Transcript Scrambling for Resources, Markets, and Power

The Age of Imperialism
 One
of the most astounding political facts of the
nineteenth century, is that, whereas in 1815 the
nations of the west – Europe and America –
controlled 35 percent of the world’s habitable
territory, they controlled 85 percent by 1914
 The nineteenth century was truly an age of empire,
in which Western Europe came to achieve greater
dominance over a larger portion of the globe than
any civilization every had before
 Western
imperialism was nothing new
 European powers had been influencing
or conquering other parts of the world
since the 1400s
 From the 1700s onward, the United
States grew “from sea to shining sea” by
means of warfare and subjugation of the
native population (Manifest Destiny – a
policy of imperialist expansion viewed as
necessary – expansion as part of the
nation’s destiny)
 But what happened during the 1800s was
that imperialism took on a more
aggressive and systematic character
 Many
historians have come to refer
to the imperial activity of the mid1800s through the early 1900s as the
“new” imperialism
 A variety of interrelated factors
enabled and motivated the nations
of the West to engage in imperial
conquest during the 1800s,
especially during the second half of
the century, when the “new”
imperialism became prevalent
 All of these trends apply mainly to
the nations of Europe and to a
degree, the United States
 One
set of factors was economic
 Industrialization gave the West not just the
ability to conquer other parts of the world, but
also more reasons to do so
 Large-scale industrial production made western
economies hungry for raw materials, many of
which could be seized from less powerful
nations by force
 Conversely, Western nations needed markets for
the goods that their industrial economies
produced
 Colonies were believed to serve well as
potential markets (in retrospect, economic
historians determined this was a mistaken belief
and that colonies were less suitable as markets
than other industrialized countries)
 Military
issues were obviously important
 Industrialization had bestowed new weaponry of
all types upon the armies and navies of the
West: ocean-going fleets powered by steam (and
later, by petroleum), modern rifles, machine
guns, rapid-fire and long-range artillery, and
more
 Only on rare occasions could native populations
resist Western military forces, thanks to
overwhelming numbers, miscalculation on the
part of the invaders, or simple good fortune
 Another military factor was the growing need of
Western nations to maintain bases and coal (or
oil) stations around the world, both for their
navies and civilian fleets
 Steam-
and petroleum- driven ships required
elaborate repair and fueling facilities
 For strategic purposes, Western nations
seized islands and ports around the world
A
social factor – Europe’s rapid population
growth during the 1800s, partly due to new
crops from the Americas – played a role in
prompting imperial activity
 One outlet for excess population growth
during the 1800s was emigration to the
Americas as millions of Europeans made that
choice
 Another outlet was to leave the homeland
and go to the colonies
 Ambitious or sometimes desperate families
or individuals decided to make their fortunes
abroad in this way
 Scientific
knowledge and technological
aptitude were instrumental in allowing
the West to conquer and colonize
 The advances in transportation,
communications, and warfare brought
about by the Industrial Revolution
enabled Western nations to build
empires
 A new wave of exploration during the
1700s and early 1800s had added
considerably to Western nations’
knowledge of Africa, Asia, the Arctic,
Antarctica, and, in South America, the
Amazon basin
 Better maps and greater familiarity
with local environments made it easier
for Westerners to conquer them
 In
addition, medical advances made it possible for
Europeans and Americans to penetrate the tropical
regions more deeply
 Previously, diseases such as sleeping sickness,
yellow fever, and especially malaria had prevented
Westerners from gaining control over the interior
of places like Africa and Southeast Asia
 In other words, these illnesses worked as a natural
guard against invaders
 The development of effective treatments for these
illnesses (especially quinine, which relieved the
symptoms of malaria) changed this
 Finally,
a complex set of cultural factors
motivated Americans and Europeans to
build empires and spheres of influence
 A sense of racial superiority was
widespread among white Europeans and
Americans at the time, and created a
sense that Western nations were
entitled to conquer and colonize the
areas that seemed “backward” or
