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In asserting themselves through trade and through imperialism, Western cultures have damaged the world, devastating scores of cultures by imposing their own identity on them. Although colonizers have forms of assistance to offer, such as advanced technology, modern medicine, and education, colonialism has effectively subjugated and obliterated scores of people as evidenced by this list of sources and histor-ical events. Effectively, the lengthy history of European imperialism dates back to the twelfth and thir-teenth centuries, in which the Christian Western Europe embarked on a series of religiously sanctioned military Holy Crusades to restore control of the Holy Land. Gradually, over several centuries, the infat-uation of the West with imperialism swelled as a result of the Industrial Revolution and fueled by the prejudiced ideology of Social Darwinism. In a few distinctive scenarios, trade and imperialism has helped improve the lives of the “uncivilized,” but in nearly all cases, it brings death and destruction instead in the name of wealth and greed.
The definition of “improving the world” includes giving technology, but does not consisting of an-nihilating entire groups of people through colonization. The West has numerous factors of reasonable “improvements” to offer: modern medical care, technology and education have numerous benefits. Eu-ropeans brought roads, railroads, schools, hospitals, improved sanitation, and better farming methods to the territories they colonized, undoubtedly increasing the population and improving its life span. The Berlin Conference involved European leaders scrambling to carve arbitrary boundaries into the African continent, paying no attention to existing ones, claiming ownership of almost eve...
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...hnson, and Northrup. The Earth and Its Peoples: A Global History, Volume II Since 1500 (4th Brief Edition). Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2008. Print.
Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer. New York: Signet Classics, 1997. Print.
Hawkins, Hunt. “Heart of Darkness and Racism.” Conradiana 14.3 (1982): 163–71. Rpt. in Heart of Darkness. Ed. Paul B. Armstrong. 4th ed. New York: Norton Critical Editions, 2006. 365–375.
Hochschild, Adam. King Leopold’s Ghost. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1999.
Kincaid, Jamaica. A Small Place. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2000.
Ondaatje, Michael. “Buried 2 Part iv.” Handwriting: Poems. New York: Knopf, 2000.
Orwell, George. “Shooting an Elephant” The Essay Connection. Ed. Lynn Bloom, 3rd edition. DC Heath and Company (Lexington), 1991: 305–312.
Raffaele, Paul. “Out of Time.” Smithsonian Apr. 2005: 62–70.
Watts, Cedric. 'Heart of Darkness.' The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad. Ed. J.H. Stape. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. 45-62.
Orwell, George. “Shooting an Elephant.” Shooting an Elephant and Other Essays. Ed. Sonia Orwell. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1950. 3-12.
Bulliet et al. The Earth and Its Peoples: A Global History. 3rd. II. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2005. 685.
Bausch, Richard, and R. V. Cassill. "Heart of Darkness." The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. New York: W.W. Norton, 2006. 126-86. Print.
Following World War II, the concrete nature of imperialism, or the subjection of people or groups based on a social, economical, or racial hierarchy, was seemingly in decline. For instance, India and Pakistan had both gained their independence from Britain in 1947 (p.761), and the French, though unwillingly, gave up their colonies in Vietnam (p.754), but with the development of the Cold War there became a need to ideologically separate the free “First World”, which was made up of western Europe and the United States, from the communist “Second World”, which was primarily made up by the Soviet Union. This separation unintentionally formed yet another hierarchy, and further perpetuated imperialistic notions. While the Soviets attempted to continue political imperialism in surrounding states to form a political and economic buffer from democratic nations, which due to globalization, or the mass integration of cultural and economic practices, would have been necessary to accomplish, many nations, such as the U.S., who subscribed to these democratic beliefs still counterintuitively practiced imperialism in their attempts to forcefully liberate communist nations based on the notion that their free way of life was superior to other’s communist status quo. Therefore, imperialism continued to surface through the dualist political line drawn by the Cold War, but also later through a need to stay competitive culturally and economically in a growing global community in states both subject to past colonizing nations, as well as the nations who relinquished their control over them.
Bulliet, Richard W. Earth and Its Peoples: a Global History. 5th ed. Vol. 1. Boston, MA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2011. Print.
Although imperialism helped the colonized people by improving the economy and the lives of the people, for the most part imperialism hurt the colonized people because the people were forced to grow cash crops which led to death by starvation.
Hawkins, H. (2006). Heart of darkness and racism (4th ed., p. 366). New York London: Norton Critical Editions.
Orwell, George. “Shooting an Elephant.” The Brief Arlington Reader. Ed. Nancy Perry. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2004. 334-339.
Achebe, Chinua. "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness." The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. New York: Norton, 2001. 1783-1794.
A. Michael. Matin. Introduction to Heart of Darkness and Selected Short Fiction. New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2008. Print.
what an alteration there would be if they were brought under Anglo-Saxon influence.” It quickly becomes apparent that those who were integral to the modern colonization of South Asia, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa were not doing so out of the goodness of their hearts. Without delving too deeply into the actual statistics of the good done for these “barbaric” cultures, it may seem as if colonization was a positive occurrence. In all actuality, however, the ulterior motives and imperialistic attitudes of the key players in colonization brought much more harm than gain. The benefits of colonialism were almost entirely one-sided at the unfortunate loss of the other side’s culture, inhabitants, resources and overall way of life.
Watts, Cedric. Conrad’s Heart of Darkness: A Critical and Contextual Discussion. Milan: Mursia International, 1977.
Heart of Darkness is a story in which racism presents itself so deliberately that, for many, the dilemma of race must be tackled before anything else in the book may be dealt with. Conrad used derogatory, outdated and offensive terminology for devaluation of people’s color as savages. This use of language disturbs many readers who read this book.
Achebe, Chinua. "An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness." Heart of Darkness: An Authoritative Text, Backgrounds and Sources, Essays in Criticism. 3rd ed. Ed. Robert Kimbrough. New York: W.W. Norton, 1988. 251-262.