Colonial Terrorism and the Incorporation of Africa into the Capitalist World System

Abstract

For more than five centuries, European empire builders, namely Portugal, Holland, France, England, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Spain, and later the United States, employed different strategies and tactics such as terrorism in Africa to make money through the ownership of human beings, exploration, evangelization, colonization, commercialization, banditry, and robbery The processes of merchandising Africans, dominating and controlling trade, destroying African cultures and religions, imposing Christianity⁷, destroying African leadership and sovereignties by establishing colonial governments, dispossessing lands and other economic resources, and transforming Africans into coerced laborers all involved war and terrorism. To use different forms of violence in merchandising Africans and taking over the homelands and resources of indigenous peoples is an act of terrorism. Terrorism and other forms of violence enabled these empire builders to enrich themselves and their collaborators at the cost of indigenous Africans; consequently, they established themselves as powerful countries, claimed racial superiority, and imposed their cultures and Christian religion on Africans. Although several scholars have explored the impacts of slavery, exploration, Christianity, and colonization on the entire continent, they have neglected to study the role of colonial terrorism in the destruction and dehumanization of African societies and in the establishment and maintenance of the European-dominated racist capitalist world system.

A major version of this article was published as “The Colonial Terrorism, Global Capitalism and African Underdevelopment: 500 Years of Crimes Against African Peoples” in Tue Journal of Pan-African Studies, 5, no. 9 (March 2013): 3–43. Its modified version is reprinted here with permission.