Berlin West Africa Conference
- Berlin West Africa Conference
-
(1884–85) Series of negotiations at Berlin in which the major European nations met to determine the future of Central Africa.
The participants declared the Congo River basin region to be neutral, guaranteed freedom of trade and shipping for all colonial powers, forbade slave trading, and rejected Portugal's claims to the region.
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▪ European history
a series of negotiations (
Nov. 15, 1884–Feb. 26, 1885) at Berlin, in which the major European nations met to decide all questions connected with the
Congo River basin in
Central Africa.
The conference, proposed by Portugal in pursuance of its special claim to control of the Congo estuary, was necessitated by the jealousy and suspicion with which the great European powers viewed one another's attempts at colonial expansion in Africa. The general act of the Conference of Berlin declared the Congo River basin to be neutral (a fact that in no way deterred the Allies from extending the war into that area in World War I); guaranteed freedom for trade and shipping for all states in the basin; forbade slave trading; and rejected Portugal's claims to the Congo River estuary—thereby making possible the founding of the independent
Congo Free State, to which Great Britain,
France, and Germany had already agreed in principle.
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Universalium.
2010.
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