Obligatorisk opgave 12 (400 ord) Engelsk B e-learning Ren Rubion

Write an essay in which you discuss imperialism as a historical background of our divided world.

If our world is divided it is not because of colonialism, but in spite of colonialism, if you ask me. Throughout history small kingdoms, countries, nations or whatever you call them, almost inevitably gets swallowed by larger ones. The era of European colonialism began after Columbus rediscovered the American continent. The Incas, Aztecs and other bronze-age civilizations had already colonized most of South America. They were easily defeated by the European guns and the deceases they brought with them. The Europeans were brutal and ruthless, driven by greed and delusional religious motives. But realistically, the cultures they wiped out were even worse. Few tears have ever been shed over the termination of those industrial-scale ritualistic human sacrifices. It took another 100 years or so before the African continent was colonized. Today the continent consists of roughly 52 independent countries. It is far from a perfect construction, but on the whole civil wars have replaced wars between nations there. And it is in fact quite an improvement over the estimated 10 000 petty kingdoms, ranging from stone-age to barely iron-age, that preceded European colonialism, constantly at war with each other, always happy to provide Muslim (and later European) slave traders with fresh captives. It was the only inhabited continent left on the planet that never had had anything resembling large-scale civilization (except from a small part along the last stretch of the Nile). In fact, the colonial era itself was a major improvement, despite its obvious flaws. The lack of development we see today in large parts of the African continent is not nearly as much a result of colonialism and exploitation, even by extreme criminals like the Belgian king Leopold II, as is generally postulated. On the contrary: The problems these places suffer from today are largely due to the fact that they were not colonized for long enough. South- and Mesoamerica were civilized during their colonization long before the Europeans arrived. The replacement of one largely coherent culture by another was in fact a small step. World War II made colonies unfashionable to the point of embarrassing, and Africa became decolonized within fifty years after the end of Hitlers attempt to colonize large chunks of the world. Unfortunately, the rather arbitrarily outlined African countries were in many cases not homogenized enough to manage very well on their own. It was more abandoning ship than giving these nations their independence.

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