The Berlin Conference

The time was 1884 – 1885, 130 years ago and the place was Germany. During that period when Europe’s search for minerals and markets had become insatiable, greed and selfish acquisitiveness, supported by illusions of grandeur were also reasons for the Berlin Conference. One conquistador, protecting his ill begotten gains was the principal instigator; King Leopold II, and his gain was the Congo. Before the conference, European diplomacy treated African indigenous people in the same manner as the New World natives, forming trade relationships with tribal chiefs. By the mid-19th century, Europeans considered Africa to be disputed territory ripe for exploration, trade, and settlement by their colonists. With the exception of trading along the coasts, the mineral, economic, and strategic worth of the Continent was essentially unidentified. Historians generally agree, the Scramble for Africa began with King Leopold II of Belgium who had read a report in 1876, how the rich mineral resources and other natural treasures of the Congo Basin, could return an entrepreneurial capitalist substantial profits. Leopold founded the International African Association, followed in 1878 by the International Congo Society, with defined economic goals. Léopold secretly bought off the foreign investors in the Congo Society, to pursue his personal imperialistic goals, with the Society serving primarily as a philanthropic front, neatly concealing the driving corruption behind the facade. Hidden behind that altruistic front Leopold ordered his minions to assume control over the Congo Basin. Concurrently fearing intervention or annexation by more powerful co-European competition, the wily Leopold pre-empted…

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