Berlin West Africa Conference
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- San Diego State University - Department of Political Science - General Act of the Berlin Conference on West Africa, 26 February 1885
- Al Jazeera - Berlin 1884: Remembering the conference that divided Africa
- South African History Online - The Berlin Conference
- Khan Academy - The Berlin Conference
- Academia - Between law and history: the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 and the logic of free trade
- Date:
- November 15, 1884 - February 26, 1885
- Participants:
- France
- Germany
- Portugal
- United Kingdom
Berlin West Africa Conference, 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.