Colonialism and Africa's TechnologyGloria T.Emeagwali
MAIN WEB SITE: Colonialism is a system of administration;
a process of exploitation; and a production system often geared
towards the creation of capitalist relations and the economic
and socio-cultural aggrandizement of the colonizer. This may
be done by covert or overt, psychological, legal and military
mechanisms. For an admission of the negative effects of British
colonialism see a candid though rare admission by Jack Straw,
British Foreign Secretary. See also a review of Braudel- one
of the eurocentric apologists of colonialism. Colonialism inhibited the development
of indigenous technology in Africa to a large extent. Colonial
domination brought with it a shift into a cash crop economy
and de-stabilized some of the existing processes of technical
growth. The dumping of goods took place. African
markets were flooded with cheap mass-produced textile, glass
and iron products in the context of policies such as "the
scrap iron policy" of Britain. Indigenous manufacturing
capability was deliberately undermined to facilitate European
exports. Captive markets were created. There were deliberate
laws aimed at suppressing African indigenous technological
development. Among the first groups to feel the
impact of the invaders' new laws and activities were the metallurgists.
These included the blacksmiths who forged iron and the whitesmiths
who worked with lighter metal such as tin. Blacksmiths were
depended on as much by farmers, for implements, as by the
aristocracy and the political elite. This system of internal
self-reliance changed. It is interesting to note that practitioners
of indigenous medicine were confronted with unjust laws leading
to: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Fines
Sadly enough, African medical practitioners who were trained in the conventional Western bio-medical tradition were discriminated against and often denied employment. They were excluded from membership from the white-dominated "West African Medical Staff" made up of British migrants. In the words of the Legislative Council Proceedings of November 2, 1911: " It is only of recent that those in the Medical Services have been able to fight out the right to be recognized and classed as something above chief clerk." But these discriminatory laws were not confined to medicine. In 1909 the Nigerian builder of a model steam ship was threatened with imprisonment by the British colonial authorities.
See Gloria Emeagwali (ed) African Civilization, American Heritage, 1997
See also my entry on "Colonialism and Science in Africa" in Helaine Selin(ed), Encyclopedia on the History of Non-Western Science and Medicine, Kluwer, 1997 A relevant discussion is given by Nurudeen
Abubakar in " Metallurgy in Northern Nigeria, Zamfara
Metal Industry in the 19th century." Refer to Gloria
T-Emeagwali (ed) Science and Technology in African History,
Edwin Mellen,1992 (The strength of Patton's text is its analysis of racist manipulations against the rising elite of African bio-medical practitioners during the colonial era) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
See also a review of Braudel
Send comments to Dr Gloria Emeagwali Professor of History and African Studies, CCSU "emeagwali@mail.ccsu.edu" 860-832-2815
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