Colonial Rule in Southeast Asia

The New Imperialism

• In the nineteenth century, a new phase of Western expansion into Asia and Africa began.

• Beginning in the 1880s, European states began an intense scramble for overseas territory.

• Imperialism, the extension of a nation’s power over other lands, was not new.

  • However, the imperialism of the late nineteenth century, called the “new imperialism” by some, was different.

• There was a strong economic motive.

  • Capitalist states in the West were looking for both markets and raw materials, such as rubber, oil, and tin, for their industries.

• Colonies were also a source of national prestige.

  • To some people, in fact, a nation could not be great without colonies.

• In addition, imperialism was tied to Social Darwinism and racism.

• Some Europeans took a more religious and humanitarian approach to imperialism.

• These people believed that the nations of the West should help the nations of Asia and Africa.

Colonial Takeover in Southeast Asia

• The new imperialism of the late nineteenth century was evident in Southeast Asia

• The process began with Great Britain.

  • In 1819, Great Britain, under Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, founded a new colony on a small island at the tip of the Malay Peninsula called Singapore (“city of the lion”).

• During the next few decades, the British advance into Southeast Asia continued.

• Next to fall was the kingdom of Burma (modern Myanmar).

  • The British advance into Burma was watched nervously by France, which had some missionaries operating in Vietnam.

• France was especially alarmed by British attempts to monopolize trade.

  • The French eventually succeeded in making the Vietnamese ruler give up territories in the Mekong River delta.

• In 1884, France seized the city of Hanoi and later made the Vietnamese Empire a French protectorate—a political unit that depends on another government for its protection.

• In the 1880s, France extended its control over neighboring Cambodia, Annam, Tonkin, and Laos.

• After the French conquest of Indochina, Thailand (then called Siam) was the only remaining free state in Southeast Asia.

• Two remarkable rulers were able to prevent that from happening.

  • One was King Mongkut (known to theatergoers as the king in The King and I), and the other was his son King Chulalongkorn.

• One final conquest in Southeast Asia occurred at the end of the nineteenth century.

• In 1898, during the Spanish-American War, United States naval forces under Commodore George Dewey defeated the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay.

• Believing it was his moral obligation to “civilize” other parts of the world, President William McKinley decided to turn the Philippines, which had been under Spanish control, into an American colony.

  • The Filipinos did not agree with the American senator.

• Emilio Aguinaldo was the leader of a movement for independence in the Philippines.

Colonial Regimes in Southeast Asia

• Western powers governed their new colonial empires by either indirect or direct rule.

• Sometimes, a colonial power could realize its goals most easily through cooperation with local political elites.

  • In these cases, indirect rule was used.

• In Southeast Asia, colonial powers, wherever possible, tried to work with local elites.

  • Indirect rule, then, was convenient and cost less.

  • Indirect rule was not always possible, however, especially when local elites resisted the foreign conquest.

• In such cases, the local elites were removed from power and replaced with a new set of officials brought from the mother country.

  • This system is called direct rule.

  • To justify their conquests, Western powers had spoken of bringing the blessings of advanced Western civilization to their colonial subjects.

• The colonial powers did not want their colonists to develop their own industries.

• Plantation owners kept the wages of their workers at poverty levels in order to increase the owners’ profits.

• Nevertheless, colonial rule did bring some benefits to Southeast Asia.

Resistance to Colonial Rule

• Many subject peoples in Southeast Asia were quite unhappy with being governed by Western powers.

  • Sometimes, resistance to Western control took the form of peasant revolts.

• Early resistance movements failed, overcome by Western powers.

• At first, many of the leaders of these movements did not focus clearly on the idea of nationhood but simply tried to defend the economic interests or religious beliefs of the natives.

  • Not until the 1930s, however, did these resistance movements begin to demand national independence.

Empire Building in Africa

West Africa

• Before 1880, Europeans controlled little of the African continent directly.

• West Africa had been particularly affected by the slave trade, but that had begun to decline by 1800.

• As slavery declined, Europe’s interest in other forms of trade increased.

