Differing Perspectives on Imperialism WHAP/Napp

“For most of Africa, mainland Southeast Asia, and the Pacific islands, colonial conquest came later, in the second half of the nineteenth century, and rather more abruptly and deliberately than in India or Indonesia. The ‘scramble for Africa,” for example, pitted half a dozen European powers against one another as they partitioned the entire continent among themselves in only about twenty-five years (1875 – 1900). European leaders themselves were surprised by the intensity of their rivalries and the speed with which they acquired huge territories, about which they knew very little.

That process involved endless but peaceful negotiations among the competing Great Powers about ‘who got what’ and extensive and bloody military action, sometimes lasting decades, to make their control effective on the ground. Among the most difficult to subdue were those decentralized societies without a formal state structure. In such cases, Europeans confronted no central authority with which they could negotiate or that they might decisively defeat. It was a matter of village-by-village conquest against extended resistance. As late as 1925, one British official commented on the process as it operated in central Nigeria: ‘I shall of course go on walloping them until they surrender. It’s a rather piteous sight watching a village being knocked to pieces and I wish there was some other way, but unfortunately there isn’t.’

The South Pacific territories of Australia and New Zealand, both of which were taken over by the British during the nineteenth century, were more similar to the earlier colonization of North America than to contemporary patterns of Asian and African conquest. In both places, conquest was accompanied by massive European settlement and diseases that reduced native numbers by 75 percent of more by 1900. Like Canada and the United States, these became settler colonies, ‘neo-European’ societies in the Pacific. Aboriginal Australians constituted only about 2.4 percent of their country’s population in the early twenty-first century, and the indigenous Maori were a minority of about 15 percent in New Zealand.” ~ Ways of the World

Main Points of Passage:

Notes:
  1. The Age of Imperialism
  1. Nineteenth century was Europe’s age of global expansion
  2. Behind Europe’s expansion lay the Industrial Revolution
  3. Europe needed to sell its own products
  4. Wealthy Europeans also saw social benefits to foreign markets, which served to keep Europe’s factories humming and its workers employed
  5. What made imperialism so broadly popular in Europe was nationalism
  6. Industrialization also provided new means for achieving goals
  7. Steam-driven ships, moving through the Suez Canal  faster
  8. Underwater telegraph made possible almost instant communication
  9. Discovery of quinine to prevent malaria reduced European deaths in tropics
  10. Breech-loading rifles and machine guns increased Europe’s advantage
  1. New European Attitudes
  1. Europeans developed a secular arrogance that fused with or in some cases replaced notions of religious superiority
  2. Chinese, who had been highly praised in 18th century, seen in 19th century as weak, cunning, conservative, and a distinct threat, the “yellow peril”
  3. African societies demoted in 19th century in European eyes to the status of tribes led by chiefs as a means of emphasizing their “primitive” qualities
  4. New kind of racism, expressed now in terms of modern science
  5. Europeans saw a hierarchy of races, with whites on top and less developed “child races” beneath them
  6. Europeans saw imperialism as inevitable, natural outgrowth of superiority
  7. Some Europeans adopted “social Darwinism,” though not necessarily shared by Darwin himself, a racist “survival of the fittest”
  8. Another viewpointa genuine, if condescending, sense of responsibility to the “weaker races”expressed in poem “The White Man’s Burden”
  1. Imperialism and China
  1. Stunning reversal of fortune for a country that in Chinese eyes was the Middle Kingdom
  2. Robust economy and American food crops enabled massive population growth but no Industrial Revolution
  3. Corruption was endemic and harsh treatment of peasants was common
  4. Taiping Rebellion set much of China aflame between 1850 and 1864
  1. Ideology was based on a unique form of Christianity
  2. Hong Xiuquan (1814-1864) proclaimed himself younger brother of Jesus
  3. Sent to cleanse world and establish “heavenly kingdom of great peace”
  4. Called for abolition of private property; radical redistribution of land; equality of men and women; end of foot binding, prostitution, and opium smoking; and organization of society into sexually segregated camps
  5. Denounced Qing dynasty as foreigners who had “poisoned China”
  6. For a time, days of Qing dynasty appeared to be over but divisions within Taiping leadership provided an opening for Qing dynasty
  7. By 1864, the rebellion was crushed
  1. Shifting balance of global power led to famous Opium Wars
  2. British began to use opium, grown in India, to cover trade imbalance
  3. By 1830s, an enormously profitable and highly addictive drug in China
  4. By 1836, after a debate on whether to legalize the drug or crack down on its use, emperor decided on suppression
  5. Chinese seized and destroyed without compensation more than 3 million pounds of opium from Western traders
  6. British determined to teach Chinese a lesson began first Opium War in 1839
  7. Treaty of Nanjing, which ended conflict in 1842, largely on British terms, imposed numerous restrictions on Chinese sovereignty
  8. Chinese had to pay a $21 million indemnity to British and ceded Hong Kong
  9. Also required China to open five ports to trade and granted foreigners right to live in China under their own law (extraterritoriality)
  10. Western nations plus Japan and Russia carved out spheres of influence
  11. Chinese authorities were not passivetried applying traditional Confucian principles with very limited and cautious borrowing from West
  12. Their effort was known as “self-strengthening” but resisted by scholars
  13. Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists, “Boxers” killed numerous Europeans and Chinese Christians in Boxer Rebellion in 1900 but failed
  14. But an immensely powerful force of Chinese nationalism, directed against both the foreign imperialists and the foreign Qing dynasty, developed
  15. 1911  Qing Dynasty collapsed  the last Dynasty of China

