What role did the then Sweden-Norway kingdom play in the conquest and occupation of Africa? What did it derive from this catastrophic conquest? On this day of the 131st anniversary of the start of the infamous pan-European conference in Berlin, Germany, we publish here David Nilsson’s 2013 groundbreaking study on the subject

David Nilsson, “Sweden-Norway at the Berlin conference, 1884-1885”, 54pp., Current African Issues 53, Nordiska Afrikaanstitutet, Uppsalla, 2013 (http://www.isn.ethz.ch/Digital-Library/Publications/Detail/?lang=en&id=175724, accessed 12 May 2014)

“What [i]s ... presented in this paper is arguably incongruent with the common perception that Sweden lacks a colonial history. Sweden did not acquire territories in Africa after the Berlin conference, but through the Berlin and Brussels agreements of 1885, King Oscar II and Baron Gillis Bildt enabled Sweden-Norway to get ‘a piece of the African cake’ (as King Leopold once put it) even without de facto colonisation.” – David Nilsson, “Sweden-Norway at the Berlin conference, 1884-1885”, p. 32 (added emphasis).