A civilized person is one who is open to the world and willing to change in order to improve. A civilized person is one who does not discriminate against other people or try to change other people in order to gain fame and fortune. According to this definition of civilized people, Africans acted like civilized people whereas Europeans acted like savages during the colonization of Africa.
In order to avoid economic depression caused by surplus of products and low consumer demand for these products at home, European tribes needed to find new markets for their products that were not self-sufficient so that they could gain profit from the surplus of products by making these new markets dependant on their products. The industrial European tribes saw Africa as the perfect destination for their goods; they predicted that Africans would buy more than they would be able to sell and thus the Europeans would gain more profit. The Europeans also figured out a way to morally justify forcing these products upon the African people at home since the majority of African people were not Christian. Colonialism in Africa gained the Europeans copper, diamonds, slaves, and other resources to increase their wealth and worldwide prestige. However, the consequences for the African people were mostly devastating: the Europeans politically and economically exploited the African people by dividing the land into political areas, by making African people dependant on European goods, and by stealing their raw materials. Also, the African’s traditional way of life was disrupted by the Europeans who imposed their beliefs upon the African people against their will, and in some cases slaughtered, or experimented on, thousands of Africans who refused to live the “Western” way.
Up until the 1880s, much of Africa was still unexplored by the Europeans; the European influence was on the coastline. The French Republic had gained control over Algeria; Great Britain held the Cape Colony and Portugal had Angola. Soon other countries followed their example in an attempt to gain profit and international recognition. In the 1880s, Leopold II of Belgium created the international African association, which he claimed was to help “civilize” the people in Central Africa. The main purpose was to gain control over the area by creating a sovereign state. He sent an explorer who was familiar with the central part of Africa in order to talk the chiefs of the societies who inhabited the region into the idea of the Congo state. By 1882, Leopold had obtained 2 300 000 squared km of territory, which is 10 times larger than the territory of Belgium and was occupied by many different societies with different social structures and different belief systems. Soon others followed this example in what became known as the “Scramble for Africa”.
During the Berlin Conference in 1985 the African continent was divided among the European tribes, which then imposed different regimes without consulting the African people. In order to gain international recognition of a colony, a country had to apply effective occupation, which meant that they had to convince the people within that territory to accept the new state rule. This usually meant the use of force to subdue any people who did not agree.
Africa had rich deposits of raw materials that Europe was either lacking or having shortages of. The European tribes were dependant on raw materials to keep the industrial machine going. Africa had important raw materials such as gold, diamonds, platinum, chromium, vanadium, manganese, uranium, iron and coal among others. Also African societies were producing cotton and the European cotton textile industry, which ironically was one of the earliest industries in Europe, was already dependant on imported cotton. So the Europeans saw a perfect opportunity to get cotton for cheap. By 1914, the Europeans had gained direct control over 90% of Africa and forced the division of the African continent into several countries that were usually composed of many different societies with different social structures. The Europeans did not care to understand these social structures because they considered African people inferior.
When the European colonials and missionaries entered into what is present day Nigeria, they brought with them ideas of how the people of a society should be organized. The European ideas included very different roles for men and women within their tribe that were inconsistent with the roles of men and women in certain African societies. For the most part, women were responsible for making important decisions regarding economical and international affairs. Europeans made African women stay at home and naturally this led to an economic instability that is still shaking the continent.
Another interesting aspect of the African colonization was the African art. When colonialists first laid their eyes on African art and sculptures, they thought that since it was a product of inferiors, it was also inferior. Yet when a famous European artist at the time, Pablo Picasso, started incorporating the stylized forms of African sculptures into his art, everybody was mesmerized which helped Picasso become even more famous.
Most Africans had opposed the European domination of their continent from the beginning but the Europeans had the weapons of mass destruction and some Europeans subjected some ethnic groups to genocide. The Germans began colonization of South-West Africa around 1894, but were met with great resistance from both the Herero and Nama peoples. Herero chiefs attempted to be peaceful with the Germans, signing several treaties with the colonizers, but it was to no avail. The Germans kept pushing their settlements further into Herero territory and kept on trying to force a western lifestyle upon the Herero. Finally, in January of 1904, the Herero people were fed up and they staged an organized revolt against the German colonists, killing over 100 German settlers and soldiers. The Nama people joined the Herero against the Germans in October 1904. The Herero and Nama fought bravely to try and retake their lifestyle, but the Germans had more advanced weapons technology and were ruthless in their techniques. They destroyed crops, poisoned wells, and killed and raped children, women, and men alike. Lynching was one of Germany’s favorite ways to kill Herero people.
The Herero and Nama people had never before encountered such savage war practices and their starving demoralized armies were defeated within three years. During those 3 years 60 000 Herero people were killed. In the end, only 20% of the Herero population and half of the Nama population survived, and these survivors were sent to concentration camps where they worked as slaves in inhumane conditions and were often beaten and tortured by the Germans who did not consider these people to be human beings. German soldiers repeatedly raped the Herero and Nama women and children and forced them to perform sexual favours in these concentration camps, leading to high rates of sexually transmitted diseases within the camps that soon took over the entire continent. None of these sexual diseases were present in Africa before. Herero and Nama prisoners were also used as subjects in experiments designed to prove the superiority of the Arian race, experiments that were overseen by Dr. Eugen Fischer who would later become the head geneticist of the Nazi regime.
Unfortunately, German scientists were not the first to demean the Herero people by experimenting on them in order to justify savage racial theories. The cousin of Charles Darwin came up with his first eugenicist theories during his visits to Southwestern Africa in 1850.
Still, some Africans felt oppressed by their own culture and wanted a change. For example, if an Igbo woman gave birth to twins, the chief of the village would put them in a box and throw them in the bush because it was considered bad luck to have twin children. As Chinua Achebe points out in his novel, Things Fall Apart, practices such as these drove some people to except Christianity and colonialism simply because they were fed up with their own social structure and belief system and they were looking for a change. However, who is to say that these practices would have continued without the intervention of the colonialists? Perhaps things would have not only changed for the better but this would have also inspired other societies to abolish inhumane practices.
What is interesting about pre-colonial Africa is that different societies with different social structures lived peacefully and for the most part in perfect harmony with each other. Then came the Europeans dividing the continent into vast areas and teaching everyone the savage ways of tribalism, or the ever so popular “my tribe is better than your tribe” view of the world. There were no tribes in Africa before the Europeans came. There were indigenous societies with different social structures and different culture. Christian missionaries and colonial leaders took it upon themselves to teach the African societies, who they saw as savages, the ways of European “civilization”. In reality they brought the destructive concept of tribalism that is still shaking the African continent and which led to permanent instability, ethnic conflicts, civil war, underdevelopment, and poverty. In pre-colonial Africa, societies existed in peace and harmony for the most part. The Europeans marginalized African societies by taking control over vast areas and drawing political borders.
My ass belongs on your face.