Resources and Development of Imperial Ambition - Essay Example

RESOURCES AND DEVELOPMENT OF IMPERIAL AMBITION By s + of No other literary work explores more about imperial stories focusing on resources besides concentrating on the need to speak stories to the people other than Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe and King Solomon’s Mine by Ridder Haggard. Chinua Achebe avers that the writer in both new and old nation has a bigger role to play while presenting his or her content to the audience (Faulkner, 2007, p. 52). Taking it from the African perspective, Achebe holds that the writer ought to help people from Africa and abroad comprehend that Africans had and maintained viable culture that remained intact before the arrival of the white man on the African land. In his Things Fall Apart, Achebe demonstrates that the African writer carries recognizing and celebrating the culture as his or her biggest job in order to make people from Africa start salvaging their dignity. King Solomon’s mine is a classical Victorian rendition of the unexplored Africa at the start of the 18th century. From the book, the realization that Africa was just like other continents comes out clearly. Throughout the narration in the book, imperialism comes out in many instances. For instance, the title of the book symbolically infers to the biblical times of King Solomon. From the biblical perspective, the King is known to be so wise. Other than being wise, the biblical conquests for wealth are something which are akin to the modern day imperialism. In the times of King Solomon, there were fights over territories, mines included. For instance, the book is a quest to show proof of the existence of the mines that were owned by the King. In the course of doing this, the mines that were causes of war with the Edomites, for instance, get unearthed. The revelation from this narration is that forms of leadership which border on autocracy and imperialism have been in existence from the olden days. The book only goes ahead to make the reader have a different perspective of the happenings at the time. The perception by Westerners over Africa is a clear example of imperialism. For instance, the description of the Zulu tribe in the narration when the author meets them is a clear bias which is influenced by imperialist thoughts. For instance, the author’s description of the Zulu was that of a tribe which were primitive even in their language. Based on the fcat that the Zulus are normal people and their culture differs from the Author’s, it is wrong to classify their culture as primitive. In fact, such a perception is what leads to the imperialism that was later to take over Africa as the Europeans scrambled for its vast resources. In fact, if looked at introspectively, the problems that later arose in post-colonial Africa must have been influenced by the imperialists who colonized the continent. The King Twala who was the leader of the Kukuana exhibits what ails most forms of leaderships today. The king is an epitome of bad leadership and imperialism. He lords over his people ruthlessly. In fact, he uses his people to get his personally desires. Looking back, he is s depiction of imperialism which was inherently present amongst the natives. The early discoveries that were made in Africa were only focused on getting its natural resources. for instance, the author alludes at how the early explorers in Durban were amazed by the vast resources of minerals that were abundant in the country. This was later to be seen through the Boers who aggressively took over the region. Critically looked, the greed that was in the early explorers of the continent point out imperialism; their concern was not only to explore but finding resources which would benefit them without caring for the welfare of the local African communities like the Zulys. The first of the two-part stories fallows through Okonkwo’s fall from a prestigious position to the small tribal world he currently resides. However, the world entails traditional purity that comes along with economical beauty enabling the reader to access a hitherto allegory regarding the old conflict pitting the society and an individual. These types of resources used in both the first and second story by Chinua Achebe make the audience comprehend events happening to Okonkwo, his society, as well as his culture. In the second story, Achebe attempts to draw contrasts. While the first is ancient, the second story appears more modern. Through the second story, Achebe lifts the novel a notch higher to a tragic plane. The story entails conflict among cultures besides destruction of the world occupied by Okonkwo. The destruction starts with the arrival of missionaries from Europe. They are aggressive and the change forms the prologue of Achebe’s book. In the king Solomon’s mines, the author talks of the British that explored the unknown regions in Africa. Initially the mission was all about the search of a lost brother but when the explorers turned into adventurers, they had known about the treasures of the land and this was the course to colonization. They discovered the treasures of the land, which included minerals like Gold, Diamonds, Emeralds, Salts of phosphates and sulphates, cobalt and other metals like copper and platinum, Zirconium. Gold mining was the major Africa’s mine resource. Human resources were also explored and exploited in imperial stories. Slavery was one aspect of forced labor. Human resource was exploited on the farms and some were sold to work on European firms in other continents particularly the West Indies and Northern in Solomon’s Kingdom. These are evidences that the empires, colonies and nations are created for the available resources: to attain the resources and retain or protect them (Gough 1980). On the contrary, people have disintegrated and divided their territories to establish their own territories for the same need to control their territories. It is the same concept of developing new imperialism; the same imperial ambition this time round causing disintegration rather than integration with the same cause of having to protect and control own resources. This case has been witnessed in many countries. If people decide to come