(Download pdf) The Pearl Of The East The Economic Impact Of The Colonial Railways In The Age Of High Imperialism In Southeast Asia Didac Cubeiro Rodriguez full chapter pdf docx

The Pearl of the East: The Economic
Impact of the Colonial Railways in the

Age of High Imperialism in Southeast
Asia Dídac Cubeiro Rodríguez
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmass.com/product/the-pearl-of-the-east-the-economic-impact-of-the-colo
nial-railways-in-the-age-of-high-imperialism-in-southeast-asia-didac-cubeiro-rodriguez
/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...
Australia in the Age of International Development,

1945–1975: Colonial and Foreign Aid Policy in Papua New
Guinea and Southeast Asia 1st ed. Edition Nicholas
Ferns
https://ebookmass.com/product/australia-in-the-age-of-
international-development-1945-1975-colonial-and-foreign-aid-
policy-in-papua-new-guinea-and-southeast-asia-1st-ed-edition-
nicholas-ferns/
The Political Economy of Automotive Industrialization

in East Asia 1st Edition Richard F. Doner
https://ebookmass.com/product/the-political-economy-of-
automotive-industrialization-in-east-asia-1st-edition-richard-f-
doner/
The Oxford handbook of economic imperialism Zak Cope

(Editor)
https://ebookmass.com/product/the-oxford-handbook-of-economic-
imperialism-zak-cope-editor/
Growth Mechanisms and Sustainability: Economic Analysis

of the Steel Industry in East Asia 1st Edition Jun Ma
https://ebookmass.com/product/growth-mechanisms-and-
sustainability-economic-analysis-of-the-steel-industry-in-east-
asia-1st-edition-jun-ma/
Chinese Writing and the Rise of the Vernacular in East
Asia Peter Francis Kornicki
https://ebookmass.com/product/chinese-writing-and-the-rise-of-
the-vernacular-in-east-asia-peter-francis-kornicki/
Revenants of the German Empire: Colonial Germans,

Imperialism, and the League of Nations Sean Andrew
Wempe
https://ebookmass.com/product/revenants-of-the-german-empire-
colonial-germans-imperialism-and-the-league-of-nations-sean-
andrew-wempe/
French Liberalism and Imperialism in the Age of

Napoleon III Miquel De La Rosa
https://ebookmass.com/product/french-liberalism-and-imperialism-
in-the-age-of-napoleon-iii-miquel-de-la-rosa/
The Future of East Asia 1st Edition Peter Hayes
https://ebookmass.com/product/the-future-of-east-asia-1st-
edition-peter-hayes/
The Oxford History of the Ancient Near East: Age of

Persia Karen Radner
https://ebookmass.com/product/the-oxford-history-of-the-ancient-
near-east-age-of-persia-karen-radner/
PALGRAVE STUDIES IN ECONOMIC HISTORY
The Pearl of the East

The Economic Impact of
the Colonial Railways in
the Age of High Imperialism
in Southeast Asia
Dídac Cubeiro Rodríguez
Palgrave Studies in Economic History
Series Editor
Kent Deng, London School of Economics, London, UK
Palgrave Studies in Economic History is designed to illuminate and enrich
our understanding of economies and economic phenomena of the past.
The series covers a vast range of topics including financial history, labour
history, development economics, commercialisation, urbanisation, indus-
trialisation, modernisation, globalisation, and changes in world economic
orders.
The Pearl of the East

The Economic Impact of the Colonial Railways in
the Age of High Imperialism in Southeast Asia
Department of Applied Economics
Autonomous University of Barcelona
Barcelona, Spain
ISSN 2662-6497 ISSN 2662-6500 (electronic)

Palgrave Studies in Economic History
ISBN 978-3-031-21673-2 ISBN 978-3-031-21674-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21674-9
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2023
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc.
in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such
names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for
general use.
The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and informa-
tion in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither
the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with
respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been
made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps
and institutional affiliations.
Cover illustration: Getty Images - Jupiterimages
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Contents
1 Introduction: Ports, Telegraphs, and Railways

at the New Globalization Era in Southeast Asia 1
2 Four Colonies and the Race for the Chinese Market 33
3 The French Railway to China: The Red River Railway 51
4 The Burmese Railway to China: The Irrawaddy River
Railway 83
5 The Philippines Railway: A Link with Hong Kong 121
6 The Dutch East Indies Railway in Java 165
7 Epilogue: The Economic Impact of the Railways
on the Colonial Budget 201
Index 219
v
List of Figures
Fig. 1.1 Railroad at sugar mill in Cuba, 1857 (Source Courtesy

of Museo Naval, Madrid) 3
Fig. 1.2 Share certificate from the Dutch Rhenish Railway dated
1 July 1886 (Source Wikimedia Commons. File Dutch
Rhenish Railway Share Certificate.jpg) 4
Fig. 1.3 Dock of Santiago de Cuba, by Carlos Boudet, 1810
(Source Courtesy of Archivo General de Indias, Seville) 5
Fig. 1.4 Paper mill in the Philippines, by Domingo de Roxas,
1822 (Source Courtesy of Archivo General de Indias,
Seville) 7
Fig. 1.5 A map of the East Indies and the adjacent countries, 1717
(Source Wikimedia Commons. File B26055943A.jpg) 8
Fig. 1.6 Ships waiting for the passage of the Suez Canal around
1880 (Source Wikimedia Commons. File PortSaid Canal
1880.jpg) 17
Fig. 1.7 US Postage Stamp 5 cent 1953 opening of Japan
centennial issue commodore Perry (Source Wikimedia
Commons. File Commodore Matthew C Perry-5c.jpg) 23
Fig. 1.8 Old walls of Barcelona, on the sea, demolished
by 1878 (Source Wikimedia Commons. File
Muralladelmar-ant1878.jpg) 26
Fig. 1.9 The Harbour, Bombay by Francis Frith, Between 1850s
to 1870s (Source Wikimedia Commons. File The
Harbour, Bombay by Francis Frith.jpg) 28
vii
viii LIST OF FIGURES
Fig. 1.10 View of the Bund, Shanghai, 1869 (Source Wikimedia

Commons. File View of the Bund, Shanghai [John
Thompson].jpg) 29
Fig. 1.11 Port workers at Tel Aviv, 1938 (Source Wikimedia
Commons. File Port workers loading crates of oranges
at the Tel Aviv port.jpg) 30
Fig. 2.1 Sugar plantation in East Java. Laying-out of a sugar
cane field according to the Reynoso system, by Ohannes
Kurkdjian, 1921 (Source Wikimedia Commons. File
KITLV-30198.tiff) 36
Fig. 2.2 Rice harvest in Japan, by Elstner Hilton, 1911 (Source
Wikimedia Commons. File Rice Harvest of Japan [1911
by Elstner Hilton].jpg) 40
Fig. 2.3 Menam River from the Royal Dock Yard, Bangkok,
circa 1870–1900, by G.R. Lambert (Source
Wikimedia Commons. File Menam-rivier in Bangkok
RP-F-F01197-X.jpg) 46
Fig. 3.1 Li Hongzhang and Jules Patenotre after signing
the Li-Patenotre Treaty, also known as the Treaty
of Tianjin, 1885 (Source Wikimedia Commons. File
Li Hongzhang and Jules Patenotre after signing
the Li-Patenotre Treaty.jpg) 54
Fig. 3.2 Post and Telegraph building in the French territory
of Kwangchowan in the 1920s (Source Wikimedia
Commons. File Kouang-tchéo-wan.jpg) 57
Fig. 3.3 Steam locomotive number 31 of the Jinpu Railway, 1910
(Source Wikimedia Commons. File JinpuRy-31.jpg) 60
Fig. 3.4 A train of the French Indo-China Yunnan Railroad
is shown arriving at Hanoi Station in 1940 (Source
Wikimedia Commons. File Hanoi, French Indochina, ca.
1940.jpg) 62
Fig. 3.5 Canoe fishing on the Mekong, by Pierre Paul
Cupet, 1894 (Source Wikimedia Commons. File
N5968224JPEG11DM.jpg) 65
Fig. 3.6 600 mm gauge Phu Lang Thuong Lan son line
in Vietnam, 1894 (Source Wikimedia Commons. File 5t
Decuaville040 locmototive Phu Lang Thuong Lang Son
line.jpg) 67
Fig. 3.7 Vietnamese opium smoker, 1900 (Source Wikimedia
Commons. File Vietnamese opium smoker [..].jpg) 70
LIST OF FIGURES ix
Fig. 3.8 Scene of daily life on the Hanoi–Chinese border,

by Héliographie Dujardin, 1903 (Source Revue d’historie
des chemins de fer, 35, 2006; Open edition: https://jou
rnals.openedition.org/rhcf/418) 74
Fig. 3.9 Port of Haiphong, with the rail tracks, 1931 (Source
Wikimedia Commons. File bpt6k97443583.jpg) 76
Fig. 4.1 Burmese war-boat, crewed by thirty men
armed with muskets and dhas. 1852 (Source
Wikimedia Commons. File Burmese war-boat ILN
1852–0327-0004.jpg) 85
Fig. 4.2 A British force arrives in Mandalay, Burma on 28th
November 1885, following the third Anglo-Burmese War
(Source Wikimedia Commons. File British forces arrival
Mandalay 1885.jpg) 86
Fig. 4.3 Inauguration ceremony of the Suez Canal at Port Said,
17 November 1869 (Source Wikimedia Commons. File
L’inauguration du canal de Suez 17 November 1869
Gal18riou001f.jpg) 89
Fig. 4.4 A Thousand Miles on an Elephant in the Shan
States 1890 (Source Wikimedia Commons. File 334
of a thousand miles on an elephant in the Shan States
11205657493.jpg) 99
Fig. 4.5 Strand Road, Rangoon (1870), Myanmar Port Authority
(Source Wikimedia Commons. File Strand Road Rangoon
1870.jpg) 110
Fig. 4.6 Pier with iron forging. Rangoon in the 1870s (Source
Wikimedia Commons. File Vintage photo of a ship
Rangoon in the 1870s.jpg) 111
Fig. 4.7 Rangoon Harbour (1890) (Source Wikimedia Commons.
File Rangoon Harbour.jpg) 113
Fig. 4.8 Showing erosion of right bank of the river (Source
Buchanan [1914, p. 538]) 114
Fig. 4.9 Sinking a Mattress (Source Buchanan [1914, p. 540]) 115
Fig. 4.10 View of the new deep-water channel (Source Buchanan
[1914, p. 542]) 116
Fig. 5.1 Cigar factory of La Flor de La Isabela. Drawing
before the fire of 1898 (Source La Compañía General
de Tabacos de Filipinas 1881–1981. Autor Emili Giral y
Raventós) 133
x LIST OF FIGURES
Fig. 5.2 Inauguration of the Manila to Dagupan Railway (Source

