The Centennial of the West African Conference

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The Centennial of the West African Conference of Berlin, 1884-1885
Author(s): George Shepperson
Source: Phylon (1960-), Vol. 46, No. 1 (1st Qtr., 1985), pp. 37-48
Published by: Clark Atlanta University
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By GEORGE SHEPPERSON 
The Centennial of the West African 
Conference of Berlin, 1884-1885* 
1984 Is GEORGE ORWELL'S YEAR; and any centenaries which may be com- 
memorated in 1984 run the risk of being overshadowed by his 
melancholy musings on the future in his celebrated anti-utopian novel. To be 
sure, the consequences of the West African Conference of Berlin, which 
opened on Novemeber 15, 1884 at Bismarck's official residence in the 
Wilhelmstrasse and, after a short break for Christmas and the New year, 
closed on February 26, 1885, were melancholy enough. But there was an 
element of hope in it: an element, perhaps, which was reflected in another 
anti-utopia, the centenary of whose publication some, maybe, will be com- 
memorating in the United States in six years time. This was Caesar's Column. 
A Story of the Twentieth Century by Minnesota Populist Ignatius Donnelley. 
In this bizarre but prophetic story of urban terrorism in Europe and America, 
Donnelley's narrator comes from Africa and, early in the novel, gives a 
picture of an African state a century after the Berlin Conference, which 
illustrates the roseate hopes with which some endowed the new Congo Free 
State, ill-named and ill-starred, that emerged from the Conference. He 
reports "new lines of railroad; new steamship fleets upon the great lake;... 
large colonies of white men, settling new states, upon the higher lands of the 
interior; of their colleges, books and newspapers; and particularly of a dis- 
sertation upon the genius of Chaucer, written by a Zulu Professor, which had 
created considerable interest among the learned societies of the Transvaal.'" 
Henry Morton Stanley, the pseudo-American whose explorations of the 
Congo and journalistic publicizing of them had been a powerful force behind 
the calling of the Berlin Conference, read Donnelley's Caesar's Column; was 
delighted to learn that its narrator lived in an African village named Stanley; 
and called it "a powerful story ... a small seedling of good may, or ought, to 
come from it."2 
Did, however, any seedling of good come from the West African Confer- 
ence of Berlin, the first international conference to concern itself with Africa, 
at which fifteen Powers were represented: Germany, Austria-Hungary, 
Belgium, Denmark, Spain, the United States of America, France, Great 
Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, Sweden and Norway, and 
Turkey? And if it did, how has this seedling germinated during the last 
century? 
* This Article was presented originally as an address to the New England Historical Association meeting at 
Worcester, Massachusetts, April 14, 1984. 
'Ignatius Donnelley, Caesar's Column. A Story of the Twentieth Century, ed. Walter B. Rideout (Cambridge, 
1960), p. 13. Was there any personal connection between Ignatius Donnelley and Henry Wellington Wack, the 
American author of the most forceful defense in English of Leopold II's "red rubber" regime in the Congo 
Free State (The Story of the Congo Free State, published in New York in 1905)? Rideout, in his edition of Caesar's Column, refers to "personal reminiscences" of Ignatius Donnelley by Wack. (p. ix) 
The Autobiography of Sir Henry Morton Stanley G.C.B., ed. Dorothy Stanley (Boston, 1909), p. 433. 
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PHYLON 
These problems are not easy to approach because of the emotion which so 
often surrounds them and because of the relative neglect by historians of 
some important and interesting questions about the Berlin Conference of 
1884-85 and its consequences. 
Typical of the emotion engendered is this passage from the British journal, 
New Statesman, for January 27, 1984: "A hundred years ago at the Conference 
of Berlin, European men began the process of dividing up Africa into colonial 
possessions. This year, as part of its centenary activities, Kwame Toure [origi- 
nally Stokley Carmichael] was to have toured Britain speaking about the 
consequences of this act for Africa and black people. He has been prevented 
from doing this by the British Home Office."3 Furthermore, both emotion and 
scholarly neglect were revealed at and after a meeting organized by German 
historians in Bremen in December, 1982. Divisions between West and East 
Germany (which houses in Potsdam the archives holding the records of the 
Conference) do not make cooperation easy - and some form of cooperation 
by German historians is clearly called for, if only because there is no adequate 
German history of the West African Conference of Berlin. It was also evident 
at the Bremen meeting that not only were German historians divided on the 
appropriate way to commemorate the international gathering on Africa in 
1884-85 and the General Act of the Berlin Conference of February 26, 1885; 
but historians from Europe and Africa were also divided on these questions. 
