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Imperialism: "Things Fall Apart" Compared to Primary Sources
   

Imperialism is the act of a larger more powerful country taking over a

smaller weaker country.   Imperialism was very evident in the eighteenth

and nineteenth centuries.   Africa, an up and coming country was a

gargantuan country and just waiting to be taken over.   At one point in time

the entire continent was taken over by imperialist nations.   The novel

"Things Fall Apart" written by Chinua Achebe tells about the trials and

tribulations of African people and their country during imperialist times.

There are a number of primary sources that I have read that talk about

imperialism throughout Africa.   This essay will be a comparison between

the primary sources I have read and the novel by Achebe.

          "Records of the Maji Maji Uprising" is the first primary source dealing

with imperialism.   It happened in 1905 in Tanganyika, Africa.   This was one

of the first battle with early colonial reign in Africa.   The Africans were told

if they applied Maji (holy water) that they would be invincible to bullets (1).
1.   G.C.K. Gwassa, John Iffle, Records of the Maji Maji Uprising, Sources of Twentieth-century Global History (Copyright 2002 by Houghton Mifflin Company.   All Rights Reserved) Pg. 14-17

This made Africans upset because of the fact that they would have to pay

taxes to the country that was imperializing them.   Germany was the

country that took them over, and now they were placing taxes on the

country that was not even theirs.   This relates to "Things Fall Apart"

because all the different villages had their own set of traditions and values

and as the villages all became imperialized by Great Britain everything was

new, and they had to adjust their normal lifestyles to fit that of Great

Britain.   In result of imperialism, many villages and tribes fell apart,

including families started to break away as well....