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Imperialism as Seen Through Different Eyes
Listed below are 12 different points of view given on imperialism by a variety of different people. You need to read each point of view and decide whether it favors colonizers (the Europeans) or colonized. Above the line to the left write down your answer and in the text underline the words that made you decide either that it is the colonizers or colonized. Use the first quote as an example.
Remember COLONIZER is a person or country takes over another country (example would be Belgians in Congo)
COLONIZED are local people in the colonies (example would be Africans in Congo)
- The following excerpt comes from the French Society of Colonial and Maritime Studies.
“No one in France ... doubts the benefits of colonization and the advantages which it offers both to the country which undertakes it and to that which receives it. Everyone agrees that colonies offer markets for raw materials, the means of production, the products lacking to the mother-country; that they open markets to all the commerce and all the industries of an old country ...”
"Programme," Bulletin de la société des études coloniales et maritimes, cited in A. Murphy, The Ideology of French Imperialism, 1871-1111. Catholic University of America, 1948, 29.
- An American congressman explains the importance of American control in the Philippines.
“The Philippines are ours forever ... And just beyond the Philippines are China's illimitable markets. We will not retreat from either. We will not renounce out part in
the mission of our race, trustee, under God of the civilization of the world. And we will move forward to our work.... with gratitude... and thanksgiving to Almighty God that He has marked us as His chosen people, henceforth to lead in the regeneration of the world...
Our largest trade henceforth must be with Asia. The Pacific is our ocean ... And the Pacific is the ocean of the commerce of the future ... The power that rules the Pacific, therefore, is the power that rules the world. And, with the Philippines, that power is and will forever be the American Republic.”
Congressional Record, 56th Congress, 1st Session (1900), 704ff.
- Heinrich von Treitschke, a German historian, gives a historical perspective of imperialism.
“All great nations in the foulness of their strength have desired to set their mark upon barbarian lands. All over the globe today we see the peoples of Europe creating a mighty aristocracy of the white races. Those who take no share in this great rivalry will play a pitiable part in time to come. The colonizing impulse has become a vital question for a great nation ...
We ... [in Germany] realise today what opportunities we have missed. The consequences of the last half-century have been appalling, for in them England has conquered the world. Continuous friction left the Continent no leisure to turn its eyes across the seas to where England was capturing everything ... the whole position of Germany depends upon the number of German-speaking millions in the future ... [and) no other course is open to us but to keep the subject race in as uncivilized a condition as possible, and thus prevent them from becoming a danger to the handful of their conquerors ...
We must, and will, take our share in the domination of the world by white races...”
Heinrich von Treitschke, Politics (1897), (B. Dugdale and T. de Bille, trans.) New York, Harcourt, Brace and World, 1963, 64-67, 108. Abridged version of 2-vol. Constable and Co. edition, 1916.
- William Langer provides a philosophical perspective on imperialism.
“But this economic side ... must not be allowed to obscure the other factors. Psychologically speaking, I imagine, the prevalence of evolutionary teaching [about the "survival of the fittest"] was perhaps crucial. It not only justified competition and struggle but introduced an element of ruthlessness and immorality that was most characteristic of the whole movement ... the industrial system, which was tending more and more toward the mechanization of humanity, made inevitable the yearning for escape and action.”
William L. Langer, The Diplomacy of Imperialism. New York, Knopf, 1956, 95-96.
- Heinrich von Treitschke on the benefits of colonies.
“It is madness to say that the exodus of Germans to America is an advantage for us. What good has it done to Germany that thousands of her best sons have turned their backs upon their fatherland because they could not earn their living at home ... every colonizing effort which retains its single nationality has become a factor of immense importance for the future of the world. Upon it depends the share which each people will take in the domination of the earth by the white races. It is quite conceivable that a country without colonies may cease to rank as a great European Power, however strong it may be. Therefore, we must ... see to it that the outcome of our next successful war must be the acquisition of colonies by any possible means .... It is a sound and normal trait in a civilized nation to avert the existing dangers of over-population by colonization on a large scale.”
Von Treitschke, Politics, 65-66, 108.
- The London Times offers its opinion on imperialism.
“While we are lulled to sleep for months by parliamentary statements ... other nations are acting ... While we go talking about a policy of open doors, other nations are consolidating and extending their spheres of exclusive influence at such a rate that there will soon be no door to open ... Are we to go on forever, trying to keep out the ocean with a mop, or are we going to take the world as we find it, and to secure at least some area of Chinese territory where British enterprise may have a chance?”
London Times, July 30, 1898, quoted in Langer, The Diplomacy of Imperialism, 679.
- A British politician explains why Britain should take over the Congo.
