The Berlin Conference

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Berlin Conference of 1884. In the 1880s, as colonial powers attempted to increase their spheres of influence in Africa, tensions began to grow between European nations including Britain, Belgium and France. In 1884 the German Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, brought together many of Europe’s leading statesmen to discuss trade and colonial activities in Africa. Although the original purpose of the summit was to settle the question of territorial rights in West Africa, negotiations eventually dealt with the entire continent. The conference was part of the process known as the Scramble for Africa, and the decisions reached at it had effects which have lasted to the present day. The conference is commonly seen as one of the most significant events of the so-called Scramble for Africa; in the following decades, European nations laid claim to most of the continent.

→ Play on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Richard Drayton 2 episodes
  Rhodes Professor of Imperial History at King's College London
• Richard Rathbone No other episodes
  Emeritus Professor of African History at SOAS, University of London
• Joanna Lewis No other episodes
  Assistant Professor of Imperial History at the LSE, University of London

Reading list

• Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law
  Antony Anghie (Cambridge University Press, 2007) Google Books →
• Replenishing the Earth: The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Anglo-World
  James Belich (Oxford University Press, 2009) Google Books →
• The Berlin West African Conference, 1884-1885
  Sybil Crowe (Royal Empire Society, 1942) Google Books →
• Bismarck, Europe, and Africa: The Berlin Africa Conference 1884-1885 and the Onset of Partition
  Stig Forster, Wolfgang J. Mommsen and Ronald Robinson (eds.) (OUP, 1989)
• King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism
  Adam Hochschild (Pan, 2012) Google Books →
• Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer
  Tim Jeal (Faber & Faber, 2008) Google Books →
• The Last Journals of David Livingstone
  David Livingstone (Horace Waller ed.) (Murray, 1874) Google Books →
• The Cambridge History of Africa (volume 6)
  Roland Oliver and G. N. Sanderson (eds.) (Cambridge University Press, 1985) Google Books →
• The Scramble for Africa
  Thomas Pakenham (Abacus, 1992) Google Books →
• Africa and the Victorians: The Official Mind of Imperialism
  Ronald Robinson and John Gallagher with Alice Denny (Palgrave Macmillan, 1982) Google Books →

Related episodes

• The Congress of Vienna
  
  19 Oct, 2017 940 History of Europe
• Africa
  
  8 Jul, 1999 960 History of Africa
• 1848: Year of Revolution
  
  19 Jan, 2012 900 History
• Bismarck
  
  22 Mar, 2007 940 History of Europe
• The Zulu Nation’s Rise and Fall
  
  15 Apr, 2010 960 History of Africa
• The British Empire’s Legacy
  
  31 Dec, 1998 940 History of Europe
• The Russo-Japanese War
  
  1 Apr, 2021 950 History of Asia
• Baltic Crusades
  
  24 Nov, 2016 940 History of Europe
• Slavery and Empire
  
  17 Oct, 2002 900 History
• The Barbary Corsairs
  
  9 Nov, 2023 900 History
• The Thirty Years War
  
  6 Dec, 2018 940 History of Europe
• Archaeology and Imperialism
  
  14 Apr, 2005 930 History of the Ancient World
• The Riddle of the Sands
  
  12 Jun, 2008 820 English and Old English literatures
• Mercantilism
  
  16 Mar, 2023 330 Economics
• The Siege of Vienna
  
  14 May, 2009 940 History of Europe
• Coffee
  
  12 Dec, 2019 640 Home and family management
• The May Fourth Movement
  
  9 Dec, 2021 950 History of Asia
• The Empire of Mali
  
  29 Oct, 2015 960 History of Africa
• The Continental-Analytic Split
  
  10 Nov, 2011 100 Philosophy
• The British Empire
  
  8 Nov, 2001 900 History

---

Programme ID: b03ffkfd

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03ffkfd

Auto-category: 967 (Africa - General History)