Welcome back to a new season of 15-Minute History! Jon, Joe, and the rest of the team are glad to be back for season 10, where we are looking at the forces that made us, both the good and the bad.
It was November 15, 1884, and the German chancellor had company. Representatives from fourteen powers arrived at his home in Berlin that day, including Britain, France, Belgium, Portugal, and the United States. Otto von Bismarck had called them together because the governments of Europe all wanted pieces of Africa, their claims were starting to overlap, and he wanted it settled before it turned into another war on the continent.
The conference lasted three months. The delegates spent most of that time on trade, on who could use the Congo and Niger rivers, and on what it would take for one country to recognize another's claim to African land. They argued and disagreed.
What they did not argue over was who belonged in the room. No African ruler had been invited to Berlin, and none had been consulted beforehand. The men at the table had already decided that this was their conversation to have, and they were entitled to make whatever decision they wanted.
They went home without a finished map, since most of the borders were worked out in later years by treaty and force. But the terms were set, and over the next thirty years nearly all of Africa came under European rule.
Join us as we show you imperialism, how it worked in King Leopold's Congo and in British India, how the people behind it justified it, and how it still affects the world today.