Period 5: Industrialization and Global Integration c. 1750 to c. 1900 Key Concept 5.2.

Imperialism and Nation-State Formation As states industrialized during this period, they also expanded their existing overseas colonies and established new types of colonies and transoceanic empires. Regional warfare and diplomacy both resulted in and were affected by this process of modern empire building. The process was led mostly by Europe, although not all states were affected equally, which led to an increase of European influence around the world. The United States and Japan also participated in this process. The growth of new empires challenged the power of existing land-based empires of Eurasia. New ideas about nationalism, race, gender, class, and culture also developed that facilitated the spread of transoceanic empires, as well as justified anti-imperial resistance and the formation of new national identities. I. Industrializing powers established transoceanic empires. A. States with existing colonies strengthened their control over those colonies. i. British in India The British East India Company had established trading posts along the coasts of India. They had the Mughal emperors consent to do this, of course, bringing commodities into India, buying from India and sending products back to Europe. When the Mughal empire began to decline after the death of Aurangzeb in 1707, the EIC took advantage and began to strengthen its posts. By 1750, company merchants began campaigns of conquest in India to protect the commercial interest from increasing disorder. They enforced their rule with a small British army and a large number of Indian troops known as sepoys. A sepoy revolt in 1857 set in motion the establishment of direct British imperial rule. Why? The sepoy regiments received new rifles that fired bullets from cartridges. The cartridges were wrapped in waxed paper to protect them from moisture. The wax was made from animal fat and the British officers told the sepoys to tear the paper off with their teeth. Hindu sepoys would not because the animal fat may have come from cows, which they held sacred. Muslim sepoys would not because the fat may have come from pigs which they consider unclean. The British changed the procedures for packing and opening cartridges, but the sepoys staged a mutiny and killed their British officers and proclaimed restoration of Mughal authority in May of 1857. Peasants and unhappy elites jointed the fight and transformed a minor mutiny to a large-scale rebellion that threatened British rule in India. The rebels had different interests and could not agree on a common ground for rebellion. Britain had powerful weapons and telegraph communications so they could rush troops to trouble spots. There were some terrible acts of violence from the conflict. At Cawnpore, sepoys overcame the British garrison and its population of 60 soldiers, 180 civilian men, and 375 women and children. They killed all of the men, many of them as they surrendered, and 2 weeks later went back and massacred the women and children. When fresh British troops arrived, they hung all rebels and suspects as revenge. British troops would blow rebels to pieces with cannons. Within a year, May 1858, British had restored their authority in India. The government of England took over power from the EIC and imposed direct imperial rule. Queen Victoria assigned responsibility for Indian policy to a newly established office of secretary of state for India. A viceroy represented British royal authority and administered the colony through an elite Indian civil service staffed almost exclusively by English. Indians served in low-level bureaucratic positions, but British officials laid out all domestic and foreign policy in India. Britain oversaw

the clearing of forests, the restructuring of landholdings, and encouraged the farming of tea, coffee, and opium (very valuable trade items!). They built railroad and telegraph networks and constructed new canals, harbors, and irrigation systems. All of this would support commerce and agriculture, and link India to the larger global economy. The British did not try to convert the Indians to Christianity, but they established English style schools for children of the elite (to win support) and suppressed Indian customs that conflicted with European laws or values such as the burning of a wife on her husbands funeral pyre. B. European states, as well as the Americans and Japanese, established empires throughout Asia and the Pacific, while Spanish and Portuguese influence declined. i. France had not been able (although they tried) to establish themselves in India, but they did build a large southeast Asian colony of French Indochina. This consisted of the modern states of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. The imperialists established the colony between 1859 and 1893. They introduced European-style schools and tried to establish close connections with the native elites. Unlike the British, however, French officials encouraged conversion to Christianity and the Roman Catholic church became prominent throughout French Indochina, especially in Vietnam. By the end of the 1800s, all of southeast Asia was under European imperial rule except for the kingdom of Siam (Thailand) which retained its independence because colonial officials saw it as a nice buffer between British-dominated Burma and French Indochina. C. Many European states used both warfare and diplomacy to establish empires in Africa. i. King Leopold II of Belgium, after hearing about the great African rivers the Nile, Niger, Congo, and Zambesi and the access the provided to inland regions (which had not been truly touched by Europe at this time), sent Henry Morton Stanley to develop commercial ventures and establish a colony called the Congo Free State in the basin of the Congo River. This is the location of the Democratic Republic of the Congo today. Belgium has much larger and more powerful neighbors in Europe and in order to hold off competition from them, Leopold announced that the Congo region would be a free-trade zone accessible to merchants and businesspeople from all European lands. However, he carved out a personal colony and filled it with lucrative rubber plantations run by forced labor. The Berlin Conference of 1884 which laid out the regulations of European colonization in Africa set as its policy for Belgium the improvement of the lives of people in the Congo Free State. Leopold ignored this, however, and used the colony for his own profit. At first, he earned his fortune in ivory, and then after a rise in demand and prices for rubber, he forced the people to collect sap from the rubber trees. Working conditions in the Congo Free State were so brutal, taxes so high, and abuses so many that humanitarians protested Leopolds colonial regime. Predatory rule had ended with the death of 4-8 million Africans. In 1909 the Belgian government took control of the colony, which was then known as Belgian Congo. D. In some parts of their empires, Europeans established settler colonies. i. France tried to turn Algeria into a settler colony. Between October and December 1848, the French government sent about 13,000 rebels from the 1848 revolution to Algeria and spent 1,000 francs each to provide them with land, livestock, and tools. The hope was these settlers would become pioneers and would help turn Algeria into a productive French colony (and theyd be rid of the rebels). The settlers did not do as well as was hoped. A lack of

