15 November 1884, Bismarck's residence in Berlin. Delegates of fourteen states sit beneath a large map of Africa. No African is in the room. Over three months they agree who may claim a coast, what makes a claim 'effective', and that the Congo basin will be open to all traders.
Why then
In 1880 Europeans hold the African coasts and little else. Quinine, river steamers and breech-loading rifles have opened the interior, and King Leopold of the Belgians, France and Britain are racing for it. Bismarck calls the conference so the race does not become a European war.
What they wanted
Bismarck wants the other powers busy overseas. Britain guards its coasts and the Niger; France looks for an empire to make up for Alsace. Leopold gets the Congo as his personal colony. The rulers of Africa are not asked.
What changed
By 1914 only Ethiopia and Liberia are independent. In Leopold's Congo rubber quotas are enforced with the gun and the severed hand, and millions die. In German South-West Africa in 1904 a war against the Herero and Nama becomes genocide, and most of the Herero people die. Many of the lines drawn in this race are still Africa's borders.
Still argued
Did the conference divide Africa, or only set rules for a race already under way? Most historians now say the second.