E.M. Barretto Ferrocarril de Manila a Dagupan [Álbum
Recuerdo de Manila], ca. 1885. Palacio la Cumbre,
Subdelegación del Gobierno en San Sebastián) 135
Fig. 5.3 General map of the expansion of the Port of Manila,
1880 (Source Album Obras del Puerto de Manila,
Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid) 145
Fig. 5.4 Port works building on the Malecón del Norte or Muelle
de la Farola, 1887 (Source Album Obras del Puerto de
Manila, Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid) 147
Fig. 5.5 Ten-ton steam crane and a wooden crane, 1887 (Source
Album Obras del Puerto de Manila, Biblioteca Nacional,
Madrid) 148
Fig. 5.6 Priestman dredge iron 60 hp Manila, 1887 (Source
Album Obras del Puerto de Manila, Biblioteca Nacional,
Madrid) 149
Fig. 5.7 Widening of the dike. Eastern port of Manila, 1887
(Source Album Obras del Puerto de Manila, Biblioteca
Nacional, Madrid) 154
Fig. 5.8 Tramway in the church square of the village of Malabon,
1885 (Source E.M.Barretto Tranvia de vapor a Malabón
[Álbum Recuerdo de Manila], ca. 1885. Palacio la
Cumbre, Subdelegación del Gobierno en San Sebastián) 156
Fig. 6.1 The arrest of Diponegoro, 1857 (Source Wikimedia
Commons. File Raden Saleh—Diponegoro arrest.jpg) 170
Fig. 6.2 Railway standing at Semarang NISM Station., KITLV
19,197 Photo Collection, 1901 (Source Wikimedia
Commons. File Trein naar Soerakarta van de Samarang.tif) 175
Fig. 6.3 Map of Ambarawa, the railroad station and Fort Willem I
(1922) (Source http://mahandisyoanata.blogspot.co.id/
2009/10/inside-fort-willem-i-at-ambarawa.html) 177
Fig. 6.4 Ambarawa Station 1906 (Source Wikimedia Commons.
File Treinstation bij Fort Willem I te Ambarawa KITLV
1,400,018.tiff) 178
Fig. 6.5 Section of the railroad track outside Ambarawa, 1900
(Source Wikimedia Commons. File Tandradbaan in de
smalspoorlijn bij Ambarawa op Midden Java 19,354.tiff) 179
Fig. 6.6 Orenstein & Koppel offices in Soerabaja (Source KILTV
Photo Collection, 1890) 181
Fig. 6.7 Locomotive used to transport sugar in Java, 1920 (Source
Wikimedia Commons. File Locomotief gebruitk voor het
transport van suiker op Java 122,405.tiff) 182
LIST OF FIGURES xi
Fig. 6.8 Map of the port of Tanjung Priok in 1908 (Source

Wikimedia Commons. File Kaarten SGD Tandjong Priak
haven van Batavia.jpeg) 186
Fig. 6.9 First inner harbor, Tanjung Priok Batavia, Java
1926 (Source Wikimedia Commons. File Collectie
Tropenmuseum Tandjoengpriok Batavia Java
100007979.jpg) 187
Fig. 6.10 Java and Madoera railways 1889 (Source Collection Dirk
Teeuwen) 188
Fig. 6.11 Java and Madoera railways 1913 (Source Collection Dirk
Teeuwen) 189
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: Ports, Telegraphs,

and Railways at the New Globalization Era
in Southeast Asia
An Empire of Engineers
The nineteenth century has been considered the era of engineers because
of their marked work in the design and implementation of all types
of infrastructure, such as lighthouses, ports, railroads, roads, supplies,
radio antennas, telegraphs, cable stations, etc. Their actions were instru-
mental in the development of European colonial empires on a global
scale (Smiles 1862). The nineteenth century also represented a change in
the sense that engineers became professionalized. To date, we commonly
see the continuity of scientific families and dynasties holding a sort of
local monopoly over the design and awarding of various engineering
works, including fortifications and military engineering barracks, bridges,
churches, sewers, warehouses, and various civil engineering works. As the
nineteenth century progressed, administrations modernized and gained
access to these professionals, who will bring new ideas and break with
a traditional system of seeing cities, their metropolitan areas, and their
connection with communications and new logistics needs, with a modern
vision of the concept and influenced by a global vision (Safford 2014,
pp. 197–252). These are professional profiles halfway between classical
engineers and scientists, with the main objective of achieving useful
knowledge with a clear characteristic: that of achieving rapid implemen-
tation in reality in cities, ports, etc. These figures usually coincide with
the phases of design and execution and, often, the elaboration of the
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2023
D. Cubeiro Rodríguez, The Pearl of the East, Palgrave Studies
in Economic History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21674-9_1
2 D. CUBEIRO RODRÍGUEZ
budgets of materials and their items and certifications once the works have
started. These professionals, engineers, mathematicians, physicists, archi-
tects, and cartographers were used to create teams in the field. Although
they often acted under the umbrella of the administration, we could
assimilate them to the current engineering studies that we usually find
in our environment but with a multidisciplinary scope. From these teams,
as the nineteenth century progresses, new professionals will emerge, as
well or better trained, who will continue this work inherited from their
predecessors (Lucena and Fernández 2022, p. 305). In the second half of
the nineteenth century, this network will be the driving force behind the
infrastructure of the empire, and it is a transversal model that we find in
different European metropolises, and in those we deal with in this book:
Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, and Spain.
European metropolises suffered a turbulent nineteenth century. This
was particularly difficult in the Netherlands, Spain, and France. In the
Netherlands, Belgium’s independence in 1830 was a severe blow to the
Dutch budget. Belgian industry was located in Wallonia, where there was
already an old tradition of iron and coal mining and metallurgy. It experi-
enced rapid development similar to that of England, thanks to a banking
system favorable to industrial investments, which provided the country
with one of the best railway systems in Europe. In 1830, Belgium had a
highly developed textile industry and an expanding iron and steel industry
in Ghent and Liège. France lived the nineteenth century with contin-
uous changes of government, from the Napoleonic expansion through
the revolution of 1830, the liberal monarchic restoration, or the revo-
lution favorable to the working classes in 1848, with the arrival of the
II Republic. France lost or sold the colonial empire it had built until
1814, mainly in America, and began the construction of a new empire.
It was from 1830 in Africa and Asia, starting with the conquest of
Algiers that same year, that took advantage of the decline of the Ottoman
Empire. Napoleon III increased the French presence in Indochina based
on the presence of French missionaries since the seventeenth century.
In the Spanish case, the French occupation of the Iberian Peninsula
between 1808 and 1814 (Aymes 2003) left Madrid disconnected from
the overseas empire, as the colonies of Spanish America took advantage
of initiating their independence processes from 1820 (Buschmann 2014,
p. 3). After different governments of different complexions, Spain endeav-
ored to maintain what was left of the empire: Cuba, Puerto Rico, the
Philippines, the Carolinas, Marianas and Palau, Equatorial Guinea, and
1 INTRODUCTION: PORTS, TELEGRAPHS, AND RAILWAYS … 3
the Sahara, creating the Dirección General de Ultramar in 1847, which

once endowed with more resources and autonomy, would become the
Ministerio de Ultramar in 1863 (Elizalde 2016, pp. 390–393). Dirección
General de Ultramar first and the Ministerio de Ultramar in second place
decisively directed the work of engineers and the provision of the neces-
sary infrastructure, such as the telegraph in the Philippines in 1836, the
first Spanish railroad in Cuba dated 1837, the cable between Hong Kong
and Manila linked in 1880, or the first telephone call in Havana, made
in 1877, thanks to the acquisition of telephone terminals in the United
States (Lucena and Fernández 2022, p. 306) (Fig. 1.1).
A transversal fact in these countries is that the infrastructure works in
the colonies were carried out by the colonial administrations following
the guidelines dictated by the metropolis. Depending on the adminis-
tration and government in power, control and instructions were more
or less intense, and resources were more or less limited, but in general,
scarce. Most transport infrastructure, such as railroads, tramways, and
other services, operate under concession contracts, usually for periods of
between 50 and 100 years of operation and with guaranteed interest rates
Fig. 1.1 Railroad at sugar mill in Cuba, 1857 (Source Courtesy of Museo
Naval, Madrid)
of return, since bonds were usually issued giving the subscriber of the
debt the right to the collection of a half-yearly or annual coupon.
With Western powers expanding their influence throughout the world,
there was a period of great effervescence in public works invest-
ment, which accompanied private investments in agricultural and mining
exploitations destined for export. This boom in public and business
activities gave civil engineers access to public works projects, historically
reserved in colonies of military or naval engineers. For the case studied
in this book, investments in logistics and communications infrastructure,
such as ports and railroads, the incorporation of civil engineers was espe-
cially relevant, which made a difference in the conception of projects and
in the geographical distribution of infrastructure (Lucena and Fernández
2022, p. 307) (Fig. 1.2).
The incorporation of these civil professionals generated the need to
train more engineers, and throughout Europe, we saw a boom in the
Fig. 1.2 Share certificate from the Dutch Rhenish Railway dated 1 July 1886
(Source Wikimedia Commons. File Dutch Rhenish Railway Share Certificate.jpg)
increase of degrees to supply the engineering corps and their different

specialties. In Spain, they were integrated into the Ministry of Public
Works and specialties were created throughout the nineteenth century:
marine engineers (1821), construction and hydraulic engineers (1825),
mining engineers (1835), civil engineers (1841), forestry engineers
(1843), topographical engineers (1860), agricultural engineers (1868),
railroad mechanical engineers (1896), and geographic engineers (1900).
Due to colonial expansion, it was common for engineers assigned to the
colonies to have no fixed destination, and we found engineering works,
such as bridges or lighthouses, made by the same team of engineers across
the globe (Lucena and Fernández 2022, p. 307) (Fig. 1.3).
Despite increasing specialization in engineering education, graduates
had to be flexible and prepared for a variety of jobs. It was common
for civil engineers, after completing a project or local infrastructure, to
be appointed as municipal architects or assigned to the direction of fire
Fig. 1.3 Dock of Santiago de Cuba, by Carlos Boudet, 1810 (Source Courtesy
of Archivo General de Indias, Seville)
departments or directors of public gas or electricity companies. The indus-

trialization dynamic that Europe experienced in the nineteenth century,
with advances in the use of iron, coal, and steam, transformed the means
of production and transportation. Engineers’ work in their various special-
ties made it possible to maintain colonial possessions, modernize them,
and link them to their metropolises in a period of great global interaction.
The European powers found themselves in multiple scenarios of friction
against each other, delimiting borders, and maintaining orders thousands
of kilometers from the capital. The management of resources, agricul-
tural and mining exploitation, the creation of logistics platforms, and the
storage and transport of goods to reach the final consumer in Europe was
in part possible thanks to the work of these engineers displaced to the
colonies, often facing an enormous task and with very limited resources
(Fig. 1.4).
The Advent of Steam Navigation:

