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1. How important is cultural or historical context to the production and reception of a text?

2. How do we approach texts from different times and cultures to our own?

3. To what extent do texts offer insight into another culture?

4. How does the meaning and impact of a text change over time?

5. How do texts reflect, represent or form a part of cultural practices?

6. How does language represent social distinctions and identities?

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Advertising, a multibillion-dollar industry, is one of the most prominent ways to spread information. The average American watches 16 minutes of commercials in every hour of television watched. When commercials shine a light on global poverty, more viewers will aspire to help the cause. Here are 5 commercials taking on poverty:

Unsung Hero by Thai Life Insurance

Thailand requires all children within the country to enroll in school. However, of secondary school-aged children are not enrolled in school. The story begins with a benevolent man who lives a humble life giving back. He donates money daily to a family begging for money to send their daughter to school and does random kind deeds for several members of his community. As the community's happiness grows, the man realizes that the daughter of the family has gone. He soon comes to realize that, with his donations, she now can attend school. Thai Life Insurance is a Christian insurance company dedicated to making people happier.

Giving by TrueMove

The commercial follows the life of an owner of a street food stand. In the beginning, a poor boy gets caught stealing medicine from a neighboring stall. The street stand owner pays for his stolen goods and gives him a bag of soup for his sick mother. Decades later, the man passes out and is extremely ill. The hospital fee comes back and the family isn't able to afford it. A few days later, the family finds out that the little boy from the beginning is now a neurosurgeon and paid all the hospital bills. Although Thailand provides its citizens with universal healthcare, low-income families still cannot afford some hospital treatment fees. TrueMove is one of the leading mobile providers in Thailand, spreading the message, "Giving is the best communication."

If London Were Syria by Save the Children

Among displaced people, are children. Conflicts force children out of their homes and into international waters in search of safety. With war, terrorists, human trafficking and the additional threat of racism, Syrians and other displaced people face many humanitarian issues everywhere. The award-winning advertisement by Save The Children has almost 65 million views on YouTube, spreading empathy into millions of hearts. The film follows a young girl throughout the span of a year, from comfortable living to displaced. She undergoes near-death experiences and the loss of members of her family, spotlighting the hardships of a refugee.

Make a Change by Hyundai Philippines

This commercial by Hyundai Philippines overviewed the life of a blind beggar. At first, the beggar did not receive many donations, and every passerby ignored him. A man came along and reworded the sign, raising the number of donations. After a while, the beggar asked the man what he changed to the board. The new quote said, "It's a beautiful day, but I can't see it." The touching story raises awareness about of people living under the poverty line in the Philippines.

You Can Save Her by Magic Bus

This commercial begins with one high-class girl seeing a girl in poverty. The poor girl was in worn-out clothes and barefoot, working intensive labor for her abusive father. She strolls around her village, introducing facts about Indian children in poverty. Although child marriage has been illegal since 1929, a quarter of girls in India are married off before the age of 18. India houses of the world's children living in extreme poverty. Magic Bus is an Indian organization sponsoring Indian children throughout their lives. They send children to school and help them integrate into society, preventing immoral marriages and abuse.

Through these commercials taking on poverty, viewers realize the impact of global poverty on the world, encouraging them to act on their emotions. With donations from millions of viewers, organizations can reduce the number of people in poverty.

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Top 5 Commercials Taking on Poverty - The Borgen Project

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Advertising, a multibillion-dollar industry, is one of the most prominent ways to spread information. The average American watches 16 minutes of commercials in every hour of television watched. When commercials shine a light on global poverty, more viewers will aspire to help the cause.

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1. Why and how do we study language and literature?

2. How are we affected by texts in various ways?

3. In what ways is meaning constructed, negotiated, expressed and interpreted?

4. How does language use vary amongst text types and amongst literary forms?

5. How does the structure or style of a text affect meaning?

6. How do texts offer insights and challenges?

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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, (born September 15, 1977, Enugu, Nigeria), Nigerian author whose work drew extensively on the Biafran war in Nigeria during the late 1960s.

Early in life Adichie, the fifth of six children, moved with her parents to Nsukka, Nigeria. A voracious reader from a young age, she found Things Fall Apart by novelist and fellow Igbo Chinua Achebe transformative. After studying medicine for a time in Nsukka, in 1997 she left for the United States, where she studied communication and political science at Eastern Connecticut State University (B.A., 2001). Splitting her time between Nigeria and the United States, she received a master's degree in creative writing from Johns Hopkins University and studied African history at Yale University.

In 1998 Adichie's play For Love of Biafra was published in Nigeria. She later dismissed it as "an awfully melodramatic play," but it was among the earliest works in which she explored the war in the late 1960s between Nigeria and its secessionist Biafra republic. She later wrote several short stories about that conflict, which would become the subject of her highly successful novel Half of a Yellow Sun (2006). As a student at Eastern Connecticut State University, she began writing her first novel, Purple Hibiscus (2003). Set in Nigeria, it is the coming-of-age story of Kambili, a 15-year-old whose family is wealthy and well respected but who is terrorized by her fanatically religious father. Purple Hibiscus garnered the Commonwealth Writers' Prize in 2005 for Best First Book (Africa) and that year's Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book (overall). It was also short-listed for the 2004 Orange Prize (later called the Orange Broadband Prize and now the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction).

