Many different countries sent representatives to this meeting. They made agreements so that the competition between the European nations remained moderate.
This ended the fear that rivalry between different groups of European settlers could turn into war. (Four centuries earlier, in 1494, an agreement between Spain and Portugal prevented war in South America, where both of those nations had settlers.)
Beyond preventing war, the Berlin Conference help establish some other regulations for Africa. The treaty which contained these agreements was called the “General Act” of the Berlin Conference. As historian Andrew Zimmerman writes,
The General Act guaranteed a free flow of commerce along the African coast and in the Congo and Niger Rivers and their tributaries. The signatories also vowed to fight slavery in Africa; “watch over the preservation of the native tribes, and to care for the improvement of the conditions of their moral and material well-being”; guarantee “freedom of conscience and religious toleration” for foreigners and Africans alike; and protect “Christian missionaries, scientists and explorers.”
While the treaty avoided a war between the European nations, and ensured the welfare of the Africans, it created tensions with the Ottoman Empire. Egypt and the Sudan, along with other regions of northern and eastern Africa, were still part of the Ottoman Empire.
The Ottomans operated a thriving slave trade in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Although slavery had been eliminated in Europe and North America, it still existed in many areas in the Middle East.
The slave traders from the Ottoman Empire were concerned that the Europeans in Africa would prevent them from capturing Africans and sending them to be sold in the slave markets of Istanbul or Arabia. This led to frictions between Ottoman representatives and European governments.
