How did 19th century European nations arbitrate the process of colonization among themselves?

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It was kind of a hit or miss affair, but there were a number of confrontations that were peacefully resolved.

One was the Fashoda Incident, in which French from Chad and British from Egypt both claimed Sudan (the headwaters of the Nile). The French on the spot yielded to superior British forces, but the matter wasn't resolved until the French government agreed to back down.

Then there was the Algeciras Conference, that avoided war between Germany and France over Morocco. Germany tried to prevent France's creeping takeover of the country by appealing to America's President Theodore Roosevelt (a recent Nobel Peace Prize winner) to broker a compromise. The final result was that France established a sphere of influence in Morocco that fell a bit short of its earlier goods, so Germany got only part of what she hoped for.

It wasn't always a peaceful affair. The Boer War in South Africa took place between Dutch settlers and the British colonists. Fortunately, it didn't become a wider war because countries like France, the Netherlands and Germany didn't intervene to protect the Boers, even though they were drawn ethnically from these countries.

Still, the Concert of Europe established after the Napoleonic wars inspired the Europeans to dodge a number of bullets until they couldn't dodge the ones the really counted, the shots at Sarajevo that started World War I.

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