Colonization in Africa and Civilization - Admission/Application Essay Example

The emergence of mercantilism ideology that swept Europe from the 18th century encouraged the gathering of more wealth for power and political influence and this was responsible for their further such for economic resources in the spirit of competition. The idea of getting more wealth after exhausting their own resources explained the scramble for Africa by the European nations. With the steady expansion of their administrative power to African countries, there was settling of some of them in their colonies and this promoted the arrival of other social services. The idea of spreading civilization was a secondary purpose that actually came into light later after the colonizers had deeply exploited the African communities in their resource endowment. Late 19th century most of the African communities had become fed up with the ruthless treatment from the European colonizers and begun to stage rebellion which was met with equal brutality from the white rulers. It was during this time that another group of Europeans who proclaimed the word of God begun to stream into Africa as missionaries (Boyce, 122). Their primary role was to spread the gospel of God which they felt was superior to the African traditional religion.

A civilization that the Europeans claim to have brought in Africa actually resulted from the work of the missionaries who came later after a lot of damage had been done to the African rich natural endowment. The actual issue that necessitated exposure of the Africans to the western way of life was introducing the whites’ language that would make communication by missionaries easier. As the missionaries taught language, education was introduced to make them even more enlightened so that they could help in spreading the word of God through various means that included interpretation. As the colonizers continued staying, they have begun to introduce the Africans to some skills of making life easier especially in order to master basic artisan skills for helping them carry out some activities in the way they did it in their countries. It is important to note that even this time they were only interested in exploiting the energy of the Africans to foster their own economic expansion. It can be argued that civilization gradually got its way into Africa in the course of the struggle for independence when some of the already enlightened Africans stepped in to give ideas on various approaches to get rid of colonial authority which was oppressive. The steady acceptance of the Europeans to accommodate the grievances of the Blacks slowly initiated free interaction between the Europeans and upon independence, the states adopted their mode of Education (Boyce, 122). This greatly expanded the transfer of western civilization to Africa.