Complete the Review Quilt Below (Place Key Points in Each Box):

The Age of Imperialism: / Industrialization and Imperialism: / “Scramble for Africa”: / European Views of Chinese in 1800s:
European Views of Africans in 1800s: / Berlin Conference: / Social Darwinism: / White Man’s Burden:
Middle Kingdom: / Problems in China in the 1800s: / Taiping Rebellion: / Goals of Taiping Rebels:
Outcome of Taiping Rebellion: / Opium in China and Reversing Trade Imbalance: / First Opium War (Causes and Effects): / Treaty of Nanjing:
Hong Kong: / Spheres of Influence: / Boxer Rebellion: / 1911 in China:

Strayer Questions:

  • In what ways did the Industrial Revolution shape the character of nineteenth-century European Imperialism?
  • What contributed to changing European views of Asians and Africans in the nineteenth century?
  • What accounts for the massive peasant rebellions of nineteenth-century China?
  • What was the impact of Western pressures on China during the nineteenth century?
  • Why was China unable to respond effectively to mounting pressures from the West in the nineteenth century?

  1. Land redistribution, reforms to simplify Chinese writing, equality for women, and armed struggle were major features of which pair of Chinese movements?
(A)Taiping Rebellion, Communist
(B)May Fourth Movement, Taiping Rebellion
(C)Nationalist, Taiping Rebellion
(D)May Fourth Movement, Communist
(E)Nationalist, Boxer Rebellion
  1. Which of the following best describes China’s trade relations with the rest of the world by about 1750?
(A)Export of Chinese manufactured and luxury goods in exchange for Western manufactured and luxury goods
(B)Export of Chinese manufactured and luxury goods in exchange for silver
(C)Import of Western manufactured and luxury goods in exchange for silver
(D)Negligible levels of trade with the rest of the world since China produced all it needed
(E)Mercantilist expansion colonizing the Philippines, Indonesia, and Southeast Asia
  1. Which does NOT belong in a group of nations that achieved territorial concessions in China by 1914?
(A)Japan (E) Italy /
  1. Which of the following does NOT belong in a list of Chinese movements resentful of foreign domination?
(A)Boxer Rebellion
(B)May Fourth Movement
(C)Tanzimat Reform Movement
(D)Chinese Communist Movement
(E)Kuomintang (Nationalist) Movement
  1. Which thinker is most closely associated with formulating the theories of “Social Darwinism”?
(A)Karl Marx
(B)Jean-Jacques Rousseau
(C)Thomas Hobbes
(D)Herbert Spencer
(E)Charles Darwin
  1. Which of the following was a new Western motive for overseas territorial expansion in the industrial era?
(A)Missionary drive to convert non-Western peoples to Christianity
(B)Seizure of land to be put to use raising cash crops
(C)Drive to dominate sources of precious minerals and metals
(D)Need for raw materials for factory production
(E)Access to new markets for sale of Western manufactured goods

Thesis Statement: Comparative: Imperialism: Africa and China

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