preparation for their arrival, and strong military control got in the way of the operation. Many of the settlers died or returned to France. E. In other parts of the world, industrialized states practiced economic imperialism. i. The Opium Wars in China ii. The US and Latin America: The US was a nation whose beginning was owed to imperialism. Euro-Americans pushed native people to the borders of their country in order to maintain control of the land. Then they tried to control the entire hemisphere! The Monroe Doctrine, issued by President James Monroe in 1823, warned European states that the western hemisphere was off limits. Essentially, the US claimed the Americas as a protectorate and that anything that needed tending to in the western hemisphere was going to be taken care of by the United States. This led to the American leaders being interested in lands outside the temperate regions of North America. In 1867 the US bought Alaska from Russia, and in 1875 claimed a protectorate over the islands of HawaiI (where the US had established highly productive sugarcane plantations). The Hawaiian kingdom survived until 1893 when a group of planters and businesspeople overthrew the monarch, Queen Liliuokalani and invited the US to annex the islands. President Cleveland opposed the annexation but his successor, William McKinley was open to expansion and agreed to acquire the islands in 1898. In Cuba, anti-colonial tensions broke out against Spain. The US had business interests in Cuba and Puerto Rico and had made large investments in the countries. When a US battleship, the Maine exploded in Havana harbor, the US used it as an excuse to go to war against Spain. To Hell with Spain, Remember the Maine was the slogan. It was determined later that the ship exploded due to an internal engine malfunction, but it was easier to blame it on Spain and send troops to take possession of Cuba and Puerto Rico, thus eliminating any European influence in the western hemisphere. The US navy destroyed the Spanish fleet at Manila in a single day, and took possession of Guam and the Philippines as well. This prevented these final Pacific Spanish colonies from falling into the hands of the Japanese or the Germans. The colonial rule of these lands proved to be more difficult. The US had promised the Philippines its independence, but it was in a very strategic location in the South China Sea. The US could not just let it be. The Filipinos fought periodically for 4 years, ending with the promise of independence under the guidance of the United States. This did not come until 1935 and full independence was not granted until after the Second World War. In Central America, the United States saw an opportunity to ease transportation between the Atlantic and Pacific. They wanted to purchase land from Colombia on the isthmus of Panama to build a canal connecting the two oceans. Colombia refused to sell the land to the US. Teddy Roosevelt, a hero from the Spanish-American war in Cuba and now President of the United States supported a rebellion against Colombia (he supplied arms for the Panamanians to fight) and helped the rebels form the new state of Panama. In exchange for his support he was able to purchase the land for the canal. Roosevelt was able to help the new leader acquire the land and then paid him for it. The US had expanded its interests in Latin America and Roosevelt issued the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. This gave the US the right to intervene in the domestic affairs of nations within the western hemisphere if the nation showed an inability to maintain the security necessary to protect US investments. The Roosevelt Corollary and the Panama Canal (finished in 1914) strengthened US military and economic claims in the western hemisphere.

II.

Imperialism influenced state formation and contraction around the world A. The expansion of US and European influence over Tokugawa Japan led to the emergence of Meiji Japan i. Japan agreed to a series of unequal treaties with various Western powers in order to avoid the problems of China, which initially resisted such treaties. ii. Japan, unlike china or the Ottoman Empire, sought in the aftermath of the Meiji restoration to save Japan from foreign domination by a thorough transformation of Japanese society, drawing upon all that the modern West had to offer. iii. The Meiji restoration was less destructive than the Taiping Uprising in China, which left Japan in a better position to reform. iv. Japan was of less interest to Western powers than either China or the Ottoman Empire, allowing it to reform while under less pressure. v. The reforms instituted following the Meiji restoration transformed Japan far more thoroughly than even the most radical of the ottoman or Chinese efforts. vi. Japan industrialized more thoroughly than either china or the Ottoman Empire. vii. Japan did not become as dependent on foreign capital as the Ottoman Empire. B. The United States and Russia emulated European transoceanic imperialism by expanding their land borders and conquering neighboring territories. i. Manifest Destiny term coined by John OSullivan relating to the United States destiny to spread from Atlantic to Pacific (1845). ii. Russia expanded east into Manchuria, south into the Caucasus and central Asia, and southwest toward the Mediterranean. The southwest push led them to interference with the Balkan provinces of the Ottoman empire. After defeating Turkish forces in a war from 182829, Russia tried to establish a protectorate over the weakening empire. This was a considerable threat to the rest of Europe, who came to the aid of the Ottoman empire. The coalition included Britain, France, and some smaller Balkan areas (Romania and Sardinia, for example) and the conflict is known as the Crimean War (1853-56). Whereas they had been able to defeat Qing China and the Ottoman forces, the defeat of Russia in the Crimean War proved its weakness when put up against the industrialized west. C. Anti-imperial resistance led to the contraction of the Ottoman Empire i. Nationalism spurred revolts seeking independence in the Balkans. D. New states developed on the edges of existing empires i. Siam developed and maintained independence as a buffer between French Indochina and British-dominated Burma. E. The development and spread of nationalism as an ideology fostered new communal identities. i. III. New racial ideologies, especially Social Darwinism, facilitated and justified imperialism A. White Mans Burden