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to the Virginia Company and other corporations that organized and financed settlements in North America and the West Indies. In 1558, England ceded Calais to France, losing the last remnant of its Angevin empire in continental Europe. Yet, that same year, the political and diplomatic condition of England changed in ways that eventually encouraged further American exploration and other enterprises, though that was far from clear at the time. Later in 1558, Queen Mary, Catholic wife of Philip II of Spain, died, and her Protestant sister Elizabeth ascended the throne, shifting England’s enmity away from France and towards Spain, especially once the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots removed a focus for French intrigue. Rivalry with Spain encouraged the plundering of Spanish New World treasure ships and settlements and intrusions on Spanish trade, especially when the Revolt of the Netherlands and the beginning of the Eighty Years War against Dutch Protestants from 1566 weakened Spanish power to protect its New World interests. In 1562, John Hawkins, England’s first major slave trader, began carrying human cargo and other merchandise between Africa and the Spanish Caribbean, as well as plundering Spanish settlements. Six years later he was attacked by a f leet of the Viceroy of Mexico off Veracruz, heightening hostility between Spain and England and encouraging the kind of privateering, or licensed piracy, by English ‘sea dogs’ that was already being practised by French corsairs against the Spanish. Most famously, Francis Drake, ‘El Diablo’ to the Spanish, and a f leet of six ships led by the Golden Hind, attacked Spanish ships and settlements near the Isthmus of Panama and encouraged slaves to destabilize the Spanish empire in Central America and parts of South America from the 1570s. Drake combined plunder with exploration. In 1577, he rounded Cape Horn and proceeded north to claim Nova Albion, now California, raided Callao and Lima, and then sailed west across the Pacific, stopping at the Philippines and the Moluccas spice islands. After crossing the Indian Ocean and rounding the Cape of Good Hope, he finally completed his circumnavigation of the globe with his arrival in Plymouth in 1580. The 4600 percent profits enjoyed by shareholders in the joint stock-sponsored enterprise added to people’s interest in New World profiteering. After 1585, during the war with Spain, Drake resumed his western actions, attacking Cartagena de Indias, Santo Domingo and St Augustine, and numerous Spanish ships, until he was lost at sea in 1595. Meanwhile, in 1570, Martin Frobisher set out on the first of a series of voyages to find a north-west passage, despite Elizabeth’s continued reluctance to invest state revenue in exploration or colonization. Forming the Company of Cathay with Michael Lok and other London merchants, Frobisher undertook three more voyages in 1576–78. The gold mine he founded on Baffin Island, however, produced nothing but iron pyrite, and the company folded. John Davis, backed by investors who included Adrian Gilbert, brother of the more famous Humphrey, made three other unsuccessful searches for a north-west passage north of Labrador in 1585–87. More than simply muscling in on Spanish markets, attacking Spanish ships and settlements, and searching for a north-west passage, the English began to think seriously about establishing their own New World territories, though it took them some time to attempt it and even longer to do it successfully. In November 1565, Elizabeth’s Privy Council considered arguments for colonization as well as for further attempts to find a north-west passage by Sir Humphrey Gilbert, the Devonshire landowner and half-brother of Sir Walter Raleigh. The next year Gilbert wrote A Discourse of a Discoverie for a New Passage to Cataia (published in 1576), although unsuccessful involvement in Ireland kept him out of Atlantic affairs for a decade. In 1577, however, he proposed capturing Santo Domingo and Cuba as bases for conquering Mexico. The crown demurred but instead gave him permission, though no financial assistance, to establish colonies some way north of Spanish Florida, preferably ‘Norumbega’ (named after a mythical inland sea that would lead to Asia). Gilbert’s 1578 settlement mission, however, quickly reverted to the relatively limited aims of attacking Spanish ships. By 1582, though, he was more convinced that North America was a place to colonize, and by the end of the next year had sub-patented some 8,000,000 acres of land to potential colonizers, including large grants to a group of Catholic gentry headed by Sir George Peckham and Sir Thomas Gerrard, anticipating, like the French Huguenots, the New World as a haven for religious dissenters. In 1583, he landed at St John’s harbour and declared Newfoundland English, but that September he was lost at sea and nothing came of his colony.11 The lost colonies of Roanoke Gilbert’s death, unlike Cabot’s almost a century before, did not dampen the growing English appetite for exploration and colonization. In 1584, Elizabeth I granted Sir Walter Raleigh the same grant Gilbert was given, again with no financial backing and this time without Newfoundland fishing