Colonial Encounters in Asia, Africa, and Oceania (Chapter 18)

Vocabulary flashcards about Colonial Encounters

Colonial Rule

The major new element in the historical experience of many millions of Africans, Asians, and Pacific Islanders during the long nineteenth century (1750-1914).

Gutta-percha

A natural latex used to insulate underwater telegraph lines, which was needed as a raw material by Europe in the nineteenth century.

The Imperial Durbar of 1903

An elaborate assembly mounted by colonial authorities in India to mark the coronation of British monarch Edward VII and his installation as the Emperor of India.

Social Darwinism

The idea that European dominance inevitably involved the displacement or destruction of backward peoples or "unfit" races.

Boers

The white descendants of the earlier Dutch settlers in South Africa who fought bitterly for three years before succumbing to British forces in the Boer War (1899-1902).

Apartheid

A racial system in South Africa that provided for separate "homelands," educational systems, residential areas, public facilities, and much more to limit African social and political integration.

Reservations

The large areas to which Indians were confined and in boarding schools to which many of their children were removed, reformers sought to "civilize" the remaining Native Americans there, eradicating tribal life and culture, under the slogan "Kill the Indian and Save the Man."

Buganda

The East African kingdom whose rulers saw opportunity in the British presence and negotiated an arrangement that substantially enlarged their state and personally benefitted the kingdom's elite class.

Nguyen Thai Hoc

A Vietnamese teacher and nationalist who, while awaiting execution in 1930 by the French for his revolutionary activities, wrote about his earlier hopes to cooperate with the French in Indochina in order to serve his compatriots.

Léopold Senghor

A highly educated West African writer and political leader who enumerated the many crimes of colonialism and yet confessed, "I have a great weakness for France."

Swami Vivekananda

One of nineteenth-century India's most influential religious figures who believed that a revived Hinduism offered a means of uplifting the country's village communities.

Reform Effort

The campaign that Indian reformers made against sati, the ban on remarriage of widows, female infanticide, and child marriages, while advocating women's education and property rights.

Congo Free State

The invasion of the Congo, where private companies were operating under the authority of the state, forced villagers to collect rubber, with a reign of terror and abuse that cost millions of lives.

Maji Maji

The massive rebellion known as this occurred in 1904-1905 and persuaded the Germans to end the forced growing of cotton.

Cecil Rhodes

A British-born businessman and politician who made a forture in South African diamonds and became an enthusiastic advocate of British imperialism.

David Livingstone

The British missionary and explorer of Central Africa whose work in exposing the horrors of the Arab slave trade gave him an almost mythic status among Europeans.

Henry Stanley

The British journalist and explorer who gained lasting fame by finding Livingstone, long out of touch with his homeland, deep in the African interior.

From the Cape to Cairo

A famous phrase referencing a north-south corridor of British territories along the eastern side of the continent stretching from South Africa to Egypt.