The Control of Rivers and Seas
In the mid-nineteenth century, much of the world was under the influ-
ence of European powers, but they had no effective control over most
territories. Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and East Asia are beyond
the reach of Europeans. The French conquest of Algeria required as many
years and almost as many means as the conquest of Europe by Napoleonic
troops, and the same was true for the Russian conquest of the Caucasus
(Headrick 2011, p. 169). Effective European domination was confined
to the seas and major ports, but Western influence was diluted as one
moved inland from colonies. This fact is distorted by the image given to
us by the maps of the time marking complete areas of domination, and
this is also the case in the countries we study in this book, in the cases of
British Burma, French Indochina, the Dutch East Indies or the Spanish
Philippines (Fig. 1.5).
In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, these barriers to the inte-
rior were blurred by technological advances and steam navigation, which
made a key difference to the colonized people and gave them greater
control over the forces of nature. Naval dominance was very limited at
the age of the sail. Sailing ships rarely go up rivers and are very vulner-
able to fortress defense guns or Chinese junks in shallow waters. With
the advent of the industrial revolution, the use of steam engines on ships
became popular as the nineteenth century progressed. The first successful
Fig. 1.4 Paper mill in the Philippines, by Domingo de Roxas, 1822 (Source
Courtesy of Archivo General de Indias, Seville)
introduction was Robert Fulton’s North River ship in the United States
in 1807. Thanks to his invention, Fulton obtained a monopoly of steam
navigation for the Hudson River and Chesapeake Bay, and the Delaware,
Ohio, and Mississippi rivers. The motorization models were improved
with different designs by other engineers, such as Henry Shreve’s Wash-
ington. This had an engine on the surface of the ship, which allowed
a draft of half a meter, compared to that of its rivals, which required
Fig. 1.5 A map of the East Indies and the adjacent countries, 1717 (Source
Wikimedia Commons. File B26055943A.jpg)
a draft of one meter because the engine was semi-submerged in the

hull (Headrick 2011, p. 173). Shreve boats could travel north of Missis-
sippi year-round, without running aground on the sandbars that formed
when the river’s flow dropped, using the same navigation system used
by canoes. By the mid-nineteenth century, steamboats on American and
European rivers had become popular, but they did not yet have access
to maritime navigation. River navigation was used in Asia by the East
India Company during the Anglo-Burmese wars, which will be discussed
in the chapter on Burma. In 1824, the governor general of India, William
Amherst, incorporated steam warships to organize amphibious attacks on
the Burmese coast. Burma is surrounded by mountains, and the best
access to the interior is from the coast, up the Irrawaddy River, from
Rangoon to Mandalay. Campaigns against the Burmese army were very
limited, for although the British dominated the Bay of Bengal with their
brigantines, they could not advance up the meandering Irrawaddy River.
The Burmese repelled river attacks with fast, shallow-draft boats called
praus, propelled by about a hundred oarsmen on double banks. These
boats had held off British raids in the interior to that date. The East
India Company decided to go for steamships to change the situation and
imported three steamers: the Enterprize, the Pluto, and the Diana. Enter-
prize was used as a transport vessel between Calcutta and Rangoon, and
Pluto and Diana were gunboats with cannons arranged on both sides of
the hull. The Burmese praus could not cope with British naval artillery
(Headrick 2011, p. 180). But perhaps most relevant was not the effec-
tiveness of the river-range gunboats, but the route taken repeatedly by
the Enterprize, which made a coastal sea passage putting steam engines
to the test in a more hostile environment than the river. This aroused
the interest of British shipping companies that focused on improving
the route between India and Great Britain, whose reduction in travel
time could mean a lucrative business. English businessman James Henry
Johnson arrived in Calcutta in search of funding for a steamship line to
cover the route between Britain and the Bay of Bengal. Johnson managed
to raise enough funds to build the Enterprize, a 464-ton vessel with two
sixty-horsepower, ocean-crossing capabilities (Headrick 2011, p. 182)
that took four months to reach Calcutta from London.
To date, communications between Europe and Asia could follow three
possible routes: around Africa, across Syria, and up to the Persian Gulf,
or via Egypt through the Red Sea. The Atlantic route was the safest but
the longest, approximately six to nine months for a sailing ship, and was
normally used for the transport of goods. The other two were faster and
used as couriers. The Persian Gulf route was safer because from Bombay,
the British navy kept pirates on the East African coast. The voyage from
Basra to Bombay was about two months for a sailing ship and counting
the overland voyage to the Mediterranean and then to England, it could
be about five or six months of total voyage. In 1830, the steamship Hugh
Lindsay left Bombay and reached Suez in thirty-three days, 12 of which
she waited to load coal in Aden, arriving in England in fifty-nine days,
a feat for the time. The economic cost was extremely high because of
the amount of coal she had to carry for the journey, and because of this,
this steam line route was only operational for three years, until 1833.
That same year, pressure from English and Indian merchants and busi-
nessmen led the British government to abolish the commercial monopoly
of the East India Company, leaving it a political and military adminis-
trator of India (Headrick 2011, p. 184). By 1837, advances in steam
engines and improvements in ship hulls made it possible to tackle long

ocean routes with steamships. The East India Company sent a 620-ton
ship, Atalanta, to India. Atalanta was the first ship to make the entire
voyage to India around the Cape of Good Hope powered by steam. In
the following years, she will be joined by more steamers, creating a stable
shipping line between the United Kingdom and India (Headrick 2011,
p. 188). By 1840, Britain had extended regular steamship lines across the
eastern Mediterranean to the Red Sea, then to India, and India to Burma
(Headrick 2011, p. 190). Steamships were invaluable in the conquest and
colonization of Southeast Asian rivers that could not be reached by sailing
ships.
Motivations of the Western Powers

in Asia in the Nineteenth Century
The period between 1870 and 1914 is known as the era of imperi-
alism, an era characterized by the extension of the dominance of colonial
powers, the emergence of new actors in the international scene, and
the emergence of a new model of economic domination (Hobsbawm
2003). During the Industrial Revolution, there were some moments
when markets were saturated, which meant that it was not so easy to
make profits or at least recover initial investments, since industrial prod-
ucts were no longer a novelty and people did not buy them quickly.
When this happened, it was necessary to find new virgin territories from
an economic point of view, new markets, in which to invest these capi-
tals, and the solution once again went through the colonies. With the
triumph of the liberal revolutions in Europe, the bourgeoisie increas-
ingly evolved toward conservative positions for fear of the protests of the
popular masses. On some occasions, the political classes, through propa-
ganda, developed plans of conquest focused on restoring national pride
wounded after previous military defeats. At other times, they only sought
to keep the population entertained or happy with the appearance of great-
ness and unlimited economic progress. Another typical objective of the
popular classes was to try to gain commercial and military control of the
mainland and sea routes, a strategy to keep rivals isolated, often provoking
numerous territorial conflicts, which further paved the way for the First
World War. Specifically, in East Asia, it resulted in the division of parts of
a very weakened China in the hands of the Empress Dowager Tzu-Hsi,
with the loss of Manchuria to Russia, Taiwan, and Korea to Japan, Hong
Kong, and Tibet to Great Britain, and even by countries with reduced
power such as Portugal, which was left with Macao. In addition, China
had to suffer interference in its trade policy and even direct aggressions,
such as the sacking of Beijing by several Western countries under the
pretext of controlling the Boxer revolt (Hobsbawm 2003, pp. 290–292).
Other territories in Southeast Asia were also occupied by Western powers,
such as Indochina by France, Burma by Great Britain, and the Philippines
by the United States, after a long period of Spanish colonization since
the sixteenth century (Osterhammel 2015, p. 575). In addition to Asia,
another great spoil of imperialism was Africa, whose conquest became a
race starting with the British occupation of Egypt in 1882, and in a few
years, left only a few independent countries outside foreign domination,
such as Ethiopia or Liberia (Osterhammel 2015, p. 576).
Many of these colonizing countries behaved in an expansionist
and aggressive military manner in occupied territories. There were
various motivations, technological, geostrategic, racial, but fundamen-
tally economic reasons, or rather, due to changes in the economies of
the countries that followed this imperialist policy. In the second half of
the nineteenth century, the Industrial Revolution created a considerable
distance between the capitalist countries and the industrially undeveloped
ones, with an undoubted economic and military supremacy, paradoxi-
cally without being given by any serious conflict, as Europe enjoyed an
unusually long period of peace based on the balance between the great
European powers (Osterhammel 2015, pp. 566–567). The second half
of the nineteenth century saw the development of the machine gun,
the repeating rifle, and considerable improvements in the accuracy and
range of artillery and explosives, but above all, the mass production of all
these weapons became possible (Osterhammel 2015, p. 566). However,
these technological advances in war machinery were not used en masse
in imperialist adventures; rather, relatively traditional techniques were
used (Osterhammel 2015, pp. 636–637). On the other hand, techno-
logical and scientific advances closely related to the Industrial Revolution
reduced travel times globally, with great improvements in transportation
and communications. The nineteenth century saw the widespread use of
railroads, steamships, telegraphy, and later radio, which made it possible
to govern remote areas from the metropolis (Osterhammel 2015, p. 608).
Beyond that, this reduction in the size of the globe made it possible
to create a global economy with an increasingly dense web of economic
transactions and movements of goods, capital, and workers. World trade
was not new, but in this period, it was boosted to levels never seen before
in what some authors have called the first globalization. Had this not
been the case, there would hardly have been a reason for the powers
to be interested in remote areas of the world (Hobsbawm 2003, p. 70)
because of the high transaction costs involved. One of the reasons for this
interest was that industrialization demanded new products, such as oil,
coal, rubber, and copper. However, one of the phenomena that altered
world trade was the mass consumption of food products, with a clear
example of tea, which was produced in China and distributed in Europe
and America, or similarly, cocoa, coffee, or sugar, which was intended
to nourish the pantries of Western citizens. However, in addition to tea
and spices, the new means of transport and the low production costs in
the areas of origin have made the trade in cereals, meat, fruit, chocolate,
coffee, and tobacco (Hobsbawm 2003, p. 73). The other complemen-
tary motive was the search for new markets for products mass-produced
by the industrial powers, given the deflationary crisis of 1873 caused by
the protectionism of the main European powers, which made it necessary
to seek markets that were not subject to these restrictions (Hobsbawm
2003, pp. 63–64). There were also other justifications for this imperi-
alism. One of them was a certain feeling of superiority, Eurocentrism,
otherness (us/them), which saw in the occupation a civilizing mission
perfectly justified by allowing an inferior culture to come into contact
with a superior one: the conqueror, and to take advantage of its scientific,
technological, and cultural advances (Osterhammel 2015, p. 644).
Much has been written about the influence on American expansionism
of the White Man’s Burden as a civilizing mission to bring humanity
closer to progress and Christian religious righteousness. This fact would
prompt a great sending across the Pacific of missionaries to transmit
the word of God to these other Asian civilizations. Practices of segre-
gation such as that of the Americans were even arrived at as an extension
of the practices of the occupation of the West in the 1890s, when a
social consensus was forged around the idea that the colonies were good
for the nation, but also an excellent occasion to spread one’s cultural
superiority to the world through this civilizing mission (Osterhammel
2015, pp. 570–630). However, on too many occasions such a feeling
of superiority did not translate into an improvement of their living condi-
tions, but rather into a justification for the unscrupulous exploitation of
the conquered nation, as would be the extreme case of Leopold II of
Belgium’s private colony in the Congo (Osterhammel 2015, p. 631).
As imperialism progressed, disputes between the powers increased.

