European Imperialism In Africa During The Early 1900's

European Imperialism in Africa As a whole, Africa was ruined by the Europeans’ greed during the early 1900’s. The European countries were very strong nationalists and they came together and decided to show their superiority by imperializing other continents and countries rather than fight with each other. They chose Africa as the best place to imperialize because of its natural resources and availability. This is what introduced the Berlin Conference. At this meeting, representatives from Great Britain, France, and other strong European players divided up Africa. There was a total disregard of the native people and each country just took what they wanted. The Africans had to work long days with little pay. European imperialism caused the African natives to fall into poverty and the working conditions were horrible. To cover this up, the Europeans educated the people and introduced them to industrial things and instruments. The European imperialism devastated the African people along with their land and tried unsuccessfully to justify it using education and industrialization. While working for the explorers, the people of
They worked long and hard days of grueling work for almost nothing. They had to work without food and many starved out in the forest working. A refugee from the rubber-producing regions described in an interview the terrible conditions, “…when we were working away in the forest, and others got lost or died from exposure and starvation,” (Document 4). Even when there was none left of a certain resource, they were told to keep working and called awful names. In a famous poem called The White Man’s Burden by Rudyard Kipling, the author uses phrases that were used to describe the African people. The white men called Africans part devil, ignorant and bad-tempered (Document 5). This was cruel on the Europeans behalf so they did things to make themselves feel and look better to