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The British Colonization of Africa and India
To summarize all, I would like to stress that Great Britain is a country on islands. If there was no colonization this country would already use all resources and people would starve. Actually, might be that there would not be any country in nowadays. That was the main reason why British needed colonization. They developed and grow their economic situation thanks to trade in Africa and India. Britain had the largest empire in the 19th 20th century. Moreover, British colonies had better the postcolonial era, because British decentralization and compromise gave a chance for colonies to embrace the institutions that were the best acceptable for their situations (Robert M. Grier 320). Colonization gave chance to countries to have new experiences, better education, health care and infrastructure, new ideas of revolution, democracy etc. Those all came along with colonization. Furthermore, English language would not be as a common second or lingua franca language. Because of colonization, according to David S. Mason, then: “ English language became the lingua franca of the political and economic elites in countries like India, Nigeria, and South Africa, and an important source of unity and identity in countries riven by ethnic and religious differences.” (101). Sure there were some negative things, like native people were slaves in own land or were sold and transported far away. Local people had no control of politics, because power had in hands of British. But if we look on big picture, then colonization change the world, even for better. Don’t you think?…
“Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.” Those words about colonization once said a Nigerian novelist, poet, professor, and criticChinua Achebe.Colonizers in this case always will be the hunters, the lions.It is easy to judge about colonization’s rights and wrongs, but really was it so bad?Have you ever thought how would look our world map if there wasn’t colonization? How different world around us would be? How about languages in our lives, English, French, Spanish and many others? So many questions that helped me realize more and more how important the colonization actually was.Of course, we always can find many different opinions about positive and negative sides of colonization. Like, on Sukarno’s, the first President of Indonesia, opinionis that colonization and imperialism was bad. He hated imperialism and he despised colonialism. He even admitted that he is afraid from results of colonization. He believed that Indonesian nation, and all other parts of world, should not be toys for others who want to be in charge. I think colonization of Africa and India is great part of British history because it brought new experiences for all involved parties, like African or Indian people, and British; helped Britain’s to significantly increase their economic growth with trade, and made English language to be main language in politics and economics. Therefore, in this essay I will describe generally about colonization and then I will look into more closely about colonization in Africa and India