The 1884–85 meeting of fourteen nations — most of them European, along with the Ottoman Empire and the United States — convened by Bismarck, that set the diplomatic ground rules for the European partition of Africa — with no African ruler present — adopting the doctrine of effective occupation, opening the Congo basin to free trade, and granting international standing to King Leopold II's Congo project, soon his private Congo Free State, so that while it did not itself draw most of Africa's borders, it gave the Scramble for Africa its legal cover and accelerating logic.
For three and a half months, diplomats from fourteen nations — most of them European, plus the Ottoman Empire and the United States — met in a grand house on Berlin's Wilhelmstrasse to decide the future of a continent. They argued over rivers, trade rights, and the limits of each other's ambitions in Africa. Maps hung on the walls. Champagne was served. Not one African was in the room. No African ruler was invited or consulted. The men gathered there did not, as legend has it, sit down and carve Africa into colonies with a ruler and pencil. What they did was quieter and, in the end, larger. They agreed on the rules by which Europe would claim a continent that belonged to other people.