Half of a Yellow Sun (2006; film 2013), Adichie's second novel, was the result of four years of research and writing. It was built primarily on the experiences of her parents during the Nigeria-Biafra war. The result was an epic novel that vividly depicted the savagery of the war (which resulted in the displacement and deaths of perhaps a million people) but did so by focusing on a small group of characters, mostly middle-class Africans. Half of a Yellow Sun became an international best seller and was awarded the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction in 2007. Eight years later it won the "Best of the Best" Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, a special award for the "best" prizewinner from the previous decade.

In 2008 Adichie received a MacArthur Foundation fellowship. The following year she released The Thing Around Your Neck, a critically acclaimed collection of short stories. Americanah (2013) centres on the romantic and existential struggles of a young Nigerian woman studying (and blogging about race) in the United States.

Adichie's nonfiction includes We Should All Be Feminists (2014), an essay adapted from a speech she gave at a TEDx talk in 2012; parts of the speech were also featured in Beyoncé's song "Flawless" (2013). Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions was published in 2017.

J.E. Luebering

Learn More in these related Britannica articles:

Ben Okri, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie....

Nsukka, university town, Enugu state, southern Nigeria. It lies in the Udi Hills at an elevation of 1,300 feet (396 m). Nsukka is an agricultural-trade centre for the yams, cassava (manioc), corn (maize), taro, pigeon peas, and palm oil and kernels produced by the local Igbo (Ibo) people. Weaving is...

Things Fall Apart, first novel by Chinua Achebe, written in English and published in 1958. Things Fall Apart helped create the Nigerian literary renaissance of the 1960s. The novel chronicles the life of Okonkwo, the leader of an Igbo community, from the events leading up to...

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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie | Biography, Books, & Facts

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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, (born September 15, 1977, Enugu, Nigeria), Nigerian author whose work drew extensively on the Biafran war in Nigeria during the late 1960s. Early in life Adichie, the fifth of six children, moved with her parents to Nsukka, Nigeria.

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DP English A Literature_ Annotating texts

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Table of Contents

Nigerian Civil War, also called Nigerian-Biafran War, war between Nigeria's federal government and the breakaway state Biafra from 1967 to 1970.

After Nigeria became independent in 1960, the new country sought to combine groups divided by ethnicity and religion-a process that led to tensions that culminated in two military coups from which the leaders of the country's Northern region emerged triumphant. When the Northern coup resulted in the murder of military and civilian members of the Igbo (Ibo) people in 1967, they declared their homeland, the Eastern region, independent. It was now known as the Republic of Biafra, and Odumegwu Ojukwu was its leader. Despite recognition by some African states and tacit support from such countries as France and Israel, the Nigerian FMG (Federal Military Government) wouldn't allow the oil-rich east to secede.

In the increasingly vicious war that followed, the FMG, with its superior forces, ruthlessly drove back the Biafran fighters. Appalling hardship ensued for the civilian population of Biafra: massacres were reported as the FMG's soldiers advanced, and famine took hold after the Nigerian government blockaded Biafra and banned Red Cross aid. As the world sat on its hands and ignored the developing humanitarian disaster, hundreds of thousands died of malnutrition before Biafran resistance was eliminated in 1970. The Republic of Biafra ceased to exist after its officers surrendered in January 1970.

It is estimated that during the Nigerian Civil War more than one million people died in battle, as a result of ethnic cleansing, or because of starvation, with starvation claiming the vast majority of lives.

Fid Backhouse and others

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Nigerian Civil War | Description & Facts

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Nigerian Civil War, also called Nigerian-Biafran War, war between Nigeria's federal government and the breakaway state Biafra from 1967 to 1970. After Nigeria became independent in 1960, the new country sought to combine groups divided by ethnicity and religion-a process that led to tensions that culminated in two military coups from which the leaders of the country's Northern region emerged triumphant.

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The Thing Around Your Neck, a collection of short fiction by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, explores the lives of Nigerians both at home in problematic - and sometimes life-threatening - post-colonial settings and, discomfortingly, as ''green card'' immigrants to the United States. In most cases happiness is at a premium, and loss and sadness are fellow travellers.

The title story itself, which is positioned at about the midpoint of the book, exemplifies many of the collection's concerns and themes. The Thing Around Your Neck, as with another story from the collection, titled, Tomorrow is Too Far, is told from the second-person viewpoint. This rarely-used style of writing tends to incorporate an accusatory tone of voice into the narration.

Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Credit:Getty Images

Here, the impression is that the unseen narrator is in fact the central character bleakly interrogating herself, as though staring into a mirror, and sparing little of her observations. The central character is Akunna, a dutiful young woman from a struggling family in Lagos, who has arrived in America via the ''visa lottery'' to live in her so-called ''uncle's'' home, to study, work for a living, and send half her earnings back to her parents.

Akunna is soon sexually abused, betrayed casually, by the ''uncle'', a married man with children. Entitled male arrogance, position and presumption is a repeating theme throughout the book, as encapsulated in Akunna's double-narration, her bitter recall: "he sat on your bed - it was his house, after all - and smiled. If you let him, he would do many things for you. Smart women did it all the time. How did you think those women back home in Lagos with well-paying jobs made it? Even women in New York City?''

