Berlin Conference

Tensions between those European powers who were seeking African colonies led to the Berlin West Africa Conference, during which the delegates of twelve European states as well as the United States and the Ottoman empire devised the ground rules for the colonization of Africa. The Berlin Conference delegates agreed for future claims on African lands: each colonial power had to notify the others of its claims, and each claim had to be followed up by “effective occupation” of the claimed territory(signed agreement from a local African ruler or by military conquest) Conference participants also established noble-minded objectives for colonized lands: an end to the slave trade, the extension of civilization and Christianity, and commerce and trade.