Thoughts on Group Seminar Sept 20

What I thought was interesting was the fact that one thing, the chicotte, could be such a powerful tool in Africa, and how it symbolized that power that the Europeans had in Africa.

King Leo Reading pg 1-32

My first reaction to the reading was the shock and surprise of the amount of deaths that were estimated to have happened in the Congo that had a connection with the countries of Europe trying to enslave them. 8 to 10 million people estimated dead is something that I can not even imagine in my head. I also thought how the narrator brought up how these deaths could be compared to the holocaust was interesting, as I had thought of the same thing before I had read it. During the introduction, when the narrator discovers the horrors that his country is committing by conducting slave trade and only taking from the African countries, he mentions how the only thing that Europe is sending to Africa is guns, ammunition, and soldiers, it one question.
What where the other Europeans that had noticed the large trafficking of slaves doing to oppose slavery?
And my other question is, Why did Europe go to Africa for this reason?

What we learned in class today 8/2

1) I learned a lot today about the origins of Pakistan and Afganistan, and how both were colonized by the British at one point or the other. I learned more about how the insurgents in both countries are tightly related as they are both in the same general area.

2) Something I was curious about was more of the specific details of how Pakistan became its own independent country.