The colonial division of Africa and the reaction of imperial Russia

Abstract

The history of the African continent, perhaps more than of any other, is full of cataclysms and turning points that radically changed the lives of indigenous peoples and predetermined the course of their further development. In the 15th-18th centuries, these were the large-scale penetration of Europeans into Africa and the slave trade, which brought untold disasters to the inhabitants of the continent. In the 19th century, Africa began to become a market for industrial goods, a sphere of capital investment, and a source of raw materials for Europe. Russia did not participate in colonial conquests, but as a powerful player in the political arena of that time, it closely followed the events on the continent. The authors of the paper focus on the reaction of imperial Russia to the colonial division of Africa and the results of the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885, which has not been sufficiently explored to date.