Berlin hosted the 1884–1885 Berlin Conference on Africa.
German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck convened the conference, which ran from November 1884 to February 1885. Representatives of European powers and the United States met to establish rules for trade, navigation and territorial claims in Africa during the period often called the Scramble for Africa.
The conference adopted the General Act of the Berlin Conference. It recognized principles including freedom of trade in the Congo Basin, freedom of navigation on the Congo and Niger rivers, and the idea that European powers had to demonstrate effective occupation when claiming territory.
African rulers and representatives were not invited as participants in the negotiations. The conference did not draw every later colonial boundary by itself, but its rules accelerated European competition and contributed to the partition of Africa. Modern historians therefore treat it as a major event in the history of European imperialism.