Essay 7

It is difficult to ascertain the "desires" of Europeans participating in African culture. Primarily, they seem to have become involved in their colonialist pursuits in Africa largely for the purpose of stymieing their continental rivals, rather than for some genuine desire for resources or other natural benefits, though this certainly changed when the abundance of oil in certain key areas became known and its uses became more pivotal to the functioning of western society as a whole. It became a land grab, of sorts, as the various powers jockeyed with each other in expanding their overseas holdings. Possessing and maintaining successful colonial ventures in Africa meant prestige for the home nation, a place of pride amid the tumultuous and often tense international developments of nineteenth century European politics.
What European nations of the nineteenth century felt they contributed to African culture may be more readily ascertained, but it is just as subject to modern stereotypes. The image of colonialism that exists today is often one of a pompous European aristocrat lording himself over subject peoples and delivering his superior culture and religion to the unwashed heathens of the world. In reality, this may have been the case to some great extent, but the conditions were invariably more complicated, as well. In India, for example, it can be argued that regional nobility actively cooperated with, or at least benefited from their interactions with British colonialism in terms of how they themselves profited from arrangements made with said officials. In Africa there may not have been a ruling elite that cooperated as fully with colonial overlords, but there was nonetheless a similar sense upon the part of the colonial administrations themselves that their presence was one that bestowed superior values and ideas upon a less developed people. Regardless of the innate racism and arrogance inherent in such assumptions, they seem be widespread in almost all cases where one culture or country imposes its will upon a country or group of people.

Essay 6

The lectures and readings on eugenics this week add a deeper insight into the idea of otherness and the condition of Africans living in Europe during the first part of the twentieth century. This development alters the way in which European attitudes toward non Europeans are perceived, primarily because, at that time, European thinkers in the field of eugenics were considering biology and breeding to be a paramount factor in what they considered the necessary development and improvement of society as a whole. That these theories came at the expense of entire races of people seems lost upon the movement, or else that itself is to be included in a goal which, by its very nature, persecutes everyone who falls below the social ideal of the time.
The one consolation for the African population in Europe during the period was that it was fairly marginal in relation to the overall population numbers of western European countries. In terms of the eugenics movement, African populations in European countries were secondary to the significantly larger Jewish population spread throughout the whole of Europe. These lines of thoughts, however vile, seem to run a splintered course in terms of European thoughts on the vitality and viability of certain elements of national population. The attitudes of the old blood aristocracy toward the working class, and likewise, the attitudes of the working class toward the authority of society were conflicting in nature and contributed to the discussion of what, indeed, was a proper social attitude. This stratified status in most European countries made the selection of a "superior" or preferable kind of citizen a more delicate act simply because the ideals of society were seen very differently, depending upon ones own social status.

Essay 5

Imperialism certainly contained elements of cultural/racial arrogance, for without them there would be great difficulty for a European nation, or any nation, for that matter, in forcing its will upon another people. By applying the rationalization that European peoples, values, and technologies were superior to African or Asian values and technologies, one could make the argument that the exploitation of the inferior latter by the superior former is perfectly acceptable, even desirable, in that the African or the Asian people thus subjugated would then benefit from exposure to a superior people and a preferable way of life. Such an idea, or at least the vague rationale behind it, can be seen to some degree in the Indian Wars that stretched throughout much of the nineteenth century in American history, where justifications were given in an effort to make the case that it was acceptable for white settlers to take land formerly in the possession of indigenous peoples.
This may stray beyond the scope of this course, but an idea similar to the one put forward by this essay assignment could easily be applied to Nazi Germany and other twentieth century powers and the conflicts which ensued when one group of people put forward their own racial/cultural superiority as a rationalization to conquer/eliminate another group of people. That certainly isn‘t to say that European colonialism was blanket genocide, only that colonialism was and did require a certain kind of self superior mindset in order for the arrangement to be carried forward at all. In this case, regions of Africa were made to be subservient to European nations based simply upon the ideas Europeans had about their own superior culture, as well as the more practical reality that nineteenth century European nations were technologically and military superior, and that few, if any of the colonial subject nations were in positions to realistically mount a prolonged and competitive resistance sufficient enough to ward off colonial occupations for anything more than a brief respite. Regardless, the same attitude prevails.