together, the central government has to come up with policies that give the member states the right to control their resources. Though the central government retains most of the powers, member states have to formulate own laws regarding what they consume and what they share with the other states. This is why federalism in the United States of in Solomon’s Kingdom has survived for ages. However, they too have also had challenges while establishing such rules. Countries like Tibet and in the empire have failed to successfully merge and consider themselves as one since in the empire wants to be in control of the people and their resources. This is a question of imperial ambitions within the different people. Interestingly, people that share the same culture and language have also shown the same intentions. There are countries of close historical ‘brotherhood’ that have fought for ages because of the need to have or share some resources. There are countries that have threatened to wipe Israel off the surface of the word. Such are statements that deeply mean that they intend to control the land and its resources. The best exemplary are the Israelis and the Arabs; they descend from the same tribes of Bedouin. This is seen throughout the world where a group of people creates prejudice and stereotypes against others in a selfish need to refer to themselves as ‘people’ but call others something derogatory. If the cause is closely observed, it lies in the selfish need to psychologically domineer them and out of it cause a condition conducive for controlling ‘the other’s’ resources. The Within Africa conflict is a good example to this since they share the same customs of Kosher and Halal respectively. They share similar languages and culture if not the same, they also share similar monotheistic religions; bur the conflict between the groups are epic and apparently never ending. Some of the Arabs have claimed Jerusalem as a city of their own. This tells how land is the primary issue between these two groups of people. They have developed a state of imperial ambition based on the resources they exploit like oil, which they can only access after conquering the land. All the Arabs have therefore ganged towards Israeli - a clear example of both integration between closer origins and disintegration with brothers of more distant origins in a bid to control resources. Chinua Achebe presents Things Fall Apart in a way that readers do not fail to appreciate and embrace cultural perspective. To facilitate this understanding, Achebe picks information accessible to the readers as well as that provides cultural and historical; context in many ways. He presents two stories that seem to overlap and intertwine at the same time in the novel under scrutiny in this context. Both stories revolve around Okonkwo, described as a strong man hailing from the village of Ibo in Nigeria (Achebe, 1997, p. 12). The presentation aims at making sure that readers get the right text-to-text, text-self, as well as text-to-world connections. To achieve this, Achebe applies various historical, geographical, literary, and cultural resources. Countries like In interior Africa have disintegrated from the mother country, Northern Africa. The main cause for this separation is the need to create their own nations where they can control and utilize their own resources without having to share them with the greater majority. This easily occurs when the central government discriminates ‘the others’ while favoring the rest in terms of resources (Bugajski, 2010, p. 41). Because of this, the Northern Africans have reciprocating by threats of war especially with the in interior Africa. This further demonstrates the Northern Africans ambitions to restore the state that once existed, recapturing the resources. Achebe holds that in Africa, there have been and still are wars related to Imperial Ambitions based on the need to attain more resources than the rest. In Sierra Leone for example, tribes fought over diamonds. There is war between tribes in Congo related to the need to control more diamonds (Schmidt, 2010, p. 33). In Kenya, the same occurred in 2007 when the major tribes Luo and Kikuyu engage in violence against each other for reasons of having control over more resources. The same was the case in the Genocide that occurred in Rwanda. In Africa however, having control over resources and creating distinction on boundaries entails having the president on your side or from your tribe. There are many tribes in Africa than the rest of the world; all these tribes want to have control over resources and secure them by creating dominions or separate nations. This is the reason presidency in the African countries has always had problems (Achebe, 1997, p. 31). The Europeans felt like giants in Africa and from the manner Africa was treated, both physically and psychologically, they came to believe in a White man’s ‘superiority’. They believed that they had to drop their own civilization course and follow the Whiteman’s in order to survive. Chinua Achebe in his book, Things Fall Apart demonstrates this mentality through character Unoka in page 5 when he quoted “Our elders say the shine will shine on those who stand before it shines on those who kneel before them” (Achebe, 1997, p. 5). In other words, a Whiteman will keep on developing and prospering economically because he has made a Black man think he is inferior to him. He kneels to worship him when he enjoys this weakness. The current world economic crisis has caused chaos for these reasons. One can only conclude to the reason of the crisis, chaos and political unrest of the world as Imperial Ambition to establish rule over resources (Achebe, 1997, p. 78). Africa remains a poor continent, but interestingly a continent of most natural resources. This has caused strains in the relations between the countries from the west and the east. For instant, In the empire has sought to solely trade with African countries; a move that most western countries have been against, as they too want to trade with the poor continent where labor is cheap and resources are existent in larger quantities though not exploited. Every developed nation wants to share this with Africans. Interestingly, some