“I know no national boundary where the Negro is concerned. The whole world is my province until Africa is free” (Garvey). These words by Marcus Garvey perfectly illustrate the spirit of unification that characterized the attitude of many people of African Descent as a direct result of the callous treatment that Africa as a whole suffered at the hands of Europeans. Europe not only ravished Africa of a significant resource in the millions of lives that it stole and enslaved. Europe also pillaged the continent with the brutal institution of colonization. The manacles of colonization inspired great suffering in the lands and lives of Africans examples include Land exploitation, labor exploitation and most significantly exploiting the minds and spirits of Africans through inhumane treatment. The disabling affliction imposed upon Africa by the White race was the driving force behind the idea of a Pan-African awareness.
The narration at the beginning of the documentary King Leopold’s Ghost best articulates the driving force behind European Colonialism. “Natural resources inspire the most unnatural greed”. Natural resources account for the primary reason that Europe deemed it necessary to lay claim to Africa. As Cesaire points out in his essay Discourse on Colonialism there were many surface excuses given by Europeans for traveling to Africa, like missionary work, extending the rule of law, and curing diseases. Cesaire argues, “no one colonizes innocently” (Cesaire 39). This statement holds especially true for the Belgian colonizers of The Congo. Belgium nearly destroyed the land of The Congo with the implementation of cash crops. The colonizers forced Africans to specialize and grow cash crops. These crops were not...
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...upon the consciousness of Black people.
Both Africans stolen from their homeland and Africans who had their homeland stolen from them share a sense of common grief with a common perpetrator in the White man. These shared sentiments are what gave rise to the Pan-African movement. The whole idea behind Pan African movement is that “Africa must be redeemed and all of us must pledge our manhood, our wealth, and our blood to this sacred cause” (Lynch). Africa needed to be redeemed from the ramifications of the exploitation that it suffered at the hands of Europeans. Examples of these ramifications are poverty, food shortages, corrupt political systems and the displacement and separation of Africa’s children. This reasoning leads to the conclusion that a Pan African consciousness developed as a direct result of the inhumane exploitation of people of African descent.
The book mainly chronicles the efforts of King Leopold II of Belgium which is to make the Congo into a colonial empire. During the period that the European powers were carving up Africa, King Leopold II of Belgium seized for himself the vast and mostly unexplored territory surrounding the Congo River.
King Leopold’s Ghost is a historical analysis by Adam Hochschild, professor at Berkley, of Belgium’s King Leopold II’s orchestration of a private empire in the Congo at the end of the 1800s. During this particular time in history, the great political powers in the world set their eyes upon Africa as a prospect for exploration, annexation and exploitation. In King Leopold’s Ghost, Hochschild recounts the great human cost of Belgium’s imperial effort, and the willingness of the world to turn a blind eye to the blatant terrorization of a people. This book is an account of the atrocities which took place in the Congo at the bidding of King Leopold II, why they happened, why they did not stop, and most importantly why no one remembers what happened to those unfortunate peoples of the Congo as a result of imperialism and globalization.
During the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century, King Leopold II of Belgium invaded the Congo and used it to procure more wealth for himself and his nation. In doing so, as many as ten million Congolese were decimated, and they faced unspeakable horrors. Hochschild argues in King Leopold’s Ghost that all actions taken by King Leopold II were done out of nothing more than sheer greed and selfishness, and he used any means necessary to get what he wanted, and manipulated others into following suit by exploiting their own greed and racism. The only way the brutality was combated, Hochschild further goes on to describe, was through the actions of the few with a higher moral character.
Pan-Africanism by definition is a movement for the political union of all African nations (Merriam-Webster Dictionary). However, to me Pan Africanism has two meanings. The first meaning is all Africans and African Americans whether in Africa or in the diaspora coming together as brothers and sisters unifying as one. The second meaning is all the African nations coming together as one. The Pan African movement was brought about because the Africans and African Americans in the diaspora were tired of colonialism and slavery that was so reliant on their people. The movement began in the mid nineteenth century and it was led by people from the diaspora and leaders in Africa. Many people and events that played pivotal roles in this movement. Some
The Pan African Movement started in the nineteenth century, yet was fortified by a few meetings held in London in the vicinity of 1900 and 1923. The movement brought forth Organization of African Union in 1963 which later changed its name to the African Union (Walters, 1997: 97).
King Leopold II developed his dream for colonization at an early age. Before he even took the throne he was on the lookout for unconquered land that could later be in his possession. The king wanted to become rich as a result of his new land through the process of trading. Once King Leopold II set his sights on the Congo, he would not give up until the land was his. He connived, manipulated and conned his way into the land. He did not care who got hurt; he just wanted his dream to be fulfilled.
Although, the Civil war brought about change for Africans, along with this change it brought heart ache, despair and restriction of worship to the African...
