Home Search Sitemap Contact Bookmark

Free Dissertations - Cultural Studies Dissertations

In General, There Would Appear To Be A Long History Of Integrated And ...

In general, there would appear to be a long history of integrated and autonomous economic activity in most regions of Africa with local and long distance trade playing a linking role. This is not an attempt to paint a ‘golden past' for Africa. Rather, it is meant to underline the fact that Africa had a healthy and fairly independent economic system before colonialism intervened to force a structural interaction with Europe.' This last point is important: in dwelling on the problems and failures of colonial era and post-independence Africa, it is easy to imagine that before the arrival of the Europeans, Africa had no problems at all. Clearly this was not the case, and it is necessary to try to consider objectively the relative successes and failures of the different periods in order to determine how best to secure the continent's developmental future.
Alemayehu (2003, 71) explains that ‘[p]re-colonial African economic interactions with the rest of the world, and especially Europe, date back many centuries, before culminating in fully-fledged colonisation in the latter part of the nineteenth century.' In a sense, colonisation can be seen as a continuation or extension of the economic relations which existed between many parts of Africa and Europe in pre-colonial years. While it is true that many African nations had an integrated and autonomous economic structure before they developed extensive trade with Europe (Alemayehu, 2003, 73), it is arguable that Europe began to play a dominant economic role even before colonising Africa. This again highlights the fact that not everything was perfect prior to colonisation, and lessons may be derived from both experiences in pre-colonial and colonial times.
Woodhouse & Chimhowu (2005,182) explain that the scramble to colonise Africa by European powers led to a different pattern of colonisation than that seen in America and led these powers, in the latter part of the nineteenth century, to establish colonial administration all across the continent, including some areas where there was no obvious economic rationale (such as mineral exploitation or agricultural production). In these situations, the colonial authorities sought to intensify natural resource exploitation in order to fund the colonial administration. ‘The resulting ‘compromises', which included indirect rule through reconstituted customary African authorities, commoditization of production by small-scale farmers, and the creation of areas reserved for wildlife and pastoralists, shaped the discourses on wildlife and natural resource management during the late colonial period and subsequently in the post-independence field of development studies.


Thanks