African countries have faced sanction from the western countries over trade with in the empire. In the empire on the other side has flooded the African markets with cheap and short-lasted commodities to have an everlasting greater share of the African markets. This is a state of nations needing to create economic empires exploiting African markets. The other aspect only means that European culture that appears superior should supervise the improvement exercise. When the two goals juxtaposition they result into tension. Chinua Achebe traces the tension in every page of the novel. This forms the core of fascination in the book. Human life is complex and the author despises any attempt to simplify this concept. He covers destruction of all aspects f life in entirety (Achebe, 1997, p. 19). This is annihilation of the bond that holds people together within the society. In the process, the falcon cannot bear the falconer. The author applies resources to pull the reader into embracing the African culture among the people of Ibo village. For instance, the author succeeds in making the reader sympathize with Okonkwo’s father. Ho covers both positive and negative influences of missionaries. Humans have also developed prejudices against others for the same reasons. Some historians refer to it as ‘Orientalism’ or ‘othering’. There are assumptions underlying Western attitudes against the Middle East and vice versa. Eurocentric prejudices against the Middle East have been argued by some historians as a measure to categorize them as the ‘others’ and create an implicit justification for European and In Solomon’s Kingdom co-brothers and imperial ambitions (Parsons, 1999, p. 81). The modern dialogue and politics is based on the need to dominate by use of prejudice. It has created the a division between one group is people and the ‘others’; where one group of individuals convince themselves that the ‘others’ are not like them or less equal than them in a bid to create the psychological distance required to exploit them and their natural resources. It is in the nature of every man, a crucial part of humans that needs to create dominion over others, rule them and control other people resources without remorse (Tabachnick & Koivukoski, 2009, p. 71). No one is left out of this need, but the most powerful groups of people are always more noticeable in their pursuit to this natural need. Even in the minor groups of people like tribes and townsmen, this natural need is expressed by every human – resources and Imperial ambitions. British rule around the world from Australia, India, Africa and In Solomon’s Kingdom demonstrates resources and Imperial ambitions to great extent; so are Spain and its pursuit for Latin in Solomon’s Kingdom and the West Indies (Wilson, 2002, p. 53). Portugal, France and Germany are not exceptions to this. They are the greatest expression of creating dominions all over the world in pursuit to control resources. ‘Othering’ or ‘Orientationalism’ as expressed by humans is perhaps mostly demonstrated through imperialism. It is seen through the course of history when empires used tactics and tricked in order to subordinate people and take control of their resources. It is mainly predicated on people of unequal territorial, cultural and economic relationship. This is what happened in the colonial era and in some parts of the world today. In the modern world, it is corporations other than states that practice imperialism in their pursuit of global resources and cheap labor (Chomsky & Barsamian, 2005, p. 152). Corporations have practiced imperialism on a different angle to successfully gain the global right to exploit nature and humanity without negative impacts the society would expect they act as legal successors of imperialism and bear a marked evolution from the historical corporation’s role in the early in Solomon’s Kingdom’s history (Lasn, 2000, p. 46). Earlier charters in the United States of in Solomon’s Kingdom were created literally by the people, and for the people and for people’s legal convenience (Linton, 2004, p. 112). If they engaged in actions that violated the rights of the people or the rules of the charter, they were immediately dissolved. Imperialism was still existent as limits were set on how big the companies would or could become. However, corporations ever since have won interests of the people or human rights for corporate entities (Ikenberry, 2006, p. 56). In conclusion, humans have evolved with characteristics of imperialism and separating themselves from the ‘others’ to justify grabbing of resources. From the earlier times of history, humans have found the need to team up, work together when gathering and hunting food or building shelter, and protecting their dominions from enemies and predators. In some way, imperialism has become genetically. The presenter of imperial stories is a teacher in many cases therefore, the audience and readers become students. Anybody reading an imperial story ought to learn a few things from the content compiled by the author. The author perfectly harmonizes the two dramas and modulates them through knowledge with the capacity to carry along human history, the life of nature, and inexplicable compulsions in the soul. Readers draw on the resources within the novel and recognize how Achebe creates a literary work that revises the African history. Analyzing Things Fall Apart makes the audience understand how Africans were civilized. Similarly, the reader comprehends how missionaries and European colonialists annihilated traditional communities in Africa using Nigeria as an example for selfish interests. The novel remains the most illuminating and permanent statue available in the present African experience. At first, the reader expects Achebe to deal with imperialism in black and white. In many ways, the author wishes to pursue the preservation of native ways. To him, imperial efforts from missionaries and colonialists threaten the existence of native ways therefore, are immoral. Within the novel, the need to uphold the African culture lives simultaneously with the desire to allow improvements to the same. Bibliography ACHEBE, C. 1997. Things fall apart. 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