Imperialist Education In African American Imperialism

In document 4, Ndansi Kumalo, an African veteran of the Ndebele Rebellion, discussed his tribe’s surrender to the “White people”. He also described the horrifying and humiliating lives they struggled with “like slaves” because of their surrender. This poor treatment led to uprisings and rebellions. Although African reactions to Europe’s Scramble for Africa were all similar, the reactions had varied results. Some rebellions failed poorly, but others succeeded.

Africa was a nation that was based off of selling slaves in which the Europeans were familiar with but by 1807, slavery was abolished which made King Leopold II move onto a different resource to line his pockets. The resource he started production on was rubber because of the widespread want for rubber for tires and other manufactured goods. Around the 19th century when Leopold acquired even more land and expanded his production on rubber and sometimes ivory his managers proceeded to force labor and strip away daily cleanliness which eventually led to the widespread disease of malaria which killed as many as 10,000,000 people. With a absolute infectious disease clouding Africa and the seemingly brutal army brought up by Leopold, what really was the driving force behind European Imperialism in Africa?

During the European Scramble for Africa, in the early 20th century, Africans had a peaceful reaction with anti-imperialistic sentiments (docs. 2, 3, 4, and 7), peaceful actions through the approach of diplomacy (docs.1, 2, and 3) and also a rebellious anti-imperialistic reaction (docs. 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9) towards the Scramble for Africa.

European powers shamelessly exploited the people and resources of Africa in the 19th century. They often tried to justify their actions by using ideology, religion and moralism. After the end of the African slave trade, the development of steam power, and medical discovery, European nations started exploring not only the coast but also the unmapped interior of the continent. In this essay, I will explain the main driving forces behind African Imperialism. The Western europeans countries all competed for land and resources because of their self interest. They sought natural resources, and technology gave them the ability to exploit them. The philosophy of national pride however, was the primary reason. (Main document) (Doc C, D & B)

European Imperialism in Africa European imperialism has been a critical part throughout history and has affected many nations. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the continent of Africa faced imperialism from European powers. Although Africa’s terrain naturally protects it from invaders, European nations were able to imperialize a majority of the African continent. African nations lacked the technology and weaponry to defend themselves from European nations which had advanced weaponry. Europeans used advanced technology like guns and powerful armies to advance through Africa, despite its terrain.

In Basil Davidson’s video “Different but Equal,” he outlines the European perception of Africa upon their discovery of the continent. Claims that the Europeans were making about African culture, however, were far fetched and did not depict Africa in a positive manner. History according to pre-European Africa was rich and diverse, but once Europeans saw for themselves how different their continent was from Africa, they began to make up their own version of African history.

Africa DBQ     Africa is an extremely large continent filled with 54 countries. European occupation of Africa has shaped the very structure and function of many of these diverse countries. Socially and economically, European influence is very obvious through imperialism, the act of one country extending power and rule over another, as well as colonization, the act of establishing a colony in another country. The effects of European imperialism and colonization have greatly damaged Africa in many different aspects of life.     European imperialism as well as colonization worked to control much of Africa.

Death by Progress In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the European countries pushed their limits in order to establish who was the most superior nation in terms of progress. The imperialistic trend drove the nations’ leaders into a competition of who has the most Christian converts, who has the largest amount of a certain produce, and ultimately, who has the largest amount of resource-rich territory. To become the most powerful imperialistic nation, countries committed various acts of genocide in the name of progress. Progress is what occurs when a country’s valued assets grow and develop to become more valuable than other countries’ assets.

Imperialism was an extremely controversial issue in the 1800s and early 1900s. Imperialism is defined in our book as: “The practice by which a nation acquires and holds colonies and other possessions, denies them self-government, and usually exploits them economically.” The Republicans and Democrats had a huge role in the idea of expansion during this time period, Republicans defined themselves on the idea of what their party did to gain self worth and the Democrats were more focused on what they opposed rather that what they stood for. Democrats imposed government influence on economy and countless other things. Democrats stood for white supremacy.

Following the end of the Industrialist Era and the emergence of countless technological advancements, the United States entered the world stage as a dominant power. The United States was attempting to create an empire by imperializing land outside of its own borders in order to benefit the country’s economic interests. Many citizens, whose views were greatly influenced by their understandings of national identity, saw this overseas expansion in conflicting ways. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, these groups differed in their opinions on the idea of imperialism due to either their wanting to remain a democratic country built on the ideals of freedom and liberty, or their wanting to expand for economic reasons and nationalism.

European imperialism started as a source for raw materials and a way to gain advantages over their rival countries (Spielvogel and McTighe 226). Yet, the African countries being imperialized were impacted by this settlement in many positive ways (Spielvogel and McTighe 231). Europeans brought ideas of Westernization and influenced the societies that were not yet industrialized and ones that lacked the modern elements many European countries had acquired (Spielvogel and McTighe 235). Through the spread of western ideals and democracy, the people of Africa were inspired to pursue their own self-rule and continuation of the modernization that the European imperialists left behind on the continent. When European nations first imperialized the African

Propaganda is information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view. Propaganda is used in every business because many people see it everyday. Propaganda and colonization go hand in hand. Colonization is the act of setting up a colony away from one's place of origin. People come from all over the world, usually to escape horrible situations, and that is what propaganda pushed people to do as long ago as the 18th century and even modern day.

In Sundiata: An Epic of Mali and The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, the importance of storytelling and recording history is prevalent throughout both stories. In Sundiata, the griot serves as the narrator of the story recounting the tale of Sundiata told to him by his father who learned it from his father and so on for countless generations. Griots travel amongst their people using oral history as a way of preserving African culture and heritage throughout generations. They treasure the superiority of oral history above written history because the written word “lacks the warmth of the human voice.” Conversely, Olaudah Equiano explores the written word as a method of spreading his story throughout the world. He writes a biography because it can be translated into countless different languages because his purpose is to educate as many people about his story in an effort to end the atrocities of the slave trade. While the function of the griot is to connect Sundiata with his ancestry via oral storytelling and music, Equiano’s written testimony distances himself from his indigenous African heritage.

While attempts have been made to legitimize the ideology surrounding the policy of residential schools, the majority of scholars – and Canadians when they are aware of what occurred in residential schools - see it today as an act of cultural genocide . In order to fully comprehend why residential schools were created, you need take into account the mindset of the Canadian government during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This mindset was succinctly stated by Canada’s first Prime Minister Sir John A. MacDonald in 1880:

This chapter in Africans and Their History by Joseph Harris presents some of the roots of the stereotypes and myths about Africa in the past and for the most part are still held today. Harris discusses how the “greats” of history, geography, and literature starting a path of devaluation of Africans that writers after their time followed. Harris also denounced the language that these “greats” used to describe and talk about Africans. He asserts that this language inherently painted Africans as inferior and subhuman.