Journal Wednesday 10th April 2013

Hello people!

Otto Von Bismark

Today in Social Sciences class we have talked about the scramble for Africa and the Berlin Conference. The colonization of Africa started in 1880 because the Europeans started conquering territories and they had problems. France and the United Kingdom wanted to create continuous empires in Africa, France from West to East and the United Kingdom from North to South.  So there was a problem of a possible war and due to this, in 1885 an international conference, the Berlin Conference, was called by Otto Von Bismarck. At first, he didn’t want to sponsored it because he thought that colonialism was a waste of time, money and people. But the merchants of Hamburg convinced him of the fact that having colonies would be good for the country.

The Berlin Conference was created to avoid an international conflict due to competition for occupying Africa and for this they established some rules and they organized colonization. On a satirical cartoon we have seen Bismarck offered the slices of Africa to the Europeans. The main European powers participated in the conference, those who were interested in participating in the distribution of African territories. 

Political opression

The enemy of slavery

They made three important decisions; the first one was that the country which occupied the coast of a territory could also seized the interior. Paqui has drawn a map to explain this and the next things.  The second one was that there was free navigation of the African rivers and the last one was the creation of the Congo Free State, which was established in the part where there were more conflicts and the objective was to obtain a neutral power. In reality it was exploited by the king Leopold II who administered it as a private property and he made dirty things, one example of these dirty things is that rubber collectors who didn’t complete their rubber collection quotas and whose hands were cut off as a punishment. And when we have talked about this, Paqui has mentioned an Irish civil servant called Roger Casement who visited the Congo and Peru and he wrote a very important report showing the dark face of colonialism. 

The scramble of Africa

Continuing with the Berlin Conference, the consequence was that all the continent was distributed between the Europeans and only the territories of Liberia, Abyssinia (present Ethiopia) and Morocco remained free. Paqui has explained that Liberia was created by freed slaves after the American Civil War , in 1820, and it was protected by the United States. Paqui has shown us on a map the territories that each country conquered and those who remained independent. 

We have also seen a video of a girl who explains the scramble of Africa and the Berlin Conference and Paqui at the beginning of the class has shown some maps to start explained the colonization of Africa. On this post you can see the video and the links of the maps, and you can also see other things that help you to study colonialism.  And on this post you can see the presentation used in class, I put here because the post is old and maybe you don’t know where the presentation is.

Paqui has also said that she has written a post about Margaret Thatcher to know more about her and another one with the film Khartoum we’ve talked about. We have talked about the syllabus of the USA when we have watched the video of the Berlin Conference, because the girl who explained it put Europe upside down. Paqui has said that they don’t know much geography and that they only learn the geography and history of their country mainly. And that, the students of every country learn what they respective governments want, for example many of them learn the Constitution by heart.

Paqui has talked a little about the imperialism in Asia that only China remained more or less independent, but this is not totally truth and I have understood that we are going to see this in the next class. 

For homework we have to do a summary about the most important colonial empires (pages 35 and 36 of the book) so don’t forget to do it!

Colonial empires

Here, you have some links in case you want to now more about geographic illiteracy in the USA: 2006 survey and 2010 survey.

The words that I have added to my glossary are:

race to occupy Africa – carrera por ocupar África

Hamburg – Hamburgo

scramble – lucha, pelea

feed – liberado, emancipado

scramble for Africa – reparto de África

Boers – former dutch colonists

Dutch – holandés

rubber – caucho

entangle – enredar

syllabus – programa educativo

That’s all guys. I hope you have enjoyed my journal. Have I got a lot of mistakes? (:

Bye, see you!