“primitive”
 Cecil Rhodes, who did much to colonize
Africa for Britain, said famously of his
Anglo-Saxon homeland, “I contend that
we are the finest race in the world, and
the more of it we inhabit, the better it
is”
 In
some cases, this belief was “justified” in
crude and prejudiced terms
 In others, the doctrine of social Darwinism was
used to argue in favor of imperialism
 This was a misguided application of Darwin’s
theories of natural selection, postulating that
the biological principle of “survival of the
fittest” should apply to humanity – meaning that
peoples who were technologically and culturally
advanced were permitted to conquer those who
were less so (it should be noted that Darwin
himself denounced this idea as a perversion of
his scientific work)
 Yet
another cultural impulse behind
imperialism was a genuine conviction that it
was the duty of white Westerners to teach
and modernize the darker-skinned,
supposedly “primitive” peoples of Africa and
Asia
 The English poet Rudyard Kipling gave this
sentiment its most famous label: the “White
Man’s Burden”
 The French spoke of their civilizing mission
(la mission civilisatrice)
 This attitude was well meaning and
heartfelt, but also condescending
 As
a practical undertaking and as a military
enterprise, the West’s domination of the world
was impressive, and it made Europe and
America immensely powerful and rich
 On the other hand, imperialism was inseparable
from bloodshed, racial prejudice, slavery, and
violence
 As English-Polish author Joseph Conrad wrote in
the novel Heart of Darkness – one of the classic
literary depictions of European imperialism –
“The conquest of the earth, which mostly
means the taking it away from those who have a
different complexion or slightly flatter noses
than ourselves, it not a pretty thing when you
look into it too much”
 Moreover,
Europe’s and America’s massive
campaigns of colonization and efforts to
influence other parts of the world left deep
political scars around the globe, many of
which have not yet healed even in the new
twenty-first century
 Both
abroad and at home, European foreign
policy in general became increasingly aggressive
as the century wore on
 During the first half of the 1800s, the balance of
power achieved by the Congress of Vienna
(restored old regimes after the French
Revolution and established a balance of power
in Europe) had largely kept the peace
 During and after the 1850s, war broke out
among the European powers several times: the
Crimean War (1853-1856), in which Russia
fought France and Britain; the wars of Italian
unification, which entangled France, Austria,
and several Italian states; and the three wars
Prussia fought to unify the German states,
especially the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871)
 Almost
the entire non-Western world was either
colonized during the nineteenth century or fell
under the influence of Western nations
 By far the largest and most widespread set of
colonial possessions was Britain’s
 As a famous adage put it, “The sun never sets
on the British Empire”
 France had a sizable empire, as did Belgium and
Netherlands
 Although Austria is not commonly thought of as
a colonizing power, its empire was in eastern
and southeastern Europe
 Russia conquered all of Siberia, much of the
territory to its south, and, for a time, parts of
North America
 After
1870, new countries such as Germany
and Italy also began to build overseas
empires, in an attempt to catch up with
older imperial powers like Britain and France
 Different
powers treated their empires
differently
 The British are considered to have taken the
most enlightened approach to colonization
 Although they took their colonies by force
and exploited them economically – they were
prone to the same sense of racial superiority
as other Westerners – they interfered as little
as possible with local customs
 In keeping with their sense of the “white
man’s burden,” they also introduced
positive social reforms and useful scientific
and technological knowledge
 Likewise, the French subscribed to the
notion of la mission civilisatrice, but were
less consistent about it
 The
Portuguese and the Belgians were known
to be especially harsh, even cruel, masters,
particularly in Africa
 Germany and Italy were also brutal
 The latter used poison gas in conquering
parts of North Africa
 North
America fell mainly under the sway of the
United States, which conquered the entire
western frontier during the nineteenth century
 Motivated by the doctrine of “manifest destiny”
– the belief that it was entitled to the entire
center of the continent between Atlantic and
Pacific – the United States fought Mexico,
negotiated borders with British Canada, and
