AFRICA; Berlin Congo I: Hist. Overview

by: Pieter Bos
date: 11/3/2002
Category: RECONCILIATION

Historical Overview of the BERLIN - CONGO CONFERENCE in 1884-5 and its consequences.
(Part 1 of the Report on the Reconciliation Conference Africa – Europe, Ambilly, France 29-31 October 2002.)

History of the Berlin-Congo Conference

In Brief
1884/85, the first so-called Berlin-Congo-Conference was convoked through Germany represented by Count Bismarck. At this conference the African continent was divided among the colonial powers of Europe and spheres of influence were arranged. Though it is widely believed the Conference averted a European war. However for Africa the results were injustice and exploitation of African nations by European nations in the short term, and bitterness, disunity and even occasions for wars and genocides have resulted down to this day.

History:
From November 15, 1884 until February 26, 1885 an international conference on Africa was held in Berlin, pretentiously called the “Berlin-West Africa Conference”. Germany, with the support of France, initiated the conference with a clear diplomatic agenda: to resist the British & Portuguese from controlling the Congo Basin & thereby the whole Congo River system. The conference’s goal was to make an agreement so as to calm the many existing tensions between the colonial powers and to “divide and rule” Africa by cutting up the continent among the European colonialists, as one would cut up a cake.
14 nations participated at this first Congo-Conference: the main players in the region: Britain, Germany, France, Belgium, Spain, Portugal and Italy. Involved super powers: Russia, Turkey, Austria/Hungary. Further were invited and also responded by their presence: Netherlands, Denmark, Norway/Sweden, and also the USA, because King Leopold’s private Congo company was bases in that country.
The focus was the authority over the Congo River basin, the supposedly richest region of the continent. Congo was for a long time private company of king Leopold of Belgium. His representatives visited tribal chiefs with cheap gifts and a contract (which they could not read) in which the chiefs gave away “in their own free will” all the resources of their territory and all the help necessary to exploit these. These treacherous covenants were enforced by cruelties, like chopping off of the limbs of children of reluctant tribesmen. Under king Leopold about 10 million people died due to his policy of colonization and exploitation.
Not one African nation was represented at any time during the 3-month long conference.

David Livingston held that the mission of Europeans in Africa had four purposes: Commerce, Christianity, Civilization, and Conquest.
These “four C’s of Livingston” set implicitly the spirit of the BC-conference.

T he key of the conference outcomes included:
1. The free use of the Congo River
2. The free use of the Niger River
3 King Leopold’s company was put under international law, and “Belgian Congo” as a nation was created, because Germany and the other powers wanted to prevent GB or France controlling the richest part of Africa.

Long Term Consequences:
Even though few Europeans know about the Berlin-Congo conference, many Africans are well aware of it.
Resulting from this conference, the African peoples were divided, new borders were established, injustice and colonial exploitation were widespread and without restraint. The resulting wounds can still be felt throughout Africa:
1. Peoples were merged and divided with no common culture; the nations formed were marriages of strange bed-fellows. Disruption of African political values
2. The mental universe of the peoples became dominated by another language and culture, i.e. that of the colonial power.
3. Politics – these were shaped by European interests; the national borders cut across tribes and the traditional political grouping within pre-colonial Africa. In 1963 the Organisation for African Unity agreed that to change the borders determined in 1885 would be too traumatic for Africa so left them in tact.
4. A loss of identity. Distrust in African national and regional and tribal identities.
Continent wide inferiority inside and outside. 5. Tribal warfare ensued. The European example of “divide and rule” is ruling still.
6. The European market has dictated the economy of Africa ever since. Selling out of African resources.
7. The infrastructure one sided oriented on export.
8. Post-colonially, nation states have not been able to pull together.
9. Poverty – the trade imbalance established by colonialism has been sustained.
10. This situation has created the climate for the current experience of Euro/US neo-colonialism both economically & politically. The Western world is still thinking about Africa as inferior.
11. Lack of love in Africa, wars, genocide, ethnic conflicts. Africans tend to remain in a victim role, which is easier than taking responsibility for their own sins AND hatred.

The sins the Europeans committed in Africa invited the spirits behinds them, such as superiority, greed, racism, enslaving. Cecil Rhodes, in 1890 the prime minister in South Africa and founder of “Rhodesia,” was in many ways a man in whom these forces came together. Of course these spirits came on top of the spirits that were already active on the continent, especially the many spirits of ancestor worship and witchcraft.
(For follow up, see Reconciliation Africa - Europe; Neo-Imperialism, Reconciliation Africa - Europe; Berlin Congo II, a Glorious Report.)

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