rights. Nevertheless, in April 1584 Raleigh despatched captains Arthur Barlow and Philip Amadas to explore and claim the region and islands from Chesapeake Bay to the Carolinas. The expedition reached Roanoke Island off modern North Carolina in July, returning to England with two local Indians, Manteo and Wanchese. The captains’ recommendation of the region for colonization encouraged Raleigh to name it ‘Virginia’, in honour of one of the virtues of his queen, and, as Lord and Governor of USAD Super Quiz ™ Resource Guide ◊ 2011–2012 REVISED PAGE ◊ 21 òñ÷ñ÷ñ÷ñ÷ñö When the surveyor and artist John White returned to Roanoke in August 1590, he discovered that the colonists had disappeared, leaving behind them the word “CROATOAN” carved in a doorpost and “CRO” carved in a tree. ò÷ñ÷ñ÷ñ÷ñ÷ö Virginia, to send Richard Grenville there to establish a settlement. Grenville departed Plymouth in April 1585 with 5 ships and 800 men, arriving off the outer banks in early July. On the way he diverted to raid the Spanish West Indies and in the process depleted many of the supplies intended to assist colonization. That was just the first thing that went wrong. On arrival, only the smallest of the vessels could negotiate the sandbanks. Then, when a silver cup went missing, Grenville burned an Indian village in revenge. Grenville departed in late August, leaving Captain Ralph Lane and 108 men to establish a fort, search for treasure and trade with the Amerindians in craft products for which the local Roanoke had no use. Lane’s reluctance to engage in agriculture proved disastrous. As supplies ran low, he requested food from the Indians. He took their offer of cleared fields and seed corn as an insult and launched another attack, murdering chief Wingina, whose experiences with the English had already prompted him to change his name to Pemisapan, meaning ‘watchful’ or ‘wary’. The Indians then withdrew, leaving Lane and his men without supplies, and when Francis Drake unexpectedly arrived with new supplies in June 1586, all insisted on returning to England. When Grenville reappeared a few weeks later, therefore, he found his colony abandoned. He nevertheless left 15 men behind and returned to England for new settlers, but when the English returned the next year these men had vanished, probably victims of revenge for Lane’s aggression. They would not be the last Roanoke colonists to disappear. Despite these setbacks, interest in Roanoke remained high. Grenville’s mission had included Thomas Hariot, a mathematician and botanist who learned Carolinian 22 ◊ REVISED PAGE Algonquin from Manteo and Wanchese, and John White, a surveyor and artist charged with identifying and drawing local f lora, fauna, and other natural features of the New World. This trip thus produced Hariot’s A Briefe and True Report of the New found Land of Virginia, published in 1588 and republished in 1590 with Theodore de Bry’s engravings of White’s paintings. It was White who, in April 1587, obtained Raleigh’s permission to lead another attempt at colonization, this time an agricultural settlement of freeholding family farmers who could form a permanent colony. White hoped to get 150 colonists, but in the event probably fewer than 100 men, women, and children embarked for the putative City of Raleigh, on the mainland in the Chesapeake Bay region. White landed at Roanoke, however, forced there by a ship’s crew keen on Caribbean plunder. Finding Grenville’s 15 men missing and no buildings or crops, White returned to England for more supplies and new recruits. Among those he left behind were his daughter, son-in-law, and their baby, Virginia Dare, the first English child born in North America. Then came another disaster, as the Spanish Armada trapped White in England. When he finally returned to Roanoke in August 1590, the colonists had disappeared, leaving behind them only the word ‘CROATOAN’ carved in a doorpost and ‘CRO’ carved in a nearby tree, suggesting attempts to reach the island birthplace of Manteo, about 50 miles south of Roanoke. No one knows for sure what happened to the Roanoke islanders. It seems likely they were lost at sea, though some historians have found impressive evidence that they joined with local Indians.12 After the Roanoke disasters, Grenville turned to his Irish estates and Raleigh to privateering against Spanish shipping and settlements. Raleigh did not lose interest in colonization permanently though, and in 1595 made his first visit to Guiana, on the north-east coast of South America, where he hoped to emulate the Spanish conquistadors by subjugating Amerindians, and then to outdo the Spanish plunderers in the treasure hunt for the lost golden city of El Dorado. He built forts to establish domination over local Indians from whom he would demand tributes while his soldiers would ‘fight for gold’. In The Discoverie of the large and bewtiful Empire of Guiana (1596), he anticipated that his commanders would ‘find here more rich and beautiful cities, more temples adorned with golden images, more sepulchres filled with treasure, than either Cortez found in Mexico, or Pizarro in Peru’. That did not happen, however, and Raleigh’s final voyage of 1617, after several years’ imprisonment, cost him his son, his fortune, and the remnants of his