Anthropology has been accused of shoring up the colonial endeavour. How would you support or refute this?

In order to answer this question it is firstly necessary to highlight the issues surrounding the colonial endeavour. We will firstly examine colonialism of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in the context of anthropological development. To illustrate the impact of this we will focus on the African empire and demonstrate the influence of ethnography by giving an example of one particular anthropologist’s input and comments on his project. Finally, drawing on a conclusion there will be an examination of the relationship between anthropology and colonialism aiming to show that the discipline needed colonialism perhaps more than the colonial government would like to admit they needed anthropology.

There is much controversy surrounding anthropology’s relationship to the colonial endeavour and some theorists have argued that European colonial projects provided the impetus for the discipline to grow and develop. The question as to whether anthropology is responsibl...