The demarcation seemed to be between those historians who wanted to com- 
memorate the Berlin Conference of 1884-85 itself and those who were con- 
cerned with its significance for and its symbolism of colonialism in Africa in 
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. As one who was privileged to attend 
the Bremen meeting in 1982 and has attempted to follow scholarly develop- 
ments after it, I cannot help wondering whether 1984, perhaps even 1985, will 
pass without an adequate commemoration of the Conference and General Act 
of Berlin: a commemoration which will stimulate scholars in the New World 
as well as the Old to attempt to complete at least some of the research tasks 
which are still outstanding on this important international Conference.4 
Foremost among these is surely the necessity of producing not only for 
Germany but for world history as a whole a substantial and well-documented 
history of the Conference. We are still obliged to rely on Sybil E. Crowe's 
unduly short and monographic The Berlin West African Conference 1884- 
1885, published in the wartime London of 1942. I am the last person to want to 
withhold tribute from this pioneering single-volume history, with its many 
insights into the tortuous diplomacy of the Powers at Berlin and its increased 
use of documentary sources, especially British. But its limitations should be 
clear, especially to Americans who are becoming conscious of the role which 
3 New Statesman (London), January 27, 1984, p.8. Compare "Law of the Sea. Africa's decaying image," West 
Africa (London), November 7, 1983, p. 2569: "The African Group's role in multinational institutions is, in good 
measure, a product of Africa's historical experience from the Congress of Berlin, held in 1885, which divided 
the African continent to suit colonial interests." 4 It should be notedthat the Commonwealth History Seminar, Nuffield College, Oxford, Hilary Term, 1984, 
was devoted to the West African Conference of Berlin. 
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WEST AFRICAN CONFERENCE 
their country played in the creation of the Congo Free State and the Berlin 
West African Conference. 
In an article on "The United States and East Africa" which I published in 
Phylon thirty-two years ago, I drew attention to the importance of American 
influences for the Berlin Conference and stated, "Yet, there is hardly any- 
thing written about America's part in this great diplomatic event; and of the 
economic implications of her actions there are no major studies."5 Happily, 
such a negative generalization could not be made today. We have a number of 
very useful studies which add much to our knowledge of America's role in the 
recognition of Belgian Leopold II's International African Association and of 
the participation of the United States in the Berlin Conference out of .which 
came the infamous Congo Free State and the "heart of the darkness" period of 
central African history. I think, particularly, of Edward Younger's biography 
(1955) of John A. Kasson,6 Chester Arthur's minister to Germany and the 
major public American representative at the 1884-85 Conference; and of the 
most helpful chapter (seventeen) on the deliberations at Berlin in David M. 
Pletcher's study of American foreign relations under Garfield and Arthur, 
not the least of the services of which was to remind us that another United 
States representative at the Conference.7 Henry M. Stanley, was not at that 
time an American citizen. One must pay tribute, of course, to the valuable 
work by William Roger Louis, especially his substantial chapter on the Con- 
ference which appeared in the composite study, France and Britain in Africa 
of 1971,8 and to his part in the edition of E. D. Morel's History of the Congo 
Reform Movement9 that was published three years before. Suzanne Miers' 
Britain and the Ending of the Slave Trade10 (1975), amongst its admirable 
examinations of humanitarian elements at work at the 1884-85 Conference 
and their connections with the Brussels Conference of 1890 that attempted to 
complete the antislavery and anti-liquor work in Africa which the Berlin 
Conference had left undone, has several useful notes on American participa- 
tion at these two international gatherings, in which the link-man emerges as 
Henry M. Stanford, former U.S. minister at Belgium, agent of Leopold II, and 
equatorial entrepreneur par excellence. The value of some of these links, 
however, was revealed, after Harriet Owsley's invaluable work on the proces- 
sing of the Stanford Papers, not by an American scholar but by a Belgian: 
Franqois L. Bontinck in his 1966 volume, Aux Origines de l'Etat Independant 
du Congo. Documents tires d'Archives Americaines.""l Finally, Sylvia M. 
Jocobs' perceptive study, The African Nexus. Black American Perspectives on 
5 George Shepperson, "The United States and East Africa", Phylon. XIII (March 1952): p. 31. 6 Edward Younger, John A. Kasson. Politics and Diplomacy from Lincoln to McKinley (Iowa City: State 
Historical Society of Iowa, 1955). 7 David M. Pletcher, The Awkward Years. American Foreign Relations under Garfield and Arthur (Columbia, 
Mo., 1962), pp. 308-09: "Stanley wrongly believed that because he had taken an oath of allegiance in order to join the Union army, he was a naturalized citizen. After realizing his mistake, he underwent naturalization in 
1885 to protect his copyright, but seven years later he resumed British citizenship." See also Richard Hall, 
Stanley. An Adventure Explored (London, 1974), pp. 335-36, 345. 8 
"The Berlin Congo Conference," France and Britain in Africa. Imperial Rivalry and Colonial Rule, ed. 
