Researching this made me think about how I would feel if people started a war where I was living and I had to live through it. I have never experienced a war where I have been living but I can imagine it is not very fun. I think it would be terrifying because I could easily walk out of my house going to school and happen to be in the middle of people fighting, and therefore I could easily get injured or worse killed! I think it must have been even weirder for the Africans because the two people who came in and had this war were not even really related or connected very much to the land. In Iraq, the Iraqi are fighting against the US and so it is at least there own people. That doesn't make it any more right but at least there is one familiar side. Not knowing at least one side would make it even harder to go through because then there is double the chances that you will get hurt. Having a familiar side means that they will probably try to avoid killing their own people as much as possible. Seeing that the Africans didn't really benefit from the war, I think that this must have been a dramatic change that they would have loved to avoid, especially considering that innocent people were taken and killed in prison camps.
Citation:
DISCovering World History. 2003. http://find.galegroup.com/gps/retrieve.do?contentSet=GSRC&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&qrySerId=Locale%28en%2
C%2C%29%3AFQE%3D%28ke%2CNone%2C8%29boer+war%24&sgHitCount
Type=None&inPS=true&sort=Relevance&searchType=BasicSearchForm&tabID
=T001&prodId=IPS&searchId=R1¤tPosition=2&userGroupName=menlo
_schlib&docId=EJ2105240003&docType=GSRC (accessed January 5, 2010).
This is great background information and its very helpful because before reading this i had no idea what the Boer War was. I was clueless but now i know that they were fighting over land.
ReplyDeleteIs it true that the Boers had freedom and Britain did not, because i did some research about that and i got an unclear answer. Im pretty sure thats right because it said after the Boers took the win they went back to the free republic.
but anyways thanks for sharing the information
Megan did the Africans try to resist these two countries taking over their land or just sit back and watch?
ReplyDeleteCarson, no civilization is simply going to hand over land, but sometimes there is nothing they can do to prevent the takeover. They didn't necessarily have the resources they needed to stop the British and Dutch from taking over their land and making them slaves. If Africans had the power and technology to protect themselves, the history of slavery would be drastically different, but since they didn't, other societies pushed them around a lot.
ReplyDeleteActually, many smaller tribes in South Africa joined with the dutch colonies in order to fight against the british. The native Africans may not have had the ability to defend their homelands alone, but when they joined with the dutch their chances of victory drastically rose.
ReplyDeleteLike Cy said, many Africans joined sides and because it gave them some power in a sense because they were teamed up with a stronger team than the were before. This was kind of a risking decision because many of them died because the many that were involved were then viewed as enemies rather than citizens who lived on the land where the war was going on. This made them more of a target than before. There were still people who didn't get involved but were still killed because they were living in the war and therefore in danger. If they were near people who were fighting they were at risk of dying because they would kill the innocent African so that they could defeat the "enemy" or other side.
ReplyDeleteWell wouldnt the Africans side with someone regardless of what happened? If they just sat back and watched, the conquering nation would take control of the population, and the Africans would be second class citizens. By siding with one country, they showed their support, so that they wouldn't necessarily have to give up their lands, because they helped support the cause.
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