French Empire and the New World

The story of the French empire starts when they try to set up Brazil as their colony, in 1555. The French named Rio de Janeiro, as France Antarctique, but their success didn’t last long, since the Portuguese and Spanish were also colonizing Brazil, the French go beaten and Brazil was not longer a French colony.
The France had more success colonizing North America in early 1600’s. The relationship between French and Native American was really good. The French were tolerant to the Indians and to try to get their confidence they used to give Indians presents. Also due the French being the minority in the new colony, and the difficulty to bring French people, the government encouraged the intermarriage, so French men were paid to marry Indian women.
Since the first French’s colonizers were missionaries, there was an attempt to convert the Indians into Catholicism, and the Indians could not to be enslaved.
The treatment that French had in relation to their American colonies was a patriot relationship; American colonies were considered as part of France.
Although the French has alliances with various Native American tribes, there were conflicts between French and Native Americans.
In 1699, French territorial claim in North American expanded, because of this expansion, the French also began to build a smaller empire in West Indians and South America coast, where is today French Guiana.
The French also expanded thought to Caribbean Islands, and French also colonized places like Guadalupe, Martinique and Saint Lucia.
All these colonies were sustained through slavery, which came from the Africa slave trade. The French had the Code Noir, which ruled the slave’s codes in national level.
The most important Caribbean colonial possession came in 1664, when the colony of Saint-Domingue (Haiti) was founded. Saint-Domingue was half possessed by France and half by Spain. Saint-Domingue was the richest sugar Colony in Caribbean.
French colonial expansion was not limited to the New World, French also had a lot of colonies in West Africa

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:gAJqoTfAXVwJ:en.allexperts.com/e/f/fr/french_colonial_empires.htm+french+empire+and+north+american+colony&cd=9&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

The British Empire in Nigeria

The Portuguese were the pioneers that opened up the African coast to trade, in the 15th century. But it did not take long to other European countries to send ships to African region.
The European struggled to establish forts and trading posts on the West African coast from about the mid-1600s to the mid-1700s. The Danes, the Dutch, French and the British were part of a big competition for trade and empire in the African coast. The British like other newcomers to the slave trade, found they could compete with the Dutch in West Africa only by forming national trading companies. The construction of the English enterprise was the Company of Real adventures, with it the British built a monopoly company and they afforded and kept the forts, to hold stocks of slaves and trade goods.
The French and the British fought against the Dutch and they took control on West African trade. Later on with civil problem inside France, the British took control in West Africa
The geographic areas that the British settled in on that time, was the whole West African coast, besides south and east.
One of the British’s colonies was Nigeria. The first idea that the British had was to open markets for manufactured goods in West Africa and expands commerce in palm oil. But the main reason changed and the British started exploring Nigeria, because of the slave trade. The slave trade devastated Nigeria during three centuries (1500 to mid 1800).
Besides the slave trade Nigeria, the British were focused in take advantage of Nigeria’s raw material, minerals, and foodstuffs. Since in Europe the weather is not very good to plant tropical crops, the British tried to encourage trade tropical crops for British manufactured goods
I am not sure how many people came over Nigeria that time. But since the British had power enough to take over the West Coast, I guess there were a lot of them there.
I believe the difference between America and Nigeria colonization was that in American colonization the British were more interested in expanding land and finding a way to extend trade to Asia. In Nigeria they were more interested in slave and crops trade. They would use these slaves to increase their production and become wealthier.

Middle Passage by Charles Johnson

Middle Passage is a novel by Charles Johnson, the story is told via ship log entries by Rutherford Calhoun, a freed slave and thief in early 19th century.

Rutherford is freed slave from New Orleans, who does not have opportunities, he tries to find a job but people do not want to give a job to a freed slave, so he becomes a thief. Calhoun has a girlfriend, and she is putting so much pressure on him to get married and he owes a lot to a creditor.
To escape those he is indebted (Papa) to as well as a marriage with, the school teacher, Isadora he is being forced to run away, he sneaks aboard an outbound ship, The Republic. He quickly finds out that the ship is put on the sea and it is a slaver headed for Africa, led by midget captain Falcon. He is an insane captain, and nobody into the ship can stand him not even his own crew.
After leaving Africa with 40 slaves, treasure, and an African "god," the ship suffers many hardships, including mutiny, slave takeover, bad weather, illness, cannibalism, and mystical mumbo jumbo brought on by the "god. I think this part of the book has the main objective to show how bad were the conditions that the slaves lived aboard the ship, a lot of them died and suffered with diseases.
After a while the ship goes down and few people are rescued, and Rutherford is one of them. Coincidentally aboard this ship are Isadora and Papa, who are about to get married. Papa finds out that Rutherford knows about his relationship with the illegal slave trade, so he gives up and let Calhoun to marry Isadora.
The book is a wonderful adventure story. It is hard to imagine but I think the book tells about slavery in a humorous way. It is a fictional story but sometimes the journey becomes so real that Charles Johnson really made me feel like one of the crew of the ship. Like with any adventure there is a romance, that looks like will not to work, but in the end everything works out well.

