Chinua Achebe, Joseph Conrad and the Representation of Africa

As early as the 1600s, European nations competed with each other to see who could acquire the most of the world’s land. In their quest, Europeans travelled: mainly to Africa, Southeast Asia, and India; regions where they forced their own rules and exploited these regions for natural resources like ivory and gold, military advantage, and commercial routes. By the early twentieth century, in Africa, Europeans had not only reinforced but also imposed some of the most extreme and horrible conditions on the continent. They had invaded homelands, fuelled the trans-Atlantic slave trade, colonized, and effectively upturned African societies in the process.