Mar 24, · To conclude, my research has clearly demonstrated that the impact of the British Empire has on the whole been hugely damaging to the culture of South Pacific nations, hugely impeding their social progression whilst systematically imposing Western culture, and destroying ‘savage’ practises Jan 01, · At its highest point of robustness, the British Empire was the largest ever. Indeed the world has never witnessed ant another empire as vast and great as the British Empire. The empire The British empire is an empire that was formed in by the union of the kingdom of Scotland and the kingdom of England in the late 16th and 17th centuries as its height, it was the biggest and the largest Empire in history and, for over a century was the foremost global power. Get Help With Your Essay
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This page of the essay has words. Download the full version above. The more important, and often least considered aspect, british empire essay, is how these powerful nations changed the places that they colonised, and perhaps also what action must now be taken, five hundred years later, to rectify historical wrongs.
I intend henceforth to explore the cultural shift across the islands of Australia, New Zealand, Tahiti and the Society Islands, Fiji, Samoa and the Solomon Islands. Pre-colonisation, the South Pacific islands were not nations in their own right, but disparate societies sharing common Austronesian ancestors.
Upon arriving in the South Seas, the Europeans immediately applied European cartographic logic to their mapping of the area in grouping islands together into groups, british empire essay. This very first action is indicative of the future treatment of the islands in a manner british empire essay of the existing native populations, as little effort was made by European explorers to learn place names, british empire essay, nor of the rivalries between villages and islands that would make grouping them together illogical.
Where Englishmen felt their country was repressive, Tahiti was perceived as sexually permissive, british empire essay. The arrival of the English destroyed much of what they had found so attractive through the arrival of gunpowder, diseases such as smallpox and syphilis against which the locals were defenceless, tobacco and alcohol, british empire essay, destroying communities.
When Cook embarked on his first voyage inhe received two sets of instructions from the admiralty. The first, relating to the observation of the Transit of Venus, gave the voyage a purpose. The second were opportunistic, and rarely discussed. The voyage was intended to be the perfect representation of the Enlightenment, british empire essay, furthering scientific research and uncovering the secrets of british empire essay last unknown quarter of the world, not one of violence and plunder.
Aside from trade, at no point were these first encounters positive for the indigenous people. For the European nations, empire was an exertion of power and a status symbol in Europe, as well as an economic opportunity.
As it quickly became evident that the islands were not rich in the precious natural resources prized in Europe, attention turned to the people inhabiting them instead. The labour trade was in demand in Crown colonies, both in South America for mining and in Queensland, Australia to support the labour-intensive sugar plantations that were developing there.
An estimated 62, Islanders were brought to Queensland between and They were landed at Maryborough and allowed to land free …. Yet even inbritish empire essay, claims were still circulating that this form of slavery persisted in the South Pacific, capturing the attention of media the world over, british empire essay, as seen in appendix B.
The possibility that slavery was still practised 75 years after England outlawed it in is evidence of the European attitude towards the South Pacific as a something of a backwater where usual morals and laws did not apply, british empire essay. Many South Pacific tribes, particularly of the Solomon Islands, Samoa and Vanuatu, practised head hunting as british empire essay crucial part of their culture.
According to a village elder that I met from Vanuatu, headhunting and cannibalism occurred in the most remote areas of Vanuatu into the s, highlighting long-term issues with law enforcement faced by Pacific authorities as a result of culture clash. The immediate catalyst for the creation of the Kidnapping Act was the shocking murder of Bishop Patteson in see appendix A under similar circumstances.
Patteson was a missionary, however blackbirders had on multiple occasions impersonated him in order to steal young boys from the islands, thus when he did visit, he was killed in reprisal. Aside from blackbirding, a great number of other hate crimes were perpetrated against the indigenous populations of the South Pacific, in some cases conducted as an orchestrated governmental campaign.
When the First Fleet arrived in Botany Bay, Sydney, insetting in motion a seminal cultural collision. In Australia, this often meant the targeting of Aboriginal communities. This term is now broadly applied to the issue of Aboriginal children being taken under the care of the Australian government, and is one of the most contentious issues in Australian politics today.
In its report from the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families, the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission HEROC declared the actions of the Australian government to be immoral, and in some circumstances, illegal appendix D.
The case is not black and white, as a government study appendix E found higher rates of drug and alcohol british empire essay and smoking with consequent disproportionate representation of Aboriginal people in the criminal justice system. Aboriginal children were never removed from their families in order to put an end to Aboriginality or, british empire essay, indeed, to serve any improper government policy or program.
