On this day in 1884, the "Berlin Conference" began when delegations from nearly every Western European country and the U.S. met in Germany to develop a set of protocols for the seizure and control of African resources.
The conference, which had no African representatives, was the first international conference ever on the subject of Africa, and dealt almost soley with the matter of its exploitation.
At the time, approximately 80% of African land and resources were under domestic control; the influence of Europeans was most strongly exerted on the coast. Following it, colonial powers began seizing resources further inland.
As a result of the conference, which continued into 1885, a "General Act" was signed and ratified by all but one of the 14 nations at the table, the U.S. being the sole exception. The Act's main features were the establishment of a regime of free trade stretching across the middle of Africa, the development of which became the rationale for the recognition of the short-lived "Congo Free State", the abolition of the overland slave trade, and the principle of "effective occupation".
The Conference's rapacious intentions for Africa were noted by outsiders: socialist journalist Daniel De Leon described the conference as "an event unique in the history of political science...Diplomatic in form, it was economic in fact."
Before the Conference ended, the Lagos Observer declared that "the world had, perhaps, never witnessed a robbery on so large a scale." Theodore Holly, the first black Protestant Episcopal Bishop in the U.S., condemned the delegates as having "come together to enact into law, national rapine, robbery and murder".
Berlin 1884: Remembering the conference that divided Africa
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really is wild that letter to America is going viral. i read it to be in the loop but it just weird to see hundreds people say things like "im gonna be sick, my whole understanding of the world flipped upside down" like girl its good its not that good. ill take it though.
like they really thought that they hated us for our freedoms.
ive been telling people to just READ that fucking letter he wrote TO US for years
there's no need for creative interpretations of what he was thinking
youll love these comment then
would feel amazing if it didnt take 20 years of frustration for it to become a well known thing lol
yeah these comments were needed 20 years ago
I wonder what it's like living like that? Like I was like that, once. I just don't really remember what it was like.
no thoughts head empty, must be nice.
All the other comments below the clip are so full of propaganda, it's depressing, almost.
Gotta be lots of tiktok kids who were born after not just 9/11 and the invasion of Afghanistan but after the 2003 US invasion of Iraq and who have lived literally their entire lives during the US Global War on Terror
its definitely not just zoomers there are 30 year olds saying this stuff π. to be fair i didnt learn about 9/11 till like middle school and everyone in class said "bush did 9/11" so i assumed bushes policies led to 9/11 and didnt look into it till highschool. i didnt even get the conspiricey lol. didnt even register.
Someone who's 30 now would have been 8 on 9/11 and, if American, would still have lived basically their entire conscious life in the post 9/11 political climate.
Also remember that libs have no political memory.
bin Laden's letter to America? It's going viral? Are we under attack by time commandos from the early 00s?
its popping off on tic tok, thousands of people having a big "are we the baddies?" moment. edit. the inciting tic tok now has 879 k veiws and 90 k likes and the girl is now posting about how capitalism is bad.
Hell yeah. I love when a noospheric pandemic breaks out and give the collective unconscious a pukey stomach!