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Imperialism and Empire
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Imperialism
• Imperialism is a term associated with the
expansion of the European powers, and later the
US and Japan, and their conquest and
colonization of African and Asian societies,
mainly from the 16th through the 19th Centuries
• Was effected not just through the force of arms,
but also through trade, investment, and business
activities that enabled the imperial powers to
profit from subject societies and influence their
affairs without going to the trouble of exercising
direct political control
Motivations
• Many Europeans came to believe that
imperial expansion and colonial
domination were crucial for the survival of
their states and societies
• Motivations can be grouped as economic,
political, and cultural
Economic Motives
• Overseas colonies could
serve as reliable sources
of raw materials not
available in Europe that
came in demand
because of
industrialization
– Rubber in the Congo River
basin and Malaya
– Tin in southeast Asia
– Copper in central Africa
– Oil in southwest Asia
Rubber trees in Malaya
Political Motives
• Some overseas colonies
occupied strategic sites
on the world’s sea lanes
• Others offered harbors or
supply stations for
commercial and naval
ships
• Foreign imperialist
ventures were useful in
defusing social tensions
and inspiring patriotism at
home, often between
industrialists and
socialists
Cultural Justifications
• Christian missionaries saw Africa and Asia as
fertile ground for converts and often served as
intermediaries between imperialists and subject
peoples
• Other Europeans sought to bring “civilization” to
subject peoples in the form of political order and
social stability
• Cecil Rhodes believed, “We (the British) are the
finest race in the world and the more of the world
we inhabit, the better it is for the human race.”
Technologies that made
Imperialism Possible
• Transportation
• Military
• Communications
Cartoon showing China
being divided by the
United Kingdom,
Germany, Russia,
France, and Japan
Transportation Technologies
The USS
Monocacy was
used to protect US
interests along the
Yangtze River in
China
• Steamships allowed imperial powers to travel
upriver much further than sailboats so
imperialists could project power deep into the
interior regions of foreign lands
Transportation Technologies
• The construction of new canals enhanced
the effectiveness of steamships and the
building of empires by enabling naval
vessels to travel rapidly between the
world’s seas and oceans
• They lowered the costs of trade between
imperial powers and subject lands
Suez Canal
• Between 1859 and 1869,
the British constructed the
Suez Canal which links
Port Said on the
Mediterranean Sea and
Suez on the Red Sea
• Allows two-way north-south
water transport from
Europe to Asia without
circumnavigating Africa
• In 1882 the British army
occupied Egypt to ensure
the safety of the canal
which was crucial to British
communications with India
1869 opening of the Suez
Canal at Port Said
Military Technologies
• Breech-loading
firearms with rifled
bores provided
European armies
with an arsenal
vastly stronger than
any other in the
world
• European armies
could impose
colonial rule almost
at will
British soldiers show a Maxim gun
to an elderly Zulu chief in 1901
Communications Technologies
• Oceangoing steamships
reduced the time required for
imperial capitals to deliver
messages to colonial lands
• In the 1850s engineers began
developing submarine
telegraph cables to carry
messages through oceans
• By 1902, cables linked all parts
of the British Empire
throughout the world
Insignia of the British
Indian Submarine
Telegraph Company
Case Study
Berlin Conference and European
Imperialism in Africa
Africa
• Until 1875, Europeans
maintained a limited
presence in Africa
• Around then, the
adventures and reports of
explorers such as David
Livingstone, Henry
Stanley, Richard Burton,
and John Speke began to
excite merchants about
business possibilities in
Africa
Richard Burton explored
east Africa with John
Speke, seeking the source
of the Nile
Africa: Berlin Conference
• Tensions among the European powers seeking
African colonies led to the Berlin West Africa
Conference (1884-1885), during which
delegates from 14 European states and the US
(no Africans were present) devised the rules for
the colonization of Africa
• The conference produced an agreement that
any European state could establish African
colonies after notifying the others of its intentions
and occupying previously unclaimed territory
Africa: Berlin Conference
• The Berlin Conference gave European
diplomats the justification they needed to draw
lines on maps and carve Africa into colonies
• By the turn of the century, all of Africa was
divided into European colonies except for
Ethiopia, where native forces had fought off
Italian efforts at colonization, and Liberia, a small
republic populated by freed slaves that was
effectively a dependency of the US
Colonial Rule
• Three types
– Concessionary companies
– Direct rule
– Indirect rule
Concessionary Companies
• This was the earliest approach to colonial rule
• European governments granted private companies large
concessions of territory and empowered them to
undertake economic activities such as mining, plantation
agriculture, or railroad construction
Stamps issued by the Mozambique Company which received a 50year administrative charter from Portugal in 1891
Concessionary Companies
• This system allowed
European
governments to
colonize and exploit
immense territories
with only a modest
investment, but the
brutal practices of the
private companies
produced a public
outcry and the
imperial countries
decided to establish
their own rule
The Imperial British East Africa
Company began work on the
Uganda Railway in 1896. 2,500
workers died during the
construction.