Prosser Gifford and William Roger Louis (New Haven, 1971), pp. 167-220. 
9William Roger Louis and Jean Stenghers, E. D. Morel's History of the Congo Reform Movement (Oxford, 
1968). 10 (London, 1975). 
"(Louvain: Edition Nauwelaerts, 1966). 
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PHYLON 
the European Partitioning of Africa, 1880-1920 (1981),12 is among a number of 
others which reveal Afro-Americans as something more than interested 
spectators: for example, John Hope Franklin's all too brief study, George 
Washington Williams and Africa,13 on the Afro-American who began with the 
wish that the United States should ratify the General Act of the Berlin Con- 
ference of 1885 and who, after a visit to the Congo State, ended his short life of 
forty-three years as an opponent of Leopold II's personal imperialism in 
central Africa. 
And yet, invaluable as such studies are, I have the impression that much 
scholarly work still remains to be done on American participation in the 
events leading up to the West African Conference of Berlin and their denou- 
ment between 1885 and 190p when, as a result of Leopold II's maladministra- 
tion of the Congo, the Belgian state was obliged to annex it. Until this has been 
done, the much needed, adequate single-volume work on the United States 
and the Berlin Conference and its consequences will not be possible. 
Although in the two decades from 1952, biographies have appeared of the 
American Big Three at the West African Conference of Berlin (Kasson,14 
Sanford" and Stanley'6), there is still scope for further investigations into what 
they meant for the Congo Conference and its outcome and into what it meant 
for them. And there are other figures, private individuals and groups from the 
United States, especially in Christian missionary and financial circles, to be 
discovered and their papers and oral tradition about them and their African 
interests to be looked for. In particular, I feel that John A. Kasson has not 
received the credit which is due to him at the Berlin Conference. It is too easy 
to present him as a tool of Leopold II and as a front man for the devious 
Sanford. Within the limitations of his time and temperament, he tried, it 
seems, to keep the interests of the indigenous inhabitants to the fore;17 and, 
throughout his speeches at Berlin in 1884-85, he made a number of interesting 
comparisons of central Africa on the eve of colonization with the settlement of 
North America which are not without interest for students of comparative 
frontiers and history. It is not enough, I think, to take a Gustavus Myers 
"Robber Barons" approach to Kasson, Sanford, and Stanley at Berlin. That 
way lies a simplistic, anti-American propaganda approach to America and the 
Congo, of which the reprint of 1961 by the Seven Seas Publishers of East 
Berlin of Mark Twain's King Leopold's Soliloquy (first published in Boston in 
1(Westport, Conn, 1981). 
1(Washington, D.C.: Department of History, Howard University, 1971): an Inaugural Lecture establishing a 
prize fund in honor of Rayford W. Logan. 
4Younger, op.cit. 
L. T. Molloy, Henry Shelton Sanford, 1823-1891 (Derby, Conn., 1952). See also Bontinck, op.cit., in text, pp. v- 
ix, 1-5. 
"6 Hall, op.cit. 
17 See, for example, Papers on Inter-Racial Problems Communicated to the First Universal Races Congress ... 
London... 1911, ed. G. Spiller (London, 1911), p.407, footnote: "The Act of Berlin... laid down certain useful 
rules (Articles XXXIV and XXXV) as to the assumption of a protectorate over territories on the coast of the 
African Continent and the conditions of occupation. These rights relate only to the rights of parties to the Act; 
they are silent as to the rights of the indigenous population in the land. It did not condemn the doctrine that 
such land if not occupied by a civilized state was res nullius, orprescribe the conditions upon which treaties 
relating to such land should be recognized... A proposal to that effect by Mr. Kasson... was put forward but 
rejected." 