In an attempt to smooth the situation and seek solutions, the Berlin
Conference was organized (1884–1885), which was mainly composed of
representatives of 14 countries involved in the division of Africa since it
was the continent that generated the most disagreements. Attempts to
bring the imperialist process to peaceful stages were insufficient, as the
confrontations accelerated in the first decade of the twentieth century.
Although there were several conflicts between the European powers, the
most important were the Anglo-Boer War between indigenous Dutch
farmers and the English occupiers, and the Fashoda incident (Oster-
hammel 2015, pp. 570–628) between the English and the French with
the withdrawal of the latter.
It is more than evident that although there were some imperialist
colonization’s that did not use the superiority of force, whether agreed
or paid, with the colonies, most of them were. Imperialism used its
power on the seas and on land because of the military and technolog-
ical superiority brought about by industrialized wealth, which made the
balance unbalanced with these colonial territories and some blows against
empires less advanced than those of European powers such as Japan,
China, and Egypt. Acting with force often meant great human massacres
and irreparable damage, with a few exceptions in economic, social, and
cultural aspects, as we will discuss later.
Many times, some of the colonized empires also committed internal
colonization’s in areas nearby their extension to the continent, either with
artificial borders or neighboring regions. China, Japan, and the United
States sometimes committed the same atrocities and ways of doing what
they were suffering on the part of European powers with the populations
of their respective empires. All had similar objectives, such as extending
their area of influence for reasons of commercial, geostrategic, economic,
cultural, or religious wealth through military or technological superiority.
On the other hand, industrialization does not necessarily push impe-
rialist policy, for if industrial capacity had translated directly into interna-
tional power, then in 1860, Belgium, Saxony, and Switzerland would have
been aggressively great powers. The politics of the new era of global impe-
rialism were largely directed toward demanding concessions of canals,
railroads, mining, timber, and plantations favorable to the private inter-
ests of European corporations. By the end of the nineteenth century,
the new joint structure of the world economy was noticeable everywhere
(Osterhammel 2015, pp. 570–619). European colonization and expan-

sion entailed some good and some bad things in the occupied countries
and Europeanized these territories slightly more. Some positive aspects
could be that the increase in population in the occupied countries surely
generated a reduction in diseases and epidemics, which resulted in fewer
deaths and hospitalized people largely to the medicines that Europeans
brought from their places of origin. The Western cultural and educa-
tional policies implemented in the classrooms meant reducing illiteracy
but surely on the rebound eliminated the tribal structure, and with this
acculturation caused a loss of cultural identity. Another positive aspect is
the introduction of new and more profitable crops adapted to the type
of land conquered and its climate. However, the main objective was to
supply exports abroad rather than favoring native populations that worked
on those lands. Another aspect could be to improve, although this was
not always the case, the infrastructure of the territory to make communi-
cations faster, as in the British colony of India, infrastructures that were
also built to improve access to the international market for plantation
agriculture.
However, the exhaustive exploitation of the colonies through the
seizure of their lands, which generally passed into the hands of large
companies or multinationals that abused the natural resources of the
region to their advantage, also had harmful environmental consequences
for the habitat. Disregard for indigenous languages and local cultures,
traditions, and customs often leads to episodes of racial segregation. In
short, it was all about the development of export-oriented economic
activity only for the benefit of the metropolis. The consequences of
this still last to this day in terms of the construction of fictitious
borders, totally arbitrary and without a cultural, historical, or geographical
criterion, sometimes generating ethnic divisions in several states.
The Strategic Importance of Southeast

Asia in the Nineteenth Century
As the nineteenth century progressed, Southeast Asia experienced the
clash of several European colonial empires in a period of growing
interest in the region, which possibly marked its geographical distribution,
defining a large part of its current borders. The European metropolises
understood that they were in one of the last territories of the globe to
colonize, especially after the division of Africa in 1885, staged in Berlin.
The United Kingdom extended its empire over India, Ceylon, Burma,
Malaysia, Sarawak, Brunei, and North Borneo on the Asian continent,
and over the Fiji Islands, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Gilbert, and part of
New Guinea in the Pacific. France occupied Annam, Cochin China, and
Tonkin, forming French Indochina, to which it later added the protec-
torate of Laos and occupied several Polynesian islands, including Tahiti,
New Hebrides, and New Caledonia. Germany, coming out stronger at
the international level, in the midst of the development of a new welt-
politik, took over part of New Guinea and various Pacific islands, such as
Western Samoa and the Marshall Islands, and was very active in China
in order to be well positioned in an eventual distribution of its provinces
or coastal cities (Elizalde 2008, p. 203). Russia continued its eastward
expansion, drawing the Chinese border with its Cossacks and began to
influence Manchuria and Korea, a traditional Chinese tributary kingdom.
Other countries did not participate in this expansive flow at the end of
the nineteenth century but retained empires built earlier. This was the
case in Spain, which exercised sovereignty over the Philippines, Marianas,
Carolinas, and Palau; Portugal, which dominated the ports of Diu, Goa,
Macao, and Timor; and Holland, which had inherited the possessions
of the Dutch East India Company in the Indonesian archipelago, with
important ports on the islands of Java, Sumatra, Celebes, and parts of
Borneo and New Guinea (Elizalde 2008, p. 204).
Two new countries outside Europe, the United States and Japan,
confirmed themselves as new powers in the region, being very active in the
Pacific and the Asian continent, with a military influence that will grow as
we approach the Second World War. From the nineteenth century, Japan
joined the colonial race after its wars of territorial expansion against China
and Russia, where it managed to occupy Korea, southern Manchuria, the
Liao-Tung peninsula, the islands of Formosa, Pescadores, and Sakhalin.
Japanese penetration in China precipitated a new distribution of zones
of influence in that country, as had happened in Africa. Great Britain
was the most important military and commercial power after the Opium
Wars, forcing China to open its ports, but the final years of the nineteenth
century saw renewed international pressure. China was forced to accept
the opening of more ports from which to operate inland: the Germans
settled in Kiao Chow, the Russians in Port Arthur looked for an inland
port that would not freeze in winter, as they did in Vladivostok, the
French in Kwang Cho Wan, and the British in Wei Hai Wei. In addi-
tion, concessions for the construction of railroads in Chinese territories
have intensified. Russia and Germany monopolized the Manchurian and

Shantung railroads. Great Britain negotiated building one in the Yangtze
Valley.
In September 1898, a Sino-German agreement was signed for new
railway construction. In this context, the US government realized that
it was lagging behind in the foreign penetration of Asia. Although its
traders had been operating in this scenario for decades, they did not
have official backing for their operations. In the 1990s, a new internal
debate began in the United States in which political, economic, and mili-
tary circles stressed the desirability of developing a global policy in line
with its new position of international influence. During the second half
of the nineteenth century, the United States annexed several archipelagos
in the Pacific, acquired the Philippines after the war with Spain in 1898,
and a new defense of its interests in China marked the beginning of US
involvement in Asia (Elizalde 2008, p. 204).
The civilian population of the occupied territories reacted to the new
colonizers by creating resistance movements that hindered the advance-
ment of colonial authorities. We have multiple examples from all the
territories, but in the chapters treated in this book, it is worth mentioning
the resistance in the Philippine case in the central mountain range of
Luzon by the Igorrotes or in Mindanao by the Moros, who estab-
lished a strong response to the colonizers. We see similar struggles in
the interior of Java that led to a bloody war in 1825, or Burmese resis-
tance in the north of the country against the British occupation that
confronted them in the three Anglo-Burmese wars. All this resistance
will be gradually forged in the mentality of the new nations, most of
which, after the Japanese withdrawal following their defeat in World War
II, will rise against their colonizers in revolutionary processes to achieve
independence.
At the economic level, the industrial revolution and the rise of liberal
policies expanded credit and investment in the newly colonized territo-
ries, spurred on by a Western market that demanded these new exotic
products. We could speak of the birth of an export plantation economy
on a global scale, with production centers and agricultural plantations
at a great distance from consumer markets. Destination markets also
expanded, covering not only Europe, but also North and South America.
With the arrival of competition from companies from other countries,
there was a transition to protectionist models, which also reached the
colonies with aggressive tariff policies that closed domestic markets to
foreign products. During this period of economic growth and increased

investment, part of it went to infrastructure, creating real logistical bases
to promote the export plantation economy. Asian countries experienced
a major effort on the part of the metropolis and businessmen to provide
these territories with infrastructure in the form of ports, railroads, public
works, and new forms of communication such as telegraph and later radio
stations. A key moment in the development of this region came with the
opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, which brought Europe closer to Asia,
considerably reducing maritime travel times between the two continents
(Elizalde 2008, p. 205) (Fig. 1.6).
Technical and scientific advances have brought about profound trans-
formations in societies and lifestyles. The communication revolution
prompted the creation of transoceanic steamship lines and the construc-
tion of railroads. The laying of cables and the extension of the telegraph
allowed new immediacy in contact and in the transmission of news,
promoting economic transactions at a distance, and the insurance of
goods. The new means of transport brought the lifestyles of different
sectors of the population closer together and encouraged the mobility of
citizens. The barriers between towns and countries began to blur. Rapid
urbanization and urban concentration have occurred. Electric light has
facilitated the improvement of quality of life in cities. With electricity,
ships could be equipped with cold storage chambers that made it possible
to bring exotic fruit to Western consumers. Notions of time and distance
Fig. 1.6 Ships waiting for the passage of the Suez Canal around 1880 (Source
Wikimedia Commons. File PortSaid Canal 1880.jpg)
change with human relationships. Streetcars crossed cities that widened,

separated industry from the center, and created wealthy and working-class
neighborhoods. Clocks appeared on church steeples, marking the arrival
and departure of streetcars. Between 1861 and 1920 more than forty-five
million inhabitants left Europe in search of new opportunities in other
parts of the world. We witnessed the multiplication of scientific, cultural,
and intellectual relations between increasingly close and interconnected
societies, with all that this entailed for the transmission of ideas and
currents that were changing societies around the world (Elizalde 2008,
p. 205). All these processes that intersected in the nineteenth century
and that transformed international relations between states, peoples, and
individuals had a clear reflection in Asia and the Pacific and a direct reper-
cussion on the European colonies in Southeast Asia that we deal with in
this book.
The Markets of China and Japan