Male presumption is also an aspect of a gender-based theme pursued to devastating consequences, in Tomorrow is Too Far. In this story an unnamed American woman revisits her childhood in Nigeria, when she was 10, her brother, Nonso, was 12, and cousin Dozie, whom she loves, 13.

The woman recalls her traditionalist grandmother presiding "over the sipping ritual to make sure Nonso went first''. It is also Nonso, by assumed right as the first-born male to a first-born father, who is taught to climb the avocado tree, and to pluck the coconut. And Grandmama "didn't show you, because she said girls never plucked coconuts".

Within this family only Nonso will inherit the earth, and suddenly "you knew that something had to happen to Nonso, so that you could survive. Even at 10 you knew that some people can take up too much space by simply being, that by existing, some people can stifle others". Yet 18 years later, "you are weeping, standing alone under the avocado tree" - fittingly at the spot where Nonso fell to earth - now sharing a stifling, unspoken secret with Dozie, and a ruined life.

Another way in which Akunna's experiences in the title story evoke those of characters elsewhere in the collection arises from the imagery of endings and new beginnings. After making the decision to escape the uncle's home, the meaning of 'the thing around her neck', becomes clear. It speaks of despair, displacement, loneliness and loss, the gulf between a sense of 'home' and a culturally alien landscape, and of disgust.

Yet, hesitantly, an inner strength asserts itself: ''The thing that wrapped itself around your neck...started to loosen, to let go''. And at the conclusion, when she must return to Lagos after the death of her father, she will travel alone, leaving her tentative, uncomprehending white American boyfriend behind: "You turned away and said nothing, and when he drove you to the airport, you hugged him tight for a long, long moment, and then you let go." The language of "letting go" is ambiguously pointed, because Akunna may or may not return to him, nor even to America, yet imbued in the action and the moment is a sense of decision, independence, growth, and a new start.

Similar imagery is evidenced in stories such as Jumping Monkey Hill, The American Embassy, and The Arrangers of Marriage. The first of these is especially interesting in that Adichie employs the narrative device of telling a story within a story, and using the former to enhance the irony of the outer story's conclusion. It is also a pronounced example of Adichie's continuing concern with male assumptions and abuse of power over young women.

The central character of Jumping Monkey Hill is a young Nigerian woman, Unjunwa, a writer invited to attend a literary workshop in South Africa.The participants, from various parts of Africa, are to compose a short story and have it critiqued by their peers - a prospect that can be demoralising. Throughout "Jumping Monkey Hill", therefore, we are able to read each successive extract Unjunwa writes, to observe the anger she records to paper, and to juxtapose it with her reactions to the workshop gathering.

At the end of Unjunwa's story, her own fictional central character, a young woman, rejects a suggestion of sexual bribery by a male business client. Again there is that concluding moment of decision: "She turns to the door and opens it and walks out into the bright sunlight. She walks and walks...where she gets in a taxi and goes to the office to clear out her almost-empty desk".

The uncompromising ending, though, is dismissed by Edward, the workshop leader, with the smug observation that, "The whole thing is implausible.This is agenda writing, it isn't a real story of real people." What does he mean by ''agenda writing''? There are multiple ironies here, for not only is Unjunwa's story autobiographical, but Edward is seen, similarly, to be a patriarchal, leering lecher both within Unjunwa's perceptions and within the surrounding framework of Adichie's story.

In a post-modernist twist to the conclusion of Jumping Monkey Hill, Unjunwa walks away from the workshop, not with a sense of moral high ground, but almost in tears, bitterly frustrated, wondering if her own manner of departure, "this ending, in a story, would be considered plausible". Clearly Adichie thinks so.The final story in the collection is The Headstrong Historian. Encompassing three generations of a Nigerian family, it explores the effects of European, Christian colonialism, the loss of cultural memory and language over decades.

Near the end, when historian Grace changes her name to Afamefuma (My Name Will Not Be Lost), it is a statement towards reclaiming the past, of linking with it across time. We might see Adichie's own, fictionalising intentions in the same light.

Further reading and viewing:

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun, Harper Perennial, London, UK, 2007. (This novel has been adapted to a film version, released in Australia in 2014.)

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah, Anchor Books, New York, 2013. (Adichie's most recent novel.)

Vendela Vida et al (eds.), Always Apprentices: The Believer Magazine Presents Twenty-Two Conversations Between Writers, Believer Books, San Francisco, CA, 2013. (Contains discussion with Adichie.)

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The Thing Around Your Neck explores post-colonial Nigeria

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Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size The Thing Around Your Neck, a collection of short fiction by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, explores the lives of Nigerians both at home in problematic - and sometimes life-threatening - post-colonial settings and, discomfortingly, as ''green card'' immigrants to the United States.

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1. How do texts adhere to and deviate from conventions associated with literary forms or text types?

2. How do conventions and systems of reference evolve over time?

3. In what ways can diverse texts share points of similarity?

4. How valid is the notion of a classic text?

5. How can texts offer multiple perspectives of a single issue, topic or theme?

6. In what ways can comparison and interpretation be transformative?

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Tomorrow is Too Far - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

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The Thing Around Your Neck - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

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The American Embassy - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (1)

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The Arrangers Of Marriage - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

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Igbo people have inhabited a large swath of southeast Nigeria and parts of Cameroon for millennia. Premodern Igbo people likely saw themselves more as members of particular villages and lineages than as members of a broad, Igbo ethnicity. Cultural rules varied considerably from village to village, as did Igbo language, which is expressed in no fewer than twenty dialects. Religion was, by all accounts, absolutely integral to Igbo culture and politics, but there was a great deal of variation in religious beliefs and practices from place to place. Deities differed from village to village.

