why was it that europe colonized africa and not the other way around?

Answer 1

The biggest reasons are technology and culture. The same question can be asked of the native Americans and other aboriginal cultures. Keep in mind 'culture' includes religion and distribution of wealth, which often work in tandem when colonizing. Basically, a need to expand markets, along with a 'moral' reason, such as converting natives to a certain religion, work together, and more powerfully, than just a simple itch to say that the colonizer was just simply power-hungry.

Answer 2

Cold produces hunger and needs. Europe was overpopulated and had needs. This produced organised aggression called Military power. Africa did not have needs they had plenty and were not organized past village or tribal states. Like the rest of the world Africa was "colonized" by the europeans. Makes you wonder if there exists a gene for aggression and war in the teutonic races. Although, the tribes of Africa and America were fighting with each other before the europeans came..

Answer 3

Africa as a continent was fragmented into many different kingdoms and tribal lands. The people of Northern Africa were more interested in trading ties to their Islamic brothers to the East than to bother much with Europe. The people of Western Africa were more interested in warfare with each other than in going out to exploit the Europeans.

There is also a question of who had bigger ships and better navigation tools at the time.

Realize, too, that there was more incentive for the Europeans to colonize Africa than for the Africans to colonize Europe. What did Europe have in the form of natural resources that could be easily exploited by the Africans? Africa had within its own continent gold and diamonds and other minerals. Africa had within its own continent a slave trade (sad to say). It didn't have to look to Europe for these things, but Europeans had to look to Africa for these things.

Answer 4

There are many reasons, but here are the most important two:

1.) Trade - Sub-Saharan Africa is geographically isolated from the trade of goods and ideas between Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. The Europeans didn't discover or invent things like gunpowder, navigational tools, or the printing press - they came from Asia via the Middle East to Europe. Europe then used this technology to dominate the entire globe until the mid-1900's.

2.) Geography - Europe has a lot of land ideally suited for agriculture and rivers that make it easy to trade and travel across the continent of Europe and beyond. Africa has very little land suited for intensive agriculture and has the world's largest desert and tropical rainforests that are impossible or very difficult to farm. The continent of Africa is also a plateau, which means its rivers have rapids close to the coast, which makes them difficult to use for travel or trade. So African societies tended to be smaller in population (less food = less people) and not connected with their neighbors because of significant barriers and lack of navigable rivers.

Answer 5

Because that home history played itself out
European culture was different from that in Africa... the diferent European countries competed with eachother, each seeking to have the most wealth. In Africa the culture was never really that greedy.... sure they had compition but basically if they were happy ....they didnt want to rule the world

plus Europe had guns...but this is just my opinion u should look it up or use another answer 4 a real answer
but seriously i think their cultures were different
Europeans were more greedy

Answer 6

potential finished civilizations generally vanquish and erase the weaker civilization. the ecu civilization emerged out of the sixteenth century extra efficient that that of the Africans. The African civilizations peaked in the 13-14th centuries and fell into decline.

Answer 7

Europe was more advanced. They had the technology and know how to do so, the Africans didn't.

Answer 8

...Europe was much more powerful than Africa. Duh.