Chapter 18

In Chapter 18, Strayer covered colonial encounters in Asia and Africa. The industrial revolution is said to have been the motivating factor in Europe’s expansion in the nineteenth century. The demand for raw materials and agricultural products increased substantially. They were also producing too many goods and had to sell them to more than just Europeans, who could not in themselves afford to purchase all that was being produced. Europe is said to have developed a stronger sense of nationalism, heightened by the junction of Italy and Germany, that made them desire more and more land to claim for their own. It is interesting to observe how the simple human need for power can bring about such grand global changes when powered by the right group of people, with all the right privileges available to them. Europeans were also beginning to look  down on other cultures in a more extreme manner. I can not believe they actually used some sort of science to support racism and prejudice. Even today, most people are inclined to instantly accept information from scholarly and scientific sources as factual knowledge. It is scary to think I could have lived in a time where science would tell me I am less intelligent and less humane than others because of my race. Diversity should be celebrated, not shunned. The second wave of colonization describes Europe’s invasion of Africa and Asia and Australia. Apparently, Europeans conquered many African and Asian peoples after many strenuous battles. There was a scramble for Africa, in which six European powers raced to claim as much of Africa as they could. Europeans believed they had the right, the duty even, to “civilize the inferior races (884)”. This meant forcing Christianity, more uniform government, work discipline, some education, and clothing. It annoys me that even today it seems to be a standard mindset that less modernized cultures are inferior or “underdeveloped”. I would not consider them inferior just because they follow a different set of values and do not think it is right that their culture was so often suppressed in history and even today they have to deal with some stigma ingrained within much of society. Europeans brought limited Western education to Africa and Asia, and some people even left, received degrees, and returned as doctors and lawyers. Most education, though, did not cover literature or science because they believed natives were too primitive for such concepts. There were violent rebellions rooted in natives’ fear of losing their own religions in exchange for European christianity. I do not promote violence but religion is such a vital part of my culture and identity that I really do understand how they could have felt it was their only hope at saving something so important to them. Natives were forced to work unpaid jobs on public projects, like building railroads and government buildings. A worker forced to collect rubber is quoted as saying, “‘When we failed and our rubber was short, the soldiers came to our towns and killed us. Many were shot, some had their ears cut off; others were tied up with ropes round their necks and taken away’” (894). It is so sad that people were tortured and murdered because of things out of their control and at the place they worked. All these people wanted to do was support their families and they were brutally killed because of this. The lack of humanity the white foreigners treated the natives with is astonishing, but unfortunately, also not very astonishing at all. These were some of the most outstanding pieces of the chapter.