About a decade after most of the great African discoveries had been concluded the diplomatic and legal basis for the partition was arranged by the Berlin Conference of December 1884 to February 1885. The slave trade was branded as illegal; formal notice was ordered given of all protectorates assumed; it was de clared that no terrritory should be annexed which was not °effectively occupied'; freedom was prescribed for all nations in the navigation of the Kongo and Niger rivers; and provision was made for general freedom of trade in the Kongo Basin. No systematic provision, how ever, was made for carrying out the "white man's burden' of advancing the cultural and moral status of the natives.
Leopold of Belgium and the Episode of the Kongo Free State—The first notable apostle of modern capitalistic imperialism to Africa was none other than King Leopold 11 of Bel gium. His interest was aroused by Stanley's first report of his African explorations in I876. Under Leopold's leadership an •International Association for the Exploration and Coloniza tion of Africa' was formed in the autumn of 1876. Two years later Stanley returned from a second exploring tour and conveyed to Leo pold's agents an account of the natural re sources of the Kongo district in rubber, palm products, ivory and various tropical woods, gums and fibres. Stimulated by this informa tion Leopold developed through the Belgian branch of the International Association the °Committee for the Study and Investigation of the Upper Kongo° (11478), which employed Stanley for the next few years in making a de tailed geographic and economic survey of the Kongo district. In the meantime. Leopold car ried along his plans to obtain full political and economic control of this region In 1882 he organized the °International Association of the Kongo,' with himself as president. Between April 1884 and February 1885, in part by intrigue at the Berlin Conference of 1883-85, be secured from the great powers the recognition of the International Association of the Kongo as an independent sovereign state, and in April 1885 he realized his full ambition by trans forming it into the 'Kongo Free State' with himself as its king. It should be kept in mind that Leopold was not the sovereign of the Kongo Free State in virtue of his position as king of Belgium, but that the African district was his own private possession. While Leopold per sistently maintained that his enterprise was founded primarily upon the desire to bring to the natives of the Kongo district the blessings of Christian civilization, his actual administra tion, especially in its economic phase of forced labor, was one of the most notorious examples of cruel and extortionate exploitation of a backward people of which modern history bears any record. Protests, begun by mis sionaries who were greatly handicapped by the difficulty of spreading the gospel in the face of the concrete demonstration of the methods of the 'most Christian King,' were taken up by leading nations who were motivated in part by humanitarian considerations and in pan by commercial jealousy of Leopold's financial profits from his African patrimony. Revela tions of extreme cruelty, made by English in vestigators in 1902 and 1904. were confirmed by an international commission in 1905, and the strength of indignant public opinion in Europe and America, including liberal Belgian opinion, forced Leopold to surrender the Kongo Free State to the Belgian government in 19K in re turn for an ample indemnity. Since the estab lishment of Belgian control, not only has the political administration been greatly improved and liberalized, but also the commercial import ance of the district has been greatly increased under more generous concessions to merchants and capitalists from Belgium and other states. See AFRICAN INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION ; KO NGO.
German Colonial Enterprise in Africa.— For a number of historical reasons Germany was extremely tardy in her entry into the colo nial movement. Though the Great Elector had begun a policy of colonial expansion and naval development in the latter half of the 17th cen tury, the agrarian fixation of the Prussian Junkerdom had led his successors to abandon these beginnings. The persistence of the medieval empire, the lack of national unification until 1870, and the absence of significant in dustrial and commercial expansion (loan to the '70's' had served to prevent Germany from being a contender in the old colonial movement Even as late as 1870 Bismarck had opposed overseas expansion and had declared that he not accept the entire French colonial em pire as a gift. But forces were at work in Ger
many which made Bismarck's opposition inef fective and which produced one of the most en thusiastic and aggressive policies of colonial expansion witnessed in modern times. The un precedented industrial development during the decade 1. 1870 and the exuberant patriot ism produced by the process of unification cre ated an userishelming desire for world mar kets and a prominent col. oral dominion. This movement Vh as iciltiAtcd by pnsate merchants and capitalists, but at a slightly later period they won 01er the .overnment to that co-opera tion in building up German commercial expan sion which resulted in the phenomenal success of German officials and merchants in securing a great proportion of the trade of the world an: In erecting a very respectable colonial empire While German missionaries had explored the southwestern coast of Africa in the middle of the 19th century and German steamship com panies had begun a desultory trade along the coast shortly afterward, the real awakening o: German interest in imperialism came about m 1876, when the German branch of the Interna tional African Association was established_ la 1882 a society for the development of 11 polilik was founded as the German Colonial Union, and two years later several mercantile marine companies and colonial societies openly sponsored a program of commercial and colonial expansion. Within two years after ISM Ger many had acquired what was substantially the basis of her African domains. In each case the territory was acquired by government explorers or by representatives of private commercial or colonial societies, and then Bismarck was won over to annexation through the pressure of na tional pride or foreign opposition. Dr. Gustav Nachtigal, the noted explorer, negotiated for the possession of Kamerun and Togland in 1864 and both were taken over as a German protec torate in 1884. F. A. E. von Liiiienu. a Bremen merchant, in the summer of 1863 pur chased what became German Southwest Atria when it was taken over by the German govern ment in the next year. Karl Peters, one of the most blatant of Pan-Germans and a representa tive of the German Colonial Society, acquired German East Africa in 1884. and his acnsuy was approved and confirmed by the goitre ment in 1885. This German territory in Ainca. totaling slightly over 1,000.000 square miles. was later defined in its boundaries and soon-vita: extended in the Anglo-German agree nest of July 1890 and the Franco-German arrangement of November 1911 respectively. In a tiniusial sense the German colonies have not heat profitable investment, though Kamer= and East Africa gave promise of developing into fruitful areas for economic exploitation The general nature of the German colonial adenines tration in Africa may best be described by di viding it into two periods, that before and that after the reconstruction of the administrative system in 1906-07. In the earlier period the ad ministration was under the control of chartered companies, not unlike the famous British East India Company. A policy of ruthless exploita tion, more perfect in its refinement of cruelty than that of Leopold in the Kongo district. was followed during this period, but in the same way that the Sepoy mutiny of 1857 led Great Bnt ain to transfer India to the Crown, so the frightful Herero wars of 190.3-0b and the mas sacre of the natives in East Africa in 19IX forced the German government to undertake a sweeping reorganization of their colonial pan" and administration. A colonial office was estab lished in 190(i and Dr. Bernhard Dernbent took charge as colonial secretary in the id lotting year. After 1A17 the oppeessmt meth ods were abandoned and a systematic attempt made to introduce the essentials of %%esters ciiiltration into these colonies. including tram Foriatstiti II) stems, S4.102lIfIC forestry work. saw nary science and some degree of demi:wary education. It must frankly be admitted that no other country has governed its African colonies of the same level of culture in a more efficient and enlightened manner than Germany since 1907. and the deprivation of Germany of her African possessions by the Peace Conference was one of the least justifiable acts of that body and perhaps the best proof that colonial booty, as well as the safety of the democratic principle in the world, weighed heavily upon the attention of the Allied powers. See GERMANY — GER MANY AND THE WAR.