34 - Writing the rule book on savage conquest: The Berlin Congress Part II

Footnotes of History

Listeners,

Today after a lengthy interlude, Dan and I release the second half of the Scramble for Africa episode.

It’s controversial of course since, despite our normal dismissal of all the virtue signalling in modern media about empire and European history, we actually found ourselves rather moved by the cold brutality of the operation.

Dan actually burst into tears, but out of deference to his ego, I cut this from the tape.

Okay that didn’t happen, but before we get too carried away by the number one mistake historians always make (i.e. imposing modern values on the past), two caveats:

1) The right of conquest of course was a recognised concept at the time and 2) many lands were bought rather than “stolen”.

As historians, our role – unlike the famous quote – IS to reason “why”.

This being said, it doesn’t get away from the fact that European leaders treated much of the continent as if it were essentially empty.

As well as the fact that they hid their imperial ambitions behind the veneer of respectability or “civilisation” (eg anti-slavery).

The Congress sounds cold and you’d be dead right:

It is a fascinating bureaucratic horror that saw a group of faceless civil servants draft the rulebook for late empire in Africa.

An interesting, if at times disturbing episode of a ruthless and impersonal governmental process applied to foreign lands, including:

• How the latecomers to empire used the moral high ground to blackmail the frontrunners
• The grotesque distortion of the meaning of free trade for imperial ends
• Bismarck as the civil servant’s pin-up idol: a mastery of bureaucratic greyness that subjugated a continent at the stroke of a pen
• Why the haplessness of one nation’s empire building actually won it more allies in Europe
• “PEC”: a single definition that was so bitterly controversial, it nearly caused a world war

Listen in and listen good.
Tim
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