reputation. He was executed on his return to England in 1618, a victim of King James’s desire to restore good relations with Spain. In Raleigh’s life, in his explorations, depredations and colonizations in Ireland and the Americas, we can see represented the entrepreneurship and aggression USAD Super Quiz ™ Resource Guide ◊ 2011–2012 On his last big journey, the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition of 1886–88, Stanley brought along 510 Remington rif les with 100,000 rounds of ammunition, 50 Winchester repeaters with 50,000 cartridges, and a Maxim gun, a gift of the inventor. He also brought along 37,262 yards of cloth and 3,600 pounds of beads as trade goods, and, for nourishment, forty porterloads of the choicest provisions from Messrs. Fortnum and Mason of Picadilly. At no time in history has the distinction between tourists and conquerors been so blurred.6 On the heels of the explorers were the military. In the seventies and eighties European statesmen, asserting their arrogant faith in the ability of their armies to overcome all African resistance, drew lines on maps of the continent to indicate where their future conquests would lie. In 1873–74, General Wolseley defeated the Ashanti, one of West Africa’s most powerful kingdoms, with a force of 6,500 men armed with rif les, Gating guns, and 7-pounder field artillery.7 Similarly, the army of the Senegalese ruler Mahmadou Lamine, with its spears, Dane guns, and poisoned arrows, was defeated by a French force of 1,400 men armed with Gras-Kropatcheks.8 In the 1890s the addition of Maxim guns and quickfiring light artillery to the arsenal of the colonialist troops made European-African confrontations even more lopsided, turning battles into massacres or routs. In 1891, near Porto Novo, a French detachment of 300 men, firing 25,000 rounds of ammunition in a 2 1⁄2 hour battle, defeated the entire Fon army.9 In 1897 a Royal Niger Co. force composed of 32 Europeans and 507 African soldiers armed with cannons, Maxim guns, and Snider rif les defeated the 31,000-man army of the Nupe Emirate of Sokoto; though some of the Nupe had breechloaders, their insufficient training caused them to fire over the heads of their enemies. In Chad a French force of 320, most of whom were Senegalese tirailleurs, in 1899 defeated Rabah, reputedly the fiercest of the Sudanese slave-raiders, with his 12,000 men and 2,500 guns.10 The Caliphate of Sokoto finally fell in 1903 after an attack by a British force of 27 officers, 730 troops, and 400 porters.11 And in 1908 the 10,000-man army of Wadai was routed by 389 French soldiers.12 Perhaps the most famous of all colonial campaigns— at least in the English-speaking world—was General Kitchener’s conquest of the Sudan in 1898. The British believed the Sudanese Dervishes were skilled but fanatical warriors and blamed them for having defeated General Gordon in 1885. Kitchener’s expedition was therefore well supplied with the latest weapons: breechloading and repeating rif les, Maxim guns, field artillery, and six river gunboats firing high-explosive shells. At one point the British Camel Corps was almost overwhelmed by a Dervish attack. Winston Churchill, who took part in the campaign, described the British response: But at the critical moment the gunboat arrived on the scene and began suddenly to blaze and flame from Maxim guns, quick-firing guns and rifles. The range was short; the effect tremendous. The terrible machine, floating gracefully on the waters—a beautiful white devil—wreathed itself in smoke. The river slopes of the Kerreri Hills, crowded with the advancing thousands, sprang up into clouds of dust and splinters of rock. The charging Dervishes sank down in tangled heaps. The masses in the rear paused, irresolute. It was too hot even for them. At Omdurman, Kitchener confronted the main Dervish army of 40,000. According to Churchill: The infantry fired steadily and stolidly, without hurry or excitement, for the enemy were far away and the officers careful. Besides, the soldiers were interested in the work and took great pains. But presently the mere physical act became tedious…. The Dervish side looked very different: And all the time out on the plain on the other side bullets were shearing through flesh, smashing and splintering bone; blood spouted from terrible wounds; valiant men were struggling on through a hell of whishing metal, exploding shells, and spurting dust—suffering, despairing, dying. After five hours of fighting, 20 Britons, 20 of their Egyptian allies and 11,000 Dervishes lay dead. Thus ended the battle of Omdurman—the most signal triumph ever gained by the arms of science over barbarians. Within the space of five hours the strongest and best-armed savage army yet arrayed against a modern European Power had been destroyed and dispersed, with hardly any difficulty, comparatively small risk, and insignificant loss to the victors.18 The general rule in late nineteenth-century Africa, that Europeans easily overcame African resistance through superior firepower, is not without exception. In a few instances—primarily in the Western Sudan and Ethiopia—Africans held back the Europeans for many years. These cases also illustrate the importance of the new weapons. Samori Touré, whose homeland was the high country