By the 1890s, Africa had become a central topic in European diplomacy, with countries signing numerous bilateral treaties that carved the continent into spheres of influence. MAP OF THE DIVISION ...

A scene from the Scramble for Africa A number of territories in Africa, quarreled over by European nations that cynically carved them up over inadequate maps in remote conference rooms thousands ...

Michalopoulos, Stelios, and Elias Papaioannou. "The Long-Run Effects of the Scramble for Africa." NBER Working Paper Series, No. 17620, October 2014.

This process became known as the ‘Scramble for Africa’. However, historians have recently started to refer to the events as the ‘Partition of Africa’ or the ‘Conquest of Africa’.