European Imperialism in Africa

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Imperialism By the late 19th and early 20th century, Europe was expanding its borders. In an attempt to grow its economy and culture, Europe’s superpowers began to search for new soil. Africa was an easy target; it wasn’t politically secure and it wasn’t modernized. In addition, it had reliable soil which would enable Europe to produce cash crops. European nations began to pour into Africa, called the Scramble for Africa. Soon, Europe took control of Africa, taking raw materials and destroyed African culture. Imperialism is the one to blame for exploitation of people and materials, the destruction of traditional culture, and unnaturally dividing up the land which causes a bunch of problems down the road. There is no doubt that imperialism has negatively affected the world. European superpowers exploited Africans and their raw materials. In the 19th century Europe began to industrialize. Europe’s new industry demanded for raw materials. Africa is relatively close and had the resources they needed. In 1882, “The British next seized control of the government as a whole and forcibly reshaped the Egyptian economy from a system based on multiple crops that maintained the country’s self-sufficiency to one that emphasized the production of a few crops.”i Perhaps Great Britain’s invasion of Egypt is the perfect example of the exploitation of raw materials. Before the takeover, Egyptians had crops which would keep them self-sufficient. By the time the British forcibly changed the economy and the agriculture, the Egyptians were no longer self-sufficient. The British only wanted the land and already implemented agricultural infrastructure to grow cash crops for Europe. The production of cash crops mainly focused on “cotton, raw silk, whea... ... middle of paper ... ...Africans for taxes, making them work on the colonies projects and this diminished the self-sufficient families. In addition, the unnatural division of land caused a great amount of problems. Tribes and different ethnic groups had lived separate for hundreds of years. When the colonies came in, they imposed new laws which forced the different tribes to live close together; war was inevitable. The colonies which forced the different tribes and ethic to live together would cost the Africans an estimated 800,000 lives, just in Rwanda. All in all, European imperialism had no benefit to the country which was being exploited. In conclusion, European imperialism in Africa caused a great deal of problems and overall had a negative impact on African culture, there is no doubt that any kind of imperialism was good, for it always boiled down to one country exploiting the other.

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