On this day in 1884, the “Berlin Conference” began when delegations from nearly every Western European country and the U.S. met in Germany to develop a set of protocols for the seizure and control of African resources.
The conference, which had no African representatives, was the first international conference ever on the subject of Africa, and dealt almost soley with the matter of its exploitation.
At the time, approximately 80% of African land and resources were under domestic control; the influence of Europeans was most strongly exerted on the coast. Following it, colonial powers began seizing resources further inland.
As a result of the conference, which continued into 1885, a “General Act” was signed and ratified by all but one of the 14 nations at the table, the U.S. being the sole exception. The Act’s main features were the establishment of a regime of free trade stretching across the middle of Africa, the development of which became the rationale for the recognition of the short-lived “Congo Free State”, the abolition of the overland slave trade, and the principle of “effective occupation”.
The Conference’s rapacious intentions for Africa were noted by outsiders: socialist journalist Daniel De Leon described the conference as “an event unique in the history of political science…Diplomatic in form, it was economic in fact.”
Before the Conference ended, the Lagos Observer declared that “the world had, perhaps, never witnessed a robbery on so large a scale.” Theodore Holly, the first black Protestant Episcopal Bishop in the U.S., condemned the delegates as having “come together to enact into law, national rapine, robbery and murder”.
Berlin 1884: Remembering the conference that divided Africa
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This is why sectarianism is poison tbh, people can root for anything to fail to show how right they were. (Have not seen such sentiment about zapatistas, but have seen about rojava/catalonia, obviously about ussr/china/yugoslavia)
Let the thousands ideologies with their own projects bloom
only team i’m rooting for is the working class 😤 😤 😤 😤 😤 😤 😤 😤
Yeah, but in this case I don’t think there’s any MLs rooting for the Zaps to fail. At least not what I’ve seen. Ive seen some criticize them in a general sense, but never “we literally dont want you to succeed”. So this feels like a bit of a boogeyman (or random twitter beef) on this user’s fault. Like its possible that there’s some very online MLs on twitter doing this that i’m not seeing though.
Well this one is just a ClA backed rebel group to destabilize Assad now so the US can take over
More like rebel group which opportunistically takes money from cia, cause their goals align. Its not like working class interest is particularly served with assad with russian military bases, so rojava with american bases is whatevs, i’m still in wait and see mode tbh.
Although they’ve half-whiffed palestine situation already, so instead of 50 50 its like 80 20 they’ll turn to shit
I’m not gonna get into debating on Assad but might want to reconsider equivocating what the Russian military/PMCs have done/is doing for foreign countries (especially in Africa) and what the US military has done/is doing
I dont think thats what he was doing. I think he was speaking specifically about Rojava, not on a broad scale.
Ive always found this take on Rojava kind of chauvinistic? Like its not recognizing the situaton on the ground that the people there are actually dealing with and expecing them to concern themselves with ML geopolitical aims when they have self preservation to concern themselves with first and foremost. Its actually probably my main quible with ML opinions on geopolitics and history (though MLs hardly all agree on it.)
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