Download CHAPTER 26 – INDIA and Africa, 1800-1945

CHAPTER 26 – INDIA, THE ISLAMIC HEARTLANDS, AND AFRICA,
1800-1945
GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES
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How did Western domination affect South Asia, the Islamic heartlands, and
Africa in the nineteenth century?
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How did these societies develop ideologies of resistance that helped them achieve
independence?
CHAPTER 26 LEARNING OBJECTIVES
THE INDIAN EXPERIENCE
British Dominance and Colonial Rule
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Summarize the variety of methods used by the British to gain control over India
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Comment on the Mutiny of 1857 and analyze its historical significance
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Characterize the relationships between the British and their Indian subjects
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Describe the impact of the British education system on Indian cultures
From British Crown Raj to Independence
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Outline the changes in the relationship between the British and their Indian
subjects after 1857
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Note the ways in which Indians resisted British rule
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Sketch the divisions within Indian society that hampered unified resistance to the
British
THE ISLAMIC EXPERIENCE
Islamic Responses to Declining Power and Independence
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Understand the reasons for the decline of Islamic preeminence
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Summarize the debates among Islamic leaders about how to respond to emerging
Western dominance
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Explain the ideology of the Wahhabis
Western Political and Economic Encroachment
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Outline how Western powers gained economic and political power within the
Islamic empires
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Comment on the historical significance of Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt
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Note how involvement in the Islamic empires increased conflict among European
nations
The Western Impact
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Explain how Western influences impacted Iran
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Describe how government opponents resisted the Qajar Shah’s cooperation with
the British and how this resistance affected Iranian society
Islamic Responses to Foreign Encroachment
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Evaluate the success of Islamic efforts to emulate Western ideas and institutions
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Discuss how some Islamic leaders attempted to integrate Western and Islamic
ideas
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Describe how women became involved in the Islamic reform movements of the
late 1800s and early 1900s
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Summarize the ideologies of the leaders who wished to purify or revive Islam in
the face of Western intervention
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Comment on the rise of nationalist movements in the Islamic world
THE AFRICAN EXPERIENCE
New States and Power Centers
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Define the mfecane, and analyze the reasons for its occurrence
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Summarize the economic developments in East and Central Africa during the
1800s
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Explain the consequences of the decline of the slave trade in West Africa during
the 1800s
Islamic Reform Movements
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Summarize the status of Islam across Africa before 1800
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Describe the jihad movements that spread across Africa during the nineteenth
century
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Note the ideology of Usman Dan Fodio
Increasing European Involvement: Exploration and Colonization
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Explain the consequences of increased European intervention in Africa
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Analyze the motivations of European explorers of Africa
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Contrast the trends in relationships between missionaries and native Africans
with those between explorers and native Africans
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Describe the reasons for increased European involvement in Africa after 1880
Patterns in European Colonial Rule and African Resistance
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Evaluate the nature of European colonial rule over Africa
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Note the roles African leaders played in colonial rule
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Explain and evaluate the methods of African resistance to European rule
The Rise of African Nationalism
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Explain the factors that led to the rise of African nationalism
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Summarize some of the factors that worked against the rise of African
nationalism
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Discuss the ideological origins of critiques of Western treatment of African
colonies
CHAPTER SUMMARY
This chapter discusses the “impact of modernity” on the Afro–Asian–Indian world.
Although the West has been a primary influence in the recent histories of these civilizations,
all areas have retained their own historic traditions in spite of western encroachment.
The “jewel in the crown” of the British Empire was India, the only major Asian
civilization to come under direct control of a European nation. This control was established
initially through the auspices of the British East India Company, which had established the
first Indian “factory” in 1608. By 1858, the Crown had assumed complete control of Indian
affairs. The impact of British ideas and ways was limited to a small but influential Indian
elite. Generally, British overlords treated Indians as backward heathens who needed the
“civilizing” influences of Britain’s “enlightened” culture, education, and religion. The
animosity and distrust felt by most Indians toward the British resulted in the mutiny of 1857–
1858 among the lower class Hindu and Muslim troops called sepoys, who constituted the
majority of the East India Company’s armies on the subcontinent. Although there was not
enough unified Indian support to gain victory, it presaged the rise of opposition. The entire
state of the British mind in India was poisoned by the Sepoy Rebellion. “Cantonments” that
segregated white masters from “untrustworthy” natives became the rule, and the crown raj
fostered anything but equality between Indian and British. India was placed under military
occupation and one-third of its total revenues went to pay for its own occupation. Indians
were not long in responding. The Indian National Congress was formed in 1885 to reform
traditional Hindu and Muslim practices and bring about a more equal relationship with the
British. Internal political and cultural divisions, however, prevented a unified effort against
British heavy-handedness.