“No man can demonstrate to you ... that such a commercial field as this Congo basin promises to be ought to be given to a country like Portugal, because one of her sea captains first sighted the mouth of the Congo 400 years ago .... The Portuguese have had nearly 400 years given them to demonstrate to the world what they could do with the river whose mouth they discovered, and they have been proven to be incapable to do any good with it, and now civilization is inclined to say to them, "Stand off from this broad highway into the regions beyond; let others who are not paralytic strive to do what they can with it to bring it within the number of accessible markets. There are 40,000,000 of naked people beyond that gateway, and the cotton spinners of Manchester are waiting to clothe them Birmingham foundries are glowing with the red metal that shall presently be made into ironwork in every fashion and shape for them, and the trinkets that shall adorn those dusky bosoms; and the ministers of Christ are zealous to bring them, the poor benighted heathen into the Christian fold”
Manchester Chamber of Commerce, Address of Mr. H. Stanley. Manchester. A. Ireland, 1884, 26-27.
- King Leopold II of Belgium sends a letter to his agents in Belgium.
“The task which the State agents have had to accomplish in the Congo is noble and elevated. They have had to carry on the work of civilisation in Equatorial Africa, ... Face to face with primitive barbarity, struggling against dreadful customs, thousands of years old, their duty has been to modify gradually those customs ....
Civilised society attaches to human life a value unknown among savage peoples. ... Animated with a pure sentiment of patriotism, recking little of their own blood [our agents] will care all the more for the natives who will find in them the powerful protectors of life and property, the kindly guardians they need so much.
The aim of all of us ... is to regenerate, materially and morally, races whose degradation and misfortune it is hard to realise...”
La Belgiaue Colonials, August 14, 1898, quoted in Louis L. Snyder, ed. The Imyerialism Readem. Princeton. D. Van Nostrand, 1962, 236-37.
- A French commander living in West Africa expresses his opinion on black Africans in 1810.
“Like the inhabitants of all barbarous countries, the natives here are addicted to many vices, and their characters as liars, thieves, and cheats are notoriously known. If they possess any virtues, I must confess they have entirely escaped my observation ...”
Quoted in Philip D. Curtin, The Image of Africa, 1964, The University of Wisconsin Press, 224.
- An important leader of the British government establishes the rules for settling trade disputes.
“We need not discuss the principles ... They amount to this, that when a merchant differs from a native chief as to their respective rights, the native chief is to be deported.”
Quoted in Robert I. Rotberg, A Political History of Trovical Alilaa, 1965, Harcourt, Brace & World Inc., 248.
- Wilfred Blunt, a British diplomat, offers a different opinion on imperialism.
“The old century is very nearly out, and leaves the world in a pretty pass ... All the nations of Europe are making the same hell upon earth in China, massacring and pillaging and raping in the captured cities as outrageously as in the Middle Ages. The Emperor of Germany gives the word for slaughter and the Pope looks on and approves. In South Africa our troops are burning farms under Kitchener's command, and the Queen and the two Houses of Parliament and the bench of bishops thank God publicly and vote money for the work. The Americans are spending fifty millions a year on slaughtering the Filipinos; the King of the Belgians has invested his whole fortune on
the Congo, where he is brutalizing the negroes to fill his pockets ... The whole white race is revealing openly in violence, as though it had never pretended to be Christian. God's equal curse on them all! So ends the famous nineteenth century into which we were so proud to have been born.”
W.S. Blunt, My Diaries. London. Martin Secker, 1919, I, 464. Quoted by permission of the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
- A missionary provides evidence for Blunt's opinions about imperialism.
“Soon we began talking, and, without any encouragement on my part, they began the tales I had become so accustomed to. They were living in peace and quietness when the white men came in from the Lake with all sorts of requests to do this and to do that ... First came the command to build houses for the soldiers ... Then they had to feed the soldiers, and all the men and women-hangers-on-who accompanied them. Then they were told to bring in rubber. This was quite a new thing for them to do ... "What strange white men to give us cloth and beads for the sap of a wild vine.- They rejoiced in what they thought was their good fortune. But soon the reward was reduced until they were told to bring in the rubber for nothing. To this they tried to demur, but to their great surprise several were shot by the soldiers, and the rest were told, with many curses and blows, to go at once or more would be killed. Terrified, they began to prepare their food for the fort-night's absence from the village ... The soldiers discovered them sitting about. "What, not gone yet!" Bang! bang! bang! And down fell one and another dead, in the midst of wives and companions. There is a terrible wail, and an attempt made to prepare the dead for burial, but this is not allowed. All must go at once to the forest ... Many died in the forests from exposure and hunger, and still more. from the rifles of the ferocious soldiers in charge of the post. In spite of all their efforts, the amount (of rubber] fell off, and more and more were killed ... Lying about in the grass, within a few yards of the house I was occupying, were numbers of human bones, in some cases complete skeletons. I counted thirty-six skulls, and saw many sets of bones from which the skulls were missing.”