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WEST AFRICAN CONFERENCE 
1905) is typical. Kasson, after all, did emphasize at the 1884-85 Conference that 
"productive labour must be seriously encouraged in the African territo- 
ries.... This result can only be arrived at through the permanent establish- 
ment of a peaceful regime."18 
Of all the contemporary American publications on the West African Con- 
ference of Berlin, one of the most striking and one which is too frequently 
neglected today is Daniel De Leon's article, entitled "The Conference at 
Berlin on the West-African Question," which appeared in the first volume of 
the Political Science Quarterly, published in Boston in 1886.19 This was prob- 
ably a product of his short-term employment at Columbia University; and it 
appeared four years before he threw in his lot with the Socialist Labor Party 
of America. It begins with a challenging generalization: "The Conference at 
Berlin on the West-African question is an event unique in the history of 
political science.... Diplomatic in form, it was economic in fact; ostensibly 
international in its bearings, in truth it concerned but one nation; and it was 
designed to help to solve, for that nation only, a strictly social question." As 
one listens to these lines, one's first thought is likely to be that this "one 
nation"20 is Belgium, acting through its Machiavellian King. But the country 
which De Leon had in mind was the nation state of Germany, then only a 
decade and a half old. 
In this manner, De Leon shifted the focus of interest of the Conference from 
Africa to Europe. He dealt scathingly with the Americans at the Conference, 
and castigated the United States for its departure from its traditional foreign 
policy of non-intervention in the affairs of Europe. To quote him again: 
We cannot turn from the contemplation of the Berlin Conference without mixed 
feelings; admiration for the giant intellect in the chair [Bismarck], and the reverse 
of admiration for the pigmies who occupied the floor... while Messrs. Sanford, 
Kasson, and Stanley [and others] strutted over the stage, believing that they had a 
hand in weighty questions of international law and were originating principles of 
far-reaching importance, they were, in fact, one and all, either led or driven as 
Prince Bismarck pointed the way, for purposes with which they had no concern."21 
De Leon continued bringing the focus continually to Mittel-Europa and 
away from Mittel-Afrika: 
But the Conference at Berlin was one of [a] series of measures adopted for the special 
purpose of checking the emigration from Germany; the bulk of this emigration 
comes to our shores; and of all ethnic alloys which this country receives, that which 
proceeds from Germany is the most valuable. The bare presence of a delegation 
from the United States at Berlin increased the effectiveness of the Congress in the 
accomplishment of its special purpose; and that purpose assuredly was not to the 
interest of the United States.22 
1Protocols and General Act of the West African Conference. Africa no.4. C.4361. 1885 (London: British Govern- 
ment Blue Books - Accounts and Papers), pp. 162-63. 
1Daniel De Leon, "The Conference at Berlin on the West-African Question," Political Science Quarterly I, 
(March 1886): 103-39. 
2"Ibid., p.103. 21 Ibid., pp. 136-37. It is worth noting here that De Leon condemned the United States for assisting at "the carving 
of a new state out of territories which, according to American principles, were Portuguese." (p.138) For 
background to this question see R. J. Hammond, Portugal and Africa, 1815-1910; A Study in Uneconomic 
Imperialism (Stanford, 1966); Frangoise Latour da Viega Pinto, Le Portugal et le Congo au XIXe Siecle (Paris, 
1972); and Eric Axelson, Portugal and the Scramble for Africa, 1875-1891 (Johannesburg, 1967). 
a Ibid., p. 138. 
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PHYLON 
And De Leon concluded, with an intensification of emphasis on the individ- 
ual which, it could be argued, was self-contradictory for a Marxist of his 
calibre: 
The Berlin Conference will stand as a monument of the restless activity of the man 
who, overlooking no opportunity, and spurning no mean which his genius may 
suggest or which accident may create, steadily pursues his life's aim of welding into 
one self-reliant and stable nation the German-speaking peoples that are settled in 
the valleys of the Rhine, the Weser, the Elbe, the Oder, the Vistula and the 
Danube.? 
It is an interesting viewpoint, especially when one remembers that the 
dominant individual, not present at the Conference but moving his pawns 
from afar, is usually considered to be Leopold II of the Belgians. Perhaps this 
traditional viewpoint is more correct than De Leon's? An example of Leopold 
II at work from afar is his instructions to H. M. Stanley when Stanley was 
about to lecture in Cologne, Frankfurt and Wiesbaden in 1884: "Speak of the 
share which the Germans are beginning to take in the manufacture of articles 
suitable to the natives of Africa. Show them that this share will day by day 
increase, that it will supply work to Germans who are now obliged to go and 
seek for some in America, and that it will enable them to remain in their own 
country.... Do not fear to dwell on this theme," said Leopold to Stanley, 
"which is of a nature to please M. de Bismarck."24 
Stanley, when he came to write his history of the Berlin Conference, did not 
underestimate Bismarck's importance in the venture: "Like the great states- 
man he is, Prince Bismarck felt this strong throb of modern German life. He 
applied his stethoscope to listen to the murmuring and latent passion of his 
era.... He is zealous in all he undertakes, he seeks advice from those com- 
petent to give it." And then, almost as if he were looking forward to Franklin 
D. Roosevelt and his Brain Trust, Stanley added, "This is his eccentricity; it is 
unusual for statesmen to convene a number of experts to consider the best 
course to pursue."25 
Whether, however, one considers Leopold II or Bismarck the more impor- 
tant individual at the Conference, or whether one is prepared to hand the 
palm for this to some other individual or group, this kind of approach to the 
meeting at Berlin in 1884-85 tends to make it more significant for European 
than for African history. In the history of the consolidation and development 
of two new nation states on the European scene, Germany and Belgium, the 
Berlin Conference was designed to play a part which transcended, for out- 
siders, its significance for Africa itself. 