warred on Native Americans, driving them to
defeat and onto reservations
 The Spanish lost their empire in North America
when Mexico launched a revolution in the 1810s
and 1820s
 The Russians gave up Alaska to the U.S. in 1867
 The
heart of the British Empire was India
 Britain and France had quarreled with
each other over hegemony in India during
the 1700s
 At the Battle of Plassey, in 1757, the
British won a major victory over the
Mughal Empire
 This victory enabled the British to
consolidate their military presence in
India, leading to a rapid decline of French
influence
 Over the next few decades, as French
power in India dwindled, the British went
on to conquer most of the subcontinent
 Until
the late 1850s, India was not administered
directly by the British government, but by the
semiprivate British East India Company, one of
the richest and most powerful business ventures
in world history
 In 1857, the Indian Mutiny (also known as the
Sepoy Rebellion) – which failed, but shocked the
British badly – convinced the government to
assume full control over the colony
 India was exceptionally important to Britain, in
terms of national pride, strategic position, and
economic benefit
 During the late 1800s, one-quarter of the wealth
generated by the entire British Empire came
from India
 The
Sepoy Rebellion began in the spring of 1857
in Bengal among the sepoys - a Sepoy is an
Indian soldier
 The reasons for the rebellion were long standing
and included: attempts by British missionaries
to convert all India to Christianity; ineffectual
command of the army in Bengal; insensitive
recruiting policy and "Europeanization" of the
sepoy regiments and sepoy objections to serving
outside their homeland and traditional areas
 The spark that started the rebellion was the
relatively new objection by sepoys to cartridges
coated with animal grease
 This offended both Hindus and Muslims
 The
part of the world that experienced the most
intense burst of European imperialism near the
end of the century was Africa
 Until the 1880s, only Africa’s coastlines had
been directly colonized or exploited, although
the exploitation had been heavy
 Gold, ivory, foodstuffs, and especially slaves had
been wrested from Africa, either by military
force or economic pressure
 But from 1880 until 1910, European nations
raced madly to take over territory in Africa
 With
better maps, industrial-era weapons,
and effective medicines against tropical
diseases like malaria, European armies and
colonizers were able to penetrate every part
of what the West thought of prejudicially as
the “Dark Continent”
 The “Scramble for Africa” grew so intense
that it almost sparked war in Europe several
times
 The
Berlin Conference of 1884 to 1885, presided
over by Otto von Bismarck, laid down guidelines
for African expansion and played a certain role
in keeping the peace
 Still, competition over African territory caused a
number of diplomatic crises among the
European powers during the early 1900s,
especially the Boer War (1899-1902)
 By 1914, only two nations in Africa remained
free: Liberia, whose independence was
guaranteed by the United States, because it had
been founded by freed American slaves, and
Abyssinia (Ethiopia) which had armed itself with
modern weapons and driven off Italian efforts
 1899-1902
 It
took the vast force of the British Army three
years of fighting, three huge sieges and many
battles with considerable loss of life, to
overwhelm the Boers (Afrikaners) and achieve
victory
 At least 25,000 Afrikaners died in the war, most
of them in concentration camps. The war also
claimed 22,000 British and 12,000 African lives
 The Afrikaners were the descendants of Dutch
and French settlers
 In the end, the Afrikaners were subjected to
British rule
 Despite
its vast size and immense population,
China fell victim to almost every European
nation, as well as the United States
 Though it was not technically colonized, it was
compelled after the Opium Wars to open its
borders and trade with other countries at highly
disadvantageous terms
 However, Southeast Asia was colonized and
influenced by a variety of powers
 It had been longest under European control
 Even
parts of Europe were, in a way, vulnerable
to imperial tendencies
 Southeastern Europe – especially the Balkans –
lay at the crossroads of several empires
 Although this area was the most economically
and culturally backward of Europe, the imperial
ambitions of Russia, Austria, the newly formed
Italy, and the rapidly deteriorating Ottoman
Empire were all centered on it
 Complicating the situation was the intense wave
of nationalism in the region
 Imperialism and nationalism would lead to
deadly consequences in the future