Scarlet Letter

The dominant image of Africa projected by European writers in the nineteenth century was that of a place of savagery and chaos. Africa was cognize as the Dark Continent, a land deprived of the deject of Western civilization, education, culture, religion, industry, and progress. The African landscape was like nothing encountered in Europe, and early explorers emphasized the differences between the cities or countryside they knew at star sign and the tropical jungle, arid open spaces, and indigenous flora and creature of Africa. The people of Africa were characterized by Westerners as lacking in devotion and intelligence, being perpetually childlike, demonic, and practicing outlandish, barbaric customs. Because of the overwhelmingly negative reports and portrayals of Africa and Africans, by late in the century most Westerners regarded colonization of the African land their moral duty; it was the White mans burden, in Rudyard Kiplings phrase, to require Africans until they could be sufficiently civilized to take their place in the world. By 1900, almost ninety percent of Africa was under European control, and the myth of the Dark Continent and the image of the deprived, depraved African native had taken hold of the Western consciousness.





At the commencement ceremony of the nineteenth century, Europeans were largely ignorant of Africa, although Portugal had been engaged since the mid-fifteenth century in the trade of African knuckle downs. Britains slave trade began a century years later, and by the eighteenth century was flourishing, but because the slave business was handled internally by African and Arab merchants, few Europeans genuinely traveled to Africa. By the end of the eighteenth century, the abolitionist apparent movement in Britain began to have an impact on British attitudes. some(prenominal) of the first representations of Africa and Africans in European writing were composed by Europeansâ€"mainly abolitionists who expressed their outrage at the injustices of slaveryâ€"who had neer traveled to...If you want to get a full essay, pronounce it on our website: Orderessay



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