Colonialism or Decivilization? Throughout the history of the world, there have been countries that believe themselves to be superior to others. Among these countries that believe this way was Europe. Although they might have be more advanced in medicine, technology, and machinery, they took it further than that. Europe believed that because they were more advanced, they were of a higher being, i.e., they are more human and the people of countries that were less advanced were less than human, closer to animals like monkeys. This believe is what is at the core of Europe’s civilizing mission’. Aimé Césaire proves in his essay Discourse on Colonialism that Europe did not benefit from ‘helping’ Africans, and African culture did not benefit from Europe’s mission either. The Europeans had that mindset because they were more advanced and …show more content…
He believed that while the Europeans believed that they were doing their responsibility as a nation that was advanced to civilize the noncivilized countries; the Europeans instead were “motivated by racism and greed, and enforced through violence and systematic economic exploitation of the working class” (Césaire). When Europe occupied Africa, they overworked the natives, making them do the labor intensive work that European men did not want to. Africans had to work and Europe kept the profit, doubtfully giving the Africans anything.
Although Césaire agrees that it would be a positive action for different civilizations to be in contact with one another, it would only be positive if one did not attempt to force the other to assimilate and give up their culture, ideas, beliefs, and ways of living. The Europeans did not only want contact, they wanted to force the Africans to assimilate to the European way of living because they strongly believed that their way of living was the advantageous way and everyone should live the way Europe