Chapter 18 - Colonial Encounters in Asia, Africa, & Oceania (1750-1950)

Chapter 18 really goes into talking about Europeans conquest for more land and its imperialism. England was hungry for more land to conquer, it just meant more power for them and they were willing to do just about anything to make that happen. On page 790 of the textbook, there is an image that really caught my attention while reading. The picture called, The Devilfish in Egyptian Water. It was known that England was pretty much taking the world, and this picture clearly shows that. The picture shows this octopus waiting to put its tentacle on Egypt, while already holding on to the other many colonies it already had power over. It was just waiting for the right time to to capture Egypt.

Although that picture stood out to me a lot, there were other parts of this textbook that stood out more because of how cruel the actions being taken were. It's commonly known that colonial rule affected people living in this time period, it affected them in their way of living, but it affected them the most in the way that they worked. During this time the economy was being transformed, and in high demand for things like; gold, diamond, copper, tin, rubber, coffee, cotton sugar, cocoas and many other products. 

The high demand for such items as I stated above meant that people were dehumanized and would work in horrific working conditions. An example of this is the high demand for rubber. Private companied in the Congo forced villagers to collect rubber which at the time was in high demand for car tires. and bicycles. There's a story in this part of the textbook told by a refugee about the horrors that were lived during that time. 

"We were always in the forest to find the rubber vines, to go without food, and our women had to give up cultivating the fields and gardens. Then we starved...We begged the white men to leave us alone, saying we could get no more rubber, but the white men and their soldiers said "Go. You are only beasts yourselves..." When we failed and our rubber was short, the soldiers came to our towns and killed us. Many were shot, some had their ears cut off; others were tied up with ropes round their necks and taken away." 

This passage alone was extremely hard for me to read. To know that people were treated this way, that although they begged and begged and knew there was nothing they could do they were killed or victims of brutal attacks. It's hard to even put into words how any of these people viewed this as being ok. What makes it really hard I believe is these people had no way out. I can only imagine how these people felt going out in the forest looking for rubber leaves, and not finding any or just not finding enough. 

There's a picture in this part of the textbook as well, page 803 of two young children with severed hands due to the brutal regime of forced labor undertaken in the Congo during the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. It was things like this that were done to people as punishment for not bringing in as much rubber as was asked of them. Again, very hard for me to think anyone would think this is an ok punishment not only for an adult but for a child as well. It's just outright cruel, and makes me sad to think if outsiders knew how this rubber was being collected and the cruel things these worker endured. And makes me think if we today know where all of our products are coming from? It's definitely something we should be more aware of to prevent things like this from repeating themselves.