between the upper Niger and the upper Senegal, was an upstart who assumed the traditional Islamic role of military-religious leader. He was not hampered by obsolete military customs and, better than any other African ruler of his time, he grasped the importance of modern weapons. He was the first leader in the region USAD Super Quiz ™ Resource Guide ◊ 2011–2012 REVISED PAGE ◊ 69 to Stalin, the Western powers in NATO saw only monolithic red extending from Leningrad to Beijing. òñ÷ñ÷ñ÷ñ÷ñö Photograph of a railway station during the partition of India. In 1947 an independent Pakistan was created for Muslims and an independent India for Hindus, despite the considerable intermingling of religions across South Asia. ò÷ñ÷ñ÷ñ÷ñ÷ö religious jurisdiction and the relationship of small states to the central Indian government contributed to the increasing f low of emigration. The withdrawal of Britain from direct rule encouraged the superpowers to engage in a contest for inf luence in India, Pakistan, and smaller states in the region that also became independent as Britain relinquished control. Britain’s dominion over half a billion Asians thousands of miles away came to an end. The British political grip on Asia (except in Hong Kong) was replaced by crucial economic connections that sustained an increasingly wealthy cohort of international financiers and businessmen who worked to reestablish the globally based prosperity of the prewar period. In 1949, Communists under the leadership of Mao Zedong (1893–1976) defeated a corrupt Nationalist government under Jiang Jieshi, whose unpopular regime the United States had bankrolled. Gaining support for its attention to the plight of peasants, Communist rule brought to an abrupt end the interference of Europe and the United States in the government and economy of China. With an undeveloped industrial proletariat, Mao emphasized his differences with Stalin’s and Lenin’s versions of Marxism, yet he too collectivized agriculture, instituted a crash program for industrialization, and brutally repressed the privileged classes. Until the 1970s China’s ties with the West were limited, and hundreds of millions of Chinese people experienced decades of social and political turmoil as Mao and his government subjected them to one brutal scheme after another. Perceiving Mao to be identical The Chinese Revolution spurred both superpowers to increase their involvement in Asian politics, and for decades to come the cold war complicated the course of decolonization both for the Europeans and for their former colonies. The USSR and the United States faced off indirectly in Korea, which had been split in two at the thirty-eighth parallel as the country was liberated from the Japanese. In 1950 the North Koreans, supported by the Soviet Union, invaded U.S.-backed South Korea. The United States maneuvered the United Nations Security Council into approval of a “police action” against North Korea—a maneuver that would set a precedent for intervention in Europe itself in the 1990s. Eventually, the United States deployed 400,000 troops to help the South Korean army repel the invaders. The combined military forces quickly pushed far into North Korean territory—almost to China’s border—where they were met by the Chinese army rather than the Soviet army. After two and a half years of stalemate, the opposing sides agreed to a settlement in 1953: Korea would remain divided at its prewar border, the thirtyeighth parallel. The Korean War affected the push for independence in Southeast Asia, raising the cold war stakes and thus the number of deaths. The French surrendered control of Indochina (modern-day Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos) after a devastating defeat at the hands of peasant armies under the Communist leadership of Ho Chi Minh. As in China and other parts of Asia, peasant agriculture had produced bountiful crops, but Indochina had suffered both from the steep fall in agricultural prices in the 1920s and 1930s and from the turmoil of war that followed hard on the heels of the global economic depression. Ho had his own brand of nationalist socialism, and his main goal was liberation from the colonial French. He advocated the redistribution of land held by big landowners, especially in the rich agricultural area in southern Indochina where some six thousand local and French owners possessed more than 60 percent of the land. The French army fought Ho’s efforts for independence with the help of the big landlords in the south, but Ho’s Viet Minh soldiers surprised the French with their tenacious resistance. Because of the Viet Minh’s Communist connections, the United States started funneling money and supplies to the French side despite its official anti-imperial position. Even so, the Viet Minh forces, using guerrilla tactics, forced the technologically advanced French army to withdraw after the bloody battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954. The Geneva Accords of 1954 carved out an independent Laos and Cambodia and divided Vietnam into North and South, each free from French control. French inf luence in the region, however, remained strong, because of the presence of French architecture, schools, USAD Super Quiz ™ Resource Guide ◊ 2011–2012 REVISED PAGE ◊ 111