African History Lesson #1

In 1884, at Portugal's request, German chancellor Otto von Bismarck decided to get the chief western powers of the world & decide on what to do with the African continent. In modern-day parlance, he basically would have said: "Welcome to the Berlin Conference!!"

But this conference was serious business as far as Otto von Bismarck was concerned. It helped the two key players in this whole deal, France & Great Britain (along with Germany & Portugal) get the lion's share of African soil; the French took up most of western Africa while the British took a Cape-to-Cairo approach to grabbing new colonies (they also acquired Nigeria & Ghana). Then one of the more infamous figures around, Belgium's King Leopold II, snatched up what is today the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Germany took Namibia & Tanzania; Portugal claimed Angola & Mozambique while Italy grabbed Somalia. This conference basically proved to be the undoing of kingdoms which had been flourishing for centuries (at that point, 80% of Africa was still under local/traditional control).

The formation of all these new colonies didn't exactly sit well with a lot of the indigenous peoples by any means. For instance, they helped merge together groups who had a penchant of hostility toward one another. And where the indigenous tribes once ruled supreme, the white minority took control, causing havoc & misery beyond the pale. Some of the books of African history which I've read recently & continue to come back to from time to time, are strongly recommended reads for anyone who loves African history/Africana as much as me:

-King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild
-In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz by Michela Wrong
-Frontiers by Noel Mostert (be forewarned: it's 1300 pages worth but still an insightful look into the Xhosa of South Africa)
-The Scramble for Africa by Thomas Pakenham
-The Washing of the Spears by Donald Morris
-Season of Blood by Fergal Keane (about the Rwandan genocide in 1994)
-Biko by Donald Woods
-Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela (I love this book tons!!)

Back to the topic at hand. The Berlin Conference really did more damage than it did any beneficial good for the Africans. Zimbabwe & the Democratic Republic of the Congo are just two prime examples of where colonialism & its aftereffects went way wrong. South Africa, with its Afrikaner (a Dutch-German mongrel) machine of oppression called apartheid, is yet another one to take into account. Angola & Mozambique, with each nation carrying a history of warfare & sorrow, are just two more...the list of casualties seems endless at this point.

For some who want to know more about Africa or a key event of world history, the Berlin Conference is one of those events to seriously look into, not to brush away from memory as an insignificant bunch of gobbledygook.