19th century European Imperialism was predominantly negative.

In this round I will refute my opponent"s opening arguments. Starting with my opponent"s first argument in R2, Pro brings up that the British empire enforced their principles of Commerce, Christianity, and Civilization on the African people. This violated the African"s autonomy, as they were unwilling to change their principles. Although violating autonomy is always a negative action, it is sometimes necessary to prevent greater suffering. By replacing African culture, and religion with Christianity, the British prevented the torture, and death of thousands of innocent people. This is because African culture and religion entailed ritual acts of human sacrifice, cannibalism, and witch-hunting. These practices led to the deaths of thousands of people. Alexander Mackay was a Scottish missionary in Buganda, and he wrote that Mtesa the Kabaka (king) of Buganda, "had a loathsome, incurable disease, and was advised by the witch doctors to resume the practice of kiwendo - human sacrifice - to propitiate the gods. Victims taken at random, unsuspecting peasants bringing in plantains to sell in the capital, were bundled off and held in slave-sticks for the night, then publicly butchered in the morning. Sometimes 2,000 people were killed in a single day." [1] Africans also practiced mass human sacrifice to their gods [2]. In this case, violating the African people"s autonomy was worth the amount of innocent lives it saved. Besides the application of Christianity to the African people, civilization and commerce are objectively beneficial things, in those respects the British were benefiting the Africans as well. K.risk"s second main argument brings up the issue of African slavery. He argues that British imperialism resulted in the enslavement of many Africans, who then were put through extreme psychological and physical stress due to their slavery. African slavery was obviously a terrible event, and it was one of the darkest moments of history. But to blame European imperialism for it isn"t logical. This is because African slavery would"ve happened regardless of whether Britain was imperialist during the 19th century. This is because slavery happened due to globalization. Due to improved ship technology, people were able to trade efficiently across the world. Thus, merchants came to Africa and traded with the African kings. These kings would trade their own slaves in exchange for goods such as firearms and clothe. If British hadn"t had imperialistic, it wouldn"t have made a difference because the slave trade was based entirely on trade (goods in exchange for slaves) and thus a result of globalization. The only ties of imperialism to the slave trade is what Pro explains as racial superiority, and empirical expansion. The problem with the racial superiority point is that it assumes the purpose of the slave trade was to "exercise racial superiority." But that's not what the purpose was, the purpose was trade. If Britain wasn"t imperialistic, and thus didn"t feel superior to African Americans, they would have still bought them in exchange for goods from African kings because the kings were selling them as slaves. The second point of empirical expansion doesn"t work because it wasn"t the government that was expanding. It was *private* merchants who were buying slaves from the African kings and selling them to plantation owners. It wasn"t the British government. Thus it could be called corporate expansion, but not empirical expansion because it wasn"t done by the government. Yet, even if we accept that this argument is relevant to imperialism, it still isn"t valid because it runs on a false assumption based on the history of African slavery. The slaves who African kings sold to the merchants were one"s that they had already enslaved. "African kingdoms were paying with their own people. In most instances, no violence was necessary to obtain those slaves. Contrary to legends and novels and Hollywood movies, the white traders did not need to savagely kill entire tribes in order to exact their tribute in slaves. All they needed to do is bring goods that appealed to the kings of those tribes. The kings would gladly sell their own subjects...Even after Europeans began transporting black slaves to America, most trade was just that: "trade". In most instances, the Europeans did not need to use any force to get those slaves. The slaves were "sold" more or less legally by their (black) owners." [3] There was no detriment to the slaves because they were slaves prior to being sold. Actually, it might have been beneficial because many times the African king would want to execute the slaves. This is because many of the slaves were captured during war, and instead of killing them the king could make a profit by selling them instead [4]. K.risk"s final contention deals with the lasting economic control that Europe has over Africa. He argues that Europe still has economic control over Africa due to the lasting effects of imperialism, more specifically Africa"s international commerce and natural resources. The problem with both of these claims is the same with the last contention; there is no tie to imperialism. Per the definition accepted at the beginning of the debate, corporations cannot be imperialistic. The corporations were the one"s who bought the ownership of mine"s and harvested Africa"s natural resources. They were the one"s who created monopolies, and controlled international trade. Thus, the corporations are the cause of all negative impact proposed by Pro"s argument. But since corporations cannot be tied to imperialism, the argument is irrelevant, and thus holds no weight. Regardless of that, even if we accept the tie, the argument still doesn"t follow because Africa holds more economic control on Europe than Europe has on Africa. This is due to Africa"s deposit of diamond. Given the world"s large demand for diamond [5], and Africa being the only supplier, Africa holds powerful economic control over Europe, and the rest of the world. This is *more* than the supposed connection K.risk proposes. Besides that, many sources argue that the economic trade was helpful for Africa as it spawned the commercial integration of Africa, centralized their politics, and exercised influence commercial trading [6]. The missing 8th citation from last round is at the bottom of my sources. 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