Download Chapter 25: Western Dominance in the Nineteenth Century: The

Chapter 25: Western Dominance in the
Nineteenth Century: The Westward
Shift of Power and the Rise of Global Empires
I. The Opium Wars
A. Opium Wars
1. Britain developed the opium trade during the eighteenth to early nineteenth
centuries as a means of handling the historical trade imbalance it had with
China. Opium was grown in the British-controlled territories and then sold for
rising profits in China.
2. As opium addiction increased at alarming rates during the early nineteenth
century, the Chinese government attempted to end the opium trade. In 1839,
Commissioner Lin was appointed and he drafted a famous undelivered letter
to Queen Victoria that argued for the abolition of the opium trade on moral
grounds—an unsuccessful venture.
3. Lin attempted to act unilaterally in 1840 by seizing all the opium that he could
find and destroying it; this was an act that Britain saw as an attack on private
property and free trade. The imperial court suspended trade with Britain.
4. Britain made counter-demands and blockaded China’s ports. Hostilities
ensued that Britain won, the opium trade was restored, Hong Kong was ceded
to the British, and the Chinese were made to pay an enormous indemnity for
the war to keep drugs out of their own country.
5. Moreover, five more ports were opened to British (and then other European
and American) traders for commerce. More would follow.
6. Through the 1850s, however, the trade imbalance would continue and even
grow because of the demand for Chinese goods in the West. However, China
would become increasingly paralyzed by rebellions, such as the Taiping
rebellion in 1860, and by a series of further invasions by Western powers.
Increasingly, China’s best real estate and its economic advantages fell into the hands of
Europeans and the United States.
II. The White Empires: Rise and Resistance
A. Rise
Previously, most large empires had arisen in Asia and had expanded by land; some smaller
ventures had set out to control trade, such as the Portuguese. Previously, only Spain had done
both.
1. Britain was one of the first European powers to think globally and to locate
colonies in strategic positions along trade routes. During the period of the
Napoleonic Wars, Britain seized, for example, Malta and other Mediterranean
islands, South Africa, parts of the East Indies, islands in the Indian Ocean, and
established its presence on islands and in coastal positions in the Caribbean.
Few other European and no Asian governments had such vision yet.
2. During the second half of the nineteenth century, other European powers
joined in with 10 million square miles of Africa as the main focus. All but
Thailand in Southeast Asia were taken, as was the Pacific; areas that were
outside direct control were usually dominated economically.
3. France doubled the territory under its control, and new empires emerged from
the new states in Belgium (1830), Germany (1870), and Italy (1870).
However, the Scandinavian countries took no part in this nor did the Habsburg
Empire; Russia’s vast land empire left no energy for overseas expansion.
4. This rise of new imperial powers was in part because of growing populations
fed with the products of mechanized and improved agriculture. Surplus
populations now spread to the “New Europes” being created around the globe.
5. Part of this, too, may also be explained by changes in patterns of disease. In
Europe, outbreaks of plague had dissipated and other major epidemics had
little effect on population growth, whereas in Africa, epidemics of malaria,
sleeping sickness, and yellow fever vastly reduced the continent’s population
during the eighteenth to nineteenth centuries.
6. New inventions, such as the chronometer, made accurate travel easier for
Europeans. Quinine and other medicines could stave off the effects of malaria,
and steam power, first by ship and later by rail, made travel easier and more
reliable.
7. Most importantly, improvements in firearms technology, especially in the
invention of the Maxim machine gun in 1884, made the destruction of
populations that resisted European invasions and imperialism possible on a
vast scale. The 1898 battle of Omdurman, which left 11,000 Sudanese dead
and 16,000 wounded, was fought by a much smaller British force armed with
Maxims.
B. Resistance
Despite the advantages enjoyed by the Europeans, disease and stubborn resistance continued to
impede their development of empire. Guerilla tactics in Afghanistan in the 1840s and 1870s kept
Britain out; French control of Algeria was stunted by continual guerilla resistance; and the Dutch
lost 15,000 men putting down guerilla rebellion in Java.
1. In New Zealand, the Maori mastered European fighting techniques, which
they employed against the British and against other native islanders with
success. Even with superior firepower and numbers, the British often found
themselves on the losing side, and, in the end, Britain’s success was as much
because of internal Maori divisions as anything else. In large part, the Maori
were conquered by their own adoption of Western technology and business.
2. In Ethiopia, Emperor Menelik II armed his soldiers with modern weapons and
conquered new territories for his own empire. When Italy attempted to invade
in 1896, they were thwarted and Ethiopia remained one of the few
independent African states and the only one to become larger.
3. Other African leaders had attempted this, like Ismail, the Khedive of Egypt,
but failed. Ismail had relied on Europeans as advisers, administrators, and
financiers. His plans bankrupted Egypt and provoked a nationalist rebellion
that eventually led to British control in 1882.
