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Imperialism Essay Imperialism, the creation and maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationship based on domination and subordination has only negative effects on indigenous natives of the land being conquered. While some fallacious sources such as Joseph Conrad, author of Heart of Darkness, and Arthropod, author of “In Praise of Cultural Imperialism” praise and support imperialism, other reliable sources such as Rafael, author of “Out of Time” and China Achebe, author of Things Fall Apart refute it and state its faults.
Imperialism never has and in no way ever will benefit natives of a country because they lose culture and traditional values, they are taken advantage of by the superior country (politically, socially, and economically), and they never prosper as much as they could have if their nation was not taken over by imperialists. In every nation or region, people are raised and brought up with certain cultural and traditional values. However, when imperialism and taken over by superior nations, they begin to lose those unique cultural and traditional values and begin to assemble the superior nation’s culture.
Although some may disagree and think that imperialism brings older and undeveloped nations up to date and makes them shed their primitiveness, it is not necessarily such a bad thing to have so much rich culture in one area. While technological development is a good thing because it also brings social development and new culture, it also destroys older and more rich cultures that should last. For instance, in Paul Raffle’s article, he speaks of a man named Sydney Possible, a man trying to keep the culture and traditions of small tribes such s the Koru intact.
Rafael says, “A dying breed today, the secretariats are peculiar to Brazil, Indian trackers charged by the government with finding tribes in hard to reach interior lands. Most secretariats count themselves lucky to have made first contact’—a successful initial nonviolent encounter between a tribe and the outside world—with one or two Indian tribes, but Possible has made first contact with no fewer than seven. ” The fact that these secretariats exist in order to track older and ultra tribes shows the negative effects that imperialism and industrialization can have on a nation.
While there are huge city parts of a nation because they were imperialism and colonized, these tiny little tribes that bear much of the nation’s culture are slowly disappearing. This is one main reason why imperialism is so harmful to the nations being colonized. Another reason that imperialism is so harmful to colonized nations is because the smaller, primitive, and less powerful nations have less control and say over what the larger nations can do to or with them.
Because of their lack of power, these smaller nations are taken advantage of, whether it be getting their resources or raw materials all used up, the nation’s peoples being exploited, or even the government getting its control and say over the people taken away. Arthropod, president and CEO of an international advisory firm specializing in transformational global trends associated Untied States should develop and modernized smaller nations in order to advance the whole world.
Arthropod states, “It is in the general interest of the United States to encourage the development in a world in which the fault lines separating nations are bridged by shared interests. And it is in the economic and political interests of the United States to ensure that if the world is moving toward a common language, it be English; that if the world is moving toward common telecommunications, safety, and quality standards, they be American; that if the world is becoming linked by television, radio, and music, the programming be American; and that if common values are being developed, they be values with which Americans are comfortable.
The notion that Arthropod brings is that if possible, the United States should imperialism the world until it is all American. This notion is highly fallacious and wrong because if the whole world were to be Americanizes, then there would be nothing unique about any other place and every part of the world would resemble another part, which would make for little diversity or culture in this world. Imperialism makes for negative causes and even more negative effects. At first when it occurs it may seem as a positive effect, but in the long run, for example in his case it was a negative effect.
All Africans and Asians were heavily exploited and were given no rights to do anything even though the mother countries gave them modern culture. Colonies inside colonies would fight because they wanted independence and have their own government and rule. There were many ethnics group that had nationalistic feelings but could not accomplish anything and become a free nation because of Imperialism. The mother country’s that did the taking over were only after a few things and unfortunately did happen to accomplish what they ere after.
They wanted raw materials, markets for goods, national glory, balance of power and they also felt as though they needed to help smaller nations as though it was their burden, which Europeans called “White Man’s Burden. ” In their point of view they thought they were helping people but really all they were doing was hurting the smaller colonies. Mother countries were destroying ethnic groups and causing civil wars between smaller nations. This newer modern Imperialism was never productive.
When a mother country took over a smaller colony for economic, lattice or social reason, they were Imperialistic. As shown they changed the modern world plenty and pretty much made it a harder world to live in at that time. It all depends on which viewpoints you may look at. Some may think it was a positive thing but overall, it only led to things in this world that were negative. Even thought the modern Imperialism occurred no more then 100 years ago, it still affects countries greatly, and how nations are broken down. Overall though, imperialism never had any positive effects and never will.