AP Euro: Unit 14.3.2 - Modernity and Imperialism 

American and European Imperialism (cont.)

Influence of Britain

• British East India Company set up coastal trade ports in the early 1600’s.
• British East India Company is a corporation (its goal is to make money) that also has its own personal army.  Their plan is quite brilliant.
  • Stir up previously existing rivalry and tensions between culture groups in India
  • Get them to fight each other.  Sell supplies to both sides. Make money
  • Once both groups are weakened enough, the BEIC army comes in and takes over.  Now can tax the region and make money
• The British slowly expanded their influence from these coastal trade ports inland.

The British East India Company in Action

• The company does both good and bad
  • The Good
    • Improved infrastructure (roads, bridges, etc.)
    • Introduced Western style education and legal processes
    • Tried to end slavery and the caste system
    • Outlawed practices like Sati (widows throw themselves on husband’s funeral pyre)
  • The Bad
    • Forced Indian men to join the military (Sepoys) which served the company
    • Allowed Hindu widows to remarry which undermined their traditional beliefs
    • Allowed Christian missionaries to travel India and try to convert people to Christianity.

The Sepoy Rebellion

• Sepoys were really unhappy
  • FORCED into military service
  • Serving overseas (even just traveling) was an offense to their native religion
  • Could be forced to attack other Indians
  • Forced to use cartridges/bullets coated in cow (sacred to Hindus) and pig (forbidden to Muslims) fat.
• Rose up and began slaughtering the British (many of them colonists, women and children present) in 1857
• Marched to Delhi (old Mughal Capital) and joined forces with the last Mughal ruler
• British crush the revolt, and take a brutal revenge upon the civilian population of India (burn cities, slaughter innocents)
• Brings about huge political and economic changes in 1858

British Colonial Rule

• India becomes a colony under the rule of the British monarchs (not BEIC)
• British sent more troops to India.  Indians have increased taxes to pay for the troops to be stationed in India
• British monarchs appoint a viceroy (a person who governed in the name of the monarch) to India.  Set up a British style government.  Many local princes were allowed to keep their power.
  • Only British people can hold the highest jobs in this new government
• British bring industrialization to India, destroy local textile weaving industry
• Encouraged India’s nomadic people to establish permanent farms, leading to a great amount of deforestation.
• British encouraged the growing of cash crops (like spices) rather than food to feed the country.  Food shortages and famine

An Argument in FAVOR of British Presence 

• Slowly, scars from Sepoy rebellion fade
• A mutual admiration between Indians and some British.
• Rom Mohun Roy was an Indian scholar (spoke/read/wrote at least 7 languages) who argued that India could benefit more from western contact
  • Education system is better.  Founded a Hindu college in Calcutta styled on western universities.
  • British had helped to get rid of caste system, getting rid of child marriage, and stopping Purdah (isolating women in a separate part of the household)
• Roy also wanted to revive Indian culture he felt was worth saving and set up educational societies to pursue this end.  

Indian Nationalism

• Sense of Indian nationalism grows from 1880’s to early 1900’s (break away from Britain and form their own nation)
• Railroads, telegraph lines, and new postal system helped Indians outgrow regional differences and form an Indian national identity that embraced INDIAN diversity
• Educational system put in place by westerners actually weakened their hold as Indians read the ideas of the enlightenment and seek to apply them to India
• Created an Indian National Congress 1885
• Rom Mohun Roy considered the father of Indian nationalism: Learn from the west, but ultimately celebrate India’s traditions and someday make a nation of our own. 

China Was REALLY Big, Stable, and Awesome

• China is the oldest and most advanced nation on Earth.
• Everyone wanted Chinese trade goods, many things made there were ONLY made there
• It makes sense then, that the balance of trade (who buys more from whom).
• China got more of Europe’s money that Europe got from China.
  • China: Trade Surplus
  • Europe: Trade Deficit

China Isolates Itself

• Shortly after the voyages of Zheng He, China underwent a period of political upheaval and changed some of its policies.  
• The Ming Emperor decided to isolate China as much as possible from outside influences. 
• It stayed that way until the middle of the 1800's 

Effects of Isolation

• In the mind of the Chinese emperor, they didn't need to trade with the outside world because they were already self-sufficient.  
• They were the world's most desirable marketplace because they produced pretty much everything from Porcelain (China) to gunpowder, to luxury silk fabric.  Europeans didn't have anything they wanted.
• Like Sub-Saharan Africa, this period of isolation had devastating impacts on China. 
• Once the world's true lone superpower, China began to fall behind European nations as they traded technology, ideas, industrialized, and improved themselves.  By the middle of the 1800's, European technology had greatly surpassed China's.

Balancing Trade = Hypocrisy

• The only resource that England had to sell that helped balance their trade deficit was a plant based drug called opium which grew in India. (Opium is the active ingredient in heroin)
• The Chinese are understandably upset that a foreign government is pushing the trade of a drug to its people (Chinese citizens were getting addicted to opium). Britain doesn’t care.  All it cares about is making money.  Argued for freedom of trade
• Eventually sales of the drug tip the Chinese into trade deficit and the British into surplus.
• Chinese authorities outlaw the drug and executed Chinese dealers.

The Opium War: 1839-42

• British brought gunships and fired on Chinese coastal cities
• The war was very short, and ended with a British victory.  
• The Chinese had to pay the British for the cost of their war (indemnities) and for the destroyed opium, as well as a new humiliatingly unbalanced trade agreement.
• English citizens living in China lived extraterritorially (under ENGLAND’s laws, tried for crimes in ENGLISH court) 
• Britain gained the port of Hong Kong (-2000!) 