The text then turns to the Islamic heartlands, noting the breakup of the great Muslim
empires—Mughal, Ottoman, Safavid and central Asian. They had all degenerated politically,
militarily, economically, and culturally from their heydays in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. Although the eighteenth century saw a revival of Islam based on Sufi inner piety,
the Islamic states were controlled more by the commercial and military rivalries of Britain,
Russia, Germany, and France. The Ottomans, under the Tanzimat reforms, brought Islamic
culture in line with the West, while others emphasized Islamic values and ideals to the
exclusion of “outside” ideas.
The chapter continues with the African experience from 1800 to 1945. This period saw
striking changes in every part of Africa, but none more radical than in Sub-Saharan Africa.
The text details the rise of the Zulu nation in the south and its contact with the Afrikaaners,
missionaries, and British. There were also a series of jihads or “holy struggles” that
flourished in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and aimed at a truly Muslim society and
wider allegiance to Islamic values. However, the key element in nineteenth century
development was the domination of African politics by white Christian Europe and America.
The history of European exploration of Africa is a story of patience and dedication, as well as
of self-promotion and violence. Explorers opened the way for idealistic missionaries who
hoped to eradicate the remaining slave trade. The “scramble for Africa” after 1870 resulted in
the European exploitation of the continent for financial gain and geopolitical advantage.
European colonial rule is one of the uglier chapters of modern history, whose worst legacy
was the apartheid state of South Africa.
African states were not simply passive objects of European conquest and manipulation.
There was domestic resistance, but in the end, other factors brought an end to most foreign
rule on African soil. The African leaders of the twentieth century learned well from the west
and used their knowledge to help end western domination by supporting nationalistic
independence movements.
KEY POINTS AND VITAL CONCEPTS
1. Indian Political Resistance to British Rule: In the three-quarters of a century before
Indian independence and the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, three major groups
dominated India’s political life. In the first group were those in the National Congress who
worked in varying degrees with the British on gradual reform and progress toward Indian
independence. Important figures in this group were G.K. Gokhale, Mohandas Gandhi and
Jawaharlal Nehru. In the second group were the militant Hindu nationalists led by B.G.
Tilak, who advocated a revival of Hindu culture and anti-Muslim communalist selfgovernment. In the third group were the Muslims, who had been hindered by the British in
advancement and were generally resistant to change. Their primary leader Sayyid Ahmad
Khan opposed Muslim participation in the National Congress, and the Hindu–Muslim rift
grew wider. It would result in much bloodletting in the struggle for independence and its
aftermath.
2. Islamic Responses to Western Encroachment: Every Islamic people or state had a
different experience with Western influence according to its particular circumstances and
history. There were at least three typical Islamic reactions to Western modernity: 1)
wholesale emulation and adoption of Western ideas and institutions. This reaction is best
exemplified by Muhammad Ali, pasha of Egypt from 1805–1849 and Mahmoud II, whose
Tanzimat reforms modernized the Ottoman government, but failed to produce an
economically sound or politically powerful state. 2) Integrative attempts to join Western
innovations with traditional Islamic institutions, which is best exemplified in the thought of
various Muslim intellectuals who argued for progressive Islam rather than materialistic
Western secularism. Jamal al-Din al-Afghani advocated a populist program called “panIslamism.” He was followed by other reformers who worked to modernize Muslim
education and stressed the need for a separate Muslim state in the Indian subcontinent. 3)
Conservative or fundamentalist rejection of everything Western in favor of either the status
quo or a return to a purified Islamic community, which was associated with the Shi’ite
community in Iran. Nationalism was also stimulated as a response to Western imperialist
exploitation or colonial occupation.
3. India, the Islamic Heartlands and Africa (1800–1945) in Global Perspective: The
century and a half following the French Revolution was a bleak one for the fortunes of these
regions. The sordid and ugly, if sometimes impressive, advance of Western economic,
technological, intellectual, and military dominance in world affairs must be seen as a
hallmark of the age. Today we recognize that this dominance was by no means synonymous
with “progress.” One result of the imperial–colonial experience has been the sharpening of
cultural self-consciousness and self-confidence of the peoples of these “third-world” areas.
Their experience, as tragic and difficult as it has been, may prove an important transition to
positive development and resurgence.