Broadly speaking, Igbo culture seems to have developed around the cultivation of yams, the primary staple food, which is still celebrated at traditional harvest festivals today. Some Igbo communities excelled at production of bronzes and cloth, and all were engaged in international trade networks long before the colonial era. 1

Igbos' sense of common identity as a single people is said to have grown particularly in the last century, in the face of colonialism, and grew even into a national identity when Igbo people tried to declare their independence from Nigeria in 1967. Despite their inability to achieve that independence, Igbo have continued to standardize the language and build a somewhat more shared pan-Igbo identity.

The first missions

Africans of Igbo ancestry from Sierra Leone were the first to preach the Gospel in Igboland in the mid-19th century, on behalf of the Anglican Church Missionary Society, which subsequently sent white missionaries. 2 The first sustained Catholic mission, led by French Holy Ghost (Spiritan) priests, arrived in the area of Igboland east of the Niger in 1885. 3 In Onitsha, on the Niger River, Obi (King) Eze Anozonwu gave them land for a church and school and granted permission to establish mission stations in nearby villages. Christianity made negligible inroads until the twentieth century, under newly consolidated British colonial rule after the British destroyed a famous traditional religious oracle. 4 Much as Christian success relied on colonial expansion, historians still struggle to explain why it was so much more successful in Igboland than among other nearby Nigerian peoples who also lived under colonial rule. On the heels of the Anglicans, Irish Holy Ghost missionaries, who replaced their French confreres, established a mission center at a hilltop near the village of Eke and began to find great success in local villages. Their strategy depended a great deal on building up English-language schools and hospitals, and on invitations from village chiefs, even though the chiefs "stayed loyal to the religion of their ancestors." 5 The tiny number of Catholic mission clergy available meant that they relied on educating local converts to catechize and educate others. Shanahan wrote in 1909, "if we go from town to town talking only about God, we know from experience that much of our effort brings no result. But no one is opposed to schools." 6 Indeed, villages approached missionaries asking for schools more often than they could be immediately accommodated. A good deal of the geographic variation in Christian denominational strength in Igboland can be explained by invitations or lack thereof to missionaries from local leaders in the first half of the 20th century.

Igbo catechists

Historians agree that Catholic clergy were so "swallowed up" from the beginning by their focus on schools and hospitals that much of the work of catechizing was actually done by trained, lay Igbo catechists. Bishop Shanahan, who devised the strategy, described the Igbo catechists as "helpers" despite being fully aware of their critical role evangelizing their own people. 7 "Local catechists were in charge of running day-to-day spiritual affairs," Jacinta Nwaka reports, "such as instruction, baptisms, home visitations, conducting daily prayers, burying the dead, and settling cases between and among families." 8 The Holy Ghost missionaries were slow to develop an Igbo clergy, focusing instead on sending missionaries from Ireland. But as the number of Igbo Catholics continued to grow, the foreign missionaries were always stretched to keep up.

Enugu, where this research is based, began to grow rapidly after coal was discovered there in 1908/9. 9 The first parish, which was previously a mission station, was established only in 1933. Less than 30 years later, Enugu was a diocese, with a Nigerian-born bishop.

Remarkable as the growth of the Church was in its first 50 years, the growth and strengthening of the Church in Igboland over the next 50 years was no less remarkable. Even in 1960, after a period of intense affiliation to Catholicism, Igbo scholars still assert that the Igbo worldview was still largely unchanged. "The victory of Christianity was only very partial and in some respects only superficial... The average Igbo of this period was not a Christian in the missionaries' sense of the word. And he was not a follower of the traditional religion in the manner of his ancestors... religion to him meant some of the teachings of Christianity enriched by some traditional religious beliefs." 10 Kalu summarizes it this way: The period up until the civil war was a planting, and after was a maturation. "The emergence of Igbo [Catholic] priests was, therefore, a dangerous process for the gods because, as an Igbo proverb would put the matter, they understood what the woman was carrying in her basket which made her return from the farm at night." 11

Civil war

The immediate post-Vatican II years were a period of intense upheaval and warfare in Igboland. Nigeria achieved political independence in 1960, but the union was fragile. The peoples of south and southeast Nigeria, including the Igbo, declared independence in 1967, proclaiming the region south and east of Enugu as the republic of Biafra. Enugu was designated as Biafra's capital. In a traumatic civil war that lasted until 1970, as many as two million civilians there died of starvation (a policy of blockade of food and medicine was imposed by the federated state of Nigeria as a weapon of war), and a generation of men was lost in battle before the Biafran leaders surrendered. The starvation resulting from the blockade during the Biafran war was known worldwide as a colossal humanitarian crisis. 12 Though the peace which followed was surprisingly non-retributive, the devastation and impoverishment was considerable, and institutions and social life had to be rebuilt out of the ruin. The missionaries and international Catholic charities provided extensive relief during the blockade, and the victorious Nigerian government ensured that the war marked the end of the Irish missionary era there. 13 The state also subsequently assumed control over the vast number of primary schools operated by Christian churches, necessitating the end of Shanahan's mission strategy. 14

Renewal

Remarkably, the years thereafter witnessed a huge growth in the Church and its seminaries, led by local leaders (Bigard Memorial Seminary in Enugu, one of many in Igboland, is the largest Catholic seminary in the world today), and fostered greater deliberate indigenization of Igbo Catholicism, even as it retains many distinctly Roman practices today. The post-Vatican II, postwar era also witnessed-and depended on-the blossoming of lay participation and organizations, even in a region with a large number of clergy today. 15 One form of religious renewal, the Charismatic movement, actually derived from American influence, but found fertile soil in Nigeria, blossoming and taking root to a degree that it did not in America. 16 Since the 1970s, religious life and priestly vocations and lay leadership all grew simultaneously in Igboland, unlike what happened in many other parts of the world.

