Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Colonial Empires
Reading my textbook section, I had a hard time figuring out what the motives were for the European people to colonize Africa. At first, I thought that perhaps the European colonists were power hungry and had large superiority complexes, thinking that they could go to any country and take whatever land that they wanted. This seems to make a lot of sense because the white men were usually referred to a bwana, which means master, and they usually called the African men "boys" no matter how old or young they were. They also drastically changed the culture of wherever they went, imposing racial stereotypes and attempting to create industries based on cheap African labor. They also imposed taxes and limited education for the Africans. However, there seems to be another motive, which would be collecting scientific information from the African populace. The more evident one seems to be the land hungry motive. The people being colonized did not respond very well. They attempted to revolt, but in the end, the European power was too great for them to overcome.
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Well, you pretty much listed motives in your response. As you said, they were able to create industries based on African labor. They also were able to impose taxes. These are all possible motives.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the textbook being hard to understand. It was really vague and there weren't many definitive points about how colonization occurred or the motives behind it. The author just kind of said that sometimes territories were taken over peacefully, sometimes they weren't. Sometimes the territories were taken over quickly, sometimes they weren't. I just don't think this was one of the textbook's stronger articles.
ReplyDeletewhich do you think was the underlying motive for the white people? Also do you think that the treatment of the natives then trasnlated over to the treatment of the slaves in AMerica. Basically which came first, the terrible treatment in America or Africa?
ReplyDeleteHornaday was just the zoo director. Instead of seeing Ota Benga as a person, he was seen more as an exhibit because he was looked at as extremely behind in evolution. Ota was more like a monkey to Hornaday, and less like a human, so to Hornaday it made sense that he would be put in a zoo. In Hornadays eyes, because Ota lived in the jungle, he was not quite a human, so he was fit to live in the zoo. This was pretty much known as Darwin racism, evolutionary racism, where someone was treated a certain way according to their level of development.
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