On some occasions, European tensions extended to the South Pacific. During the first and second Samoan civil wars, British, british empire essay, American and German naval contingents were sent to the area to protect colonial interests, and attempt to take control of Samoa by actively supported differing factions. On several occasions, warships shelled settlements, causing a huge deal of damage, and raids occurred upon both European and indigenous assets, british empire essay. From a modern perspective, it can only be considered inappropriate for European navies to engage in war against the significantly less well-armed villagers, who still carried spears, resulting in significant loss of life for political advantage.
Elsewhere in the South Pacific, including Australia, the most significant form of crime against indigenous peoples was the theft of their land. In New Zealand, the Maori population was particularly violent in their opposition of white settlers in comparison to other areas of the South Pacific, british empire essay following failed military efforts, it was this fear that prompted Europeans to attempt negotiation, as elsewhere they had facilitated new settlements through violence.
New Zealand is consistently differentiated by British authority in its partial deference to Maori culture. The British government is therefore attempting to create legitimacy for future conflict with indigenous people in the area, having issued a warning, as perhaps uniquely, each article in the New Zealand Gazette is printed both in English and a written form of the Maori language, demonstrating the beginnings of cultural cohesion.
Difficulties arose for the settlers as it was discovered that few Pacific languages use possessive pronouns, instead denoting ownership through activity, thus he who carves a canoe owns it The early settlers had not made sufficient enough effort to learn local languages in order to be able to understand the sophisticated unwritten local ownership systems, thus imposed formal state-controlled European ownership, british empire essay.
Unlike the Tahitians, who had a clear hierarchical social structure that the British could relate to, the indigenous people of Australia were nomadic, british empire essay, and had no real concept of ownership. British empire essay, they cultivated a symbiotic relationship with their surroundings, living off the land and replanting what they had used. This allowed the convict settlers to british empire essay upon Aboriginal hunting and fishing grounds, later stealing possessions from the Aboriginal people and claiming land freely, creating huge resentment among the Aboriginals, british empire essay.
The settling of land happened british empire essay a large scale, as the British convicts had come from a society where land ownership was dominated by gentry, thus rushed to take estates where they were available in Australia, as they associated land ownership with belonging to an upper social class.
Reprisal attacks thus began british empire essay European settlers venturing into the bush to british empire essay rushes. Faced with mounting pressure to quash this british empire essay resistance, Governor Phillip set about instead to capture a few Aboriginal men in order to better understand their culture, british empire essay, and end the violence.
From this directive came british empire essay story of Bennelong, now one of the most famous names in Australian history. Born in aboutBennelong was about 24 when the First Fleet arrived to create the british empire essay convict colony in Sydney Cove in Januaryand lived to see the significant damage done to his people in the early phases of colonial presence.
Bennelong quickly learned simple English and adopted European manners. He became a valuable informant, willingly providing information about Eora clans and their language and customs.
It was Bennelong who told Governor Phillip the names and locations of the Sydney clans and the Aboriginal name of Parramatta, which Phillip had at first called Rose Hill, but later renamed. Bennelong was certainly no collaborator, and had been active in resisting the British colonists before agreeing to peacefully join the Sydney settlement in October InBennelong became the third Pacific Islander to be taken to Europe after Ahu-toru, who Bougainville took to Paris inand Omai, who visited London inhaving british empire essay Cook on his second voyage.
Bennelong himself had seen the best and worst of what Europe had to offer, and chose his own civilisation. Religion and spirituality were extremely important to almost all 18th century societies, and those of the South Pacific were no exception.
The Polynesians had many gods, with many different names and attributes, to whom the practise of making human sacrifices was not uncommon. Religion was similar across most of Polynesia, and centred around the sacred site of Marae Taputapuatea on Raiatea, british empire essay.
Everything changed with the arrival of the arrival of Europeans, who brought with them Christianity. From a Western perspective, british empire essay, the adoption of Christianity in the Pacific can be seen as positive, as it encouraged peace amongst warring villages. Marae Taputapuatea, which had been a site for worship for millennia, british empire essay, was allowed to fall into disrepair as the focus of South Pacific religion turned its attention towards Rome and the West.
We started praying inside british empire essay Church. The South Pacific languages had no written form, so to communicate ideas and messages, they used artwork. Lots of artwork was based around the gods and important rituals, usually in the form of wooden statues, although tattooing and scarification were also popular, particularly amongst the Maori.
The Maori were unique in their practise of facial tattoos, or moku, a practice which continues today. Each design has a genealogy — Maoris wear their culture on their skin. Despite some of the most violent beginnings, New Zealand went on to produce some of the best integrated indigenous-settler communities, partially engendered by the emerging hybrid religion.
