Thus, with a stroke of the pen, King Leopold abolished the rights of the natives to the land and its products; thus he swept away their liberty, and the liberty of others, to trade in rubber and ivory; thus he reduced a population of millions of free men and women to virtual slavery; thus he arrogated to himself and his friends the absolute ownership of the …show more content…
Alexander Herituleac points out that Africa suffered seriously from the consequences of the scramble. For one thing, the nature of colonial exploitation forced Africa to export raw materials to the Western powers and colonialism encouraged competition and conflicts among ethnic groups to benefit the colonial powers at the expense of African states. As such, African economies are vulnerable to the ups and downs of the global markets and unable to develop its economies strong enough to compete at the global stage. For another, the Europeans powers eventually introduced capitalism to the Africans that led to the gap between Africa and the rest of developed world. Alexander Hrituleac further …show more content…
They have created the gap between Africa and other continents that is hard to bridge. In addition, another dire consequence of the scramble was the depletion of valuable resources important to the development of African economies and well-being of the Africans. Settles indicates that the European powers insisted on the production particular products to exclude the development of local economies, which eventually led to inadequacy of the food reserves causing chronic malnutrition and famine. Moreover, under colonialism, agriculture became highly commercialized. As a result, according to Settles, “the commercialization of land provided an avenue of escape for many of the males of the servile and cheap labor force in agriculture and added the price of land to the cost of production. Thus colonialism saw the rise of a large, landless class of laborers who traveled from place to place in search of