23 Ibid., p. 139. 24 Quoted in Hall, op.cit., p.239. 25 Henry M. Stanley, The Congo and the Founding of its Free State (London: Sampson Low, 1885), II, p.387. 
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WEST AFRICAN CONFERENCE 
For the insiders, the peoples of what H. M. Stanley had called six years 
before "the Dark Continent," their interests were secondary to those from 
outside. The Berlin Conference made clear its priorities: 
The Powers are in the presence of three interests: That of the commercial and 
industrial nations, which a common necessity compels to the research of new out- 
lets. That of the States and of the Powers summoned to exercise over the regions of 
the Congo an authority which will have burdens corresponding to theirrights. And, 
lastly, that which some generous voices have already commended to your solici- 
tude - the interests of the native populations.26 
In 1830-31 at Berlin, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, in his lectures on the 
philosophy of history, had written off Africa as "Unhistorical, Undeveloped," 
merely on the "threshold of the World's History."27 Half a century later, as 
this pronunciamento of priorities from Berlin indicates, Europe announced in 
no uncertain tone its arrival in Africa. 
Of course, it had arrived in Africa much earlier. Even the partition of Africa 
by the Powers of Europe, which so many African critics of the European 
presence in their continent attribute to a mythical carve-up around the con- 
ference table in the Wilhelmstrasse at the end of 1884 and the beginning of 
1885, had begun at least a decade before; and it was to continue for long after 
this. Indeed, alas, it seems that the partition of Africa - certainly, what Julius 
Nyerere has called the "Second Scramble" for Africa - 28is still in existence at 
this time of the centenary of the West African Conference of Berlin. In 
Nyerere's words, "We have artificial 'nations' carved out at the Berlin Confer- 
ence in 1884, and today we are struggling to build these nations into stable 
units of human society29... we are in danger of becoming the most Balkanised 
continent of the world."30 Mwalimu Nyerere may have exaggerated the carv- 
ing-up function of the Berlin Conference - although, as regards the 
emergence of the Congo Free State (now Zaire) between 1884 and 1885, his 
exaggeration is minimal. But the manner in which he and other African 
critics of colonialism have interpreted the Berlin Conference, structure and 
spirit, is not fundamentally at fault. The Berlin Conference may not have 
started the Scramble for Africa but it symbolized it and accelerated it. With 
regard to the exploitation of the mythical resources of the Congo Basin, an 
Afro-American, Theodore Holly, first black Protestant Episcopal Bishop, 
spoke for Africa about the European countries at the West African Confer- 
ence of Berlin: "They have come together to enact into law, national rapine, 
robbery and murder."31 
However, there was more to the Conference than sheer lust for dominion 
over palm and pine by the Powers of Europe and their allies. There was an 
element of hope not only for the modernization of the Dark Continent, as 
reflected in Ignatius Donnelley's futuristic novel, but also for the purgation 
N Protocols, op. cit., p.78. See also p.170 of R. J. Gavin and J. A. Betley, eds., The Scramble for Africa. Documents 
on the Berlin West African Conference and Related Subjects 1884/1885 (Ibadan, 1973), a most useful com- 
pendium of primary sources on the Conference and its milieu. 
27 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Philosophy of History (New York, 1956), p.99. 
= Julius K. Nyerere, The Second Scramble (Dar es Salaam, 1962). 
Ibid., p.4 
"o New Statesman (London), March 31, 1961). 31 Quoted in Jacobs, op. cit., p.71. 
