In those months, several colonial countries divided Africa - with the help of a map, a ruler and a compass. This is happening in Berlin, within the so-called Congo Conference, begun on this date in the year 1884.
A world map, five meters high, adorns the wall of the Chancellor's Palace in Berlin. The African continent is outlined with perfect accuracy, in its interior you can see rivers, lakes, the names of several settlements - and many white spots. German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck has invited representatives of 13 European countries, plus the United States and the Ottoman Empire, to Berlin. The goal is to agree on "free trade" along the Congo and Niger rivers. In reality, however, it is about the appropriation and partition of Africa by means of international law.
At the end of the conference, which lasted for months, the participants had already laid the foundations of the future partition. People who live in Africa have no say - no Africans are invited to the Berlin conference. The final document of the so-called Conference on the Congo becomes the foundation of colonization.
"Irreparable damage"
In the years that followed, Africa's new masters reshaped the continent as they saw fit. Sometimes mountains or rivers are used as boundaries, other times parallels and meridians. Or they just draw them with a ruler. Historians believe that the Berlin Conference set the dynamite for many future conflicts in Africa. "The continent was divided without taking into account the existing political, social and economic structures," says Olayemi Akinwumi, a Nigerian history professor.
The new borders fragmented the settlements of many of the ethnic groups. Trade routes were cut off because, according to the treaties, trade could only take place within the boundaries of a single colony. Numerous studies show that those regions that were most affected by the artificially drawn borders are still poorer and more prone to civil wars than elsewhere in Africa. "The Congo conference caused irreparable damage to several countries that are still suffering from it today," says Akinwumi.
In many cases, for example in Cameroon, Europeans completely ignored local traditions and needs, adds Michael Pezek from the University of Erfurt. However, according to him, researchers no longer claim that artificial borders are the main cause of conflicts in post-colonial Africa. Over the years, people there got used to living with these boundaries, which often only apply on paper. According to Pezek, borders are important to the geopolitical landscape in Africa, but to the local people they have no meaning. Oftentimes, Africans in places even profit from the artificial borders, because they create the conditions for profitable smuggling.
"Pandora's Box"
In the 1960s, as the former colonies gradually gained independence, new African politicians were given the opportunity to adjust these borders - but they didn't. "Most of them were worried, probably with good reason, that they might be opening Pandora's box," Pezek explains. "Because there have been a number of interstate conflicts in Africa in recent decades, but almost none of them were about borders."
In other words, it is not so important for today's conflicts how the Belgians, French, British or Germans divided Africa in the past, Pezek believes. But this does not justify the participants in the Berlin Conference in the least. Because the main reason for the conflicts in Africa is actually the decision of the colonizers to divide the population into certain ethnic groups. "Many of the ethnic identities in Africa that are real today were much more blurred in the 19th century," Pezek explains. For example, the Hutu and Tutsi groups in Rwanda were not ethnic groups, but social strata. It was quite possible to go from Hutu to Tutsi and vice versa. However, the colonial policy turned them into ethnic groups, and this eventually led to the horrific genocide in 1994, when about 1 million people were killed.
This text was written in 2015. Today we publish it again on the occasion of the anniversary of the beginning of the so-called Congo Conference.