News, announcements, and commentary for the students and families of GAMP.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Africa: "The Dark Continent" (The Debate Continues)
I thought that the information below would interest my African American History classes given our recent exploration of Ancient African civilization...
Africa was deemed “The Dark Continent” (most likely used in print for the first time by US journalist and explorer Henry Stanley – of “Dr. Livingstone I presume?” fame - in his Africa account “Through the Dark Continent”) due to the fact that it remained a mystery to Europeans for so long. While most of the world had been under European control for quite some time Africa held out until the final decades of the 19th century, when it was carved up and parceled out to the main European powers in the Berlin Conference. But even after Africa had been divvied up, in reality the majority of the continent remained largely unexplored. It was not exploited until later when various factors collided enabling Europeans to begin a systematic exploitation of Africa’s vast resources.
The fact that Africa was last to be colonized also meant that it was the last to gain independence as European imperialists wanted to hang on to their African colonies long enough to get a return on the investments they had put into their various economic ventures. Most of the countries in Africa have undergone decolonization in the latter half of the 20th century. This explains in part why there are so many conflicts going on in Africa today. It is not an easy task to form an independent nation. Every country has a difficult time in its formative years. Consider the US: it was practically bankrupt after the Revolutionary War, had a number of violent rebellions and was basically a group of largely independent states unified in a lose federation in its infancy. It was still trying to solidify its nationhood 90 years after it had begun its fight for independence. The US Civil War almost ripped the US apart. Instead the results of the war actually helped to strengthen the power of the federal government over the independent states and the US forged ahead as a powerful unified country. Most African nations are undergoing this process of nation building. And they face other challenges relevant to their specific traditions and historical development. The dominant political organization in most of Africa is based on tribal affiliations. The model of a nation state - a European creation - does not apply well to such a political system. So the fact that Africa was colonized and thus decolonized last explains in part why there is so much turmoil in the continent today.
But why was Africa colonized last? Compared to all the other parts of the world taken over by Europe, Africa is geographically the closest! Why then did they wait so long to get into Africa? The answer lies in the land itself. Africa is bordered by some of the harshest deserts on earth, the Sahara in the north, Namib and Kalahari in the south. The Great Rift Valley in the east creates some of the most spectacular landscapes on earth, many of which are impenetrable. Extensive rain forest and jungle cover much of the Equatorial zone. The interior of Africa is a large plateau so the continent’s rivers tend to be fast moving as they seek the coast creating many impassable rapids and waterfalls. Sand deposits in the slow moving areas of the rivers downstream from the rapids create underwater hazards for any boat that is not flat bottomed or does not have a shallow berth. Africa has a tremendous variety of fascinating yet horrific diseases that have a very impressive track record of evolving with great efficiency to form resistance to human vaccines and other treatments. Because of these situations Europeans had an incredibly difficult time penetrating into the interior of Africa and thus fully exploiting its resources until they had the technology of the 20th century at hand.
The use of the term "Dark Continent" remains an issue into the modern day. As recently as 2008 National Public Radio (NPR) had to formally apologize for using the derogatory and archaic term in its news broadcast.
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