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PHYLON 
from Africa of ancient evils such as the slave trade and the abuse of alcohol. In 
this respect, we need to know much more of the part played at Berlin and 
Brussels by private agencies, such as the British Central African lobby repre- 
sented by Fred Moir of the African Lakes Company and Robert Laws of the 
Livingstonia Mission.32 In addition to raising hopes for the abolition of the 
remaining slave trade in Africa and for the destruction of the liquor traffic, 
the Berlin West African Conference held out hopes for the unrestricted 
spread of missionary activity in the Convention Basin of the Congo and for its 
neutralization in time of war. The point was put eloquently by John A. 
Kasson: "The first colonies founded in America have been the work of differ- 
ent nationalities.... Wars immediately broke out in Europe.... The knife, 
the lance and the torch transformed peaceful and happy colonies into a 
desert.... It does not appear, then, that any sufficient grounds exist for mak- 
ing Central Africa the scene of strife of the Powers when they make war upon 
each other."33 The Great War of 1914-18 put the neutralization implications of 
the Berlin Act of 1885 to the test. Early in the War, on November 26, 1914, the 
African as well as the European belief that metropolitan hostilities would not 
spread into African territories was reflected in a moving anti-war manifesto 
by John Chilembwe, leader of the so-called Nyasaland Native Rising of 1915. 
In his words, "At the commencement of the war we understood that it was 
said indirectly that Africa had nothing to do with the civilized war. But now 
we find that the poor African has already been plunged into the great war."34 
Thus, the hopes of the West African Conference of Berlin were not realized 
and modern war spread and has continued to spread in Africa. 
One other hope which Africans and their kinsmen and women of the 
African Diaspora may have taken from the West African Conference of Ber- 
lin is that its international spirit and organization - it was, after all, in spite of 
its very obvious shortcomings on the score of African development, the first 
international conference about Africa - could be used in the promotion of 
pan-Africanism. Did the Conference become a model, perhaps not always 
very consciously, for the many international conferences on Africa and its 
destiny which Africans, especially of the Black Diaspora, were to hold in the 
future? The academic study of pan-Africanism has yet to turn its attention to 
this possible model. 
Thus, for African historians, positively as well as negatively, the Berlin 
Conference of 1884-85 is something more than a passing show, just one other 
conference, one more subsidized and well-fed retreat for the fortunate few. I 
can see what William Roger Louis means when he says that "When African 
historians at some remote date reexamine Europe's relations with Africa, they 
will probably look upon the Berlin Conference as a curiosity"35 the West 
"Fred L. M. Moir, After Livingstone (London, 1924), pp.42-3; James W. Jack, Daybreak in Livingstonia (Edinburgh, 1901), pp.203, 222. 
3Gavin and Betley, op. cit., p.220. 
3George Shepperson and Thomas Price, Independent African (Edinburgh, 1958), p.234. See also pp.229, 371-72, 
etc. 
3Louis, "Berlin Congo Conference", op. cit., p.219. 
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African Conference of Berlin, as reality and myth (and both are important 
facets of it), is more of a catalyst than a curiosity. 
Its significance for world history still waits examination. Too often, its 
importance in an international setting is obscured by that other and earlier 
Berlin Congress of 1878 with its consequence for the Balkans and the Ottoman 
Empire. Of this, it has been declared that it "managed to produce a com- 
promise among the powers without war."36 The same might be said of the 
Berlin Conference of 1884-85; and both Berlin congresses could be seen as 
part of a process which delayed world war until the second decade of the 
twentieth century. On the other hand, there is a case for arguing that the part 
played by the Conference of 1884-85 in Africa made an international war 
more certain. 
For world history, surely, the significance of the West African Conference 
of Berlin was that, in addition to heralding the arrival on the international 
scene of widespread outside interest in Africa, the problems created by its 
sanctioning of the Congo Free State and by its attempted international legisla- 
tion for that continent's rapidly growingrelations with the world beyond its 
shores, made outside involvement in Africa's affairs more certain, and more 
complex. Writing in the North American Review in 1895, the great black 
savant, Edward Wilmot Blyden, the major international offspring of the Afri- 
can Diaspora in his day, drew attention to some of these complexities: 
The African problem in Africa, which has puzzled a hundred generations of 
Europeans, is now engaging the earnest attention and taxing the energies of all the 
powers of Europe. The decision of the Berlin Conference ten years ago, has placed 
Europe in relations to Africa such as never before existed between these two con- 
tinents. Every power of Europe, including Russia, has established or is seeking to 
establish interest in Africa ... the conferences at Berlin in 1884-85 and at Brussels in 
1890, assumed for Europe the continent of Africa as its special field of operation. The 
scramble is over and now the question is how to utilize the plunder in the interests of 
civilization and progress.37 
In the twentieth century debate on the name and nature of this imperialism 
(the controversy engendered by such persons as J. A. Hobson, V. I. Lenin, 
Rosa Luxembourg, and A. Schumpeter), the significance of the West African 
Conference of Berlin still awaits detailed investigation and scholarly assess- 
ment, in particular, I feel, with respect to the interaction between its public 
sessions and pronouncements and the private groups (national and multi- 
national) and individuals who sought to influence its decisions, or to benefit 
by them. 
