Positive and Negative Impacts Western Colonialism Peoples Essay

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positive and negative impacts Western colonialism peoples Africa. Give specific examples.

Imperialism in Africa

European colonization of Africa was one of the most important events in world history, providing Europeans with the raw materials and labor resources to conquer and control much of the rest of the world. Moreover, centuries of European colonial domination left an indelible imprint on Africa's societies, economies, and cultures that is still visible nearly half a century after the end of decolonization. Though imperialism clearly benefited Africa and some Africans, on balance, it is clear that imperialism was negative for Africa and Africans.

Europeans had colonized Africa as far back as the Greeks' establishment of a mercantile colony at Naucratis in the sixth-century B.C.E. Typically, however, when scholars discuss colonization of the African continent, they are referring to the period from the sixteenth-century C.E. through the mid-twentieth century, when European powers vied with one another to exploit Africa's vast labor and mineral resources. The most important period of colonial activity, from the perspective of this paper, was the late-nineteenth century, a segment of the era in world history known as the "new imperialism," a period from France's conquest of Algeria in 1830 to the outbreak of World War I in 1914 and characterized by competition between European countries to control as much African territory as possible. By the end of the nineteenth-century, the Europeans' mad dash for African territory had paid impressive yields: Europeans controlled 10 million square miles of land inhabited by 110 million Africans, or almost the entire continent.

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[footnoteRef:-1] [-1: Thomas Pakenham, The Scramble for Africa: White Man's Conquest of the Dark Continent from 1876 to 1912 (New York: Random House, 1991), xxi.]

In order to fully exploit Africa's vast resources, European colonialists had to develop the continent's infrastructure. The largest and most important colonial infrastructure project is the Suez Canal, a waterway that connected the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean and opened in 1869. Another infrastructure project was Great Britain's "Cape to Cairo" Railway, an ambitious (and never completed) project designed to cross the continent from Cairo, Egypt in the north to Cape Town, South Africa in the south by a continuous railroad line. Both the Suez Canal and portions of the Cape to Cairo Railway are still in use, and they are both major economic engines for multiple African countries.[footnoteRef:0] In other words, European colonialists were responsible for constructing two of Africa's most important infrastructure projects, facilities that are still vital to the continent's economies today. [0: Christian Wolmar, Blood, Iron, and Gold: How the Railroads Transformed the World (New York: PublicAffairs, a member of the Perseus Books Group, 2010), 188.]

Yet, for all of the structural benefits of colonization -- the Suez Canal, the Cape to Cairo Railway -- the reality….....

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