European Christian Evangelism and Cultural Erasure in Colonial Africa

It is often argued that the colonization of the African continent in the 19^th and 20^th century was only made possible through the use of professional military infiltration. While the use of a professional military force is one of the ways in which Europeans colonized African territories, it is not the only way. In addition to military force, many Europeans utilized Christian evangelism and cultural erasure as a means of pacification. Many arguments made about colonialism in Africa point to evangelism and cultural erasure as goals of European imperialism, while other arguments boast that the European powers only wished to colonize for the purpose of economic and resource exploitation. Knowing that most of these theories have grit and evidence to back them, it is useful to study how they interact and support each other. Instead of insisting that one theory is absolutely more legitimate than another, it is considerable to identify their causal relationship in the grand scheme of European colonialism in Africa. European powers such as Belgium and Great Britain used Christian evangelism and cultural erasure as tools of pacification in order to gain economic resources in African colonies.