For world history, too, the West African Conference of Berlin must be 
given a place in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries' tendency to attempt 
to solve international problems through international meetings. At the First 
Universal Races Congress that was held in London in 1911, it received some 
notice, although perhaps not as much as it deserved, especially in sessions on 
international law, treaties and conferences and what were then designated 
36G. M. D. Howat and A. J. P. Taylor, eds., Dictionary of World History (London, 1973), p.170. This work 
contains no article on the West African Conference of Berlin. 
37Quoted in Hollis Lynch, ed., Black Spokesman. Selected Published Writings of Edward Wilmot Blyden (London, 1971), p.317. 
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PHYLON 
"the subject races."38 At the end of the 1914-18 War, however, the problem of 
the defeated Germany's colonies, especially those in Africa, made the settle- 
ment of the future of the attempted international law for some African ques- 
tions in the Berlin Act of 1885 important. The Edinburgh University Professor 
and British Imperial constitutional lawyer, Arthur Berriedale Keith, pub- 
lished in 1919 a useful book entitled The Belgian Congo and the Berlin Act 
which probably appeared too late to be influential at the Paris Peace Confer- 
ence, particularly in the revision of the Berlin Act of 1885 and the comple- 
mentary Brussels Act of 1890 that was signed by the victorious Powers at 
Saint-Germain-en Laye on September 10, 1919. And the chief of the Colonial 
Division of the American Delegation at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, 
George Louis Beer, produced four years later a book entitled African Ques- 
tions at the Paris Peace Conference which displayed this American historian's 
scholarly grasp of the relevance of the questions raised at the Berlin Confer- 
ence of 1884-85 for the new and troubled world that had emerged, a genera- 
tion later, from the Great War. Both Keith and Beer stressed the importance 
of the Berlin Conference for world history. "The Berlin Conference," said 
Beer, "was composed in a genuinely international spirit and contained repre- 
sentatives of virtually the entire commercial world."39 Keith emphasized the 
significance of the Conference for that early attempt at international control 
of a country, in the establishment of the Congo Free State. "Though in strict 
law," declared Keith, "it is true that the Congo as a State of international law 
does not owe its origin to international action at the Berlin Congress [of 1884- 
85], yet it is equally true that but for that Congress it would never have come 
into being, that the principles of the Congress were developed with the 
express purpose of being applied to the new State, and that there was at the 
time a general belief that the action of the State in its development would be 
international in character."40 That this international dream turned into a 
nightmare must not be allowed to disguise its significance for the history of 
the world. 
I shall attempt no conclusion. The Berlin West African Conference of a 
hundred years ago, its follies and its hopes, its self-interest and its idealism, 
are part of a continuing process of adjustment of America, Europe, Africa and 
the world as a whole to each other. I shall offer, instead, as a brief commen- 
tary on the centenary of this Berlin Conference a few thoughts and quotations 
from the long life of an American who had both European and African 
ancestry and of whose international significance there is now a substantial 
and controversial historical research industry at work across the world. I 
refer, of course, to William Edward Burghardt DuBois. 
3S E.G. Spiller, op. cit., pp.389-90,407-08. 39 George Louis Beer, African Questions at the Paris Peace Conference (New York, 1923), p.280. 
Arthur Berriedale Keith, The Belgian Congo and the Berlin Act (Oxford, 1919), p.16. Compare also Keith's 
comments (pp.278-81) on another scheme for international control of central Africa by the British Labour 
Party, supported by H. G. Wells, after the Great War; see also H. G. Wells, In the Fourth Year. Anticipations 
of a World Peace (London, 1918), pp.41-50. 
Vol. XLVI, No. 1, 1985 
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WEST AFRICAN CONFERENCE 
Perhaps DuBois was too young or too saddened by his mother's death in 
1884-85 to be aware of the importance of the Conference at Berlin. When he 
went to the University of Berlin seven years later for postgraduate study, 
however, he could hardly have avoided hearing about it. And yet, there are 
relatively few references to it in the great corpus of his writings. What there 
are, however, are worth notice at the time of the centenary of the West 
African Conference of Berlin. 
