Historygram

Colonial rule in Africa is one of the experiences in African history that Africans and Africa cannot forget easily with the passage of time. The scramble and partition of Africa which saw African societies being demarcated and partitioned among the European nations without the knowledge and approval of these African societies, culminated into the effective conquest and colonization of Africa. Over the years, the reasons for the colonization of Africa had received commendable attention from scholars. There is no intention here to indulge in a critique on this issue. However the views of some of these scholars are grouped into two and would be mentioned in passim. Some scholars often referred to as colonial apologists stress Philanthropic Humanitarianism and ‘genuine concern’ of the Europeans ‘for African welfare’ as the reasons for the colonization of Africans by Europeans. This group believed that Africa was static and stagnant; changing if at all with great slowness and needing the impact of outside influences to break out of the ossified shell of countless years of tradition. They supported this view with the argument that African responses were swift and fast thus, justifying colonial imposition in Africa. However, Africa scholars have come out to challenge these Eurocentric views. Some of them argued that economic interest propelled the Europeans to colonize Africa. They stressed that colonialism was a total aberration to
 
Africa’s development, thus altering forcibly the African cultural values and traditions. Thus, they argued that although colonialism brought about changes that transformed Igbo societies in many aspects, it did not destroy Igbo identity or cultural soul. Umuopara in the then Old Bende Division is one of the Igbo societies where these transformations wrought by colonial rule are believed to have been fast and swift. This work is an attempt to use historical methodology to demonstrate that the responses to colonial innovations were not as fast as has been posited by some scholars using Umuopara as a case study. It is believed that this work would help correct some perceived views about the people and help make the society’s past live in present and future.

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