Effects Of Colonialism In Things Fall Apart

Colonialism is an important topic in the novel, Things Fall Apart that causes societies to flourish, but it also causes societies to fall. Ibo society is a society that functions best by itself with no competition from other societies. Ibo society is unstable as even small-scale colonialism can cause Ibo society to fail. However, the true reason for the failure of Ibo society is colonialism. Achebe portrays the use of colonialism as having harmful effects on Ibo culture and community. Achebe illustrates that colonialism has a negative effect on Ibo culture by dividing Ibo people, which results in the downfall of Ibo civilization.
Before white men arrive to Ibo society, there is no sense of colonialism. In this atmosphere, the Ibo society functions

During the arrival of the white men to Umuofia, it states in the text, “The missionaries had come to Umuofia. They had built their church there, won a handful of converts and were already sending evangelists to the surrounding towns and villages” (143). This may seem like nothing, but these converts are the result of colonialism. White men begin to impart colonialism on the Ibo people by converting Ibo people to have Christian beliefs as this is what the white men believe in. These new beliefs negatively change Ibo society because it causes them to lose citizens and their civilization to lose power. Another example of how the white man’s arrival negatively impacts the Ibo people is because Achebe writes, “At first the clan had assumed that it would not survive. But it had gone on living and gradually becoming stronger. The clan was worried, but not overmuch. If a gang of efulefu (worthless man) decided to live in the Evil Forest, it was their own affair” (154). This quotation shows that the Ibo people begin to lose faith in Ibo religion because the white people are proving their religion faulty by building their church in the Ibo’s Evil Forest. The reason this negatively affects Ibo people is that if Ibo people begin to lose faith in Ibo religion, they could leave Ibo society, and go join the white man. This would cause Ibo society to lose power as their people would begin to follow the white men. The white man’s arrival shows us that colonialism negatively effects Ibo society as it causes Ibo people to lose their