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Historical background: Igboland's rapid journey into a Catholic bastion

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Igbo people have inhabited a large swath of southeast Nigeria and parts of Cameroon for millennia. Premodern Igbo people likely saw themselves more as members of particular villages and lineages than as members of a broad, Igbo ethnicity. Cultural rules varied considerably from village to village, as did Igbo language, which is expressed in no fewer than twenty dialects.

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Nigeria is a country in West Africa. It was colonized by the British in 1884 and the colony is established at the Berlin conference which divides Africa by European powers. The British targeted Nigeria because of its resources. The British wanted products like palm oil and palm kernel and export trade in tin, cotton, cocoa, groundnuts, palm oil and so on (Graham, 2009). The British accomplished the colonization by using its military. Although there was strong resistance from natives against the British, it was all crushed by the British. As a result, the trading post at the Niger River is created and the British economic rule is maintained over the colonies, exploiting Nigerians (Graham, 2009).

After the British conquest of northern and southern Nigeria and the merging of the two to establish Nigerian colonies and protectorate, the British seeks the best interests between direct rule and indirect rule. They will not hesitate to use the means of direct rule if they think that indirect rule cannot guarantee their colonial status. The divide and rule policy is always adopted by the British over the colonization of Nigeria. The consequences of the colonization consist of many parts. Politically, slavery was abolished. Economically, the tax system and transportation system deepened the British's plunder and control over the economy in Nigeria. Culturally, the British controlled the religious culture in Nigeria through training a group of local people to spread Christianity in Nigeria, opening missionary schools, and other ways.

"Nigeria was granted independence on October 1, 1960 but the journey to achieving the right to self-government started seven years before when Anthony Enahoro moved the motion for self-governance in the British-led parliament in 1953. [...] Foremost Nigerians like Obafemi Awolowo, Nnamdi Azikiwe and Tafawa Balewa who like Enahoro were some of the nationalists who fought for the country's independence" (Omotayo). They were trying their best to convince their colonial Britain of the need for independence but prove and the capability of self-governance. They had to use their knowledge to prove this by presentation at the parliament and with solid logic. On the other hand, British need to consider the gain and loss from the Nigeria since British is under a turbulent era: Nazism in Europe was over, but Communism and the Soviet Union was increasingly powerful (America also). The available resources were limited, so it's necessary for British to balance the risking of losing their power in the world.

Work Cited:

Katie Graham. (2009). "Nigeria: Colonization". Retrieved from "https://hj2009per6nigeria.weebly.com/colonization.html".

Omotayo Yusuf. (2017). "How Nigeria got its independence". Legit. Retrieved from "https://www.legit.ng/1044956-four-nigerians-fought-britain-seven-years-won-pictured.html".

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History of the British Takeover of Nigeria

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Nigeria is a country in West Africa. It was colonized by the British in 1884 and the colony is established at the Berlin conference which divides Africa by European powers. The British targeted Nigeria because of its resources.

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PEEL ANALYSIS IB English A_ Literature and  Language & Literature

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How to Read a Photograph - Paper One, IO, or HLE

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Identity
Culture
Perspective

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The Guardian Nigeria News - Nigeria and World News

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A fully developed composition of colonial administration did not take a full character in what would become 'Nigeria' until after the 1851 Bombardment of Lagos. The principal basis for the Bombardment was to end slave trade, even though the abolishment had taken place in 1807, and British Naval blockages had taken a position on the Atlantic ocean to further stop and arrest slave ships bobbing in and out of West Africa Region. Notorious slave ports like Lagos and Sierra Leone had been on high alert. Even with these restrictions, slave traders, and slave hunters, still had a field day in Lagos, not to mention the human sacrifices.

But it was not all about slave trades and human sacrifice back in the time. Since the first white man arrived in West Africa, the need to get exotic raw materials, spices and discover the beauty that lies within the fibre of the land, has been the major aim of their mission.

Around 1472, when the Portuguese explorers sailed along the Gulf of Guinea, they came across the great Benin Empire, and what was discovered pleased them. Over the years, they returned for the gold, ivory, pepper, spices, and mostly the slaves. For the Portuguese, French, and Germans, it was trade, nothing more. Undeterred by malaria and the treacherous waterways, the lust for the fruits of the land had the explorers coming back.

After the traders came the missionaries. In 1486, King John II sent a few of his 'Holy Advisers' to the Oba of Benin to establish a religious relationship with the Monarch, asking him to forsake his old ways and accept Christianity as the new order. The Oba declined the offer.