in the Nineteenth Century
Until the beginning of the nineteenth century, trade relations between
Europe, China, and Japan were very scarce. In both Asian countries, the
first contact with Western culture was thanks to Christian missionaries, in
particular the Jesuits (Pointing, 2001a, p. 715). On a commercial level,
Portugal had dealings with China since the sixteenth century from Macao,
and in Japan, the policy of sakoku, or closure, limited those commercial
contacts with a small Dutch presence in Dejima as well as exchanges with
China or Korea (Madrid et al. 2001, p. 213). The East India Company
had a monopoly on British trade with China, with whom it traded on
a small scale in certain ports, although foreigners were not allowed to
settle in the country (Brown 2011, p. 275). British interests in China
were purely commercial, with the ambition to expand the market and buy
Chinese products in great demand in Europe. With this goal in mind, the
British sent several trade delegations without success. In 1793, Macartney
was received as a foreign barbarian who came to pay obeisance to his gifts.
To his demands to establish trade relations, they replied that they had no
need for his products since, in China, they had everything they needed
and of better quality. Lord Amherst’s delegation in 1816 was not even
received by the Chinese court.
Although other products, such as silks or ceramics, were traded, the
main interest of the British was Chinese tea, a plant that had become a
staple product to the point that the English parliament had passed a law
requiring the East India Company to always maintain warehouses with
a year’s consumption (Brown 2011, p. 305). In just one century, the
import of Chinese tea increased from 13,000 tons to 360,000 tons in
1820, which gives an idea of British interest in that market (Pointing,
2001a, p. 714). The government itself was an interested party, since a
tenth of its revenue came precisely from a tax levied on the Chinese
tea trade (Brown 2011, p. 305). On the other hand, Great Britain had
few products to offer since Chinese demand was covered by domestic
production with products of similar quality to what the British could offer.
The latter tried to compensate for cotton brought from India, a British
colony, but this market never reached a sufficient volume (Pointing,
2001a, p. 714) for the sale of textiles. This led the East India Company
to decide to compensate for this enormous trade deficit by selling another
product from its colonies, opium. Although China initially considered
legalizing it (Brown 2011, p. 305), the negative effects of this drug in
terms of both human costs and the corruption it generated meant that
it was soon banned, although the British continued to smuggle it in
ever greater quantities. The turning point was observed in 1834. That
year, Great Britain eliminated the commercial monopoly of the East India
Company, which increased trade on the British side and, therefore, the
massive arrival of opium in China. Two years later, in 1836, Emperor
Daoguang banned the trafficking and consumption of opium, launching a
harsh persecution that did not forget either consumers or corrupt officials,
which caused its price to fall drastically as demand plummeted (Brown
2011, p. 307). In 1839, the emperor commissioned Lin Zexu to eradi-
cate root trade, achieving considerable success in a short time. In the same
year, Chinese pressure forced the British superintendent of trade to seize
all opium and hand it over to the Chinese authorities who proceeded to
destroy it. Under pressure from merchants and fear of the tax on tea, the
British government decided to respond militarily to what they considered
aggression against their subjects. In 1840, a fleet of 16 warships, 4 armed
steamers, 27 transports, and numerous troops arrived in China, which
in a few months broke the Chinese resistance and forced a negotiation
formalized in the Treaty of Nanjing, signed in 1842, which in prac-
tice meant giving freedom to the British to trade even with opium, the
surrender of Hong Kong Island, and substantial indemnities (Pointing,
2001a, p. 715). In the following years, other European countries signed
similar treaties with Chinese authorities, and the provisions signed by the
British were tacitly applied to all foreigners arriving in China, including

those from smaller nations. The opening of the world’s largest market, at
that time, approximately 400 million people pushed Westerners into ever
greater pressure on China (Martinez 2014, pp. 16–17). The restrictive
clauses of the Treaty of Nanjing were superseded by the Treaty of Tientsin
of 1856, when China stops the ship Arrow accused of transporting unper-
mitted quantities of opium, and provides Britain with a concession in
Shanghai, the opening of some cities to trade and the removal of limits
on the opium market. The British and their French allies had steamers
armed with steel breech-loading guns firing explosive bombs with which
in 1857 Rear Admiral Sir Michael Seymour destroyed the Chinese fleet
and took Guangzhou (Headrick 2011, p. 198).
This situation undoubtedly brought with it a defiant attitude from
some representatives of the Qing government, which generated the
outbreak of a new armed conflict, this time with the addition that France
was one of the English allies. The Second Opium War (1857–1860),
culminated with the signing of the Beijing Conventions in 1860, in
addition to the gratuitous and unjustified Anglo-French invasion and
destruction of Yuanmingyuan, the summer palace of the Chinese emperor
(Martinez 2014, p. 18). From 1860 onward, an unstoppable process of
Western penetration began, which lasted well into the twentieth century.
This means that the number of ports open to trade increased consider-
ably, the Chinese economic sphere was controlled by the Euro-American
empires, and the number of countries with treaties signed with China
increased, such as the one signed by Spain in 1864.
Another pressure on the Chinese regime during the second half of
the nineteenth century, until 1884, came from Russia, which expanded
throughout Central Asia as if it were a colonial empire. The Russian
conquest for Asia, which seized a significant part of Chinese territory,
was another fundamental transition in world history. The region had long
been crucial in Eurasian history: it lay on the main route of the ancient
Silk Road between Persia and China and had historically been controlled
by Persians and Chinese at different times, while others had been broken
up into independent states (Osterhammel 2015, p. 713).
From 1890 onward, Western powers would claim economic and
political privileges from the Chinese authorities, who would nominally
maintain national sovereignty, greatly weakened by military defeats (Lee
2009). In this sense, the Japanese victory in 1895 showed that Japan
was a power to be reckoned with in the new East Asian scenario, where
the European empires had very limited naval and military power and
Japan now exercised a counterpoint in China’s decisions. Historically,
the Western positions in China in that period are clearly delimited: the
Russians in Manchuria, Germany in Shantung, Great Britain in the Lower
Yangtze, and France in Yunnan, business and economic interests did not
coincide, and we find investments from different nations all over China.
On the other hand, we must consider the growing power of Japan in
northern China after 1905 and the growing commercial position of the
United States, with important business interests, after the annexation of
the Philippines in 1898, advocating the commercial opening of Chinese
ports and the maintenance of their political independence.
The turn of the century represented the international expansion of rail-
roads and maritime steam lines, and East Asia was no exception. Motor
vehicles would arrive in the region around 1910 and would not initially
compete for railroads, a means used mainly for the transport of goods. In
the 1890s, rail was the most efficient and fastest form of transportation
(Lee 2009). Concessions on railway lines, therefore, would mark colonial
economic policies in Southeast Asia, with projects approved in the Philip-
pines, the Dutch East Indies, Indochina, and Burma. In China, no major
railroad line was built until the beginning of the twentieth century, and
Western administrations struggled to obtain railroad concessions, mining
operations, and export ports.
Thus, foreign investment has grown rapidly in China. Foreign capital
financed railroads, mines, and shipping companies, and investment
banking was established in Shanghai, such as the English Hong Kong
and Shanghai Banking Corporation or the French Banque de l’Indochine,
with branches in Shanghai, Canton, and Tianjin. With the construction of
railroads, China offered significant work contracts for French companies
that gained access to them because of their experience in similar projects
in Indochina, promoted from 1898 onward by Governor General Paul
Doumer. His government gave great impulse to infrastructure, financed
on three main sources of income in Indochina: monopolies on salt and
alcohol, and the opium distribution business. Public investment was
concentrated on four major projects: the creation of an irrigation system
in the plains of Cochin; the dredging and expansion of the port of Saigon;
and two railway projects, the Yunnan line, between Kunming and the port
of Haiphong on the Gulf of Tonkin, and the Indochinoise railway line,
covering the route between Hanoi, the capital, and Saigon.
The railway experience in Indochina allowed access to concessions in

China, where French entrepreneurs conducted two important projects.
In 1899, a Franco-Belgian group won the concession for the Beijing-
Hankow railroad with a length of 1,221 km, and years later, in 1905, the
243 km Shangxi railroad project was completed in 1907.
Railroad concessions granted related privileges, such as mining rights
or leases for ports served by railroads (Lee 2009). In turn, certain political
privileges were allowed, in particular, subsidies on a minimum return on
investment or privileges such as establishing police, posts offices, and tele-
graph posts along the track (Cubeiro 2011). The right to deploy foreign
troops on railway lines consolidated the position of foreign powers in
China, generating social unrest and a growing aversion to foreignness.
Foreign influence also reached Japan at the same time and came under
similar pressures, although it was better able to control the process, given
its political stability. Until the nineteenth century, foreign contacts were
discouraged by the emperor and the daimyos and were reduced to Dutch
presence in Dejima, commercial contacts with Korea, and with China.
Russia was the first to attempt to establish relations in 1793 and 1804,
followed by the British in 1808 and 1837, all of which were rejected by
the sakoku policy (Madrid et al. 2011, p. 213) of the Tokugawa shogu-
nate. However, events in China made it clear that the policy of isolation
could not last, and the Dutch let them know in 1844, taking advantage
of their position of privilege. The Dutch themselves later informed Japan
of the intention of the United States to send an expedition to open trade
and diplomatic relations (Pointing, 2001a, p. 725).
The interest of the United States had several motives. The country
experienced great economic development and was in need of interna-
tional markets, and they thought that a similar pressure to that of Great
Britain on China could be successful. Moreover, the United States won
the states of Oregon and California from Britain and Mexico, respectively,
thus opening up to the Pacific. In addition, Americans had discovered an
area near Kamchatka that was particularly good for whaling, and they
needed nearby ports where they could stock up and acquire coal (Madrid
et al. 2011, p. 214). In the United States, Japan was considered a key
supply point midway to Chinese ports. Unlike Great Britain with the
Chinese, the Americans saw Japan as a geostrategic showcase as a direct
bridge to China on a commercial level, rather than to trade directly with
Japan’s material goods, but rather with China’s products and market
consumption in both imports and exports. China, which was poorer than
Japan as well as having a higher population density and requiring more

consumption, could also import European and American products, as well
as export better goods such as tea that interested the English and Euro-
peans, as well as other Chinese products. For these reasons, President
Fillmore attempted to establish a trade route with Japan. With that objec-
tive in 1853, Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry arrived at the port of
Uraga, carrying a letter from the president and another of his own, whose
reply was expected on his next trip. In the letter, they requested protec-
tion, permission for the arrival of ships, provisions, and establishment of
a trade agreement (Madrid et al. 2011, p. 215). Although Japan initially
resisted this last point, Perry returned with a fleet of warship-forced nego-
tiations. Finally in March 1854 they reached an agreement that opened
Shimoda and Hakodate to shipping and allowed a US consul to settle in
Edo (Pointing, 2001a, p. 725) (Fig. 1.7).
Gradually, the Japanese gave in to Western ambitions so that within
a few years, four other powers (Russia, France, Great Britain, and the
Netherlands) joined the trade agreement signed with the United States.
However, by the end of these negotiations, Japan was forced to give
an unequal agreement, similar to that with China. There were notable
Fig. 1.7 US Postage Stamp 5 cent 1953 opening of Japan centennial issue
commodore Perry (Source Wikimedia Commons. File Commodore Matthew C
Perry-5c.jpg)
differences in both cases: foreign presence was limited to commercial

