The Industrial Revolution And Imperialism: The Scramble For Africa

Have you ever walked into a stranger’s house and declare their way of life inferior to your own? Did you then proceed to move into that house and take ownership of it, dictating how day-to-day operations should work further on, with no prior knowledge of the previous dynamic? It sounds like an absurd concept, but this is exactly what the Europeans did during the era of imperialism. The Scramble for Africa was a competition featuring the major European powers in a race to see who could conquer the most land and extract the best resources from the continent. Africans and Native Americans witnessed firsthand the effects of European involvement in conservation and government affairs in their homelands. In the Serengeti and the Grand Canyon, natives
No smartphones, computers, the internet, or electricity. For anyone born in the last 150 years, this is a difficult concept to grasp and fully understand. The Industrial Revolution gave birth to many of the key processes and inventions responsibility for present day society. This marked the beginning of a transition from relying on things found naturally to creating man-made objects. The use of steam power in transportation and machines in factories significantly optimized how fast things could be done and moved. Although the late 1800’s may be regarded as one of the most important time periods for technological advancement and step towards modern time, the Industrial Revolution fanned the sparks of early environmental movements taking us back a step as well. Factories burnt coal in such large amounts that soot covered landscapes and damaged the environment, famously shown through the Peppered Moth’s genetic drift. Europeans realized the devastation they had caused once it was too late and urban cities had already replaced forests and natural habitats. Europeans wanted to save natives from making the same mistake as they had and in order to break this cycle of destruction, they were very focused on conservation within their
“In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue” and in an attempt to find a new trade route to India, discovered the Americas. He sailed home to Spain to proclaim the new land he had found that was ripe for the taking. History ran its course and the United States of America was born. As America grew larger and more powerful, the country continued to expand west, taking up more and more of the land belonging to the Native Americans. The Havasupai, a tribe native America who had a long history with the Grand Canyon were pushed out of their land for the establishment of the Grand Canyon National Park. The government’s reasoning for removing the Havasupai was they were not careful with their use of fire. “Habitually careless and improvident, they do not hesitate, where there is a motive and an opportunity, to apply fires to lands not their own, for the purpose of improving and extending the range for their cattle, or to clear lands for cultivation, and sometimes to destroy the evidence of their own trespass and depredations” . The government found their practices to be detrimental to the environment despite the Havasupai had been thriving for the hundreds of years in the Grand Canyon using the same techniques even before the government even knew of their