Amber Peng Ms. Pace H100 15 May 2024 Terminal Narratives Essay The Great Global Convergence was a period of time from 1450-1750 when European power increased as a result of African and Indigenous enslavement. Terminal narratives are accounts of history that explain the absence, loss of culture, or disappearance of Indigenous and African communities. These narratives were created to justify the actions of European colonizers. A question emerges: how does resistance and resilience in the face of European destruction challenge the “terminal narrative” argument? Although historians have traditionally argued that resistance does not significantly challenge the terminal narrative argument, this essay will focus on resistance during the Great Global Convergence because doing so will show how resistance …show more content…
Inca metallurgy was just as advanced as European metallurgy, but they used metal as a token of wealth, power, and community affiliation. These ideas were perceived as less advanced until recently. Native ingenuity demonstrates that European colonizers were not simply superior, but that there were many different aspects that led to how history unraveled. The goal of this essay is to examine acts of resistance during the Great Global Convergence, to demonstrate how resistance impacted the course of history. This goal is achieved through discussions of resistance on slave ships, political resistance, and resistance through native ingenuity. Although historians may argue that resistance does not significantly challenge the terminal narrative of European conquest, it is important to learn about and understand resistance throughout history to know how it impacts us today. Indigenous and African communities are still here today, and it is important to acknowledge that rather than claim that there was no resistance, or try to create explanations about the deaths of these
This book is complete with some facts, unfounded assumptions, explores Native American gifts to the World and gives that information credence that really happened yet was covered up and even lied about by Euro-centric historians who have never given the Indians credit for any great cultural achievement. From silver and money capitalism to piracy, slavery and the birth of corporations, the food revolution, agricultural technology, the culinary revolution, drugs, architecture and urban planning, our debt to the indigenous peoples of America is tremendous. With indigenous populations, mining the gold and silver made capitalism possible. Working in the mines and mints and in the plantations with the African slaves, they started the industrial revolution that then spread to Europe and around the world. They supplied the cotton, rubber, dyes, and related chemicals that fed this new system of production.
In the first segment of his film series, Different but Equal, Basil Davidson sets out to disprove the fictitious and degrading assumptions about African civilization made by various Western scholars and explorers. Whether it is the notion that Africans are “savage and crude in nature” or the presumed inability of Africans to advance technologically, these stereotypes are damaging to the image and history of Africa. Although European Renaissance art depicts the races of white and black in equal dignity, there was a drastic shift of European attitudes toward Africa that placed Africans in a much lower standing than people of any other culture. The continent of Africa quickly became ravished by the inhuman slave trade and any traditional civilization
...ion of imperialism has evolved. In both Heart of Darkness by Conrad, and The Poisonwood Bible by Kingsolver, Africa is invaded and altered to conform to the desires of more “civilized” people. While this oppression in the Congo never seems to cease, the natives are consistently able to overcome the obstacles, and the tyrants, and thus prove to be civilized in their own regard and as capable of development as the white nations. As Orleanna says herself: “Call it oppression, complicity, stupefaction, call it what you’d like…Africa swallowed the conqueror’s music and sang a new song of her own” (Kingsolver 385). Kingsolver illustrates that though individuals may always seek to control and alter the region, the inhabitants and victims of the tyranny and oppression live on and continue past it, making the state of the area almost as perpetual as the desire to control it.
The essay starts with the “Columbian Encounter between the cultures of two old worlds “ (98). These two old worlds were America and Europe. This discovery states that Native Americans contributed to the development and evolution of America’s history and culture. It gives the fact that indians only acted against europeans to defend their food, territory, and themselves.
Underneath the tale of Segu is the hushed and disloyal question few people tend to voice: how did they lose the rights to use the land and resources of an entire continent? This novel explains that it was not just Europe’s greed and Christianity pretense that led to the fall of Africa. It shows that Islam was a major force that endangered Segu as well. However, aside from the tragedy’s that were outlined, there lies a captivating story about culture, spirituality, and diversity.
In David Northrup’s Africa’s discover of Europe, he gives an overview of the encounter between Africans and Europeans from 140-1850. Africans played a huge role of the globalizing of cultural and economic transactions. The first encounters between the two continents were mutual. Both parties tried to gain from each other through their transactions. The purpose of this book is to inform readers that we shouldn’t look at Africans as the victim, rather as an active contributor in the African-European relation.
Before any conquistador had ever step foot in Inca lands, issues that would lead to the Inca’s downfall had been buil...
