The Berlin Conference: Creating the Devil’s Garden

The Berlin Conference: Creating the Devil’s Garden

By the end of the year 1899 of the Gregorian Calendar, European governments were nothing but empires with a dictatorship that was difficult to understand.  There was nothing left in Europe to conquer, and people from the other side of the world were bleeding, crying and mourning under the weight of European barbarism.  England, with its colonial conquests between 1879 and 1900 of the Gregorian Calendar, announced that its territories totalled 4,754,000 square miles, and that it had over 88 million people under its control.  Between 1880 and 1900, France declared itself the owner of 3,500,000 square miles and the controller of a population of 37 million people; Belgium had seized 900,000 square miles that were home to 30 million people; Germany had taken 1,026,220 square miles that were inhabited by 16,687,100 people.  Most of these territories are on the African continent.  All of the people colonised were people of colour.

However, most of these people didn’t remain as passive as the present colonial education is telling us.  People from all over the world stood up against this injustice that was being imposed on them.  It is clear that if ten percent of the world population succeeded in enslaving the rest of the world, these ten percent must have within themselves fifty times more evil than the 90 percent of the world they enslaved.

The same people who invented neither the wheel nor gunpowder nor even agriculture, nor writing--and who didn’t try to domesticate a single animal, etc.--found themselves being called slave masters.  They must know that the path they chose is not the path that dignifies humankind.  They know that they chose the path that no other human being with any common sense would dare to consider.

We should recognise that the phenomenon of “domestication” or expropriation exists in nature.  It is known as parasitism.  A parasite is an animal or plant that is incapable of producing its needed substances, so to survive, it does what we call a grafting onto others who are much stronger and produce vital substances.  There is nothing honourable in parasitism.  There is nothing honourable in any individual or group who attack others simply because their victim has all the qualities that the criminal individual or group can only dream of.  It is undeniable that if European empires had been living under favourable conditions, they would have stayed in their territories and celebrated their human genius. Hunger, famine, disease, ignorance, obscurantism, etc., are the facts that made them envious of other people. 

In Madagascar, the King Ranavalona II, who ruled from 1868 to 1883, became famous in world history for being able to resist French penetration.  We are saying French “penetration”.  The empire of Dahomey in West Africa went to war twice against France.  The kings of Dahomey (Benin), like Behanzin and Agokoli are still remembered for their strategic genius.  

One aspect of European imperialism that one never hears about is surprise.  The invasion of Africa and the rest of the world had been planned and prepared from year 145 of the Julian Calendar, when the small barbarian kingdoms of Europe realised that they had finally succeeded in ruining the dynasty of the Pharaohs.  While other people focused on the preservation of human qualities and expended their energy to improve their individual qualities, Europeans were preparing themselves for war by developing and perfecting diverse weapons and instruments of torture, assassination and full scale war. 

A similar logic allowed the Japanese kingdom to use the death of a fisherman as sufficient reason for invading Taiwan and the Chinese empire.  It is always those who didn’t succeed in melting iron that become masters of gun use against other human beings. 

The war between Chile and Peru, which the Ulaparaiso Treaty brought to an end, also deserves to be mentioned…

Now that our colonisers are done with conquering the podium for human expressions, what new message are they bringing us?  And concerning the blood that is still spilling from everywhere on this Earth, who is responsible for it? Who is responsible for the tears, for the hunger, for the diseases… and for ecological disasters, as well as for the destruction of the Earth?  Yes, the destruction of the Earth… who is responsible, and what is the excuse? 

For a very long time, universities have tried to defend and explain away enslavements by arguing that indigenous tribes were themselves already practising enslavement, but we looked everywhere on this Earth and we didn’t find any sugarcane or cotton plantations that had been established by slaves of any tribe.  It is time that we face the truth.  It is time to call a cat a cat.  This Earth became what we call the Devil’s Garden, and one cannot talk about a garden without talking about the gardener, the nursery, and the gardening tools. 

Nowadays, even a blind person will tell you that this planet is dying.  Only people with mental handicaps are still waiting for fresh evidence to convince them. Our awareness of the situation is not enough to protect us from disaster.  That awareness should lead us to restudy the world and its values.  We need to re-conquer human dignity and preserve civilisation by preserving the world as it has always been preserved, before the emergence of these doctrines of rebels with no cause and no future.  The present system thrives on the rejection of human values.  It is important to recognise the same faces from colonial times that are now abusing today’s societies as their masks.  It is they, the enemies of people… it is they, the enslavers of fellow humans.. it is they, the assassins... it is they, those who are passionately destroying the world... it is they, the gardeners of the Devil’s Garden.