It was snowing in Berlin that day in November 1884, but the conference delegates around the horseshoe-shape table in Prince Bismarck's house on the Wilhelmstrasse had little thought for the local weather. Africa had their full attention.
In recent years there had been an increasingly unseemly "scramble for Africa" involving missionaries, explorers, gunboats and small armies haring around in a frantic race to get their national flags up before anybody else.
In the name of the "three Cs" -- Commerce, Christianity and Civilization -- the Berlin Conference had convened to sort out the "Dark Continent" in a decent, orderly manner and put an end to the skirmishes, sabotage and general anarchy.