• The growing European presence in West Africa led to increasing tensions with African governments in the area.

• For a long time, most African states were able to maintain their independence.

  • However, in 1874, Great Britain stepped in and annexed (incorporated a country within a state) the west coastal states as the first British colony of Gold Coast.

North Africa

• Egypt had been part of the Ottoman Empire, but as Ottoman rule declined, the Egyptians sought their independence.

• In 1805, an officer of the Ottoman army named Muhammad Ali seized power and established a separate Egyptian state.

  • During the next 30 years, Muhammad Ali introduced a series of reforms to bring Egypt into the modern world.

• In 1854, a French entrepreneur, Ferdinand de Lesseps, signed a contract to begin building the Suez Canal.

  • The canal was completed in 1869.

  • The British took an active interest in Egypt after the Suez Canal was opened.

• The British believed that they should also control Sudan, south of Egypt, to protect their interests in Egypt and the Suez Canal.

  • Britain sent a military force under General Charles Gordon to restore Egyptian authority over the Sudan.

• The French also had colonies in North Africa.

• Italy joined in the competition for colonies in North Africa by attempting to take over Ethiopia, but Italian forces were defeated by Ethiopia in 1896.

Central Africa

• Territories in Central Africa were also added to the list of European colonies

• David Livingstone, as we have seen, was one such explorer.

  • He arrived in Africa in 1841.

  • For 30 years he trekked through unchartered regions.

  • He spent much of his time exploring the interior of the continent.

• When Livingstone disappeared for a while, the New York Herald hired a young journalist, Henry Stanley, to find him. Stanley did, on the eastern shore of Lake Tanganyika, and greeted the explorer with the now famous words, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume.”

  • After Livingstone’s death in 1873, Stanley remained in Africa to carry on the great explorer’s work.

  • In the 1870s, Stanley explored the Congo River in Central Africa and sailed down it to the Atlantic Ocean.

• King Leopold II was the real driving force behind the colonization of Central Africa.

  • Leopold’s claim to the vast territories of the Congo aroused widespread concern among other European states.

East Africa

• By 1885, Britain and Germany had become the chief rivals in East Africa.

• In addition to its West African holdings, Germany tried to develop colonies in East Africa.

• To settle conflicting claims, the Berlin Conference met in 1884 and 1885.

South Africa

• Nowhere in Africa did the European presence grow more rapidly than in the south.

• The Boers, or Afrikaners—as the descendants of the original Dutch settlers were called — had occupied Cape Town and surrounding areas in South Africa since the seventeenth century.

• In the 1830s, disgusted with British rule, the Boers fled northward on the Great Trek to the region between the Orange and Vaal Rivers and to the region north of the Vaal River.

  • The Boers, who believed white superiority was ordained by God, put many of the indigenous (native to a region) peoples in these areas on reservations.

  • The Boers had frequently battled the indigenous Zulu people.

• In the 1880s, British policy in South Africa was influenced by Cecil Rhodes.

  • He gained control of a territory north of the Transvaal, which he named Rhodesia after himself.

  • Rhodes was a great champion of British expansion.

  • Rhodes’s ambitions eventually led to his downfall in 1896.

• This war, called the Boer War, dragged on from 1899 to 1902. Fierce guerrilla resistance by the Boers angered the British.

• In 1910, the British created an independent Union of South Africa, which combined the old Cape Colony and the Boer republics.

Colonial Rule in Africa

• By 1914, Great Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Spain, and Portugal had divided up Africa.

• As was true in Southeast Asia, most European governments ruled their new territories in Africa with the least effort and expense possible.

  • The concept of indirect rule was introduced in the Islamic state of Sokoto, in northern Nigeria, beginning in 1903.

  • The system was basically a fraud because British administrators made all major decisions.

• Most other European nations governed their African possessions through a form of direct rule.

• The French ideal was to assimilate African subjects into French culture rather than preserve native traditions.

Rise of African Nationalism

• As in Southeast Asia, a new class of leaders emerged in Africa by the beginning of the twentieth century.

