Stories of colonialism are often told from those in power. The step to establish colonial rule over the African land mainly from the nineteenth century to twentieth century strengthen the expansion of the Africa’s commodity export. The subsequent regulation and manipulation of African communities and empires facilitated the railway and road construction, encouraged large inflows of investment from Europe, as well as triggering profound changes in labor operations together with land markets. At least the colonial regimes reached consensus to abolish slavery across the world therefore redeeming the human dignity that was on the verge of extinction. Nonetheless, as the eradication was deemed a positive and humane step, the same colonial regimes replaced it with schemes of forced labor. By the time the colonial power started scrambling for territories in African continent, the exports were propelled to new heights, even if there was prevalent lack of preceding era of commercialization to bar it (Lindsay, 2017). The American colonization subsequently powered the capturing, transportation as well as the enslavement of Africans within the North and South American continents as well as in the Caribbean. The Atlantic Slave Trade is a perfect representation of the principal slave importation in the world history. This trade did not only cause enormous suffering for individuals compelled into slavery, but fostered the expansion of Europeans settlement in new territories where they would earn considerable amounts of money for their governments to fund the industrial revolution. The essay delineates how these Atlantic bonds and other primary sources changed the way one understands colonialism in Africa.
There are at least three outcomes of Atlantic slave trade that appear to be certain. The first one entails that slavery was responsible for pauperizing and depopulating the African continent. This also involved massive theft of Africa’s youthful and prolific members while wrecking the history of politics and economic development of Africans societies. Furthermore, slavery caused the consolidation of the dominant ties between Europeans and non-Europeans, which made racism the basic rationalization for colonial mistreatment that endures till today in diverse guises (Lindsay, 2017). The third outcome is that Europeans together with their descendants gained gigantic profits from slavery by feeding well and increasing their population. Having new sources of massive capital and vibrant industries, the Europeans went ahead and developed advanced technology aiming at conquering and exploiting others further. The Atlantic Slave Trade therefore, reinforced the blend of diverse motives that aroused greed for material proprietorship as well as consumption, which was integrated with racism and self-glorification that started with the Crusades.
It should be understood that the end of slavery only came at the time when it was not economically productive anymore because the then mushrooming Industrial Revolution had rendered it dispensable and inefficient. The pursuit of racism, profit and self-aggrandizement by the colonial masters never ended up to the present day world. In fact, it technical got augmented as a result of the development of industries, which needed more raw materials together cheap or free labor, as well as expansive markets for their manufactured products. Through classical colonialism convenient alternative was engendered to satisfy their needs.
Another way of understanding is that colonialism in its classical form was instigated during the time Europeans invaded Americans seeking occupation for its surplus populace and to exploit natural resources. The Europeans driving motivation did not just remain the cultural domineering and pursuit of material exploitation, but also their self-importance that sought to compensate for troubling doubts on the entirety as well as integrity of the self, which in various ways and strength, assault people ubiquitously. This explains that colonialism was psychological, economic, cultural and political from the onset of it. The political and economic motives were conspicuous from the start; whereby the psychological and cultural motives were integral to it all through becoming more powerful and manifested later (Lindsay, 2017). Additionally, the consequence of colonialism is pervasive and multiple; its expansion and extension affected the believes, behavior, and the general lives of colonized people.
More often than not, colonialism misunderstood or perhaps it is narrowly defined. Several people erroneously confine colonialism to either an era or a geographic area whereas several others get persuaded to believe that colonialism is passé and outmoded. They further perceive it as a system that does not operative in Africa any more or even all over the world. Besides, there are other individuals who narrow colonialism to a system that is imposed and serving only populations and progenies of Europe, disregarding the fact that colonialism could not have been successful or sustainable in the past and present were it not be for the local minions, collaborators, who always worked in conjunction with conveyor belts vital for all kinds of oppression to persist and take root. Since then, the deliberations regarding colonialism often turn stale in Africa in the recent decades after many African countries achieved independence. Enormous euphoria flounced through the African continent forthwith after they managed to hoist and sang their so called national anthems as they celebrated the assumption of African leaders into power. From that time, African people have lived with the belief that the European powers left for good, so that perhaps Africans could progress without any impediment to relish the freedom and affluence they imagined in immediate grasp (Lindsay, 2017). But as fate would be the euphoria and escalated expectations soon paved way for disappointment together with despair since colonialism had left behind lasting legacies comprising political, economic, socio-cultural, and intellectual legacies, which have kept Europeans domination alive.
As beneficiary and culmination of initial kinds of colonialism, meta-colonialism similarly serves the Euro-American resource exploitation, social domination, as well as psychological self-aggrandizement. The motives have been persistent by residual social and political features of domination, inertia of history, together with collective socialization through operative media and learning institutions. Meta-colonialism supplemented these aspects to the potent methods as conditioned massive passion for customer goods introduced from abroad as well as an operational distribution of the acceptance that the colonial stage represents excessive advance in the history of humanity. Summarily, what changed are the motives as well as the tactics and the methods of sustaining those motives otherwise colonialism still exists.