Direct Rule
• The concessionary
companies gave way to
direct or indirect imperial
rule
• Under direct rule,
administrative districts
headed by European
personnel collected
taxes, recruited labor and
soldiers, and maintained
law and order
• Direct rule was typical of
the French colonies
French colonial administrator
Louis Léon César Faidherbe
served as governor of Senegal
from 1854 to 1861 and from 1863
to 1865. He transformed the
colony into the dominant political
and military power in West Africa.
Direct Rule
• Administrative boundaries intentionally cut
across existing African political and ethnic
boundaries in order to divide and weaken
potentially powerful indigenous groups
• Direct rule aimed at removing strong kings and
other leaders and replacing them with more
malleable people
• The underlying principle was to keep African
populations in check and permit European
administrators to engage in a “civilizing mission”
Indirect Rule
• Indirect rule exercised control over subject
populations through indigenous institutions
such as existing “tribal” authorities and
“customary laws”
• Indirect rule work in places where Africans
had already established strong and highly
organized states, but elsewhere erroneous
assumptions about the “tribal” nature of
African societies caused problems
Later Problems
• The invention of rigid tribal categories and the
establishment of artificial tribal boundaries
became one of the greatest obstacles to nation
building and regional stability in much of Africa
during the second half of the 20th Century
• The arbitrary boundaries of the Berlin
Conference did not take into consideration the
natural divisions of the African people (religion,
culture, language, ethnicity, etc)
Later Impacts
• When decolonization began in the 1950s,
loyalties to these natural groups were often
stronger than those to the arbitrarily-created
state, leading to civil unrest in many countries
• After independence, the dominant nationalist
movements and their leaders tended to install
themselves in virtually permanent power and
tried to establish single-party states
Berlin Conference
• Explain the European imperialism in Africa
in terms of the economic, political, and
cultural justifications of imperialism
Case Study:
Mahan, the Spanish-American
War, and US Imperialism
Albert Thayer Mahan
• US naval officer who lived from 1840 to
1914
• Wrote The Influence of Sea Power
Upon History, 1660-1783 and The
Influence of Sea Power upon the
French Revolution and Empire, 17931812
• Considered “sea power” to include the
overlapping concepts of command of
the sea through naval superiority and
that combination of maritime
commerce, overseas possessions, and
privileged access to foreign markets
that produces national “wealth and
greatness”
Albert Thayer Mahan
• Advocated
– “that overbearing power on the sea which drives the
enemy’s flag from it, or allows it to appear only as a
fugitive”
– “(1) Production; (2) Shipping: (3) Colonies and
Markets– in a word, sea power”
• Thought the Navy should be used offensively
and that its principle object should be
destruction of the enemy’s fleet
– Destroying the enemy’s battle fleet would in turn
cause his merchant fleet to find the sea untenable
Albert Thayer Mahan
• Increasingly became an imperialist in order to
gain control of the resources the US needed to
best use its naval power
– “by 1890 the study of the influence of sea power and
its kindred expansive activities upon the destiny of
nations converted me” to an imperialist (Mahan,
1901)
• Wrote “The Isthmus and Sea Power” in 1893 in
which he argued that building a Central
American canal would require the US to vastly
increase its naval strength to protect its interests
from European competition
Albert Thayer Mahan
• In 1890 Mahan warned that opening the
canal would immediately place the West
Coast in jeopardy and that “it should be an
inviolable resolution of our national policy,
that no foreign state should henceforth
acquire a cooling position within three
thousand miles of San Francisco,-- a
distance which includes the Hawaiian and
Galapagos islands and the coast of
Central America”
US and Hawaii
• In 1875 the US claimed a
protectorate over Hawaii,
where US entrepreneurs
had established highly
productive sugarcane
plantations
• In 1893 a group of
businessmen and
planters overthrew Queen
Liliuokalani and invited
the US to annex Hawaii
• Hawaii became a US
possession in 1898
Queen Liliuokalani
US: Spanish-American War
(1898-1899)
• The US had large business
interests in Puerto Rico and
Cuba, the last remnant’s of
Spain’s American empire
• In 1898 the US battleship
Maine exploded and sank in
Havana harbor
• US leaders suspected
sabotage and declared war
• It was an easy US victory
and after the SpanishAmerican War the US
emerged as a major
imperial and colonial power
Albert Thayer Mahan
• In the Caribbean,
the US took
possession of
Puerto Rico and
Cuba
• Mahan predicted
Puerto Rico was
to the future
Panama Canal
and to the West
Coast what Malta
was to British
interests in India
and beyond