ports, in line with the policy that sought to avoid foreign pollution,
the opium trade was banned, and Japanese industry took advantage of
the arrival of foreign technology. Despite this resistance, foreign influ-
ence provoked a nationalist reaction that strengthened the opponents of
the Tokugawa shogunate, which ultimately led to its downfall in the late
1860s (Pointing, 2001a, p. 726).
Regarding the differences in the actions of the two powers, the objec-
tives of Britain and the United States in the two eastern countries were
different, which ultimately dictated different courses of action. In the
British case, their main interest was to get a single product into a country
that was self-sufficient, so their strategy was to generate demand that did
not exist before that of opium. Only when this trade was threatened did
it use military superiority to impose its conditions. On the other hand,
the United States was interested in establishing trade relations to place its
manufacturers, as well as to obtain fishing grounds for its whaling fleet,
for which it did not hesitate to use the threat of its military force to
achieve its objectives. However, Great Britain was aware that it was nego-
tiating with a country with a serious internal crisis that had to face several
pockets of rebellion. Japan, also self-sufficient and closed for centuries to
outside influence, enjoyed remarkable peace and stability under the Toku-
gawa shogunate. Despite these initial differences, the methods of the two
powers were similar, using their enormous military superiority to impose
unequal treaties.
The Rise of Port Cities in the Nineteenth Century

In the mid-nineteenth century, the acceleration of the economy in the
phase known as imperialism, together with advances in communica-
tions, caused trade between the metropolis and the colonies to multiply,
bringing raw materials or food products from the colonies on a large scale,
as in the case of tea. This has led to a significant increase in maritime
traffic and, consequently, to an increase in the importance of ports as
nodes of this trade, often accompanied by the development of railroads.
The principles of port specialization have appeared. The city is already
another reality beyond the ports; another reality that will not discover
its need for reconciliation and approximation with its port, or vice versa.
The intimate coexistence of the primitive port and city is explained by
spatial association and maximum functional interdependence. This evolu-

tion will lead to the segregation of port space from urban space. The
effects of the Industrial Revolution were transcendental, both on ports
and in their cities. Industrialization promoted not only the movements of
the colonization processes but also all commercial communication flows
between the different cargo ports. The application of steam energy, not
only to mechanical processes but also to means of transport, will lead to
the emergence of the railroad, which, with its new tracks and stations, will
transform vessels from sailing ships to steamers, none to vessels with more
powerful capacity and larger length, beam, and draft, which will impose
significant adaptations on port spaces (Grindlay Moreno2008, p. 55).
Thus, international trade in goods favored the development of port
cities, both in the colonies and in Western metropolises, with the most
prominent examples being Shanghai, Hong Kong, London, Antwerp,
and Marseilles. This is not a new phenomenon in the nineteenth century,
but a quantitative and qualitative leap. If these commercial ports concen-
trated on all activities and were often governed by monopolistic entities
such as the East India Company, the rise of shipping and new materials
caused ports to be divided into three main functions (Osterhammel 2015,
p. 402).
Some of these ports specialize in passenger transport and are located
close to urban centers. Others have focused on mercantile traffic, which
in Europe was located further away from urban centers and was aided
by the railroad for freight transport. Finally, others specialize in warships,
becoming naval bases sometimes equipped with shipyards that concen-
trate naval military power (Osterhammel 2015, p. 402). Shipyards were
often financed by states who were aware of the importance of having a
modern fleet.
The growth of these ports generated the need for larger land areas for
handling and storage of goods, an increase in the length and depth of
the docks, and greater extension and depth of the docks. All of this led
to major expansion processes that forced an initial separation of the port
from the city, which lost, through progressive functional specialization,
the traditional urban character it had until then, acquiring the general
configuration with which it was viewed throughout the twentieth century.
However, there were also extraordinary urban opportunities, sometimes
linked to the demolition of walls, due to the creation of wide open spaces
of great scenic quality. On some occasions, the new lands generated by the
port expansions were parceled and sold, producing outstanding residential
neighborhoods by the sea and following the exemplary urban experience

of the expansion of the city in their layout (Grindlay Moreno2008, p. 55).
This indicates that the port was built in an administrative enclave
different from the municipal enclave at the heart of the city, which,
in addition to other issues, gave rise to later differences and conflicts
between the two. There is a distinction between a socialized public
domain and a purely functional public domain. Thus, the design of the
socialized part will correspond to urban planning, while the functional
part or “technocratized public space” will be the exclusive competence of
civil engineering. During the twentieth century, the isolation of the port
from the city intensified and culminated (Grindlay Moreno2008, p. 56).
In the nineteenth century, we will see how urban spaces were redesigned,
and in many maritime localities, the outer walls were removed to aerate
the streets of the city and open them to the sea, as we see in the cases of
London, Marseilles, Genoa, and Barcelona (Fig. 1.8).
This redistribution of space was also exported to colonial cities and
ports. In Asia, both China and Japan followed this path, but also in
the cities studied in this book, such as Batavia, Rangoon, Manila, and
Fig. 1.8 Old walls of Barcelona, on the sea, demolished by 1878 (Source
Wikimedia Commons. File Muralladelmar-ant1878.jpg)
Haiphong. A paradigmatic case can be found in the city of Bombay,

thanks to the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, and since 1875, this
city and its ports have been modernized to the standards of the best
European ports. The same can be seen in Tokyo, which became the
most outstanding urban construction project at the end of the nine-
teenth century thanks to the great magnitude of the reforms. In China,
it is considered that in 1888, the first modern docks were inaugu-
rated in Hong Kong, the year in which the country’s port modernity
began. However, the reform progressed very slowly along the Chinese
coast because the excess labor per economic extreme posed a brake on
mechanization (Osterhammel 2015, pp. 403–404).
The new ports formed a special world of massive freight, heavy manual
labor, and new mechanization processes. Some of the most common tasks
in port activities have become mechanized, thereby reducing handling
costs. Increased activity and the need to compete with other commer-
cial nodes boosted engineering advances in Europe and colonial cities
aimed at loading, unloading, and transporting goods, although in China,
these advances were slower because the abundance of cheap labor did
not make them as necessary (Osterhammel 2015, p. 403). However,
throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, all major
ports modernized, and those that did not modernize lost importance.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, in Europe, the large,
modern ports were in London, Marseilles, and Antwerp, and in Asia in
Bombay, thanks to the opening of the Suez Canal; in Osaka, thanks to
strong government support; and in China in Hong Kong and Shanghai,
which monopolized international Chinese overseas trade (Osterhammel
2015, p. 404). All these ports created their own administrations, although
in China or Japan in part, they were outside the control of the state
where they were located as they were ceded to foreign governors or
oligarchies under treaty ports or unequal treaties (Osterhammel 2015,
p. 419) (Fig. 1.9).
There have also been improvements in navigation technologies. Of
particular note is the replacement of wooden ships with iron ships.
Another aspect was the transition from sailing ships to fuel-powered
ships. This was another major trend in technological advances that began
around the 1870s and was globally noticeable by the 1890s. These
changes improved the transport capacity, lower freight and fare prices,
greater sailing speed, greater independence from good or bad weather,
and the possibility of maintaining lines with regular schedules. The speed
Fig. 1.9 The Harbour, Bombay by Francis Frith, Between 1850s to 1870s
(Source Wikimedia Commons. File The Harbour, Bombay by Francis Frith.jpg)
was not only noticeable in the length of the voyage, but the steamers
made shorter stopovers than the sailing ships.
However, this change in technology created new needs, such as the
supply of coal, which in turn justified the dominance of these powers
in areas producing precious coal, as well as the need for ports where to
refuel. This also clearly increased the pace of life and work in the ports.
Another consequence of the success of steamships was the overcoming, in
part, of the barriers between maritime traffic and the great navigable rivers
(Osterhammel 2015, pp. 404–405). One example is the case of Rangoon,
studied in this book in the chapter on Burma, where steamers could access
the Irrawaddy Delta to the port of Burmese city located on the outskirts
of the city. Another clear case is that of the Chinese city of Hankou (now
Wuhan). Between 1863 and 1901, ocean steamers of all sizes sailed up
to Hankou, a great inland city located in the center of China, when the
waters of the Yangtze River were high. It was only after the turn of the
century, thanks to a thorough reform, that Shanghai’s port facilities were
able to monopolize the final destination of ocean voyages (Figs. 1.10 and
1.11).
The construction of the railroad had a great influence on the opera-
tion of these port cities, connecting them with the mines and agricultural
plantations of the interior, as we see in this book in the different chap-
ters, creating a winning combination between interior production and
maritime exportation. There is no dispute that ports that are poorly
communicated or not connected to railroads have no future. In the
modern world, great port cities are enclaves of meeting and interaction
of transport by sea or land.
From a social history perspective, the most important aspect of a port
city, especially in the case of industrializing ports, is the diversity and
mobility of its labor markets. There were good reasons to define port
cities not only by their geographical location but also by the peculiari-
ties of their employment structure. The main difference between a port
and inland city is the extraordinary importance of short-term employ-
ment. Day laborers were in demand from one day to the next, and there
Fig. 1.10 View of the Bund, Shanghai, 1869 (Source Wikimedia Commons.
File View of the Bund, Shanghai [John Thompson].jpg)
Fig. 1.11 Port workers at Tel Aviv, 1938 (Source Wikimedia Commons. File
Port workers loading crates of oranges at the Tel Aviv port.jpg)
were a large number of men looking for work. The ports demanded a
large amount of exclusively male labor, even though it was seasonal work,
poorly paid, and in exploitative conditions, to which there was a lack of
welfare networks and a general climate of crime and danger in the ghettos
that were created around the port areas. However, the mechanization
of transport work led to a decrease in demand for labor. It was not a
novelty that, in the nineteenth century, ports had a mainly unstable and
fluctuating population (Osterhammel 2015, p. 406).
In China’s port cities, immigrants from inland provinces tended to
meet again in the same business sector, live near each other, and develop
their own social environments, trade organizations, and recruitment
networks. In Shanghai, there was a mosaic of communities of different
styles, with solidarity of common origin. However, the formation of place-
based groups is not unique to the Asian cities. The transcontinental
network of port cities always tended to favor ethnically differentiated
structures, as we see in the example of the city of Trieste or in the port
of New York (Osterhammel 2015, p. 407).
This also created problems, as security forces of all kinds tended to

