Were Europeans Responsible For The Colonization Of Africa?

To support their extraction of resources from Africa, the Europeans built large amounts of infrastructure and export systems (Hrituleac, 2011). The colonial governments constructed railways and roads to expedite the process of transporting resources (Settles, 1996). This benefitted Africans some, but the main motivation by Europeans was to foster their own development and get richer faster (Hrituleac, 2011). The railways they constructed were to connect the interior markets with the coastal markets and there were not many railroads within the colonies themselves (Settles, 1996). Overall, between 1890 and 1939, about 32,000 miles of railroads and 400,000 miles of roads were constructed within Africa. Additionally, cars and trucks were imported into some regions to make commerce more accessible (Hrituleac, 2011).

Cash Crop Agriculture One significant impact that the Europeans had on Africa, was the establishment of cash crop agriculture. Instead of producing food for themselves, farmers were now obligated to produce crops to export to the global market. This made many African economies reliant on the production of one or two cash crops that was predetermined by the Europeans. Popular cash crops
With the new money based economy, farmers had to switch their production from subsistence crops towards cash crops to sell to the Europeans and make money (Naumann). Similarly, the newly established tax system that was imposed also encouraged farmers to export products to make money to pay off their taxes. These taxes were one of the main drivers in order to force cash crop agriculture within African societies. Imposed export duties were another method imposed by the colonial administrations that was used to convince farmers to export their crops as well as funnel their products into metropolitan markets (Hrituleac,