Later, in 1514, King Manual of Portugal extended the arm of friendship to the Oba of Benin, but on a more tactical term. This time, it was not just about the religion but also of true friendship and service, that by the 1500s, the ancient Benin Kingdom had a diplomatic post (Embassy) in Lisbon and subsequent arrangements had the Oba of Benin send his sons and some Chiefs to Portugal to learn the new ways of the New World.

However, this was not the case for the British. On January 17th, 1845, missionaries from the Church Missionary Society (C.M.S) landed the shores of Badagry. The message they brought was that of peace, and the need to have the natives converted to Christianity in order to establish dominance. Badagry was the anchor point, and in a few years, they penetrated the hinterlands, Abeokuta and Ibadan.

Once the C.M.S had a grip of the situation on the ground, their true intent for trade, economic and political dominance was set in motion.

The essence of introducing religion was to have a good grip on the people and have them submissive to teachings and order. Once this was achieved, the economic angle was introduced and this, over the years, was followed by the establishment of a Colonial government.

10 years after the Bombardment of Lagos in 1851, Oba Docemo of Lagos was made to sign a treaty that had all the land in Lagos ceded to the British Crown. The need for that treaty was to own and control Lagos economically, and fully establish dominance over the people, their heritage, culture, and commerce.

With this done, a colonial administration was birthed and the entire land span of the country 'Nigeria,' under a colonial system.

Thus, the need to sustain the economic grip was more important than ever, as proceeds and funds were remitted to the British Treasury in London. Raw materials, Ivory, Gold, spices, and other produce were carted out of the country in large quantities. It was a period that saw a 'deem fit' system where whatever law or rule that was established was done to fit and favour the British and not the people.

At that stage, the 'religion' aspect had taken a back burner, and silently it was the oil that ran the colonial administration in the Colony.

A few individuals had the strength and valour to establish their domains and control the economics in that area. Once the British noticed the power these people had economically over their region, they struck and destabilised them by all means necessary.

A good example of this systematic clamp down were the cases of Nana Olomu of Itsekiri (1892), King Jaja of Opobo (1887), and the sadistic destruction of the Ancient Benin Kingdom (1897).

The introduction of Christianity no doubt had its good effect on the Colony of West Africa and Nigeria, to be precise, but it was used more as a weapon than the salvation it held in its other hand.

The silent effect and traces of colonisation can still be seen in Africa today. The looted treasures from the 1897 Invasion of Benin are still locked up in the British Museum, the British Treasury, and other public and private museums all around the world. The Amalgamation of the Southern and Northern Protectorate to form a country called 'Nigeria' was done basically to further facilitate trade in the Colony, causing a staggering foundation for a country that they had little time to understand.

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Understanding The Structure of Colonial Nigeria: The Religion And Economic Power Play

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A fully developed composition of colonial administration did not take a full character in what would become 'Nigeria' until after the 1851 Bombardment of Lagos. The principal basis for the Bombardment was to end slave trade, even though the abolishment had taken place in 1807, and British Naval blockages had taken a position on the [...]

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Images are part of the way we communicate and, through the Language and Literature course, it would be impossible to talk about how language operates in the world without considering the operations…

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By the 1890s postcards were widely available throughout continental Europe. The postcards appealed to tourists looking for a souvenir of their travels abroad. Although travel was still largely limited to elites, it was becoming more accessible to the middle classes.

Postcards gave these new travelers a means to share their journeys with their friends and family at home. Postcards became such a popular commodity that the period from 1895 to the end of the Great War is now considered the golden age of the postcard.

The popularity of postcards extended to postcards depicting images from European colonial possessions as well. While postcards from Africa served to reinforce stereotypes about the colonies they also served a larger purpose.

This purpose was educational in nature and showed colonial West Africa as more than a place that confirmed the stereotypes the Europeans held about the region. These images delivered to their audience the possibilities and economic potential of the colonies.

More than any other photographic format, colonial-era postcard images of Africa and African peoples helped to reinforce and perpetuate 19th-century European stereotypes of Africa as the "dark continent", devoid of history or culture.

As the antithesis of Western 'cultural superiority', Africans were characterized in postcard representations as "savage and uncivilized people", an exotic other, with no cultural ownership. This stereotyped visual representation of African peoples played a critical role in Europe's rationale for its so-called 'civilizing mission' in Africa.

In general, postcard production for the African continent focused on indigenous people and the civilizing effect of colonial-missionary systems. In addition to imagery that attempted to define and classify anthropometric profiles of African ethnic "types", postcard representations depicted dress and adornment, body decoration, indigenous settlements, scenes of daily activities, and ceremonies and rituals. Equally important, many postcards featured local chiefs or kings dressed in ceremonial regalia and other elite.

One of the most prominent themes of colonial-era postcards was imagery that documented the scope of colonial projects, including the construction of new buildings, roads, bridges, railroads, industries, and the exploitation of minerals and other natural resources.

Postcard representations also showed images of landscapes, cities, and towns before and in the early stages of "modern" development.

Postcard images depicting specific political or historical events such as the arrival and departure of important European dignitaries in Africa was another popular colonial postcard genre.

Another stereotyped image of colonial Africa postcards was the pervasive nude or semi-nude depictions of the body of indigenous African people, especially African women and girls.

These portrait postcards, typically featuring erotic content and often overtly pornographic content, catered to prevailing Eurocentric male fantasies about the 'primitive' sexuality of African women, the Other.

