How Did Imperialism Affect West Africa

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Africa had many driving forces some that they didn’t even know. Europeans wanting more power, products and money was also a part that lead them to the Imperialism of Africa. Slave trade was popular to Europeans in 1900’s. Slave ships would arrive and the people would trade their pots clothes and guns for West African slaves. Shipping the slaves invited them to explore and discover new places. Europeans would not go deeply into the continent of Africa, but this changed after the end of slavery in 1833 because of the trans-Atlantic slave trade this act gave determination to the men to discover more. Scotsman Mungo Park gave his life in 1806 while investigating the Niger River in West Africa. Finally David Livingston began more than thirty years …show more content…
Having a business of trading or selling items that were necessary at the time was one of the great ways people made a good amount of their money. For example King Leopold of Belgium attained a private land of 900,000 square miles in central Africa and his purpose was to make money by taking out ivory and rubber. In general speaking it’s always best to own your own business, so you make the rules that actuate your own opinions. Sadly Leopold's rules proceeded of mistreatment, forced labor and disease. Products were different depending in which places you were at. People were always in the need of products that were used daily. A lot of the people would argue that there wasn't enough food for everyone and the adults complained that their children were starving. This lead the people to want to break out into different places to find a better government system. Different countries or tribes would even come to battle each other. A different example of bad ruling that lead to the European Imperialism was because some colonies followed through with direct rule and others with indirect this is because they didn’t agree on the same process.
All these reasons lead to the imperialism because all the europeans had a purpose to be free and rule their own land. There needed to be a way to address these issue instead of starting a big disruptive