In Morocco, the Sultan Mulay Hassan attempted to claim sovereignty over all the tribal peoples
of the Sahara, but failed to gain their allegiance (as did the French and the Spanish when they
attempted to impose their will there).
III. Methods of Imperial Rule (pages 856-860) Complete 2nd edition
A. Native Participation in Empire
1. Native peoples actively took part in these empires, often profiting from them,
as well as being their victims. India, for example, was a country of 300
million governed by less than 1,000 British administrators and no more than
90,000 British troops and another 200,000 Indian troops commanded by
British officers. In many places, the British kept native governments in place
and ruled through indirect means—a practice that was common throughout the
empire and was utilized by many other colonial powers.
2. In some cases, the Europeans gained through the “stranger effect,” or the
tendency to grant power to outsiders because of high esteem given to the
exotic and strange. In other cases, foreigners acted effectively as arbiters in
disputes and won influence because of their supposed objectivity.
3. Many Europeans in foreign colonies, although many were middle class,
identified with the traditional ruling elites as fellow aristocrats.
British administrators created lavish ceremonies, coats of arms, titles, and many other
embellishments to link native rulers with their regime. However, local rulers also maintained real
power and performed much of the day-to-day rule in their areas. This procedure was followed by
the Dutch, French, and other European powers as a means of controlling much larger native
populations. Thus, local rulers kept these empires running at a minimum expense.
1. Europeans did have profound impacts, especially in the area of legal practice:
jury courts replaced magical ordeals, the state had the exclusive right to use
violence, and private vengeance became public law.
2. Integral to utilizing natives in administration was the creation of an educated
class as interpreters and guides. In India these “babus,” as the English called
them, were essential in governing the country, but also made up some of the
earliest revolutionaries who began to see India as independent.
3. Europeans also found competing powers useful, as Frederick Lugard did in his
use of African Muslims for the conquest of Uganda or Britain’s establishment
of a colony of freed slaves in Sierra Leone. For example, other African tribes
assisted the British against the militaristic Zulus in South Africa.
In the early period of colonization, men often developed relationships with local women that
produced valuable channels of communication and links with the native communities. Children
that were produced by these relationships could cement alliances. However, in later periods,
more women joined their husbands in the imperial colonies and racism often classed the products
of European/native liaisons as “half-breeds” who lived on the margins of society.
IV. Business Imperialism
A. Business Imperialism
1. Divided more and more between primary and secondary producers, the world
was dramatically changed by industrialization, with rich industrialized
countries expanding much at the expense of poorer, resource-producing
countries unable to control the prices of their commodities.
2. In Latin America, for example, even after independence, local elites continued
to exploit the “indios” who made up most of the population.
3. While European powers largely recognized the ban on colonial rule dictated
by the American Monroe Doctrine, European investment was a way around.
British companies, for example, raised their investments in Latin America
from $425 million in 1870 to nearly $4.8 billion by 1913. These companies
controlled rail and shipping, and often much of the valuable land and
resources that created wealth.
Complaints were common, but not readily effective against this exploitation. The problem was
that once foreign investment came in, it brought foreign control over key technologies for the
production and transport of commodities. This brought a dependence on foreign markets and
financiers—and foreign political control, at times.
1. As world trade expanded, indeed exploded, there were vast sums to be
made—most of it by Europeans and Americans. The resources produced in
the colonies were critical: phosphates from Morocco and coal, zinc, and tin
enriched France; diamonds from South Africa enriched Britain; and Russia’s
expansion into Central Asia was to bring much-need cotton.
2. A key argument by European imperialists like King Leopold of Belgium for
the carving up of Africa was to bring an end to slavery, but his real purpose
was to supply traders with ivory and rubber. Other European powers said and
did the same.
Another aspect of this land grab was the development of nationalism and a fight for larger
empire as a political competition. This part of imperial adventure appealed especially to the
working class and to peoples, like the Scots and Irish, who had been on the margins of British
society. This can be seen dramatically in the scramble of European countries for African colonies
and in the “Great Game” played out by Russia and Britain for dominance in South and Central
Asia.
V. Imperialism in the “New Europes”
A. “New Europes”
1. South Africa had already been the focus of colonization by the Dutch, and
with British rule came a new wave of Europeans, not only to exploit resources
but also to establish homes for themselves.
2. Other regions, such as Australia, New Zealand, and Canada that were of
similar climate saw the same circumstances: settlers came, native peoples
were destroyed and/or exploited, settlers outnumbered native peoples, and
their culture replaced the old one.
3. Canada is a remarkable example through its avoidance of becoming part of the
United States in the War of 1812, development of a rail system, the tenfold
growth of its population, and its union with Quebec in 1867.
