Discuss European involvement in Africa.
What will be an ideal response?
The ideal answer should include:
- To those intellectuals most aware of the larger political climate of the late nineteenth century, the greatest cause for alarm rested in Africa, specifically in the imperial policies that the European powers were exercising on that continent.
- The scramble for control of the continent had begun with the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, and, by the 1880s, Britain's seizure of control of Egypt as a whole. Then, to "protect" Egypt further, it advanced into the Sudan.
- Beyond Africa's key strategic placement, its vast land area and untapped natural resources proved an irresistible lure for European nations.
- The European mindset in Africa is displayed in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. It describes, rather precisely, Kurtz's experience in Africa, where he is transformed from an idealist dedicated to the proposition of civilizing Africa into a brutal, immoral tyrant, subjugating African natives to his dissipated will.
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What sets northern European artists apart from most other artists of the Italian Renaissance is
a) their interest in rendering material surfaces and textures in realistic detail. b) the size and scale of their paintings. c) their denial of aerial or scientific perspective. d) their portraiture.
Briefly describe the nature of daily life in Mesopotamia (Fertile Crescent).
What will be an ideal response?