The Berlin Conference was held from 1884 to 1885 in Berlin, hosted and lead by German Chancellor Otto Von Bismarck. The conference sealed the fate of African nations because it formalized the partition of the whole continent (except of Ethiopia, which was never a colony) among seven European colonial powers: Belgium, Germany, France, Spain, Britain, Italy, and Portugal.
One way in which the conflicts in South Africa differed from the conflicts in other African colonies is that in South Africa, two European colonial powers had presence: The Netherlands, and Britain, and many of the conflicts were between these two nations, and not between one colonial European power, and local African tribes.