4. In a way, this was a variant on the system of indirect rule but the rulers were
British subjects. In Australia, New Zealand, and Canada settlers came to
dramatically outnumber native peoples (whose numbers were radically
reduced through disease and war) by the end of the century. South Africa was
different: the British had to deal with both the earlier Dutch Afrikaaner
population and the indigenous black Africans.
5. In the end, the British gained support from the Afrikaaners by giving them
power over the black South African population. This was only after a series of
bloody wars, commonly referred to as the Boer Wars, between the Afrikaners
(also called Boers) and the British.
The French attempted to create a “New Europe” in Algeria through conquest and colonization,
with more than 500,000 French colonists.
VI. Empires Elsewhere: Japan, Russia, and the United States
A. Japan
1. By the end of the eighteenth century, Japanese intellectuals like Honda
Toshiaki argued that Japan needed an empire for cheap labor and natural
resources; he imagined such an empire on the European model.
2. With a growing population in the late nineteenth century, soldiers allied with
the business community for imperial expansion. Victory against China in
1894-1895 brought new territories in Taiwan and Pescadores Islands, and
control in Korea that set the stage for further expansion.
B. Russia
1. Russia’s land empire continued its expansion as a result of the Napoleonic
Wars into Finland, Poland, and the Baltic States. Colonization continued to
the south at the expense of the Ottoman Empire, and then into Central Asia.
There was an abortive plan for expansion into the Pacific, but this never came
to fruition. In 1867, Russia sold its Alaskan possessions to the United States
and left North America.
2. Expansion to the east brought Russia into competition with the expanding
Japanese dominion.
C. United States
1. Driven by the concept of a manifest destiny, the United States expanded to
absorb Mexican, Native American, and Canadian territories in a long series of
wars that spanned the nineteenth century. By 1896 the frontier was declared
closed, but then a period of expansion began across the oceans.
In 1893, with American assistance, white settlers overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy; annexation
by the United States followed in 1898. More islands in the South Pacific, as well as Puerto Rico,
were annexed that same year after a brief war with Spain. Cuba was nominally independent, but
a virtual American protectorate, after 1901.
VII. Rationales of Empire
A. Doctrines of Superiority
Following a remarkable voyage around the globe, Charles Darwin wrote, in his The Origin of
Species by Means of Natural Selection in 1859, that nature favored characteristics most suitable
to particular environments: thus, the fittest would survive longest and breed the most.
1. From this notion of the survival of the fittest others developed “social
Darwinism”: inferior races should be exterminated by superior or master
races. Darwin despised theories of this sort, but they became popular with
some nineteenth-century anthropologists. It was common, even for Darwin, to
see peoples of different races as belonging to different species of human.
2. Anthropologists like the Comte de Gobineau, who was white, classified
different races in ranking of superiority with whites at the top, blacks at the
bottom, and others in between. Comparisons of the skulls of Africans and apes
were made, and some Africans and Eskimos were even put on display in zoos.
B. The Civilizing Mission
1. As a result of these ideas, imperialists saw part of their mission in the context
of a moral and natural superiority over the peoples they ruled.
2. This feeling of superiority may have been more a case of morale than of
morality. Europe had felt weak with respect to Asia for centuries, and the
same might be said for Japan compared with China and Korea, and America
in the context of the rest of the Americas. Now, as a result of industrialization,
the tables were turned and these places saw themselves as rightly in the lead.
3. Now, with their inherent superiority, imperialism became a civilizing mission,
even to the much older and richer civilizations of India and China. The ability
of the Japanese to industrialize and to catch up and a lingering admiration for
the Chinese caused many, such as the German Kaiser Wilhelm II and the
American Theodore Roosevelt, to see them as the “Yellow Peril” who either
had to be recruited or to be resisted.
4. Assessment of imperialist claims of benefits for those they ruled are difficult
in the face of 10 million dead in the Belgian Congo from massacres and
neglect, millions dead in the Americas and Australia, and millions more killed
in Africa by European colonial powers.
The last few decades of the nineteenth century were marked by a worldwide drought that saw the
deaths of millions in Africa and Asia. In a few places European agricultural advances may have
helped, but in too many more imperial administrations worsened the death toll. Western Europe
and the American Midwest managed to organize relief and deaths were few, but Russia and the
rest of the world suffered.
VIII. In Perspective: The Reach of Empires
By the end of the nineteenth century, European empires ruled over much of the world. Their
ascendancy would be short-lived with the rise of the United States and Japan during the early
twentieth century, but their empires were immensely important as places of cultural exchange.
European legal systems, languages, religions, sports, and education spread around the globe to
Africa, Asia, the Americas, and the Pacific. But this was not one-sided: Indian patterns found
their way onto paisley ties; curry, rijstafel, and couscous made their way into Western cuisines;
and Asian, African, and Native American art has affected the imaginations of European artists.
In time, Europeans would begin to see not merely “primitives” but to see themselves and human
societies in new ways.