The Berlin Conference on the partition of Africa was held in 1884–1885.
German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck convened the meeting in Berlin, where European powers discussed rules for trade, navigation and territorial claims in Africa. The conference opened on 15 November 1884 and concluded on 26 February 1885.
African kingdoms and societies were not represented as equal participants in the negotiations. The General Act of the conference recognized principles including freedom of trade in the Congo Basin and requirements for “effective occupation,” which encouraged European states to establish administrations and military control before claiming territory.
The conference did not draw every later colonial boundary directly, and historians emphasize that conquest and treaties continued afterward. Nevertheless, it became a major symbol of the “Scramble for Africa,” the rapid expansion of European colonial rule in the late nineteenth century. By 1914, most of Africa was controlled by European empires, apart from Liberia and Ethiopia.