Chapter 32 Notes: The Building of Global Empires
AP Historical Development
Cultural, religious, and racial ideologies justified imperialism.
Social Darwinism: championed the powerful over the weak.
Nationalism: national unity expressed when members feel threatened by outside forces.
Civilizing mission: duty to bring order and enlightenment to distant lands.
Desire to religiously convert indigenous populations.
Increasing questions about political authority and growing nationalism contributed to anticolonial movements.
Anti-imperial resistance: direct resistance within empires and the creation of new states on the peripheries.
Economic imperialism: Industrialized states and businesses practiced it primarily in Asia and Latin America.
Coerced labor: The new global capitalist economy relied on coerced and semi-coerced labor migration.
Slavery.
Chinese and Indian indentured servitude.
Convict labor.
Expansion: States expanded existing overseas empires and established new colonies and transoceanic relationships.
AP Historical Thinking Skills
Sourcing and Situation: Identify the purpose, historical situation, and audience of Rudyard Kipling's "The White Man's Burden".
Contextualization: Explain how modern imperialism relates to nationalism and industrialism.
Argumentation: Explain the difference between modern imperialism of the 19th and 20th centuries and earlier forms of imperialism.
AP Reasoning Processes
Comparison: Explain relevant similarities and differences between settler and non-settler colonies.
AP Chapter Focus
Imperialism factors: industrialization, nationalistic attitudes, and ideologies.
Settler vs. non-settler colonies: whether conquerors lived in the colony or not.
Direct vs. indirect imperialism: whether an imperialist power took over the government of a colony or just controlled its economy.
Asia: Indirect rule in militarily weak empires (Mughal India, Ottoman Empire, Qing China) by European, U.S., and Japanese imperialists to control the economy.
Africa: Direct imperialism with no attention to native cultures.
Globalization: Regions brought into industrialized production, leading to migration, cultural syncretism, and nationalist/racist ideologies.
Consequences:
Competition for colonies led to world wars.
Imperial conquerors brought disease, forced labor, environmental manipulation, medicines, modern transportation, governmental collapse, and ethnic warfare to their colonies.
Created a global capitalist market that enriched the imperialist powers.
Spurred nationalist movements that formed new national identities.
Foundations of Empire
Motives of Imperialism
Tools of Empire
European Imperialism
The British Empire in India
Imperialism in Central Asia and Southeast Asia
The Scramble for Africa
European Imperialism in the Pacific
The Emergence of New Imperial Powers
U.S. Imperialism in Latin America and the Pacific
Imperial Japan
Legacies of Imperialism
Empire and Economy
Labor Migrations
Empire and Society
Nationalism and Anticolonial Movements
Cecil John Rhodes and the Spoils of Imperialism
Diamond and gold discoveries brought European settlers and change to South Africa.
Cecil John Rhodes:
Monopolized diamond mining in South Africa by 1889, controlling 90% of world production.
Prime Minister (1890-1896) of the British Cape Colony.
Envisioned British control over Africa from Cape Town to Cairo.
Annexed Bechuanaland (modern Botswana) in 1885 and Rhodesia (modern Zambia and Zimbabwe) in 1895.
Considered British society the most noble and saw imperial expansion as a duty to humankind.
Imperial Rule: Strong societies dominate weaker neighbors for resources, wealth, territory, and glory.
Industrialization: Equipped Western European states with effective tools and weapons.
Maritime experience: Provided knowledge of the world.
United States and Japan: Joined European states as imperial powers.
Foundations of Empire
Foreign conquest: Arises from a sense of essential need.
Mobilization of political, military, and economic resources.
Arguments: Political, economic, and cultural arguments justify conquest.
Success: Due to sophisticated technologies developed by European industry.
Motives of Imperialism
Modern Imperialism: Domination of European powers, the United States, and Japan over subject lands.
Domination: Occurred through force or trade, investment, and business activities.
Modern Colonialism: Political, social, economic, and cultural structures enabled imperial powers to dominate subject lands.