view ports as hotbeds of unrest and criminality. On many occasions, dock
workers had been on the frontlines of battles or revolts against colo-
nialism, the new bourgeoisie, or foreign interests. However, the ports
were more open than inland cities, not only to foreigners but also to
foreign ideas.
Another characteristic of ports in the middle of the nineteenth century
is that they were often dominated by small oligarchies of merchants,
bankers, and shipping companies, which created chambers of commerce
as organs of defense of their own interests and guarantee of social exclu-
sivity. This was true in Rotterdam and Bremen, as it was in Shanghai
and Izmir (Osterhammel 2015, p. 409). These oligarchies controlled the
administration of the ports economically, as well as the police, and even
legally, creating their own legal corpus and courts. Despite this, in general,
the policy was one of the lax controls that favored trade while avoiding
serious class conflicts. The landowners had less political influence in port
cities, although they maintained their power in large inland cities.
Thus, the ports that were created at the end of the nineteenth century
became hubs of passenger and merchandise traffic, at the hands of impe-
rialism and making possible a quantitative leap in international trade. To
do so, the ports created an administration, a series of technical innova-
tions, and employed their own labor force, but this was a phenomenon
that took place independently of urban development, nor was it reversed
by it. In the case of Asia, it is even more remarkable because the main
ports were in the hands of a foreign administration that lived with its
eyes turned toward the sea and not toward the interior. Therefore, the
economic and political influence of port cities is undoubted, but at the
urban level, their influence beyond the attraction of international trade
and the creation of labor, and their influence on the economy of the inte-
rior of the colonies, apart from the transport of the products of the export
plantations, is much more debatable.
References
Aymes, Jean R. 2003. L’Espagne contre Napoléon: La guerre d’indépendance
espagnole, 1808–1814. Paris: Nouveau monde.
Brown, Miranda. 2011. Breve historia de la civilización China. Barcelona:
Edicions Bellaterra.
Buschmann, Rainer F. 2014. Iberian Visions of the Pacific Ocean, 1507–1899.

Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Cubeiro, Dídac. 2011. Comunicacions i desenvolupament a Filipines: De l’admin-
istració espanyola a la nord-americana (1875–1935). Barcelona: Universitat
Pompeu Fabra.
Elizalde, María Dolores. 2008. Filipinas, ¿una Colonia Internacional? Illes I
Imperis 10/11 (1): 203–236.
Elizalde, María Dolores. 2016. A 500 años del hallazgo del Pacífico: La presencia
novohispana en el Mar del Sur. México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de
México.
Grindlay Moreno, Alejandro L. 2008. Ciudades Y Puertos. Ciudades 11
(Diciembre): 53–80.
Headrick, Daniel R. 2011. El poder y el imperio: La tecnología y el imperialismo, de
1400 a la actualidad, trans. Juan M. Madariaga. Barcelona: Editorial Crítica.
Hobsbawm, Eric. 2003. La era del Imperio, 1875–1914. Barcelona: Crítica.
Lee, Robert S. 2009. The Railways of Victoria 1854–2004. Melbourne:
Melbourne University Publishing.
Lucena, Manuel, and Felipe Fernández. 2022. Un imperio de ingenieros.
Barcelona: Taurus.
Madrid, Dani, Pau Pitarch, Oriol Junqueras, and Guillermo Martínez. 2011.
Història del Japó. Barcelona: Editorial UOC.
Martinez, David. 2014. El segle XIX: Temps de crisi, temps de canvi. Barcelona:
Universitat Oberta de Catalunya.
Mommsen, Wolfgang. 2002. La época del Imperialismo. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI.
Osterhammel, Jürgen. 2015. La transformación del mundo: Una historia global
del siglo XIX . Barcelona: Editorial Crítica.
Pointing, Clive. 2001a. Europe and the World. In World History: A New
Perspective, 713–732. London: Pimlico.
Pointing, Clive. 2001b. The World Balance at the End of the Nineteenth
Century. In World History: A New Perspective, 737–740. London: Pimlico
Safford, Frank. 2014. The Ideal of the Practical: Colombia’s Struggle to Form a
Technical Elite. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Smiles, Samuel. 1862. Lives of the Engineers. London: John Murray.
CHAPTER 2
Four Colonies and the Race for the Chinese

Market
A Favorable Environment
During the last decades of the nineteenth century until the 1930s,
economic growth in Southeast Asia (we understand Southeast Asia at the
end of the nineteenth century: Burma, British colony, Thailand or inde-
pendent Siam, Malaysia British colony, Indonesia or Dutch East Indies,
Dutch colonies, Indochina, French colonies and the Philippines, Spanish
colonies until the end of the century, and from 1898 onwards, American
colonies until independence) was a common fact among the economies of
the region, despite finding differences in the growth patterns of different
countries. Particularly relevant are the studies of Maddison, who analyze
Indochina and the Dutch East Indies (Maddison 1990, p. 364). In
the case of the Philippines, the most relevant growth model studies are
provided by Hooley, with an attempt to explain the growth of the Philip-
pines (Hooley 2005, pp. 464–488) and Booth, who emphasizes the
analysis of the impact of the provision of new land for the plantation
economy in the Philippine archipelago (Booth 2007, pp. 241–266). It
should also be noted that these models often work with partially estimated
data for dates for which there are no historical references, particularly
when data from more remote areas must be covered. In the case of the
Philippines, we have worked with data from engineering and execution
projects for the Spanish period, and census data for the North American
period.
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 33

Switzerland AG 2023
D. Cubeiro Rodríguez, The Pearl of the East, Palgrave Studies
in Economic History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21674-9_2
The main factors in determining growth in the area were, at the

external level, access to markets and the increase in international trade
and, at the internal level, access to arable land and the availability of a
surplus of labor that maintained and pushed average wages downward.
While it is true that natural resources and arable land were a source of
wealth in the period between 1870 and 1929 in the area, with signif-
icant growth in production, dependence on the external sector marked
the pace of production, especially in plantation economies, and not so
much the availability of arable land. The same can be said of the available
labor force. Exports transferred higher average and uniform wages to the
rural population, which subsisted mainly in systems of self-consumption
economies and initial handicraft industry.
Access to an abundant source of natural resources is a common pattern
that focuses Southeast Asian countries on economic growth, based on the
sale of these raw materials in international markets. This led to a scenario
of low industrial investment and relatively low development of local finan-
cial institutions, which did not grow stimulated by a nascent industry, as
in the classic cases of industrialization in Europe.
European mercantile and financial institutions assumed these financing
needs in most cases, and in the cases of the Philippines and Thailand,
a large part of the investment capital came mainly from the United
Kingdom. This commercial structure, centered on the exploitation of
natural resources, will require, for the most part, little capital to make the
investments, even in the initial stages (development theories state that in
the early stages, regions need external capital to make the initial produc-
tive investments and establish production, often large sums to finance
infrastructure) and will soon be a net capital generator, via the profits
of the companies. One of the reasons for this initial low dependence on
foreign capital for investment is the existence of a network of small indige-
nous farms throughout Southeast Asia, which allowed the system to be
capitalized and quickly enter the international market, allowing business
profits to be reinvested in improvements in local production, leading to
mechanization and growth in production.
Access to international markets was possible due to the flexibility
of most governments of Southeast Asian countries at the time, which
in fact promoted foreign trade and, in general, a policy of non-
intervention, leaving investment and resource exploitation in the hands
of entrepreneurs. In fact, a large portion of infrastructure investment was
financed by private capital. For example, railway lines initially installed
on the Philippine Island of Cebu were financed by British industrialists
to extract coal from mines located in the interior of the island. With
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Cotton
Kingdom, volume 1 (of 2)
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United
States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away
or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License
included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you
are not located in the United States, you will have to check the
laws of the country where you are located before using this
eBook.
Title: The Cotton Kingdom, volume 1 (of 2)

A traveller's observations on cotton and slavery in the
American Slave States
Author: Frederick Law Olmsted
Release date: January 11, 2024 [eBook #72676]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: Mason Brothers, 1861
Credits: Melissa McDaniel and the Online Distributed

Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file
was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive. Map reproduction courtesy of
the Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center at
the Boston Public Library.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE

COTTON KINGDOM, VOLUME 1 (OF 2) ***
Transcriber’s Note:
Inconsistent hyphenation, capitalization, and spelling in
the original document have been preserved. Obvious
typographical errors have been corrected.
Map reproduction courtesy of the Norman B. Leventhal
Map & Education Center at the Boston Public Library.
Download Volume 2 at
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/72677.
JOURNEYS AND
EXPLORATIONS
IN
THE COTTON KINGDOM OF

AMERICA.
ADVERTISEMENT.
MR. OLMSTED’S WORKS ON THE

SLAVE STATES.
Seaboard Slave States. A Journey in the Seaboard
Slave States, with Remarks on their Economy. 1 vol.,
12mo. pp. 724. Price, $1.25.
Texas Journey. A Journey through Texas: or, a Saddle
Trip on the Southwestern Frontier; with a Statistical
Appendix. 1 vol., 12mo. pp. 516. Price, $1.25.
Journey in the Back Country. A Journey in the Back
Country; with a complete Index to the three volumes. 1
vol., 12mo. pp. 492. Price, $1.25.
The Cotton Kingdom. A Traveller’s observations on
Cotton and Slavery in the American Slave States.
Based upon three former volumes of Journeys and
Investigations by the same author. 2 vols., 12mo. pp.
384 and 408. With a Colored Statistical Map of the
Cotton Kingdom and its Dependencies, mainly derived
from the United States Census. Price, $2.00.
This work was, by request, prepared by its author with
especial reference to English readers, and is
simultaneously published in England and in this country.
A MAP OF
THE COTTON KINGDOM
and its Dependencies
IN AMERICA.
Dominant Cotton Districts.

(producing two Bales Blue
or more to each
Slave)
Subordinate Cotton Districts.
(producing less than Yellow
two Bales)
Subsidiary Slave Districts.
(producing no Cotton Red
or less than half a
Bale)
Full horizontal lines indicate in which there is a strong

Slave property interest, there being more Slaves than
Freemen here resident. Dotted horizontal lines shew a
moderate Slave property interest.
In all the colored space not covered by horizontal lines, the

resident free population is more than two to one of the
Slaves, but is yet hampered with slavery.
The data for this map are mainly derived from the United
States Census of 1850.
Fred. Law
Olmsted.
D. McLellen New York—
Lith. 26 Spruce Mason
St. N.Y. Brothers.
See larger image

THE
COTTON KINGDOM:
A TRAVELLER’S OBSERVATIONS ON COTTON AND SLAVERY IN THE

AMERICAN SLAVE STATES.
BASED UPON THREE FORMER VOLUMES OF JOURNEYS AND INVESTIGATIONS BY THE SAME
AUTHOR.
BY
FREDERICK LAW OLMSTED.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. 1.
NEW YORK:
PUBLISHED BY MASON BROTHERS,
5 and 7 MERCER STREET.
LONDON: SAMPSON LOW, SON & CO., 47 LUDGATE HILL.
1861.
Entered, according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1861, by
MASON BROTHERS,
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States for the
Southern
District of New York.
PRINTED BY
C. A. Alvord,
15 Vandewater-st.
DEDICATION.
TO
JOHN STUART MILL, ESQ.