Second Opium War 1856-58

• Other European powers, sensing weakness, made their own efforts to gain territory and influence in China. 
  • Russians, French, Italians, Germans, the United States, and even the Japanese all forced the Chinese to give further concessions of territory and trade to Western nations.
• The Second Opium War was fought during a Chinese civil War (Taiping Rebellion) which claimed the lives of between 20 and 30 million Chinese.  
  • This made it easier for western powers to dominate China.

A Divide Among the People

• China was also a torn country in terms of what it wanted.  
  • A majority of the people wanted to adopt more western technology and customs (especially weapons).  
  • However, some of these new ideas threatened the elite's privileged status in society, as well as their traditional Confucian beliefs and practices in the civil service system, which dated back to the 500's AD. 
• New ideas were largely rejected by the elite's.  

Keeping up the Pressure

• China's weakened state and failure to modernize caused further conflicts with Japan, who had become very western and wanted imperial colonies.
  • Sino-Japanese War starts in 1894  
  • They seized Taiwan in 1894 
  • Korean peninsula and much of Manchuria by 1905.  
• Other European powers carved out their own spheres of influence. 
• The US didn’t take any territory, but argued that China should be kept open for everyone to trade in, on an equal basis. Called the Open Door Policy 
  • No-one consulted the Chinese in establishing these guidelines. 

An Attempt at Reform

• In 1898, a young emperor named Guang Xu made it his intention to reform China and make it more “western”
  • Modernize civil service exams
  • Encourage new industry
  • Reform of schools and military 
• Industrialization and reform are the right move, but they threaten the power of China’s noble class.
• Was removed from power and replaced by his aunt Ci Xi, who was more loyal to the existing Chinese nobility.

More Rebellion….More Concessions

• Sick of outside interference in China, the people again rose up and rebelled in what became known as the Boxer Uprising  
• A multi-national force of the US, Europeans, and Japan all came together to crush the rebellion.  
• China was forced to make more concessions to Europe and Japan, but the Chinese nationalist spark refused to die.
• When empress Ci Xi died in 1908, a successful revolution swept over China.
• When the dust settled, reformer Sun Yixian emerged as the president of the new Chinese Republic in 1911.

Japan CHOOSES Isolation

• In the early 1600’s, the Tokugawa Shogunate came to power.
  • Rigid enforcement of feudal system
  • Closed Japan off from outside nations
  • Forbade Japanese from traveling outside of Japan 
• Unlike most other nations, this led Japan to develop a very homogeneous society due to this geographic isolation (the people in Japan are almost ENTIRELY Japanese)
• Suspicious of outsiders: especially Europeans who tried to convert people to Christianity (they were killed if they set foot on Japanese soil). 
  • This policy is known as Gaijin 

Forced to End Isolation

• In 1853, Commodore Matthew Perry (USA) sailed into Edo harbor with a message from President Fillmore
  • End Isolation and open up to trade, or we will attack you
• Japan looked at what happened to China during the Opium wars.  Made the decision to give in to US demands.
• Other European nations approach Japan with similar demands, force Japan into uneven trade agreements by threat of force
• Japan is humiliated.  Revolts sweep through Japan and the Shogun is removed from power.

Japan Looks to the Future

• The 15 year old emperor Mutsuhito was “restored” to power.  Took the name Meiji (means enlightened rule) and began to reform Japan
• Ruled for the next 44 years.  
• Golden Age in Japanese history; period from 1868-1912 dubbed the Meiji Restoration 
• United Japan.  Plan is to adapt to the ways of the western nations so that they would no longer have to give in to their demands.  
• “A rich country, a strong military” became their motto.

Meiji Industrialization

• The real key to catching up with the west was industrializing Japan.
  • Built factories capable of producing high grade steel.  
  • Used it to build a new infrastructure for Japan (railroads, telegraph lines, postal system, etc)
  • People flock to cities, industrial type jobs/lifestyle to what we saw in US/EUR
  • Reformed the economy as well.  
  • Merchants no longer untouchable class
  • Government sets up factories, sells them to wealthy families to further develop them (Kawasaki, Toyota, Mitsubishi, Nissan) known as Zaibatsu
• Women have a secondary role in society

Imperial Japan

• Japan had a flourishing industrial economy, but lacked many of the important natural resources of their own (and buying them was expensive).
  • Decided to take what they needed by force.
• Japan’s first target was Korea (already the center of fierce competition between China, Russia, and Japan for greater influence)
• Japan did the SAME THING that the US did to Japan.  Went in with a strong show of force and demanded that Korea end its isolation and open up to Japanese trade.
  • Totally worked.

Imperial Japan

• Korea was already a tributary state of China, and as Japan made more demands, China became angrier.  
• Led to the first Sino-Japanese War in 1894, Japan won easily.  
  • Gained control of Taiwan, and won trade port access in China (complete with unequal trade agreements)
• Ten years later, Japan fought Russia for control of Korea and Manchuria (a region in China/Russia) in a conflict known as the Russo-Japanese War.  
  • Again, Japan won easily, almost completely destroying Russia’s pacific fleet.  Totally humiliated a European power about 1000 times its own size.

New Japanese Empire

• In 1910, Japan fully annexed Korea, and parts of Manchuria into the Japanese Empire.
  • Created new infrastructure (railroads, telegraphs, etc) and modernized its new territories, but ruled the people harshly.
• Anti-Japanese resentment fostered nationalist movements in both Korea and Manchuria, but both were crushed.
• The world began to see Japan as an Imperial power. COMPETED with west  
• While the western powers were busy with WWI, Japan was busy claiming more territory.
• By the time WWII rolled around, it was already an Empire.