Essays on Belgians

Though not always elitist, movies are excellent at reflecting the reality and human history, just as poetry and prose are. The movie industry was being developed over the 20th century while the human civilization was being shaken by major military collisions, be they regional or conflicts of world proportions. There was no way the movie industry could sit sluggish in the circumstances, with film directors addressing the most vital social issues of the day. Genocide is one of grimmest crimes committed during the conflicts. Atrocious was the genocide of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire and Jews in Nazi Germany – ...

Political Science

Introduction Belgium was one of the founding members of the current day European Union in the year 1957. Since then, Belgium has continuously campaigning in an active manner for the improvement and expansion of the entire European continent in the global arena. Quite a few of the leading politicians of Belgium have also played substantially pivotal roles in the construction of Europe. Subsequently, the minds and the identity of the Belgians have long been fashioned by the membership of Belgium in the European market. Belgium is officially a popular monarchy constitutionally and also a federal parliamentary democracy. It has a bicameral ...

Also known as the Great War, World War I began on June 1914 when wars were declared by the world’s super power. Due to signed treaties and other forms of agreements between countries, the feud between the first two states led to more disputes among countries associated with the same. Consequently, is safe to state that the First World War was the result of a form of a ripple effect on war declarations and the need to honor the aforementioned treaties. However, according to Hamilton and Herwig, the beginning and events of the Great War were “an accident; it was ...

Writing

Summary of Reading This paper examines ethnocentrism as a source of conflict. The author argues that ethnicity is a unique bond that binds together people who believe to share a common culture, heritage, religion, and language. It is clear from this article that it is difficult for a person to be absorbed into an ethnicity that they do not belong. According to the author, even a prolonged understanding of a given ethnicity does not adequately co-apt an individual to a given ethnicity. This article cites William Graham Sumner as the father of the term ethnocentrism. Ethnocentrism refers to the perception by one ethnic group that ...

Hotel Rwanda movie is based on a true story of a man who against all odds tries to save people in the midst of genocide in Rwanda. It was an organized murder of almost a million Rwandans. He gives hope to people in a country when there is no hope left. Rwanda descends into total chaos and madness and the whole world opts out. Nobody wants to help the Africans as they are viewed as dung. He opens arms to the helpless and by this saves many lives. The movie is all about the atrocities conducted against humanity in Rwanda. The tension that ...

The 1994 Rwandan genocide is perhaps one of the most important events to the African continent. In this event, a nation with one of the smallest land mass in the continent suffered the biggest loss of human lives in its history. Within a short time, about a million people had lost their lives within a span of just one hundred days. Other scholars have argued that number of people murdered in the genocide far exceeds the 1 million mark, about one fifth of the country’s total population. Several governments and human rights groups have taken keen interest in studying the Rwandan case so ...

The issue of race and ethnicity has been a sensitive matter in many governments for many decades. Socio-political aspects combined with economic interest have generated a totally different form of leadership other than the one intended to serve the state and pursue nation building. This new kind of leadership is skewed towards fostering efforts that benefit only a particular ethnic groups or race. The result of such differentiated form of leadership is rampant corruption, violence and in some cases genocide. Several states such as Somalia are now failed states due to political ideologies defined by ethnicity. Africa seems to suffer this problem ...

It is a tragic but all too familiar irony that many modern-day nations might never have existed without colonialism. Such is the case with the central African nation known today as the Democratic Republic of Congo, the second-largest sovereign nation on the African continent. Between the years 1885 and 1908, the Belgian monarchy headed by King Leopold II, first cousin of Great Britain’s Queen Victoria, undertook colonial rule in a region shaped by the river Congo and part of an ancient tribal kingdom. Financial gain provided the impetus for the Belgians, as it had been for the British, Dutch, Portuguese, ...

Introduction

The Rwandan Genocide of 1994 was one of the massacres that country witnessed in the course of its history. The genocide was responsible for the death of approximately 800000 Rwandans in a span of only three months. This death toll translated to about three quarters of the Tutsi community, which was a minority ethnic community in Rwanda. Ever since Rwandan’s colonization, ethnic composition played a significant role in shaping the political structure of the country. This implied that Belgium colonizers had a great impact on influencing the genocide that took place during 1994. With this regard, the principle cause of the genocide can ...