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Essay On European Imperialism

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Europe’s involvement with imperialism in Africa is infamous for their poor treatment of the natives and their backwards sense of civilizing the uncivilized. However, the effects of their imperialism left lasting consequences specifically due to their implementation of eurocentrism and dehumanization. Eurocentrism is when Europeans hold other countries up to their own European values and experiences (Meriam-Webster). This effect only belittles the traditions of the native people and throws them into a social strata based on the rules the Europeans conjure up. Due to the Europeans believing to be superior based on their ability to fulfill the European values, they tend to dehumanize the native people. Dehumanizing the people and holding them up the rules of the Europeans, inhibits the country’s ability to develop as a nation. They are restrained by the European rules yet are expected to function as a European society. Two novels depicting the social relationships of the native people of Kenya and Rwanda, and the European society, display how the eurocentrism and dehumanizing strategy ends up affecting not …show more content…
They dehumanized the people of Rwanda and Kenya by forcing labels of gods, cockroaches, or traitors upon the citizens making them unrelatable and unable to work with. Suffrage, women’s rights, and justice were all sacrificed as they were dehumanized. The policies behind education and government in the two books are compromised as the eurocentrism strategy clouded the native’s opportunity to be developed by forcing the white man’s expectations over them. In both novels, one is able to see how not only the eurocentrism and dehumanization affected the characters, but how the events could have inhibited the country’s ability to develop and

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