Imperial Presence In Africa And Asia example essay topic

DURING THE LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY, EUROPEANS CONQURED AFRICA AND ASIA.A. Critically examine the kind of arguments Europeans used to justify these actions and whether we can trust these arguments and: European nations and Japan at the end of the 19th century spread their influence and control throughout the continent of Asia. Southeast Asia, unlike many other parts of the world on the eve of European expansion, long had been a cosmopolitan region acquainted with a diversity of peoples, customs, and trade goods. The arrival of Europeans in force in the early 16th century (others had made visits earlier, beginning with Marco Polo in 1292) caused neither wonderment nor fear. Long-distance travel by then was no novelty, and already there was impressive precedence for the arrival of foreign delegations rather than of individual trading vessels. A century before the Portuguese first arrived at Malice in 1509, that port and several of other in Southeast Asia had been visited by a succession of Chinese fleets. Between 1403 and 1433 Ming-dynasty China had sent several enormous flotillas of as many as 63 large vessels and up to 30,000 people on expeditions that carried them as far as Africa.

The purpose of these journeys, led by the Muslim court eunuch Cheng Ho, was to secure diplomatic and trade advantages for the Chinese and to extend the sovereign lustre of the ambitious Yung-lo Emperor. Yet, except for efforts to regain Dai Viet (Vietnam) as a province, these expeditions had no permanent military or colonial ambitions and did not much disturb the Southeast Asian region. Perhaps in part because of the sound defeat the Vietnamese handed a Ming occupying army in 1427, China lost interest in its new and far-flung initiatives, and the voyages came to an abrupt end. Europeans presented a rather different prospect for Southeast Asia, however, above all because they sought riches and absolute contro over the sources of this wealth.

The Europeans were few in number, often poorly equipped, and generally could not claim great technological superiority over Southeast Asians, but they were also determined, often well-organized and highly disciplined fighters, and utterly ruthless and unprincipled. Except for the Spanish in the Philippines, they were not interested in colonization but rather in the control of trade at the lowest financial cost. These characteristics made Europeans a formidable-though by no means dominant-new force in Southeast Asia. B. Does the novel, things fall apart offer a compelling picture of the consequences of this conquest on conqured peoples In Things fall apart, Okonkwo's relationship to the new comers is exacerbated by the fact he has a very great deal at stake in maintaining the old ways. All his hopes and dreams are rooted in the continuance of the new ways helps to explain his extreme reaction. The missionaries were often viewed as agents of imperialism. There is a saying common to Native Americans and Africans alike which goes like this: Before the white man came, we had the land and they had the bible.

Now we have the Bible and they have the land. Though Catholicism had shaped Latin-American and eastern Canadian culture, and though it came to be at home in the United States, it also found itself a worldwide presence for the first time in the 19th century. This expansion was the result both of Western nations' imperial presence in Africa and Asia and of the rebirth of a missionary spirit in Christendom. Early missions in Africa almost nothing remained of the strong early Christian communities in the north. Through the centuries, North Africa had become largely Muslim. The Muslim presence there offered more resistance than did native African religionists in the remaining part of the continent.

Christians were not welcomed and were often persecuted. Even in partly Christian Abyssinia (Ethiopia), where the Coptic Church was prominent, Catholics were largely excluded except between 1702 and 1839. An archbishopric was established in Algiers, and in 1868, Archbishop Charles Lavigerie founded the White Fathers, who were energetic but largely unsuccessful missionaries from that base. West Africa presented obvious and persistent problems for all Christians, because it was from there that European nations had carried on most of the slave trade. Portuguese colonialists did help the Catholic Church establish itself in parts of West Africa, but progress was slow. Catholicism fared better in East Africa, particularly in Madagascar and around Lake Victoria.

Uganda, Kenya, and Tanganyika (now Tanzania), for example, have thriving churches. The record was less triumphant farther south, in no small measure because of Dutch and British Protestant power. Yet there, as elsewhere, independent missionary societies worked despite considerable hardship.