Fourteen western nations attended the three-month session. Conspicuous by their absence were those who had the most at stake -- the Africans. But there was little hypocrisy: no one pretended the lines were drawn for any interests other than those of the countries at the table. The interests of Africans were never a factor.

"The Europeans came and assumed command of African history," wrote British historian Basil Davidson, "and the solutions they found were solutions for themselves, not for Africans."

The Africa of a century ago consisted of several hundred independent states, some large and powerful and well advanced, others smaller, weaker and more primitive. When the Europeans finished drawing their lines, these states had been condensed into about 40 pieces of territory.

It was not an easy or neat process. Ethnic groups were cleaved into fragments -- the Ovambo were split in half by the boundary line that divided Portuguese Angola from German South-West Af