In this essay I will tell how the Aztec and Inca empires ended, and also I will compare the fall of both empires, using for a point of departure the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors in the land of Mexico. Wherever the Spanish went always the same thing happened, from my point of view. Innocent people were killed for no good reason, cities were massacred, civilizations were destroyed or forced to convert to Christianity. And so, I think now is the time to reevaluate the actions of the European explorers who subjugated the native American peoples and their civilizations. Undoubtedly the most glorified and heroically portrayed of these figures of the European conquest of the New World were the conquistadors, the Spanish conquerors of Mexico and Peru in the 16-th century. These men, under leaders such as Hernan Cortes and Francisco Pizzaro nearly eliminated the Aztec and Inca peoples. Surely many of these soldiers were extremely cruel and intolerant of the native populations. But it is important to consider, with the push of both sides toward territorial expansion, how these groups (European and American) could remain isolated from each other. Furthermore, with meeting of these two imperialist cultures, it must be considered whether it would be possible for the two to peacefully coexist.
Initially most people in Asia and Africa were traditionalists and wanted no part in imperialism, but in the light of power shown through the battles with the West native people changed their minds. “Some concluded that the West was indeed superior in certain ways and that it was therefore necessary to reform their societies and copy some European achievements” (McKay Hill, Buckler, Ebrey, Beck, Crowston, & Wiesner-Hanks, 2009). Becoming modernizers is beneficial because it was impossible for native people to conquer the West. The advances in military development especially in weapons were overwhelming compared to that of African and Asian t...
In the early 1880’s, the powers of Europe started to take control of regions in Africa and set up colonies there. In the beginning, colonization caused the Africans little harm, but before long, the Europeans started to take complete control of wherever they went. The Europeans used their advanced knowledge and technology to easily maneuver through the vast African landscape and used advanced weapons to take control of the African people and their land. The countries that claimed the most land and had the most significant effect on Africa were France, England, Belgium, and Germany. There were many reasons for the European countries to be competing against each other to gain colonies in Africa. One of the main reasons was that the Europeans believed that the more territory a country was able to control, the more powerful it could become and the more powerful it would be seen as by other countries. Other reasons for the desire to control African land included the many natural resources that could only be found in Africa, such as diamonds, gold, and as time progressed, rubber. It also provided new markets in surrounding places so that manufactured goods could be sold for a larger profit. The Europeans had many motives for imperialism in Africa. Yet the true motives were often shielded as they tried tom present themselves as humanitarians when in reality they were making Africa a terrible place to live with brutality and harsh treatment of the African natives. The ways of the Europeans had many physical and emotional costs for the people of Africa. The imperialism process also took a toll on the people of Europe. The European imperialistic colonization in Africa was motivated by the desire to control the abundant natural resources an...
Africa’s struggle to maintain their sovereignty amidst the encroaching Europeans is as much a psychological battle as it is an economic and political one. The spillover effects the system of racial superiority had on the African continent fractured ...
According to Dictionary.com, love is a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person. Newt doesn’t understand what love is and in my opinion, I believe that Newt and Catherine should not be together. It is not a good a idea for Newt and Catherine to be together because Catherine is about to be a wife, Newt just expects Catherine to feel the same way after being gone for over a year and finally and in the end, he went A.W.O.L for her which is not the right thing to do. The first reason that I think Newt and Catherine should not be together is because Catherine met someone else during Newts time being a private first class in the Artillery.
An overwhelming majority of African nations has reclaimed their independence from their European mother countries. This did not stop the Europeans from leaving a permanent mark on the continent however. European colonialism has shaped modern-day Africa, a considerable amount for the worse, but also some for the better. Including these positive and negative effects, colonialism has also touched much of Africa’s history and culture especially in recent years.
Descriptions of Africans dying, or more precisely, being killed, are common stories surrounding imperialism. Heart of Darkness, finely details the worst kind of African imperialism, the Belgian kind. Millions of people, in what today is called the Congo, were forcefully enslaved, and then made to gather ivory tusks, and rubber plants, all the time being treated as animals, for the sole purpose of lining the pockets of the Belgian monarchy. These scenes shock the more caring, and kind hearted reader, in today’s world, and leave questions swirling in the mind about how atrocities, similar to the ones described in Heart of Darkness, could have been carried out, by a supposed more enlightened society. Surprisingly enough, European imperialists do not hold the sole rights to death and destruction. In fact, simply by reading a history book of the last 2000 years, the reader may come to the conclusion that imperialism was a natural part of empire expansion. Just look at the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Huns, the Moslems, the Christians, and finally the British. What did they all have in common, first they all conquered territory, and usually to do this they needed to kill indigenous people, so that they could use newly conquered land, for their needs.
Throughout history, Africa has been a vulnerable player in the eyes of the rest of the world. From the slave trade to various civil right injustices that have taken place over in every century, from what we have studied in this class, we have been able to see the lasting impact on the continent as a ramification of certain events occurring. Using various sources from the text, which serve as evidence, and help prove how the western world exercised its power in order to capitalize on the African continent and exploit the African people and land.