This study is primarily a diplomatic not a legal one, its object being to set the Berlin West African Conference of 1884–5 in its true relation to contemporary history. The importance of the conference as a landmark in international law, has in fact been exaggerated, for when its regulations are studied it can be seen that they all failed of their purpose. Free trade was to be established in the basin and mouths of the Congo; there was to be free navigation of the Congo and the Niger. Actually highly monopolistic systems of trade were set up in both these regions. The centre of Africa was to be internationalised. It became Belgian. Lofty ideals and philanthropic intentions were loudly enunciated by delegates of every country to the conference. Only the vaguest and most unsatisfactory resolutions were passed concerning the internal slave trade, the one humanitarian question of any importance to be discussed at its sittings; whilst the basin of the Congo, if not the Niger became subsequently, as everyone knows, the scene of some of the worst brutalities in colonial history.