  • On the one hand, the members of this new class admired Western culture and sometimes disliked the ways of their own countries.

  • On the other hand, many came to resent the for- eigners and their arrogant contempt for African peoples.

• There were few democratic institutions.

• Middle-class Africans did not suffer as much as poor African peasant plantation workers.

• Europeans expressed their superiority over Africans in other ways.

  • Such conditions led many members of the new urban educated class to feel great confusion toward their colonial masters and the civilization the colonists represented.

• During the first quarter of the twentieth century, resentment turned to action.

British Rule in India

The Sepoy Mutiny

• To rule India, the British East India Company had its own soldiers and forts. It also hired Indian soldiers, known as sepoys, to protect the company’s interests in the region.

• In 1857, a growing Indian distrust of the British led to a revolt.

• The major immediate cause of the revolt was the spread of a rumor that the British were issuing their Indian troops new bullets that were greased with cow and pig fat.

• From this beginning, the revolt quickly spread.

• Atrocities were terrible on both sides.

• At Kanpur (Cawnpore), Indians armed with swords and knives massacred two hundred defenseless women and children in a building known as the House of the Ladies.

  • As a result of the uprising, the British Parliament transferred the powers of the East India Company directly to the British government.

• In 1876, the title of Empress of India was bestowed on Queen Victoria.

Colonial Rule

• The British government ruled India directly through a British official known as a viceroy (a governor who ruled as a representative of a monarch), who was assisted by a British civil service staff.

  • British rule in India had several benefits for subjects.

• Through the efforts of the British administrator and historian Lord Thomas Macaulay, a new school system was set up.

• Railroads, the telegraph, and a postal service were introduced to India shortly after they appeared in Great Britain.

• The Indian people, however, paid a high price for the peace and stability brought by British rule.

  • In rural areas, the British sent the zamindars to collect taxes.

• The British also encouraged many farmers to switch from growing food to growing cotton.

• Finally, British rule was degrading, even for the newly educated upper classes, who benefited the most from it.

  • Despite their education, the Indians were never considered equals of the British.

  • The British also showed disrespect for India’s cultural heritage.

An Indian Nationalist Movement

• The first Indian nationalists were upper class and English-educated.

• Many of them were from urban areas, such as Mumbai (then called Bombay), Chennai (Madras), and Calcutta.

• Some were trained in British law and were members of the civil service.

• At first, many preferred reform to revolution, but the slow pace of reform convinced many Indian nationalists that relying on British goodwill was futile.

• In 1885, a small group of Indians met in Mumbai to form the Indian National Congress (INC).

  • The INC did not demand immediate independence but did call for a share in the governing process.

  • The INC had difficulties because of religious differences.

• In 1915, the return of a young Hindu from South Africa brought new life to India’s struggle for independence.

• Mohandas Gandhi was born in 1869 in Gujarat, in western India.

• On his return home to India, Gandhi became active in the independence movement.

Colonial Indian Culture

• The love-hate tension in India that arose from British domination led to a cultural, as well as a political, awakening.

• This revival soon spread to other regions of India, leading to a search for modern literary expression and a new national identity.

• The most illustrious Indian author was Rabindranath Tagore.

• Tagore’s life mission was to promote pride in a national Indian consciousness in the face of British domination.

• Tagore, however, was more than an Indian nationalist.

Nation Building in Latin America

Nationalist Revolts

• By the end of the eighteenth century, the new political ideals stemming from the successful revolution in North America were beginning to influence Latin America.

• European control would soon be in peril.

• Social classes based on privilege divided colonial Latin America.

  • The creole elites were especially influenced by revolutionary ideals.

  • Creoles were descendants of Europeans born in Latin America who lived there permanently.

  • Creoles deeply resented the peninsulares, Spanish and Portuguese officials who resided temporarily in Latin America for political and economic gain and then returned to their mother countries.

  • The creole elites soon began to denounce the rule of the Spanish and Portuguese

• Before the main independence movements began, an unusual revolution took place in the French colony of Saint Domingue, on the island of Hispaniola.

• Beginning in 1810, Mexico, too, experienced a revolt.

