THE CENTURIES OF DARKNESS: THE BEGINNINGS OF IMPERIALISM
Ever wondered why the Europeans and Americans practically have control over the entire world. How did they manage to exert their influence and made nations bow down to them. How-in the span of five centuries- did they manage to come out of the age of ‘darkness’ into the age of ‘enlightenment’. From a superficial perspective, it seems as if their own efforts in advancing towards modern science and modern technology bore fruits for them but the situation is not as simple as it seems. The advancement of Europe came at a price: The decline of the Eastern countries (The countries of Asia and Africa). This is a dark story that no Western historian would care to admit since it goes against their entire narrative of Justice, Peace and Human Rights. They present themselves as the flag bearer of humanity but they are nothing but tarnishers of it. In this series of articles (of which this is the first piece), I will present you how the countries of the East and the countries of Latin America were exploited at the hands of European countries. When we say Europeans or Americans; it is important to emphasize that we obviously do not mean the people of those places as they themselves are subjected to tyranny. We mean the rulers, the statesmen, the capitalists of those countries.
Someone might come forward and put an argument that all these things are the part of the past and we should now forget it and move forward; what’s done is done, we cannot change it. There are three arguments to counter it.
- First: History is a subject which is full of lessons. We cannot move forward if we overlook history.
- Second: People still consider West as the flagbearer of justice and human rights. Instead of condemning what they have done over the past centuries, people commend them for it. They call it the ‘Age of Enlightenment’ which is really ‘The Age of Darkness’.
- Third: The process still has not stopped, some powerful countries still exploit some less powerful countries through force and influence.
The issue has such firm grounds that all the issues seem secondary to it. In fact all the issues stem from imperialism. From the wars between nations to the two World Wars. From the poverty in the third world countries to the starvation because of it. From the ideology of extremism to the killings at the helm of it. From invading democratic process to orchestrating a rebellion if failed to so. All those things arose from imperialism; The greed of getting more and more, to exploit more and more. They go as far as killing millions of people just to exert and maintain their influence in the regions.
The history of imperialism is quite complex but interesting. Before we move forward, we need to understand what imperialism really is. Imperialism is the control of people and lands by means of force. Imperialists are those who colonize lands for the purpose of trade, war and propagation of culture. Imperialism began as Europeans found new ways to reach continents of Africa and Asia (which were full of resources) to steal their resources and bring them to Europe. Europeans could not trade for goods then as they had nothing in return to give. They soon realized that in order to have complete control over the ‘trade’, they need to control their political and cultural values through propaganda. Imperialism can be classified into five eras.
- Ancient times
- From 15th to 19th Century
- From 1870 to The Second World War
- From the Second World War to Cold War
- From Cold War till now
We will be focusing on Imperialism which started in the 15th century and has stretched till now. Our focus here would not be how European countries managed to take control of the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America as this is a discussion in itself, rather, we will focus on how much damage they exerted on the countries they occupied. Spaniards, for example, started the slavery of the Black Africans for the compensation of the destruction of the Native Americans in the 16th century. Portuguese made them work like animals for their interests. Spaniards took the money of the natives to their country by putting hefty interests on goods. There is no mystery surrounding what the French did to Eastern Africa. The condition of the region tells the entire story. Countries like China could not reach its true potential due to the control of the colonizers. As a result, they got dependent on International Market for products. The details about the countries being exploited will come in the future articles. As the people of the Indian Sub-continent, we all know what the English did to the region. Not only did they steal our resources, they exerted their cultural influence to an extent that people of the region take pride in claiming that they understand English more than they understand their native languages which is ironic since this article is also in English but to give my message to the masses across the globe, I am bound to write this article in English.
Imperialism has not ended rather it has changed form. We cannot console ourselves with the fact that things are getting better, that the exploiters have learned their lessons and changed themselves, that there is awareness amongst the masses against the imperialists. We see countries exert their influence through other means; the biggest of which is Media. West now do not capture the lands rather they capture the minds. Through movies, games, books, news, internet, social media; they have penetrated to our homes. This is a very dangerous form of imperialism as the imperialist do not need to use heavy machinery to occupy our homes; just by capturing our thought process they could make us slave and work for their interests. For this we need to be vigilant and focused. We have been exploited in the past; we should make sure that this does not happen again.
The media is the most powerful entity on Earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and the guilty innocent and that’s power. Because they control the mind of the masses (Malcom X)
I have started this series of articles to expose the West and make the people who were exploited aware of what their ancestors have been through for freedom and how the West through different platforms is exerting influence on us till today. I hope these articles would pave a way for a better understanding of the history of the west and provide lessons to take as we move forward in this age of technology.
