During our travels today we stopped
at the fairly new Berlin Conference memorial on Wilhelmstraße. This memorial
commemorates the ‘Congo/Berlin/ West-Africa’ Conference took place from
1884-1885, organized by Otto von Bismarck the first Chancellor of Germany. Here
the European powers (Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Denmark, France, the United
Kingdom, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden–Norway, the Ottoman
Empire and the United States) decided to arbitrarily divide the African
continent amoung themselves without consulting any one from the regions. They
paid little attention to the ethnic and tribal boundaries already present, and
instead focused on achieving their goals of large free trade area, access to
resources, etc. There was common belief that is was ok because the boundaries
were not really meant for the local populations, they were for the European
powers. 
This has had lasting affects on the
people, perhaps, as Michalopoulos and Papaioannou argue, greater than those of
slavery and colonization. In their paper, they reason that there is a strong causal
correlation between the partitioning of ethnicities and the extended periods of
civil war in these regions. In one of their figures (photo to the right) it
shows conflicts across the continent and by comparing this with the imposed boundaries
and Murdock’s ethnolinguistic map they have found evidence to support their
hypothesis. They also link this with the
underdevelopment in these areas as illustrated by light density data.
The
sign was constructed in 2005 after a Green politician and chairman of the
Africa Forum eV, Dr. Victor Dzidzonou from Togo backed the project. This is the
first monument of its kind in Berlin, however the previous year monuments of
the same kind had been erected in Hamburg, Düsseldorf and others.
Although
the sign was recently added and the conference is not something commonly
associated with Germany history, it is a part of that history and should be
acknowledged.
Michalopoulos,
Stelios, and Elias Papaioannou. The Long-run Effects of the Scramble for
Africa. Cambridge, Mass.: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2011.
1 comment:
I really like the extra maps and data that you have added. Its harder to imagine the spatial distribution of these types of things and displaying it with maps makes it so much easier. The maps that you chose are very well done, excellent choice!
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