Discuss the impact of British colonial rule, and in particular the Essay

Discuss the impact of British colonial rule, and in particular the regulations regarding witchcraft accusations and oracles, on the framing and methods of Evans - Essay Example Most of the world’s knowledge of witchcraft during that period and beyond in fact came down from Western Europe, where it was believed that many people practiced witchcraft, something considered evil and frightening. Scholars believe that witchcraft in Europe was part of a very ancient religion that existed long before Christianity. Thousands of witch trials were held there at which people were accused of witchcraft. These witch trials were later replicated in massive proportions in Salem, Massachussets in the US, another former British colony, where suspected witches were hanged and burned at the stake. So it must have been nothing new for the British to come upon the practice of witchcraft in many African territories that they colonized. Much like their forbears in the Middle Ages, their reaction to witchcraft in Africa was one of fear followed by a desire to persecute and eliminate the source of that fear. This is exactly what the British tried to do in Azande, a territory that straddles the boundaries of Sudan, Zaire and the Central African Republic. Under the 1899 Anglo-French Convention, the French who competed and fought with the British in Africa ceded the Azande to the British. Forthwith, the British established a military outpost there which military occupation gave way to civil administration in 1920. The Azandes lived in the watershed area between the Nile and Congo rivers to which they were resettled from the wilderness by the British after the first World War. They never returned to the jungles. When the British gave Azande some independence, it set up a civil service system manned by career people generally from the upper classes in England. A British colonial governor and a legislative council ruled the territory alongside the native chieftains. One of the first steps taken