Today in History: Berlin Conference Began

[Musashi Miyamoto]

1884: Berlin Conference Began

As European nations scrambled for African territory in the late 19th
century, they began to come into conflict.  To prevent those
conflicts and to bring order to the colonization of Africa, the
Berlin Conference, organized by German Chancellor Otto Von Bismarck,
convened on November 15, 1884.  Representatives from Great Britain,
France, Germany, Portugal, and Belgium negotiated their claims to
African territory and established a framework for making and
negotiating future claims.  The peoples of Africa were not
represented and had no say in the dividing of their homelands.  By
1900, nearly 90 percent of African territory was claimed by European
states.

AsB4,
Henry Mus