Part 2- Question 4

Child soldiers are young children who have weapons provided to them by the RUF. The RUF got the children to take their side and kill others by forcing them to take drugs and alcohol. The young girls would be sexually abused and used as slaves. Ishmael Beah a child soldier says that you when you are a child soldier you loose everything you have- family, community, etc. He was rescued after two years of being a child soldier and had a rough time rehabilitating to be ready to go back to society he under went therapy, learning how to sleep, living without violence, living with other people. He had to be in a center for 8 months to learn how to be civilized. He published a book in which is called “A Long Way Gone- Memoirs of a Child Soldier”.

Part 1- question 5 by jeffrey

I don’t think Imperialism is inevitable; well at least 100% of the time. Sometimes you just had bad luck and can’t defend yourself. In other cases, you rise up to the occasion and fight for your freedom. That inspiration can be the factor that helps you win. However, in Africa the people there weren’t really united as a whole. They were scattered all over the place and would occasionally fight each other. This made it easier for another country to imperialize them. I personally think that everyone should have equal power and rights because I’m more of a capitalist guy than a communist. Though, I don’t think that to have more power over someone you have to imperialize a weaker country. Throughout history there have been examples of a resolution to this. One example is the Berlin Conference. The purpose of this conference was to distribute power, wealth and land equally in Africa. Too many Europeans were starting wars for land during the “Scramble for Africa”, so all the European leaders came together in this conference and agreed to a certain portion of Africa. In another time were Europe itself was fighting for land in their own continent due to the actions of Napoleon. He had conquered almost all of Europe and something had to be done about it. So, the Congress of Vienna happened in which European borders were restored back to order and a promise was made to not fight with each other.

part 1- question 3 by Jeffrey

Colonization of the 1500’s and Imperialism in the 1900’s are similar and different in many ways they both are affected the lives of people by the actions of Europeans. They have caused deaths, poverty, and civil wars.
Some similarities that they have are that they both changed the social class system in the countries they took over. During the age of exploration the Conquistadors took all of Latin Americas resources such as their crops and gold. While during Imperialism the European countries took the Africans land and natural resources such as the highly valued diamonds.
Some differences that they have are that they were started for different reasons. For starters the age of exploration was started mainly because Spain and Portugal wanted access to new trading route because the Muslim Turks controlled trade in the east of their geography so they went to the Latin American countries. While on their sailboats they would chant the reasons for this voyage “gold, god and glory!” In the other hand Imperialism started because of the desire for European countries to become stronger.
It was called the “scramble for Africa” as many countries were fighting for land in Africa. The Berlin conference then settled warfare and allowed the distribution of land in Africa is done fairly; however African leaders didn’t have any say in this. In addition Imperialism is different from colonization because it caused civil wars in countries in Africa such ad Sierra Leone. Rebel groups such as the RUF, had position of guns by trading their diamonds for it. This allowed to them to have control of the Africa and do some pretty messed up things. The Age of exploration on the other hand resulted in had some similarity to Imperialism because the decline of Latin American led to the desire for African slaves.

Explain how the Berlin Conference and the imperialism of Africa that ensued effected the both the colonized Africans and Europeans colonizers?

The Berlin conference had to do with imperialism of Africa. It affected both Africans, and the European. The European got more rich. The european had this much moeny because of captailism. The Africans were effected in a negative way, they were force to do what europeans told the to do. Like dig for gold and diamonds. Most of them were killed because the RUF chop of there hands and killed them. They had to learn there cultures, and act a european way. The Africans were trained to be Europeans but didn’t really had power.