Friday, March 25, 2011

How does ethnocentricity cause conflict?

On January 26th of year 1788, British first came to the land called Sydney, in Australia. From that island, they found ‘First Australians’ who were described as numbed in the book ‘The Rabbits’ and later they called by ‘Aboriginals’. First time, this contact seems very happy and pleasant to each other. However, their different culture and ethnocentrism caused them to raise a war, which lead by British people.


As British and native Australian had a different ethnocentrism, they become incompatible with each other. However, during that time British already made their mind to take over the Australia, because they thought no one own those lands, because they thought native Australians were not a human, they thought they are animal. From native Australian point of view, they felt dumbfounded, because native Australian owned their lands and British people suddenly came to invade their lands, which were well owned and used by native Australian. When those two situations or ethnocentrism met each other, they solved that problem in severe ways. This is because; they started to kill each other.


After they started a war, the relationships between native Australian and British become extremely worse and both caused some conflicts each other. For example, one native Australian guy called Pamulway burnt all the crops that British made. Also, eh killed the British colonist called McIntyre. Finally, he caught by British and he chopped his head, then his head transported to England. This conflict shows how seriously they hate each other. Other conflict they had was that, the nation called Wiradjuri resist to British, lead by Wndradyne. However, from that war, British won very easily, because British had high technologic weapons. Finally, native Australians asked for peace to British.


These whole situations were started by dramatically different ethnocentrism and cultures. If they had some sympathy between them, they would not go that far, which was killing each other. Surprisingly, both of them extremely hated each other, because; native Australians called British ‘Red devil’ and British called native Australians as ‘Black devils’.