The African continent is a region that has a great and rich history. If only you would take your time and dig deep into our history, the treasures you will find are fascinating. The Europeans said that our continent had no history at all. But this is very wrong as we can see Africa having great empires such as the Mali and Songhai kingdoms that played a role in civilization.
Unfortunately, people have tarnished the name of Africa. Whenever we hear about our past, most people shift their minds to the slave trade and wars. Africa was more than the slave trade as it played a role in the civilization of the world.
However, the Europeans distorted history to promote false information about the African continent. The European continent seemed to have twisted history to justify the slave trade and colonization. For Europe to justify these acts, it had to make a history that emphasized its superiority and reduce the contribution of others.
#1 When and How this Falsehood Gained Ground
Europe established the distortion of history during the 15th and 16th centuries. It is the same period when Europeans wanted to increase to other regions. The countries in the European continent by the time were poor and had diseases. They feared to become non-existent.
Hence, their leaders paid people who were called explorers. They sent these people to go and rob off Africa and Asia and return rewards to the European continent. Some of these explorers were Christopher Columbus, Vasco da Gama, David Livingstone, and Mungo Park. These people laid a perfect base for the European continent to colonize the globe.
Hegel strengthened the views concerning the superiority of the white color. Hegel described the blacks as underdeveloped and this aided justify Europe’s colonization of the African continent.
Europe colonized the minds of people especially Africans through falsifying history. One of the ways they did this was by saying that ancient Greece, a state in SE Europe, was the base of civilization. Here we will see Africa playing a part in civilizing the world despite the falsehood that it did not.
One professor says that Egyptian civilization was the 1st one and the civilization of ancient Greece wouldn’t exist without it. Egypt is one of the modern African countries. Greece borrowed a lot from the Egyptian way of life.
Europe claimed that ancient Egypt was not part of the African region and that it was an extension of Europe. Europe went further ahead and said that people should not see Egypt as an African civilization. Here again, we see Europe twisting history by emphasizing that Africa did not play any role in the civilization of the world and this is false. We see the Greece civilization coming after Egyptian civilization and they borrow heavily from the Egyptian civilization.
Besides Europe twisting history, we see Europeans presenting their way of life being superior to other cultures. They used this technique to control and colonize Africans. The British, French, and Portuguese used the same method of domination by the colonization of people’s minds.
#2 The French
The French had a rule that permitted them to choke the way of life of the people who were under their control. They established French political, cultural, and economic projects. The French colonized the mind of Africans by teaching them to aspire to be like the French to get French citizenship.
#3 The British
In the country of Nigeria, we see Fredrick Lugard perfecting a system that permitted the British to operate tax control. Moreover, they were to operate the external military. They left the other aspect of rule to the traditional inhabitants. The British colonized the minds of Africans by establishing the British educational system and the use of their language.
#4 Relevance Today
In the modern world, we still see this act of mind colonization going on. For example, most African countries have shown China that it is superior to them by depending a lot on China. We see the Chinese people in a country like Kenya practicing the aspect of dominance on Kenyans.
It is therefore very crucial for people to understand where they came from. If we keep allowing the falsehood that the continent had no role in civilizing the globe, we will continue to rely on developed states.
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