Settler colonies: Established in North America, Chile, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa.
European agents: Controlled domestic and foreign policies in India, Southeast Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Belief: Imperial expansion and colonial domination were crucial for survival.
Wealth: Merchants and entrepreneurs gained wealth from business ventures.
Cecil John Rhodes: Promoted British imperial expansion after making fortune in diamond and gold mining.
Economic Motives of Imperialism
Reliable sources: Overseas colonies could serve as reliable sources of raw materials.
Rubber, tin, copper, and petroleum.
Rubber trees: Indigenous to the Amazon River basin, but plantations were established in the Congo River basin and Malaya.
Tin: Available from colonies in Southeast Asia.
Copper: Available in Central Africa.
Petroleum: Supplied by the United States and Russia, but Southwest Asia attracted European industrialists and imperialists.
Colonies: Would consume manufactured products and provide a haven for migrants.
Support: Arguments from national economic interest generated support for imperialism.
Political Motives of Imperialism
Geopolitical arguments: Colonies were crucial for political and military reasons.
Strategic sites: Some overseas colonies occupied strategic sites on sea lanes.
Power and prestige: Desire for power and prestige motivated imperialism.
French imperialism: Intended to restore France's international prestige after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871.
Colonies for pride: Public opinion demanded colonies for German pride and validation after nationhood.
Domestic politics: Defuse social tension and inspire patriotism.
Colonial exhibitions: Subject peoples displayed dress, music, and customs for tourists.
Cultural Justifications of Imperialism
Spiritual motives: Missionaries sought converts to Christianity.
Communications: Missionaries often facilitated communications and provided information.
Meeting places: Missionary settlements served as meeting places and distribution centers.
Mission civilisatrice: French imperialists invoked the "civilizing mission" as justification for expansion.
White man's burden: Rudyard Kipling defined the duty of European and Euro-American peoples to bring order and enlightenment to distant lands.
The Birth of Nationalism
Nationalist sentiment: State governments used it for imperial expansion.
National unity: Expressed when members feel threatened by outside forces.
Abyssinian campaign of 1862: The British Conservative party used an incident to whip up nationalist outrage.
Tools of Empire
Technological advantages: Industrialization conferred powerful advantages.
Military technologies: European states competed to develop increasingly powerful military technologies.
Industrialization: Made it possible to produce huge quantities of advanced weapons and tools.
Technologies of medicine, transportation, communication, and war.
Imperial Medical Technologies
Malaria: Common and deadly disease in tropical regions.
Quinine: Effective treatment of malaria became a powerful weapon.
Cinchona tree: Indigenous peoples in Peru used the bark to treat fevers.
Jesuit bark: Worked well against malaria.
Quinine pills: European colonizers kept quinine pills by their bed stands.
Commercial planting: British in India and Dutch in Java began commercially planting cinchona trees.
Transportation Technologies
Steamships: Traveled faster than sailing vessels.
British gunboat Nemesis: Brought the Opium War to a conclusion in 1842.
Construction of new canals: Suez Canal (1859-1869) and Panama Canal (1904-1914).
Railroads: Helped maintain hegemony and organize local economies.
Military Technologies
Firearms: Advanced firearms of the early nineteenth century were smoothbore, muzzle-loading muskets.
Breech-loading firearms: Mid-century European armies used breech-loading firearms with rifled bores.
Rifled machine guns: By the 1870s Europeans were experimenting with rifled machine guns.
Maxim gun: In the 1880s they adopted the Maxim gun.
Battle of Omdurman: British army with twenty machine guns and six gunboats encountered a Sudanese force.
Machine guns and explosive charges killed close to twenty thousand Sudanese.
Communications Technologies
Oceangoing steamships: Reduced the time required to deliver messages.
Telegraph: Exchanged messages even faster.
Submarine cables: Devised reliable submarine cables for the transmission of messages through the oceans.
Monopoly: Provided imperial powers with distinct advantages over their subject lands.