Nigeria gunmen kidnap foreign worker in oil region

I was looking for a recent news story about Africa that could promote any of the six stereotypes discussed in class and I could realize that the most news I read about Africa were related with at least one of the six stereotypes.
I chose an article that shows a case, which happened in Port Harcourt in Nigeria, about some Nigeria gunmen that kidnapped and Indian citizen living in Nigeria’s restive oil region. The police have been looking for the kidnapers to try to rescue the man. However, they were unable to find him, and they are currently still on the hunt for him. The article says that this is the second case of kidnapping in the same region this week.
This case demonstrates signs of endemic violence because there were two cases of kidnapping in a short period of time, last two days, in the same region. The girl already found was kidnapped on Thursday and the Indian citizen, the continued disappeared, was kidnapped on Friday night. The article also says “Kidnappings of foreigners in Port Harcourt and the rest of the Niger Delta have become common in recent years as militants and criminals seek ransoms from employers”, so clearly I could realize that cases like this happens very often.
Another article, talking about the same kidnap of the girl, explains that “for years the kidnappers targeted primarily expatriate oil workers but recently wealthy Nigerians have been more common victims”. The kidnapers abducted the little girl, an eight-month old baby, for ransom.
In conclusion I think Port Harcourt promotes the stereotype of endemic violence. A place where kidnaps are considered common is clearly a violent place. However people have to consider that Nigeria is a really poor country with high levels of corruption, so the indices of violence will be higher. So people should not apply the endemic violence as a stereotype in the entire Africa.
If you want to know more about check the links below
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100206/ap_on_re_af/af_nigeria_oil_unrest
http://www.euronews.net/newswires/148733-gunmen-kidnap-8-month-old-child-in-nigerian-oil-hub/

Angola

When I was thinking about what country to write about, Angola was the first country that came to my mind. I thought about it because Angola is a Portuguese speaker country and it was colonized by Portugal as Brazil.

In 1483 Vasco da Gama first dropped anchor in Luanda. The land now known as Angola was, at the time, inhabited by a number of small tribes living in loosely defined kingdoms that lacked the organization and administrative cohesiveness of 15th-c­entury Europe. The Portuguese had no real desire in the country, but later on the interests of Portugal changed and Luanda was founded as the Portuguese colony of Angola in 1575 by Paulo Dias de Novais.

When the Portuguese found the new colony, Brazil, Angola became a major source of slaves for Portugal's New World colony of Brazil. For the next 300 years Portugal’s African colonies had only two real functions: a strategic base on the route around the Cape of Good Hope, and a collecting center for one of the largest forced human migrations in history. Angola suffered from one of the most backward forms of colonialist rule.

After World War 2 spontaneous clashes became frequent between various African communities and colonial administration due to African resistance to colonial rule. The Angola independence was not peaceful. The country had to fight 14 years to get its independence. First the three main groups in line with the various tribal affiliations beat the colonialism and then they were fighting each other in a civil war. Finally in 1974 the armed forces overthrew the Fascist regime in Portugal started talking Angola independence and in 1975 Angola was granted independence from Portugal.

Angola has enormous reserves of oil, gas and diamonds, as well as considerable hydroelectric potential, varied agricultural land, good rainfall and considerable marine resources. The main mineral resources are petroleum, diamonds, iron ore, phosphates, copper, feldspar, gold, bauxite and uranium. Angolan government is a republic, nominally a multiparty democracy with a strong presidential system.

I hope one day i can go to Angola, because I think this country must have a lot in commom with my country, plus i wont have to worry about the language.
http://www.lonelyplanet.com/angola/history http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0107280.html?pageno=2 http://www.iss.co.za/af/profiles/Angola/NatRes.html