Episode 282 - The Scramble for Africa Berlin Conference of 1884/5 and Lüderitz becomes German
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Show notes
There are many correlations and connections in this episode, so hang on tight as we toboggan down the slippery slopes of history bumping into all manner of bizarre and simultaneously heinous characters. Keeping in mind that we’re dealing with men and women of their age, nevertheless, the tale is one of intrigue, ego, treasure hunting, not to mention, madness.
Belgium by 1882 was barely half a century old, becoming independent in 1830, ruled by King Leopold the Second, who sported a spade shaped beard and a giant colonial chip on his shoulder. Because he led a respectable European country, he was a king, but how he’d become a king was a sleight of hand.
His father was a German prince, related to the British Royal family, Leopold the First. This trembling nation had been pasted together — an uneasy amalgam as Adam Hothschild writes — of French and Flemish, a version of Dutch spoken in northern Belgium. King Leopold the Second was fluent in French, German, like his father and later, English.
He never bothered to learn Flemish, spoken by more than half his people. A snob, some said, bitterly, as bitter as the division created by language and class. French was the language of the bourgeois, the educated, Flemish was working class. Even the professionals of northern Belgium spoke French instead of Flemish, the perceived language of the farm labourer and factory worker.
As a teen, Leopold the Second was a gangly youth, his head too big for his body, his clothes hanging off his spindly shoulders — a callow boy who’s mother tended to write him threatening letters about his lack of interest in studies rather than speak to him directly. He was useless in most subjects except for Geography. Leopold the Second was a Geography freak, and from the age of ten, his education was based in military lore. By fifteen he was a lieutenant of the Belgian army, 16 he was a captain, 18, a major, 19, a colonel, and a year later, at 20, a major general.
This pencil thin spindle of a boy had to apply for an audience with his father - who spoke to his son through messengers. As this alienated boy aged, he surrounded himself with men who explained how government worked, and plied him with maps.When the elder Leopold died, Leopold exclaimed :
“Petit pays, pettis gens”. — small country, ordinary people. Belgium, just for the record, is about the same geographic size as Lesotho and squeezed between France and Germany, the grand nations of Europe in the late 19th Century. Leopold was peeved by his puniness, something had to be done to rouge up the petit pays.
Recognizing growing domestic pressure and the strategic need to split British and French alliances, Bismarck plunged Germany into the colonial race. In 1884, he hosted the Berlin Conference, with a hazy goal at formalizing something about the European partition of the African continent.
The main aim of Berlin Conference was to deal with the growing pressure of European claims over West Africa, but it was much more than that. It began formally on Saturday 15th November 1884, as winter snow which had arrived early cloaked Berlin.
The plenipotentiaries had their brief - but what was Bismarck planning? Was this a free trade conference to safeguard German business in the Congo and Niger? Or was Bismarck about to wield a hefty cake slicer, to carve up the whole African continent?