One particularly poignant carving depicts a Maori version of the Virgin Mary and child. Mary stands upon a severed head and has a full-face moku, which in Maori culture is an adornment reserved for the first-born daughter of noble families, indicating her as sacred, taboo to the rest of the community.
It was revered by locals, but they gave it away to the missionaries in the 19th century as proof that they had converted their beliefs, british empire essay, before being taken to London by british empire essay London Missionary Society and displayed as a trophy. Picasso kept a cast of it in his studio, as did the sculptor Henry Moore. Its design is replicated in some body tattoos in homage to traditional worship.
Eventually however, even the art was influenced by colonists. According to the influential Polynesian artist Angela Tiatia, the projection of European myths still haunts Polynesia, particularly that of the Polynesian woman. Only in the 21st century is the Pacific beginning to push back against this myth through art and poetry, and in places legislation, british empire essay. The Dreamtime, in contrast to other Pacific religions, is a spiritual belief system based on artwork, telling the history of the Aboriginal history, so has been affected differently by colonisation.
The use of art as a medium to pass information from one generation to another has british empire essay the oldest continuous artwork tradition anywhere in the world, the oldest examples dating to over 40, years ago. Aboriginal artwork often represents animals, scenes from the Dreamtime, or aerial views of landscapes, british empire essay, like a map, in dot form.
As Aboriginal communities were driven further from the areas they had traditionally inhabited, they were also separated from their masterpieces, and their cultural expression. The Aboriginal people went into self-exile in the central Australian desert, and by had largely been written out of the story of modern Australia, and certainly out of its art.
In the 20th century this would begin to change. The artwork of Albert Namajira, when it was shown in art galleries in large Australian cities, british empire essay, captivated the public. Namatjira had been born in Hermannsburg, british empire essay, a tiny Aboriginal settlement 80 miles from Alice Springs, centred around a Lutheran settlement. Namajira taught himself to paint, producing watercolours of the landscape of the highest quality, some of which are now in the National Gallery of Australia.
InNamatjira became the first Aboriginal person to be granted full Australian citizenship, and as such was entitled to buy alcohol. Naturally, he shared this with his friends and british empire essay, for which he was charged with supplying alcohol to indigenous Australians inand died within a few months of completing his punishment of hard labour. Perhaps the best example of Aboriginal art is a piece produced by 43 Aboriginal artists from Arnhemland, who created their own memorial to mark the bicentenary of the arrival of the First Fleet in The piece consists of intricately carved hollow log coffins, one to represent each year of European settlement, british empire essay.
They are monuments to the hundreds of thousands of Aboriginal people who have died since at the hands of European colonisers. Aboriginal people remain marginalised politically, socially, and economically, but not artistically. Art is an escape for many aboriginal people, but has also become a british empire essay of income and self-respect, and helped them mark their place in their own country.
When Cook and other early settlers first came to the South Pacific, they were keen to find translators, and teach indigenous people such as Bennelong, and indigenous children in mission schools English, but made little effort to learn local languages. One of the greatest colonial legacies left in the South Pacific is linguistic. Most Melanesian countries, with the exception of Fiji, speak a form of broken English known as Pidgin English or Bislama, british empire essay, with which they can understand one another, british empire essay.
In a region where languages are spoken by million people 16british empire essay, a common language is extremely useful, thus the British Empire has positively contributed to international relations, although Pidgin is a purely functional language with only one tense, so is limited in its use.
There was also great success in introducing phonetic spellings of indigenous languages, based on the Latin alphabet that had been introduced by the missionaries in around Many chiefs saw the importance of written communication, especially given the presence of Europeans, british empire essay, who placed significant emphasis on the written word. In this way, the most innate expression of culture was suppressed.
How the British Empire became Powerful (Short Animated History)
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This essay will attempt to put this news in context, outlining the history of the British Empire during the nineteenth century and in particular examining the effects the Empire had on Britain and its home population. The British Empire at the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century. Although Britain had lost thirteen of its North American Essays on British Empire. Essay examples Essay topics The Development of Merlin’s Character in the Legend of King Arthur view essay example Character King Arthur 1 Page. Children, similar to mirrors, reflect images of what happens around them. They reflect the gestures, wisdom, and personality traits of the adults at an early age, then later Feb 09, · View Full Essay Words: Length: 2 Pages Document Type: Essay Paper #: British Empire in the 's. In the aftermath of the Second World War the British Empire was began to disintegrate with a number of colonies engaging in conflicts aimed at driving the British out and gaining their independence
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