The Magnificent African Cake

Destiny Guzman
October 5, 2014
AFR 150
Prof. Malki
The Magnificent African Cake In the video, “The Magnificent African Cake” by Basil Davidson, Africa was isolated up into new colonies by Europeans. After the end of subjugation in Africa, Europeans needed to stretch their empires for industrialization and trade. This period of time was known as the "scramble for Africa" in light of the fact that numerous European nations were guaranteeing as much land from Africa. In 1884, the Berlin Conference was held and these European nations "cut" up the African nations like a cake where every nation got its partition of land. The sentiments and representation of Africans was nonexistent. Actually, Europeans considered Africans as "defenseless kids or lazy settlers." This prompted the inclination that Africans were inferior compared to Europeans and killings of Africans regularly occurred in the European settlements. Toward the end of the distribution of African land in 1914, there only remained two countries that were not under European control. The fundamental countries included in the colonization of Africa included France, England, Portugal, Germany, and Denmark. The Portuguese colonization of Africa happened in Mozambique and the principle impacts of this colonization were the financial issues for the Africans.
The Europeans then set up monoculture estates to develop crops to bolster the modern edifices in their countries. But, they required plantation workers, so they commonly set up European lawful systems that were primarily for arranging constrained work. In the beginning, the Europeans utilized taxation as an approach to drive colonized individuals into working for wages. People all around were exhausted and since they didn't have cash economies, the main way indigenous people groups could raise cash for expenses was to work for European plantation owners for the money to pay colonial for the taxes. Regularly the grounds people had for growing their own food was taken or colonial government’s obliged indigenous individuals to grow cash crops, for example, peanuts and cotton, rather than nourishment for themselves. Individuals who took part in monoculture and grew cash crops were given very little in exchange for their harvests, in respect to what the European organizations gained in benefits from selling those crops. Frequently the crops, such as, cotton, were utilized to make apparel which Africans were compelled to purchase at exorbitant prices. These sorts of practices obliterated land fertility and made a reliance on cash crops and processed goods. This was the start of a series of ghastly famines in numerous African regions.