This provocative stereotyped imagery was actively used in colonial propaganda campaigns to lure European men to the colonies for work, or to make them enlist in the navy or colonial armies. A large series of semi-nude postcard images featuring male "warriors" with weapons were also widely distributed

Colonial photography was an integral part of European representation. Like guns and rifles, the camera was another equally prominent weapon, used for the perpetuation of racial discrimination and colonial governance.

By distorting social ideas, promoting empire, justifying colonialism, and misrepresenting indigenous peoples and cultures, colonial photography nurtured the belief in European superiority.
(Photo credit: Library of Congress).

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Colonial postcards from a disturbing past, 1890-1914

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By the 1890s postcards were widely available throughout continental Europe. The postcards appealed to tourists looking for a souvenir of their travels abroad. Although travel was still largely limited to elites, it was becoming more accessible to the middle classes. Postcards gave these new travelers a means to share their journeys with their friends and family at home.

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A South African fast food ad that subverts the country's colonial history has been banned from TV by the country's Advertising Regulatory Board, following a complaint that the ad mocked 'the struggles of the African people against the colonisation by the Europeans in general, and the persecution suffered at the hands of the Dutch in particular'.

The campaign for Chicken Licken, from agency Joe Public, shows a 17th century African travel to Holland to colonise Europe. The ARB has ruled that the topic of colonialism was not an appropriate subject for comedy. "The Directorate is of the view that the Respondent's commercial trivialises an issue that is triggering and upsetting for many South African people," reads the ruling.

In its official response to the complaint, Chicken Licken said that the intention of the ad was not to mock the 'struggles of colonisation'. Chicken Licken told the ARB that the intention behind the spot was to 'uplift the South African spirit'. "That is the place from which the commercial stems, to show South Africans that Chicken Licken believes this country has all the potential to conquer the world and rewrite history from an African perspective. Its tongue-in-cheek sense of humour is a tone that consumers have come to expect, but its communication's underlying purpose is to create a sense of pride and patriotism amongst South Africans."

Speaking when the spot launched, creative director Martin Schlumpf and director Grant De Sousa commented on the potential controversy of the campaign. They said that the idea was to subvert arrogant colonial attitudes held by Europeans who first invaded the country. They also argued that the campaign represented a more 'mature' South Africa, that was ready to address and talk about its difficult history.

"Colonialism is a big and touchy subject in South Africa and this was the perfect opportunity to turn it on its head and put South Africa on top, literally. South African consumers are maturing, they want to be challenged, they want to be entertained and they want to laugh, even if it is at themselves. Having said that we know we can't please everyone all the time, responsible risk-taking with the correct tone and humour is vital," said Martin, talking to LBB at the time.

Director Grant De Sousa said he was inspired by contemporary paintings of Dutch colonisers and wanted to expose the hubris and pretension of the European arrivals who exploited the locals. "To be honest it is somewhat of a hot topic. We, as a country, are doing our best to move past it all. This spot was a good opportunity to make light of just how ridiculous colonialism was as a concept. The beginning of my treatment was this painting which we had all seen in textbooks here. It was this insane depiction of these glorified Europeans, namely the Dutch, rocking up on the shores of South Africa, and "rescuing" these poor African villagers."

The ruling that the ad is 'triggering' for South Africans has been met with derision on social media, with the majority of responses on Twitter taking issue with a complaint that assumes offence on behalf of Black South Africans or celebrating the satire. However some commenters agreed with the ruling, saying that they felt the ad's humour could be misleading.

The story has generated interest in the local media. Speaking to radio station CHAI Fm, a station that specialises in matters of interest to South Africa's Jewish community, ARB CEO Gail Schimmel likened colonialism and its impact to the Holocaust and persecution suffered by the jewish people, saying, 'There are some situations that you can never laugh at'. However the presenters pointed out that, upon being asked to critically assess the Chicken Licken ad, both black and white employees at the station had found no issue with it and that South Africans often tried to 'take back power through humour'. The issue has also been picked up by local stations 702fm (which last week singled out the ad as a 'hero') and Power.

It's a controversial ruling for the new body which only formed at the beginning of November, to take the place of country's Advertising Standards Authority, which went into liquidation at the end of September this year. The advertiser will be submitting an appeal.

Whatever the outcome, the ruling and surrounding controversy comes at a time when South African brands are being more vocal about race and the legacy of colonialism and apartheid.

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south african ad satirising colonialism banned

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South African Ad Satirising Colonialism Banned | LBBOnline

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A South African fast food ad that subverts the country's colonial history has been banned from TV by the country's Advertising Regulatory Board, following a complaint that the ad mocked 'the struggles of the African people against the colonisation by the Europeans in general, and the persecution suffered at the hands of the Dutch in particular'.

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Johnny Depp waves to fans at a film premier in Tokyo in 2017. He appears in an ad for a Dior men's fragrance called Sauvage that sparked outrage last month for its use of Native American culture and symbols. (Shizuo Kambayashi/AP)

When the French company Christian Dior launched its Sauvage product line, the campaign was met with an eruption of controversy and debate. Unsurprisingly so: The ad featured the rugged landscape of southeastern Utah and a man in Native dress dancing while a voice promised the new products would provide "an authentic journey deep into the Native American soul in a sacred, founding and secular territory." The outrage over the appropriation of Native culture and the name Sauvage led the company to pull the campaign.

