Dem. Rep. of the Congo

The above map of Africa shows that excepting one country (Ethiopia) all the other countries were occupied by eight European countries. Democratic Republic of the Congo was occupied by Belgium during king Leopold II at the 3rd. quarter of the nineteenth century.

Association Internationale Africaine :

This was an organisation fomed by King Leopold II of Belgium for promotion of humanitarian projects in the central Africa now known as Dem. Rep. of the Congo.

He convened a conference of nearly forty well-known experts amongst the geographic scientists and philanthrapists of European countries in Brussels in1876. But the conference ended to discover the ways of exploration of the various countries in their inividual interests and each of them formed their own committees to organise nationalised expeditions into the African interior with very little sharing of information.

At the end of nineteenth century two persons, i) Henry Morton Stanley and ii) Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza in thier own way took the responsibilities of expeitions in the Congo regions. Portugal, which also claimed the area due to old treaties with native Kongo Empire, made a treaty with Great Britain on Feb., 1884 to block off the Congo Soceity's access to the Atlantic.

At the same time, various European countries trie to acquire foothold in Africa. france occupied Tunisia and toda's rep. of the Congo in 1881 and Guinea in1884. In 1882, Great Britain occupied the niminally the Ottoman Egypt, which in turn ruled over the Sudan and parts of Somalia. In 1870 and 1882, Italy took possession of the first part of Eritrea, while Germany declare Togo, cameroon and South West Africato be under its protection in1884.

The Berlin conference of the association of 1884-1885 ended in a fracture of the association which caused "Scramble for Africa."