Our Rough Draft essay

Maddy Gamble
Callie Norberg
Rachel Stein
Claire Bjerke
Maria Finsness

Do you know what it feels like for a foreign power to come into your homeland, and start to control your day-to-day life? In modern times like today, most people are not experiencing this. Starting the late 1800’s, natives of Africa, India and Asia felt trapped because forces such as Britain controlled their land. This policy of a foreign power extending its hegemony over an underdeveloped area for economic, political, and social reasons is referred to as imperialism. Because of imperialism, natives are forced or decide to change their ways. This idea is portrayed in Things Fall Apart, written by Chebe. A significant character Nowye converted over to Christianity because he agreed with the core beliefs. He created a sense of belonging with the other converts, missionaries, and the Christian God. Another example is how Okonkwo, the main character, fights against the British forces that were invading his land. He did not want to appear inferior to them and he wanted to be the leader, thus he attempted to drive them out. Those examples go to show that imperialism had negative and positive affects on the victim countries.

Once Britain had settled in South African, many changes began to take place in the culture, the people, and infrastructure. When the British were coming in, they brought along their culture and their traditions. They brought in Christianity and missionaries. Because of the missionaries, the natives started to convert to Christianity, loosing their old religion along the way. Land was taken away from the natives, and they were forced to pay taxes. The land that was taken away from the natives were then given to the British so that they could farm for themselves. Lastly, the imperialism of South Africa destroyed the African ruling system. The South African countries could not maintain their infrastructure, and the Europeans built a new infrastructure. They were not strong enough to participate in the global economy once they regained independence from Europe. The imperialism destroyed the traditional culture of South Africa, bought many changes to the native people, and changed the whole infrastructure that the natives built their lives around.

In South Africa there were numerous events that occurred due to the imperialism. First off, there were many advances in agriculture and mining, because of the imperialism. The mining industry grew enormously, because of the vast amount of gold and diamonds in South Africa. Because of this growth in the industry new way had to be invented to do things in a faster manner. Also, because of the Imperialism the Europeans thought of themselves as superior people. The Europeans thought this, because they had better technology, weapons, and could take over the African colonies they were a better and more dominant race. Many Europeans and Africans also died, because of the spread of foreign diseases. The South Africans were affected by diseases like Influenza, Small pox, malaria, mumps, trachoma, etc. They had never faced diseases like this before.
The British imperialism in South Africa came from their drive to convert people to Christianity. Protestants from England were opposed to slavery, and felt it was their moral duty to stop the Swahili slave trade. They also believed that it was their job to convert non-Christians, and they sought to do so in South Africa. The British were also in competition with France over who could gain the most territory. Britain took over Niger, Nigeria, Nyasaland and Bechuanaland. The French were also threatening Britain with plans to divert the Nile River, and render their territory useless. Aside from imperialism’s effects, the causes were very practical.

The British imperialized for many reasons. One of which was to protect their economy. The British economy was very dependent on trade and by developing their colonies that expanded their trade. The colonies were potential markets for industrial products. Since Africa was undeveloped, land was cheap, which simplified achieving their goal. The need to imperialize was important because the British needed to protect their trade routes with India from France and Germany. Originally, they never really cared about Africa until they discovered gold and diamonds in the 1870's. After these discoveries, there was an overseas expansion in raw materials; rubber, tin, copper, petroleum, etc. Through this developed trade routes, not only did the British economy expand, but European merchants and entrepreneurs made personal fortunes.

I bet most of you are wondering…What can we do to prevent or stop imperialism around the world? The answer to that is quite simple- to get organized. What I mean by that is to raise funds, organize military forces against it, and establish a group determined people. There are already many present and past groups such as International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement and The Anti-Imperialist Committee of Correspondence that have been working or worked on stopping imperialism. In addition, we need to educate the younger generations about the negative effects, so that they do not get a crazy idea to imperialize. If we can abolish all foreign control, countries will be able to lead independently. That will make the world a better place!