New Imperialism

New Imperialism

1815-1945

Context:

What had changed in the 19th century?

  • Industrial Revolution   * Railroads and steamships   * Both require resources, that they gained from expanding to places like the Americas
  • Capitalism   * Want consumers
  • American Revolution, French Revolution   * Belgium also wanted a piece of Africa
  • Nationalism
  • Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment   * Demand that we focus on material reality   * Western worldview is about property and manipulating the material world
  • Portuguese and Spain fell behind in terms of technology   * Still had wooden boats

In Old imperialism, there were a lot of independent regions in Africa. In new imperialism, only Liberia was independent.

P-

I- steam engine

E- capitalism

C- Enlightenment, Scientific Revolution, race, nationalism, Christianity

E-

S- social Darwinism, White Man’s Burden, Friederich Blumenbach’s racial pyramid

African Colonies:

  • The British had the most colonies   * Mostly near water
  • The French have the Sahara desert
  • The Protestant Germanic world is on the rise
  • Everybody has something in Africa
  • All of the Portuguese colonies were on the coast

Evolution

  • Natural selection
  • Happens to species as a whole, not individuals
  • Survival of the fit
  • Is not theological
  • As the environment changes the species has to once again adapt   * This idea was expanded into race, gender, social class, etc.

Causes

The Berlin Conference of 1884 contributed to the Scramble for Africa.

  • All the European countries divvied up a map of the world to decide who gets what
  • Germans are already winning as it was held in Germany

New ideas included social Darwinism (pseudoscience), the White Man’s Burden, and new nations of race

  • White man’s burden was written by the same author as the Jungle Book, Rudyard Kipling   * He claimed that Native Americans were wild, needed the Europeans to conquer them, were the children of Europeans (were not fully matured), and were half-devil

Johann Friedrich Blumenbach added a 5th race in 1776

  • This was so that he could create a pyramid
  • We still use this racial classification
  • Mixed-race people did not belong to either category

Whiteness is being equated with military power, cleanliness, knowledge

  • Pear’s soap advertisements   * They showed images of black people washing with their soap and becoming white people

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