US and Panama
• In 1903 the US supported a rebellion against Colombia and helped
rebels establish a breakaway state of Panama
• In exchange for the support the US won the right to build a canal
across Panama and control the adjacent territory known as the
Panama Canal Zone
• The Canal opened in 1914
Panama Canal
• Between 1904
and 1914, the
US built the
Panama Canal
which links the
Atlantic and
Pacific Oceans
without having
to transit Cape
Horn
Gatun locks under construction in 1910
US and Central America
• The Canal was part of a long tradition of US
interest in the Caribbean area
• In 1823 President James Monroe issued the
Monroe Doctrine that warned European states
against imperialist designs in the western
hemisphere
– Any European attempt to reassert control over former
colonies or to establish new ones would be
considered as a threat against the US and an act of
provocation
• The Monroe Doctrine served as a justification for
US intervention in hemispheric affairs
Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe
Doctrine
• In 1904 the government of the
Dominican Republic went
bankrupt
• President Theodore Roosevelt
feared that Germany and other
nations might intervene forcibly
to collect their debts
• Roosevelt asserted that “in the
Western Hemisphere the
adherence of the United States
to the Monroe Doctrine may
force the United States,
however reluctantly, in flagrant
cases of such wrongdoing or
impotence, to the exercise of an
international police power....”
Cartoon portraying Roosevelt
as an international policeman
wielding his “big stick”
Early 20th Century US Interventions
in Latin America
• Cuba
• Dominican Republic
• Nicaragua
• Honduras
• Haiti
US and the Pacific
• The Spanish-American
War also resulted in
American victories in the
Pacific where the US
took possession of the
Philippines and Guam
• Prior to that Mahan’s
expansionist vision had
“reached not past
Hawaii,” but now it
encompassed the
Asiatic mainland
Commodore Dewey destroyed
the Spanish fleet in a single
day at the Battle of Manila.
Mahan and the Pacific
• Mahan saw US expansion in Asia as being
not the product of military force but of
peaceful commercial penetration
• He saw US control of the Panama Canal,
Hawaii, and the Philippines as “stepping
stones to the two great prizes: the Latin
American and Asian markets”
The “Open Door”
• Secretary of State John Hay issued
a series of notes to the European
powers in 1899-1900 articulating
the concept of the “Open Door” in
China
• The idea was to secure
international agreement to the US
policy of promoting equal
opportunity for international trade
and commerce in China
• Hay proposed a free, open market
and equal trading opportunity for
merchants of all nationalities
operating in China
The “Open Door”
• European acceptance of the proposal was
largely conditional but Hay nonetheless declared
agreement
• The Boxer Rebellion of 1900 threatened the
principle of the Open Door as foreign powers,
including the US, intervened in China and in
some cases secured their own concessions and
areas of special interest along the way
• Still the Open Door policy represented the
growing American interest and involvement in
East Asia at the turn of the century
Mahan, the Spanish-American War,
and US Imperialism
• Discuss US imperialism around the turn of
the century in terms of the diplomatic,
informational, economic, and military
instruments of power
Practical Exercise:
China and a North Korean
Collapse
The Collapse of North Korea
• Kim Jong Il’s “Hermit Kingdom” in North Korea
will one day inevitably collapse and various
world powers will rush to fill the vacuum
– The US, which has maintained a substantial troop
presence in South Korea since the end of the Korean
War, will likely seek to reunite the Korean Peninsula
under a democratic government. It will also want to
ensure North Korea’s nuclear weapons do not end up
in the wrong hands.
– South Korea will be divided in its desire for
reunification. On the one hand it will want to reunify
based on historic nationalism. On the other, it
certainly will not want to absorb North Korea and all
its economic and social problems immediately.
The Collapse of North Korea (cont)
– China will desire to maintain some sort of a buffer
between itself and democratic South Korea and will
also want to avoid a destabilizing flood of North
Korean refugees across its border. It will also want to
maximize economic gain from any outcome,
especially access to the ports in northern Korea.
– Russia will want to prevent any further encroachment
by China on Russia’s already declining influence in
the Far East.
– Japan’s proximity to Korea would likely cause Japan
to suffer from the potential economic competition
posed by a reunified Korea. Also Koreans have a
longstanding hatred for Japan as a result of Japan’s
brutal occupation of Korea before and during WWII.
The Collapse of North Korea
• Role Players
– South Korea
– China
– US
– Russia
– Japan
• How will each nation respond to the
struggle to fill the vacuum created by a
North Korean collapse?