During the latter part of the nineteenth century, European imperialism was on the rise, and along with it, the pressure to claim as much territory as one possibly could for a given territory. In particular, there was a growing interest amongst the European powers to obtain as much of Africa for one’s state as possible, resulting in the “Scramble for Africa”. As a means of regulating this conquest of the continent by other states, the imperial powers decided to resolve things in a “civil” manner via a conference that would change the face of the African continent almost irreversibly; this congregation was the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885.
This event is not regarded with the same grandeur as it once possessed, for scholars of today now recognize that the proceedings of the conference played an important role in charting the fate of the continent, continuing to do so to this day. Therefore, an examination of press releases from the time and contrasting them with the academic views of today provides a preliminary means of accomplishing this goal of comparing the similarities and differences between the two time periods. Specifically, there is a clear dichotomy between the opinions of the past and
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It is believed that this notion is the base from which many of the intercolonial struggles of the late nineteenth century were built from, with the Berlin Conference being one the most symbolically important ones due to the conference establishing that there would be European dominance over Africa for the foreseeable future. Thus, it is from these roots, that is to say, those of the conference, that Africa became truly entangled in the colonial matrix. As a result, the only way for this to truly change is for deimperialization, i.e, regarding all civilizations as being