In many accounts of the Africans, the Africans were in disagreement with the European's Scramble for Africa. Ndansi Kumalo an African veteran wrote in 1896 if many of them to give or keep their land. In a distrustful and agony tone he spoke of how the poor treatment of the Africans in the Ndebele rebellion against the British advances in South America to convince many others not to stay because it has impacted many Africans and many died in the process of it. He says “So we surrendered to the White people and were told to go back to our homes and live our usual lives and attend to our crops. They came and were overbearing. We were ordered to carry their clothes and bundles (Doc.4).” A German military officer in 1896 wrote in a newspaper article about the reactions of the Africans about the white settlers. In an awed tone he wrote about the 1906 account of the Maji Maji Rebellion in German East Africa and to give an example of how the Africans believed in a magic medicine would help them defend themselves against the white settlers (Doc.8). Mojimba an African chief in 1907 described a battle in 1877 on the Congo River against British and African mercenaries to a German catholic missionary. In an appalled and hateful tone he used this description to show that these whi...
As we know the majority of our past has challenges and the discontent, fight to win independence from the Europeans. With the various readings we have discussed in the past couple of weeks about fighting for independence due to colonization. Also the troublesome view on race, human identity, and frustration. We will discuss a very important reading and viewing that is believed to best represents the main challenges that Africans’ went through during their difficult journey to independence, and identify conflicts. Blackass by Ignoi Barrett, will give us two very different examples but, very similar concepts on the role of independence and the war that colonization has been carried on in this new world in an political sense.
The experiences of the women of the African diaspora are as diverse as the regions they have come to inhabit. Despite the variety in their local realities, African and African-descended women across the planet share in many common experiences. Wherever they have made their homes, these women tend to occupy inferior or marginalized positions within their societies. Whether in the United States, Europe, Latin America, or even Africa itself, black women must confront what Patricia Hill Collins describes as a “matrix of domination” which has, for centuries, perpetuated their subjugation and oppression. According to Collins, a matrix of domination is a comprehensive social organization in which intersecting oppressions are created and maintained (Collins 246). Although these systems are manifested differently depending on the cultural context in which they were birthed, most have similar origins. In the cases of both Africa and the United States, the most salient factor in the development of oppressive orders is the widespread European colonization which took place from the sixteenth to mid-twentieth centuries. This historic domination of Africans and their descendants, combined with the near-universal presence of patriarchy in human cultures, have worked together to place black women among the most oppressed groups worldwide.
In conclusion, the arrival of the Europeans to Africa impacted negatively on the continent. It led cruelty, hatred, division, mistreatment and color discrimination towards the Africans. This led to wide suffering, murder, torture, poverty, under development and exploitation of the African resources. The consequences of European colonization can be felt in Africa to date in the extreme activities such as the genocide in Rwanda. Africa is also characterized by ethnic violence, slums, landlessness and underdevelopment which can all be traced to the European invasion of the continent.
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 ...
Therefore Black Consciousness’ main belief was, that racial domination had become internalized, thus causing low self-esteem, which in turn allowed room for political disunity and encouraged a dependence on white leadership. The philosophy of Black Consciousness was to break this set of attitudes and form a new belief in black self-reliance and dignity. It was only when this was achieved could black the man truly be liberated both physically and mentally. The Black Consciousness philosophy was an agenda for ideological realignment and political revitalization, which could rebuild and recondition the mind of the oppressed. This ideology brought a new sophistication and insight into the analysis of African psychology.
In the histories of many different nations there has was a beginning to each that is just as diverse as the nations and countries that make up this world. Some have maintained and identity that holds still today, some have risen out of the ashes of warfare, and some have been forced into making a decision to fight or assimilate in and against other countries. When it comes to the latter no other regions understand this better than Asia and Africa, now Asia and Africa are vast regions that contain a large majority of population and land area. So much so that all will not be covered, not because they cannot be but because some do not belong in the conversation of this paper. Some cannot hold claim to be instrumental in what is Afro-Asia Solidarity, although the goal of Afro-Asia was to ensure the opposite. Many countries if not almost all located in Asia and Africa were colonized by the pillars of western civilization which led to these regions having a common enemy, the term Afro-Asia derived from the need to support one another as countries began to come into their own or were trying to. At the conception of this idea thing were promising for both Asian and African sides, but along the way something went wrong because in the discussion of Pan Africanism and Anti Imperialism the topic is lesser known and easily disregarded. To provide insight into as why this happened this happened one must set the stage by providing the past circumstances the developed into Afro-Asian Solidarity.The beginning of this struggle has to begin during the age of imperialism, now there where a culmination of events that lead to this age and many countries were to blame. Although before this age of which countries like Great Britain, France, Portugal, and...
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.