Abstract:
This paper examines how pressure groups affected the US government's perception of its role in Africa in the period from the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 up to World War I. During this period American government officials tended to support and encourage European colonialism in Africa and to avoid interfering with European colonial administration. Pressure groups tried to force the US administration to change its attitude. The pressure from the prohibition movement to ban the exportation of alcohol to Africa was responsible for the participation of the US in two conferences in Brussels (1889, 1899) which aimed at putting a limit on the slave and liquor trade in the colonies. By 1906, the US government had come under heavy pressure to do something about the atrocities carried out in the Congo Free State (present-day Zaire) by King Leopold of Belgium, and President Roosevelt was forced to change his policy towards the Congo. With the outbreak of World War I, President Wilson was similarly forced to change his policy and to take a firm stand against the European acquisition of territories in Africa