Colonialism Impacts Africans

When Europeans made their conquest of African Territory, into the heart of Africa, was not only frantic, unexpected but appeared as an unseemly scramble for African territory. Due to the structure of Africa, the British conquest in West and East Africa were swift, those of the French in the western Sudan proved to be long and painful. The continued advancements of Africa were not fought by the white continental troops but the black African solider. This impacted the society of African cultures moving forward because of the colonialism that took place as a result of the invasion.

Colonialism affected Africans in many ways. Since European conquest of Africa was carried out without any preparations, planning or even an ideology by which to establish the governance of colonies has resulted in an administrative structure that’s  ill equipped to handle the unexpected challenges of controlling the vast regions of Africa. The governments were set up by very small number of European officials who held all the principal political administrative positions and most of the military ranks above captain, there-fore this affected the dependency on Africans to act in a variety of jobs in colonial service. An example would be police officers, clerks, typists, interpreters with low pay. The upside was that beside the long hours, low pay, and mental physiological contractions these people where taught skills that set them apart from the remainder of their people.

The civil servants couldn’t hold high ranking positions, and often political Europeans need to seek the resources of traditional or accepted African leaders to carry out political agendas. This was often done by bribes, rewards, gifts and flattery. The control political European need was to influence the people of Africa toward their “way” of civilization. European influence affected how people lived, worked, identified themselves, relationships between men and women, and even what kind of crops that they could grow.

Europeans wanted to control African labor and the way it want to do that was to build an infrastructure in political and military control.  They used the African people to help exploit their land for resources they wanted without regards for building up the people, land or resources to financially sustain itself but used force if necessary  to achieve the use of African labor supplied cheaply to help export oriented industries and settler farms.  The way men functions in African traditional society changed due to new domestic service work that often kept male workers engaged in wage labor, especially young men. This allowed the young men to go outside normal traditional way of life and the authority of the elders to acquire capital and social advancement.

Colonization impacted the African women to be more like the European women who lived a life that had a greater importance on being a housewife, but at the same time expected them to be responsible for the increased responsibility of agricultural production. This reminded me of the “second” shift ideology we use in the United Stated for working mothers, who when they come home now start their “second” shift in performing their roles as a mother and wife, doing her motherly and wifely duties after working all day at a wage labor job.

The way African people identified themselves changed, from having ties to their family, clan, to being ruled by a census that stated they all had to belong to a “tribe”. European also influenced the role religion played on the people, disregarding traditional African cultures and religious beliefs and replacing it with Christianity and Islam. In search of revenue to support itself, Europeans changed the focus of revenue to cash crops to boost the economy and feed the European industry these colonies needed. 

Europeans felt that they were both racially and morally superior to others, particularly Africans. Europeans invaded Africa at first with the purpose of instilling Christianity into natives but then with the abolition of slavery went by force to seek a way to control at the same time  introduce western ideas of civilization in areas like education, medicine, hygiene, and monogamous marriage. It completely disregarded traditional African cultures and forced integrated European beliefs onto the African people. While we can’t erase the past, we are unclear of what the future will hold. The dominant role that Europeans powers, The United States, and international institutions have tried to create new opportunities for Africa. The European nations thought that they would come in and rule the "savages" that inhabited the land.  While they thought they were bigger and more important than Africa, it wasn’t complete "dominance" and rule over the foreign land, but the influence regarded as “recolonization” of Africa still remains to this day.