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¶ … colonization, much of the African continent consisted of prosperous cities, states, and kingdoms. In Western Africa, for instance, raw materials, precious metals, foodstuffs, and animal products flowed along Saharan trade routes, especially after Arabian traders introduced the camel. Powerful states like Ghana and Mali were incredibly wealthy and many Sudanese kingdoms benefited from increased trade and intellectual interaction with Islam.
All this changed during the Middle Ages. About a hundred years before they discovered the New World, Europeans (at first the Portuguese and the Spanish) began their systematic conquest of Africa. The enslavement of African men and women initiated a brutal slave trade that eventually helped the European powers control and dominate the New World.
Slavery drastically changed the way in which people lived and worked on the African, North American, and South American continents. First, the conquest of the Americas obliterated whole tribes, forever altering the ethnic and cultural...
Moreover, history was easily distorted as the chroniclers were mostly European men -- the conquerors. Those Europeans who came to the New World in search of riches, religious freedom, adventure, or a new life saw African slaves as necessary in forming a cheap labor force. By the time of the Southern plantations, slaves became a sort of status symbol; they were no longer servants to the rich. Even more dehumanized than they were when they served wealthy Continental Europeans, slaves had become synonymous with property by the sixteenth century.
Slavery most drastically changed the lives of those who were captured; slavery turned people into property. Moreover, the demographics of Africa changed. Some families were torn apart, while others were wrested from their home soil, altering the composition of native African villages, communities, and kingdoms.
The first African slaves were used as servants for the rich. However, as slaves were also used as navigators in the exploration of…
Works Cited
African Slave System." Encyclopedia of Slavery. 28 Jul 2003. http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAslavery.htm.
Bancroft, Hubert H. "Anti-Slavery History." Excerpt from The Great Republic by the Master Historians. 28 Jul 2003. http://www.publicbookshelf.com/public_html/The_Great_Republic_By_the_Master_Historians_Vol_III/antislave_bf.html.
Both of these techniques, however, tended to pervert the established regimes by either destroying them or granting them more power than they ever had before. Boahen sees the central cause behind this European imposed partitioning of Africa to lie within the changing economic postures of the European imperial powers: "The second half of the nineteenth century was the period during which international trade became increasingly competitive, following the spread
Social dissent and unrest should not be the result of multiculturalism, the authors point out, but nonetheless those are the social realities, in many instances, of the new global picture. There is now, like it or not, a "blurring of cultural borderlines," the authors report; and as a result, the notion of culture within the word "multiculturalism" no longer refers to habits and customs of a people in anthropological terms.
Overview of Africa’s Post-Conflict History Historical Formal Institutions Colonial legacies persist in Africa in spite of a post-colonial era (Austin, 2010). These legacies have continued in post-conflict Africa’s history. In Africa, there has been no real unifying factor bringing individuals together, primarily because of the communal aspect of society throughout the continent. Community exists and can be found everywhere in Africa. Structural, dramaturgic and institutional factors in formal institutionalization in Africa of
This entertainment is the ceremonial or festive taking of alcoholic drinks at events called "beer parties." Researchers noted the significance of the festive element of work among the laborers but showed beer as an essential aspect of work. The rule in these beer work parties are adjusted to the particular workers involved. It invokes the overall value and morality of helpfulness and reciprocity, which are part of beer-drinking events.
The Bantu Authorities Act of 1951 continued the government's social engineering projects. Black Africans were assigned to "homeland" states, independent regions with artificially created governments ("The History of Apartheid in South Africa"). The South African parliament officially ruled the homeland states, but residents of those areas were denationalized under the Bantu Authorities Act ("The History of Apartheid in South Africa"). Between 1976 and 1981, the government of South Africa denationalized
Industrial Revolution Changed the World Economy? The Industrial Revolution that started in Great Britain in the latter part of eighteenth century is considered by some historians to be the most significant transformation in the economic environment of human civilization after the Agricultural Revolution. While there is no disagreement on the view that the 'revolution' had a great effect on the world economy and transformed the lives of a large number