Did one conference in Berlin really carve up Africa?

Not quite. The Berlin Conference of 1884–1885 is the famous scene of "the carve-up of Africa": fourteen countries, organised by the German chancellor Otto von Bismarck at the request of King Leopold II of Belgium, met around a table to agree on the rules for European colonisation and trade in Africa. No African country was invited. The meeting ended with the General Act of Berlin, which can be seen as formalizing a scramble for the continent that was already under way.

But some scholars warn against overstating what happened there. The conference did not draw Africa's map. A 2024 study found that the only borders set at the conference were those of the Congo region, and these were revised later. Most of Africa's borders did not take their final form until over two decades later, and many came from bilateral agreements between colonial powers before and after the conference.

What Berlin did produce were rules. The most important was effective occupation: a power could acquire rights over colonial lands only if it actually held them, with treaties with local leaders, its flag, and an administration with a police force. Britain, France and Germany argued about how strict this should be, and the British position, that large territories could be controlled without directly governing them, won out. The rule applied to the coast, so in the interior the powers simply negotiated, and the strongest side usually got most of what it wanted.

Borders were drawn by European negotiators, and the process ignored ethnic, linguistic and cultural divides. Berlin was less the moment the lines were drawn than the moment the game got its rules.