The Scramble for Africa - Western Imperialism

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Meeting at the Berlin residence of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck in 1884, the foreign ministers of fourteen European powers and the United States established ground rules for the future exploitation of the "dark continent." Africans were not invited or made privy to their decisions.

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The French dominated most of West Africa, and the British East and Southern Africa. The Belgians acquired the vast territory that became The Congo. The Germans held four colonies, one in each of the realm's regions. The Portuguese held a small colony in West Africa and two large ones in Southern Africa.

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While the Great Powers competed for territory elsewhere, the king of one of Europe's smallest countries carved his own private colony out of 100km2 of Central African rainforest.

He claimed he was doing it to protect the "natives" from Arab slavers, and to open the heart of Africa to Christian missionaries, and Western capitalists.

He turned his "Congo Free State" into a massive labour camp, made a fortune for himself from the harvest of its wild rubber, and contributed in a large way to the death of perhaps 10 million innocent people

"The chopping of hands"

The film opens with the shocking images of some of Leopold's victims - children and adults whose right hands had been hacked off by his agents.

They needed these to prove to their superiors that they had not been "wasting" their bullets on animals.

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During the period 1904-08 Germany's colonies in German South-West Africa and German East Africa were rocked by separate, contemporaneous native revolts against their rule.

In total, as many as 65,000 Herero (80% of the total Herero population), and 10,000 Namaqua (50% of the total Namaqua population) either starved, died of thirst, or were worked to death in camps such as Shark Island Concentration Camp between 1904 and 1908. Characteristic of this genocide was death by starvation and the poisoning of the population's wells whilst they were trapped in the Namib Desert.

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The tensions between the imperial powers led to a succession of crises, which finally exploded in August 1914, when previous rivalries and alliances created a domino situation that drew the major European nations into the First World War.

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Boer child in a British concentration camp during the Second Boer War (1899–1902)

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The De Beers Group of Companies has a leading role in the diamond exploration, diamond mining, diamond retail, diamond trading and industrial diamond manufacturing sectors. The company is currently active in every category of diamond mining: open-pit, underground, large-scale alluvial, coastal and deep sea.[2] The company operates in 28 countries and mining takes place in Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Canada.

The company was founded in 1888 by British businessman Cecil Rhodes, who was financed by the South African diamond magnate Alfred Beit and the London-based N M Rothschild & Sons bank.[3] In 1926, Ernest Oppenheimer, a German immigrant to Britain who had earlier founded mining giant Anglo American plc with American financier J.P. Morgan,[4] was elected to the board of De Beers

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Oppenheimer, a rival diamond producer with his own production company (Anglo American Corporation, which will reappear later in the story) essentially bought his way onto the board of directors over the years. By 1927, he was chairman of the board.

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The United States was seen as the next big market for diamonds, and a very effective game plan was formed to sell diamonds to Americans: convince them that diamonds equated love.

Through advertising, men were convinced that the size of the diamond in an engagement ring showed how much they loved their fiancée. Movie stars were shown wearing diamonds in the relatively new motion pictures. And the most effective piece of advertising came in 1947, with the creation of the tag line "A diamond is forever." This later become the company's official motto.

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Discovery Leads to War
As diamonds were discovered in South Africa, wars began to rage in that part of the world and South African tribes were at war with each other. In addition to the civil war, the Dutch and the English were also at odds, as they both tried to establish control over the country. Bloodshed soon became normalcy in South Africa. In the 1930s, the De Beers Group, a diamond mining and trading company, controlled the mining of diamonds in order to maintain their rarity, which then caused diamonds to be more precious and desired.


The ongoing discovery of these rare and precious gems led to more dangerous mining and many Africans were enslaved to mine diamonds, which were used by terrorists to fund their organizations and to buy more arms and weapons. Miners were kept under close watch by child soldiers who carried AK-47s and other high-powered firearms that were purchased with money gathered from the blood diamonds. Many farmers were kidnapped and forced to mine. If they refused, they were either killed or parts of their body were amputated. Miners caught hiding or stealing diamonds have been shot on the spot or their hands amputated. This was how the term blood diamonds, also called "conflict diamonds," came about.

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