Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow

by Yuval Noah Harari

In the late nineteenth century, several European powers laid claim to African territories. Fearing that conflicting claims might lead to an all-out European war, the concerned parties got together in Berlin in 1884 and divided Africa as if it were a pie. Back then much of the African interior was terra incognita to Europeans. The British, French and Germans had accurate maps of Africa’s coastal regions, and knew precisely where the Niger, Congo and Zambezi empty into the ocean. However, they knew little about the course these rivers took inland, about the kingdoms and tribes that lived along their banks, and about local religion, history and geography. This hardly mattered to the European diplomats. They unrolled a half-empty map of Africa over a well-polished Berlin table, sketched a few lines here and there, and divided the continent among them.