His attitude as a young man was the conventional one of many Afro- 
Americans of his day: "The Congo Free State was established and the Berlin 
Conference of 1885 was reported to be an act of civilization against the slave 
trade and liquor. French, English and Germans pushed on in Africa, but I did 
not question the interpretation which pictured this as the advance of civiliza- 
tion and the benevolent tutelage of barbarians."41 
By the time of the outbreak of the Great War, however, he had changed his 
views radically about it. In his article, "The African Roots of the War," 
published in the Atlantic Monthly of Boston in 1915, perhaps his most impor- 
tant contribution to the theory of imperialism, he linked the conference to his 
ideas on imperialism: 
... the Berlin Conference to apportion the rising riches of Africa amongst the white 
peoples met on the fifteenth day of November, 1884. Eleven days earlier three 
Germans left Zanzibar (whither they had gone secretly disguised as mechanics) and 
before the Berlin Conference had finished its deliberations they had annexed to 
Germany an area over half as large again as the whole German Empire in Europe.42 
This shift in DuBois' perception of the Conference was dramatically 
expressed in his autobiographical sketch of 1940. "Hitler,"he declared, "is the 
late crude but logical exponent of white world race philosophy since the 
Conference of Berlin in 1884."43 It was a cryptic remark. But it seems an 
extension of his concept of the African roots of the First World War into the 
Second; and, when, at the end of this conflict, DuBois came to write his sketch 
of Africa in world history he put what he called "the greatest tragedy that has 
ever overtaken the world," the "collapse of Europe,"44 into an overall African 
perspective. "I believe that the trade in human beings between Africa and 
America... is the prime and effective cause of the contradictions in European 
civilization and the illogic in modern thought and the collapse of human 
culture."45 By the time that DuBois wrote these words, the Berlin which had 
championed the cause of civilization in central Africa in 1884-85 had become 
the Berlin of Hitler's bunker, the center of the Holocaust, and the destroyer of 
civilization in central Europe. 
A century after the West African Conference of Berlin the irony and the 
tragedy of this transmutation of civilized values mocks and haunts us. It is 
easy to accuse DuBois of emotion and bias. But with his ancestry spanning the 
41 The Autobiography of W. E. B. DuBois (New York, 1968), p.143. 
" W. E. Burghardt DuBois, "The African Roots of the War,' Monthly, 115 (May 1915): 707. 43 W. E. Burghardt DuBois, Dusk of Dawn. An Essay toward an Autobiography of a Race Concept (New York, 
1940), pp.169-70. 
44W. E. Burghardt DuBois, The World and Africa. An Inquiry into the part which Africa has played in World 
History (New York, 1947), p.1. 
4Ibid., p.43; compare also pages 18 and 35. 
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PHYLON 
hunters and the hunted in the slave trade and his experience at the University 
of Berlin of hearing Professor Heinrich von Treitschke thunder out to his 
class "Mulattoes are inferior,"46 his perspective on Berlin in 1884-85 challenges 
orthodox historians to find a better one. And it makes at least one historian 
regret that William Edward Burghardt DuBois did not choose the West Afri- 
can Conference of Berlin for his thesis topic at Harvard! 
6 DuBois, Dusk of Dawn, op. cit., p.98-9. 
Vol. XLVI, No. 1, 1985 
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	Article Contents
	p. 37
	p. 38
	p. 39
	p. 40
	p. 41
	p. 42
	p. 43
	p. 44
	p. 45
	p. 46
	p. 47
	p. 48
	Issue Table of Contents
	Phylon (1960-2002), Vol. 46, No. 1 (1st Qtr., 1985), pp. i-iv+1-88
	Front Matter [pp. i-iv]
	Out of Sight, out of Mind: Robert Stein's 1904 "Deafricanization" Scheme to "Hopeland" [pp. 1-15]
	The African Colonization Movement and Ohio's Protestant Community [pp. 16-24]
	U.S. Liberian Relations during World War II [pp. 25-36]
	The Centennial of the West African Conference of Berlin, 1884-1885 [pp. 37-48]
	The Status of Slaves in Igbo and Ibibio of Nigeria [pp. 49-57]
	The Politicization of Bureaucracies in Developing Countries: St. Kitts-Nevis, A Case Study [pp. 58-70]
	The Brief Diplomatic Career of Henry Highland Garnet [pp. 71-81]
	Literature of Race and Culture
	Review: Blacks in Britain [pp. 82-83]
	Review: Succeeding and Failing in School [pp. 83-84]
	Back Matter [pp. 85-88]