THE AFRICAN ENCOUNTER WITH EUROPEANS
The coming in of Europeans in Africa resulted in many changes. At first their arrival led to the improvement of trade, though a lot of minerals were taken away by them. But things turned worse when that trade turned into the selling and buying of human beings. From that time many things happened to the African people. Some of the things that happened were the arrival of missionaries who had also an impact on the African community. Later on it was the conquest and the partition of Africa. Many of these experiences that happened when the Europeans arrived affected Africans negatively. This paper will reflect on the changes and the consequences that ...view middle of the document...
Also those African slaves played an important initiative in developing the Europeans by working in their plantations. Without those African slaves, I think that the Europeans themselves could not have met with the much needed labor in their plantations, and their development could have been halted. But that initiative was could have been done in Africa.
In addition, the other change that happened when the Europeans came to Africa was the coming in of missionaries who wanted to evangelize Africans. That was a good move by the Europeans. And when they arrived in Africa Christianity increased tremendously, and that Africa has a large percentage of Christians in this world (Kalu, 2007, p. 185). However, the actions of many of the Europeans contradicted with their mission of evangelizing Africa. Those Europeans were teaching about the equality of man, and yet they did not achieve it (Basil Davidson ‘The Bible and the Gun’). Those Europeans though they were Christians they still practiced racism, and they mistreated many Africans. Furthermore, the coming in of Christianity led to the destruction of the African culture in both their traditional and spiritual beliefs. At first Africans had their own beliefs but when the missionaries arrived a lot of those practices disappeared.
Moreover, Africans encounter with European had another big consequence which was the conquest and the partition of the African community. One change from this partition of Africa was the drawing of lines on maps of territories of which they knew little about the African societies (Collins & Burns, 2007, p. 207). This may have destroyed the organized African societies that were there at that time, but those colonialists divided the societal boundaries the way the wanted them to be. Besides that, the colonization of Africa resulted in...