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they would have been harder to subdue and exploit.
    Nonetheless, in spite of the often terrible and disproportionate retribution for opposing the colonial powers, many African nations resisted the foreign intrusion and acquisition of their lands and property wherever they could. The Ashanti waged four wars with the British during the nineteenth century; Samory Touré fought French expansion in western Africa andthe Sudan for decades, while the Zulus famously battled the British in 1879; and the Hehes of German East Africa (who live in what is now modern-day Tanzania) fought the colonial administration in the early years of the twentieth century. Some African communities played imperialist forces off each other in a desperate attempt to ensure their survival as the Great Powers fought for control of the continent's human beings, rubber, gold, ivory, diamonds, cacao, timber, and fertile lands. Nevertheless, the gun proved far superior to magic, or the spear, shield, and bow and arrow. Tens of thousands of native Africans were killed mercilessly so the newcomers could access their wealth or settle on their lands. Eventually, the military power of the intruders overwhelmed Africa, and the Europeans carved its territory into spheres of control. Overwhelmed, many Africans were hauled onto reservations.
    Perhaps nothing from the West, however, had greater power over conquered natives worldwide than the legal and economic systems the imperial powers imposed, along with exposure to the Bible. Before the missionaries came to sub-Saharan Africa in the mid- to late nineteenth century, contact beyond the coasts had mainly involved trade in slaves and ivory; Islam, which had been in Africa almost since its beginning in the seventh century CE, generally remained confined to the regions north of the Sahel and on the coast; and neither Arabs nor Europeans made much effort to introduce their cultures to the natives in the hinterlands.
    Culture in Africa had remained mostly oral, with the tenets, triumphs, and troubles of its peoples transmitted from generation to generation through word of mouth or tradition. When written culture finally arrived in sub-Saharan Africa, especially with the missionaries, Africans were mesmerized by the records that were proclaimed to be the words of God.
    While the native peoples knew and worshipped God, they didn't know that anything had been written about him. TheBible was presented to the inhabitants as more relevant to their lives than the oral knowledge, traditions, and wisdom of the culture that had sustained them up to that point. They were told that Christianity not only represented a better expression of devotion than their own cultural practices, but indeed was the true faith; to question its authority or that of those who interpreted it was a sin and indeed heretical. To local peoples all around the world, including Africa, the Bible became the entry point to a new way of life that was guided by a new priesthood, whose power and authority were reinforced by the conquerors' guns. If some parts of the Bible contradicted the traditional wisdom of the local community's ancestors or were incomprehensible, what was needed, the natives were told, was not any effort to explain God's mysteries, but faith, and faith alone.
    Missionaries certainly provided an opportunity for communities to become literate—though only the Bible was available to read. Rather than take the foreign scriptures as works of human beings inspired by the Divine, however, the native peoples took them to be the literal words of God, whether dictated or even written by God himself. Neither the missionaries nor teachers saw the need to correct such misinformation; often they believed it themselves.
    However well-meaning the missionaries may have been in spreading what they perceived to be the Good News of Jesus Christ, the result of their evangelism was the beginning of a deep cultural inferiority complex among their African converts. Many