  • Hidalgo, who had studied the French Revolution, roused the local Indians and mestizos (people of European and Indian descent) to free themselves from the Spanish

• On September 16, 1810, a crowd of Indians and mestizos, armed with clubs, machetes, and a few guns, formed a mob army to attack the Spaniards.

• The participation of Indians and mestizos in Mexico’s revolt against Spanish control frightened both creoles and peninsulares there.

  • In 1821, Mexico declared its independence from Spain.

• José de San Martín of Argentina and Simón Bolívar of Venezuela, both members of the creole elite, were hailed as the “Liberators of South America.”

• By 1810, the forces of San Martín had liberated Argentina from Spanish authority.

• In January 1817, San Martín led his forces over the Andes to attack the Spanish in Chile.

• The arrival of San Martín’s forces in Chile completely surprised the Spaniards.

• Convinced that he could not complete the liberation of Peru alone, San Martín welcomed the arrival of Bolívar and his forces.

  • By the end of 1824, Peru, Uruguay, Paraguay, Colombia, Venezuela, Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile had all become free of Spain

• In the early 1820s, only one major threat remained to the newly won independence of the Latin American states.

• Distrustful of British motives, United States presi- dent James Monroe acted alone in 1823.

• In the Monroe Doctrine, he guaranteed the independence of the new Latin American nations and warned against any European intervention in the Americas.

• More important to Latin American independence than American words, however, was Britain’s navy.

Difficulties of Nation Building

• The new Latin American nations faced a number of serious problems between 1830 and 1870.

  • Most of the new nations of Latin America began with republican governments, but they had had no experience in ruling themselves.

• Soon after independence, strong leaders known as caudillos came into power.

  • Caudillos ruled chiefly by military force and were usually supported by the landed elites.

• Antonio López de Santa Anna, for example, ruled Mexico from 1833 to 1855.

• Texas gained its independence in 1836 and United States statehood in 1845.

  • Fortunately for Mexico, Santa Anna’s disastrous rule was followed by a period of reform from 1855 to 1876.

• This era was dominated by Benito Juárez, a Mexican national hero.

  • Other caudillos, such as Juan Manual de Rosas in Argentina, were supported by the masses, became extremely popular, and brought about radical change.

• Political independence brought economic independence, but old patterns were quickly reestablished.

• Latin America continued to serve as a source of raw materials and foodstuffs for the industrial nations of Europe and the United States.

• The emphasis on exporting raw materials and importing finished products ensured the ongoing domination of the Latin American economy by foreigners.

  • A fundamental, underlying problem for all of the new Latin American nations was the domination of society by the landed elites.

  • Land remained the basis of wealth, social prestige, and political power throughout the nineteenth century.

Political Change in Latin America

• After 1870, Latin American governments, led by large landowners, wrote constitutions similar to those of the United States and European democracies.

• By 1900, the United States, which had emerged as a world power, had begun to intervene in the affairs of its southern neighbors.

• In 1903, the United States supported a rebellion that enabled Panama to separate itself from Colombia and establish a new nation

• American investments in Latin America soon followed, as did American resolve to protect those investments.

  • Some expeditions remained for many years.

• United States Marines were in Haiti from 1915 to 1934, and Nicaragua was occupied from 1909 to 1933.

• In some countries, large landowners supported dictators who looked out for the interests of the ruling elite.

  • During Díaz’s dictatorial reign, the wages of workers had declined.

• Madero’s ineffectiveness created a demand for agrarian reform.

• Between 1910 and 1920, the Mexican Revolution caused great damage to the Mexican economy.

Economic Change in Latin America

• After 1870, Latin America began an age of prosperity based to a large extent on the export of a few basic items.

• One result of the prosperity that came from increased exports was growth in the middle sectors (divisions) of Latin American society — lawyers, merchants, shopkeepers, businesspeople, school-teachers, professors, bureaucrats, and military officers.

• Regardless of the country in which they lived, middle-class Latin Americans shared some common characteristics.

• The middle sectors in Latin America sought liberal reform, not revolution.