It's not hard to see...

My Response to From How Europe Underdeveloped Africa by Walter Rodney


........What Europeans did to the Africans. It's also not to hard to see how ruthless they were exposing the culture and manipulating the minds of peoples who kept to themselves. Had the Europeans not settled their way into Africa, I'm sure the Africans would have stayed a long time in their own regions. It seems to me after all the readings so far, that Africans did not have much interest in the materialistic nor any Imperial rankings of the sort. Reading the stories of those who have been taken for granted, I have been able to change my mind.


I come from a materialistic civilization. Money is a primary key in trade in my country, religion is everywhere I turn but no longer a form of a sacred intimate between worshipper or being, but better a means of pointing the fingers at those whose believes do not reflect your own. Africa has not been this way, and yet their simplistic and innocent way of life was raided by greedy men with guns.


Europeans used their faith as a way to manipulate the minds of many Africans. If you learned the language and followed the faith, you were able to expderience the trade, you were able to find yourself on the level of the beings who came with wealth, and much finer things. But Africans lost sight, and the non-existent greed became a small glowing green flame in their eyes and soon they were trading their own countrymen for European goods. Goods that they had lasted a long time without, and were slowly contributing to their own demise without any understanding that they were being used all along.


The natural resources that African was abundant that only served purpose in need and not the greed, for the survival of the natives and not the monies that it was gaining from in Europe. These resources were being exploited and destroyed--mines, ivory, rubber...etc. Which also turned the natives that owned the resources in the first place, the workers who would in slavery be forced to steal from their own land and be worked to near-death or even demise itself to support the European's thirst for wealth.

And as Rodney said "What did colonial governments do in the interest of Africans? Supposedly, they built railroads, schools, hospitals and the like. The sum total of these services was amazingly small." In Chapter 6.

But who were the Europeans surviving when they had best interests in mind? Schools maybe, as they converted more and more Africans over to christianity to keep the "heathens" culture before its exposure happened to fall upon a European shoe. But these railroads and schools, roads and hopsitals were all being built by slaves who had no initial gain. And even today, the medical treatment in Africa is a very poor system. The widespread of deaths that involve in HIV has not been solved by the "all the hospitals" that Europeans built.


I agree much with this essay in it's essence, I think it's hard to argue that Africans wouldn't be better off without the colonization.



Here's a great link to some REALLY REALLY GREAT PICTURES:http://www.flickr.com/photos/8862328@N03/sets/72157600599327714/

I advise you to check them out. THEY'RE AMAZING.