The controversy sparked a debate, once limited to translators and scholars, about what the French word "sauvage"actually means. Does it mean "wild," as it is often translated, or "savage," as the campaign seems to promote?

Defenders of Dior argue that the word refers to a wild nature, and that critics don't understand the differences between French and English when they treat "sauvage" and "savage" as cognates. But critics charge that the Sauvage campaign is little more than warmed-over colonialist rhetoric and a reminder of France's not-so-recent past as a racist empire.

The critics are right. While French colonialism in North America has garnered less attention than its Spanish and English counterparts, especially in the United States, its legacy persists. And French colonialists used the word "sauvage" in the very ways suggested by Dior's ad campaign to justify their takeover of large swaths of North America. By calling indigenous peoples and American environments sauvage, explorers, colonists and missionaries claimed that they were untamed and uncivilized - and framed French intervention in Native lives as an act of cultivation and domestication.

In fact, the ad campaign replicates the history of early French missionaries, explorers and settlers who claimed indigenous lands in North America. Samuel de Champlain, who founded Quebec City in 1608 and led the colony for much of the next several decades, used "sauvage" to describe the place and to sell his colonial project to French audiences. He used the word to characterize the local plants and environments, musing that "if they were cultivated they would be as good as ours."

French explorers and missionaries also used the word to describe the people they encountered in New France, suggesting a people who were, according to a 1606 dictionary, "feral," "of the woods" or "errant." That is to say, the translation of "sauvage" as wild is not incorrect, but it misses the sense of inadequacy or degeneracy that French attitudes and policies proclaimed.

In this way, cultivation became both a suggested course of European settlement and a justification for it: Europeans would take wild places and peoples in hand and, through the introduction of European farming, faith and family, subject them to the yoke of a paternalistic colonial order. French colonists planned to tame moose to carry freight and round up beaver in manageable pens to increase productivity. Settlers like Champlain carefully tended to American grapes and other fruit with real optimism that they could make them taste French.

Across the continent, missionaries and colonial administrators sought to settle indigenous communities into ordered agricultural communities, introduce Christianity and make Native families more like their French counterparts. Both people and place would be cultivated until the differences between them and their French counterparts disappeared.

When Champlain proclaimed to indigenous people, "Our young men will marry your daughters, and we will become one people," he seemed to suggest that Native people would become French through a form of cultivation by white Europeans. The sentiment has since been lauded (and rightly critiqued) by historians and commentators trying to distinguish French American colonialism from its Spanish and English counterparts. Indeed, French colonists invoked the term "sauvage" to proclaim that they were improvers, in contrast to other colonizers who were interested only in gold.

But that was and remains a fantasy grounded in the erasure of Native peoples and cultures. The centuries of genocidal violence, slavery and intentional efforts to disrupt and replace indigenous societies and cultures that followed Champlain's speech expose the racist logic of colonialism, which could not be hidden by pleasantly packaged French plans.

Had Dior simply used the word "sauvage," it might not have prompted so much controversy. But its description of the fragrance further reinforced colonial tropes. For example, the ad describes the sandalwood from which the scent draws much of its character as a "difficult plant to cultivate" that grows in a "harsh, natural environment, [where] each tree battles to spread its branches and thrive." The product also promises a "wild beauty that comes to life on the skin."

And when copywriters explained that Sauvage's creator has made "[t]he fragrance of a new frontier: an interpretation with a rich heady trail that celebrates the magic of wide-open spaces," they leaned into the colonial legacy of the term.

In a statement, Dior defended the campaign, touting its work with Americans for Indian Opportunity, a Native American advocacy organization (which subsequently disavowed its involvement on the campaign.) "The Parfums Christian Dior project is a part of AIO's Advance Indigeneity Campaign to change the misperceptions about Native Americans, to share accurate American history, to build awareness about Native Americans as contemporary peoples and to promote Indigenous worldviews," Dior said. Rather than changing misperceptions, however, the campaign may have reinforced them.

When Champlain and his peers picked the word "sauvage," they deployed it to justify dispossession of indigenous lands and the marginalization of indigenous peoples in the first centuries of European settlement in North America. When Dior promised "[a]n authentic journey deep into the Native American soul," the gap between the company's aims and those of the French missionaries and colonists who established colonies in what are now the United States and Canada disappeared entirely.

Although Dior has pulled the campaign and in a statement apologized for "any offense caused" by it, we can still use this moment to reflect on the erasures that led to a massive company investing in a hugely expensive campaign reinforcing long-standing colonial tropes.

North America has many colonial legacies, and recognizing the violence and racism of Dutch, Spanish, Swedish, Italian, Russian, German and, of course, English and French encounters is the essential work of understanding our history. But simply translating non-English words into familiar Anglo histories of contact with Native American peoples flattens the unique histories of contact and colonization. Exploring this history should lead us to broaden our view, to center unique stories of indigenous resistance and creativity and to insist upon human rights, dignity and self-determination for Native communities today.

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Perspective | The real history behind Dior's Sauvage campaign

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When the French company Christian Dior launched its Sauvage product line, the campaign was met with an eruption of controversy and debate. Unsurprisingly so: The ad featured the rugged landscape of southeastern Utah and a man in Native dress dancing while a voice promised the new products would provide "an authentic journey deep into the Native American soul in a sacred, founding and secular territory."