Sir,
I beg you to accept the dedication of this book as an indication of the
honour in which your services in the cause of moral and political
freedom are held in America, and as a grateful acknowledgment of
the personal obligations to them on the part of
Your obedient servant,
THE AUTHOR.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
INTRODUCTORY.—THE PRESENT CRISIS 1
CHAPTER II.
THE JOURNEY FROM WASHINGTON 28
CHAPTER III.
VIRGINIA.—GLIMPSES BY RAILROAD 38
CHAPTER IV.
THE ECONOMY OF VIRGINIA 108
CHAPTER V.
VIRGINIA AND ITS ECONOMY—CONTINUED 141
CHAPTER VI.
SOUTH CAROLINA AND GEORGIA SURVEYED 224
CHAPTER VII.
THE SOUTH-WEST—ALABAMA AND MISSISSIPPI 272
CHAPTER VIII.
MISSISSIPPI AND LOUISIANA 285
CHAPTER IX.
FROM LOUISIANA THROUGH TEXAS 342
COTTON AND SLAVERY.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.—THE PRESENT CRISIS.
The mountain ranges, the valleys, and the great waters of America,
all trend north and south, not east and west. An arbitrary political line
may divide the north part from the south part, but there is no such
line in nature: there can be none, socially. While water runs downhill,
the currents and counter currents of trade, of love, of consanguinity,
and fellowship, will flow north and south. The unavoidable
comminglings of the people in a land like this, upon the conditions
which the slavery of a portion of the population impose, make it
necessary to peace that we should all live under the same laws and
respect the same flag. No government could long control its own
people, no government could long exist, that would allow its citizens
to be subject to such indignities under a foreign government as those
to which the citizens of the United States heretofore have been
required to submit under their own, for the sake of the tranquillity of
the South. Nor could the South, with its present purposes, live on
terms of peace with any foreign nation, between whose people and
its own there was no division, except such an one as might be
maintained by means of forts, frontier-guards and custom-houses,
edicts, passports and spies. Scotland, Wales, and Ireland are each
much better adapted for an independent government, and under an
independent government would be far more likely to live at peace
with England, than the South to remain peaceably separated from
the North of this country.
It is said that the South can never be subjugated. It must be, or we
must. It must be, or not only our American republic is a failure, but
our English justice and our English law and our English freedom are
failures. This Southern repudiation of obligations upon the result of
an election is but a clearer warning than we have had before, that
these cannot be maintained in this land any longer in such intimate
association with slavery as we have hitherto tried to hope that they
might. We now know that we must give them up, or give up trying to
accommodate ourselves to what the South has declared, and
demonstrated, to be the necessities of its state of society. Those
necessities would not be less, but, on the contrary, far more
imperative, were the south an independent people. If the South has
reason to declare itself independent of our long-honoured
constitution, and of our common court of our common laws, on
account of a past want of invariable tenderness on the part of each
one of our people towards its necessities, how long could we
calculate to be able to preserve ourselves from occurrences which
would be deemed to abrogate the obligations of a mere treaty of
peace? A treaty of peace with the South as a foreign power, would
be a cowardly armistice, a cruel aggravation and prolongation of war.
Subjugation! I do not choose the word, but take it, and use it in the
only sense in which it can be applicable. This is a Republic, and the
South must come under the yoke of freedom, not to work for us, but
to work with us, on equal terms; as a free people. To work with us,
for the security of a state of society, the ruling purpose and tendency
of which, spite of all its bendings heretofore, to the necessities of
slavery; spite of the incongruous foreign elements which it has had
constantly to absorb and incorporate; spite of a strong element of
excessive backwoods individualism, has, beyond all question, been
favourable to sound and safe progress in knowledge, civilization, and
Christianity. To this yoke the head of the South must now be lifted, or
we must bend our necks to that of slavery, consenting and
submitting, even more than we have been willing to do heretofore, to
labour and fight, and pay for the dire needs of a small portion of our
people living in an exceptional state of society, in which Cowper’s
poems must not be read aloud without the precautions against the
listening of family servants; in which it may be treated as a crime
against the public safety to teach one of the labouring classes to
write; in which the names of Wilberforce and Buxton are execrated;
within which the slave trade is perpetuated, and at the capital of
whose rebellion, black seamen born free, taken prisoners, in
merchant ships, not in arms, are even already sold into slavery with
as little hesitation as even in Barbary. One system or the other is to
thrive and extend, and eventually possess and govern this whole
land.
This has been long felt and acted upon at the South; and the
purpose of the more prudent and conservative men, now engaged in
the attempt to establish a new government in the South, was for a
long time simply to obtain an advantage for what was talked of as
“reconstruction;” namely, a process of change in the form and rules
of our government that would disqualify us of the Free States from
offering any resistance to whatever was demanded of our
government, for the end in view of the extension and eternal
maintenance of slavery. That men to whom the terms prudent and
conservative can in any way be applied, should not have foreseen
that such a scheme must be unsuccessful, only presents one more
illustration of that, of which the people of England have had many in
their own history, the moral Myopism, to which the habit of almost
constantly looking down and never up at mankind, always
predisposes. That the true people of the United States could have
allowed the mutiny to proceed so far, before rising in their strength to
resist it, is due chiefly to the instructive reliance which every
grumbler really gets to have under our forms of society in the
ultimate common-sense of the great body of the people, and to the
incredulity with which the report has been regarded, that slavery had
made such a vast difference between the character of the South and
that of the country at large. Few were fully convinced that the whole
proceedings of the insurgents meant anything else than a more than
usually bold and scandalous way of playing the game of brag, to
which we had been so long used in our politics, and of which the
people of England had a little experience shortly before the passage
of a certain Reform Bill. The instant effect of the first shotted-gun that
was fired proves this. We knew then that we had to subjugate
slavery, or be subjugated by it.
Peace is now not possible until the people of the South are well
convinced that the form of society, to fortify which is the ostensible
purpose of the war into which they have been plunged, is not worthy
fighting for, or until we think the sovereignty of our convictions of
Justice, Freedom, Law and the conditions of Civilization in this land
to be of less worth than the lives and property of our generation.
From the St. Lawrence to the Mexican Gulf, freedom must
everywhere give way to the necessities of slavery, or slavery must
be accommodated to the necessary incidents of freedom.
Where the hopes and sympathies of Englishmen will be, we well
know.
“The necessity to labour is incompatible with a high civilization, and

with heroic spirit in those subject to it.”
“The institution of African slavery is a means more effective than any
other yet devised, for relieving a large body of men from the
necessity of labour; consequently, states which possess it must be
stronger in statesmanship and in war, than those which do not;
especially must they be stronger than states in which there is
absolutely no privileged class, but all men are held to be equal
before the law.”
“The civilized world is dependent upon the Slave States of America
for a supply of cotton. The demand for this commodity has, during
many years, increased faster than the supply. Sales are made of it,
now, to the amount of two hundred millions of dollars in a year, yet
they have a vast area of soil suitable for its production which has
never been broken. With an enormous income, then, upon a steadily
rising market, they hold a vast idle capital yet to be employed. Such
a monopoly under such circumstances must constitute those who
possess it the richest and most powerful people on the earth. The
world must have cotton, and the world depends on them for it.
Whatever they demand, that must be conceded them; whatever they
want, they have but to stretch forth their hands and take it.”

(Download pdf) The Pearl Of The East The Economic Impact Of The Colonial Railways In The Age Of High Imperialism In Southeast Asia Didac Cubeiro Rodriguez full chapter pdf docx

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

(Download pdf) The Pearl Of The East The Economic Impact Of The Colonial Railways In The Age Of High Imperialism In Southeast Asia Didac Cubeiro Rodriguez full chapter pdf docx

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Pearl of the East: The Economic

Impact of the Colonial Railways in the

Australia in the Age of International Development,

The Political Economy of Automotive Industrialization

The Oxford handbook of economic imperialism Zak Cope

Growth Mechanisms and Sustainability: Economic Analysis

Revenants of the German Empire: Colonial Germans,

French Liberalism and Imperialism in the Age of

The Future of East Asia 1st Edition Peter Hayes

The Oxford History of the Ancient Near East: Age of

The Pearl of the East

The Pearl of the East

ISSN 2662-6497 ISSN 2662-6500 (electronic)

Cover illustration: Getty Images - Jupiterimages

1 Introduction: Ports, Telegraphs, and Railways

Fig. 1.1 Railroad at sugar mill in Cuba, 1857 (Source Courtesy

Fig. 1.10 View of the Bund, Shanghai, 1869 (Source Wikimedia

Fig. 3.8 Scene of daily life on the Hanoi–Chinese border,

Fig. 5.2 Inauguration of the Manila to Dagupan Railway (Source

Fig. 6.8 Map of the port of Tanjung Priok in 1908 (Source

Introduction: Ports, Telegraphs,

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

the Sahara, creating the Dirección General de Ultramar in 1847, which

increase of degrees to supply the engineering corps and their different

departments or directors of public gas or electricity companies. The indus-

The Advent of Steam Navigation:

a draft of one meter because the engine was semi-submerged in the

engines and improvements in ship hulls made it possible to tackle long

Motivations of the Western Powers

As imperialism progressed, disputes between the powers increased.

(Osterhammel 2015, pp. 570–619). European colonization and expan-

The Strategic Importance of Southeast

have intensified. Russia and Germany monopolized the Manchurian and

foreign products. During this period of economic growth and increased

change with human relationships. Streetcars crossed cities that widened,

The Markets of China and Japan

British were tacitly applied to all foreigners arriving in China, including

The railway experience in Indochina allowed access to concessions in

Japan as well as having a higher population density and requiring more

differences in both cases: foreign presence was limited to commercial

The Rise of Port Cities in the Nineteenth Century

spatial association and maximum functional interdependence. This evolu-

neighborhoods by the sea and following the exemplary urban experience

Haiphong. A paradigmatic case can be found in the city of Bombay,

This also created problems, as security forces of all kinds tended to

Buschmann, Rainer F. 2014. Iberian Visions of the Pacific Ocean, 1507–1899.

Four Colonies and the Race for the Chinese

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 33

The main factors in determining growth in the area were, at the

Title: The Cotton Kingdom, volume 1 (of 2)

Author: Frederick Law Olmsted

Release date: January 11, 2024 [eBook #72676]

Original publication: New York: Mason Brothers, 1861

Credits: Melissa McDaniel and the Online Distributed

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE

THE COTTON KINGDOM OF

MR. OLMSTED’S WORKS ON THE

Dominant Cotton Districts.

Full horizontal lines indicate in which there is a strong

In all the colored space not covered by horizontal lines, the

See larger image

A TRAVELLER’S OBSERVATIONS ON COTTON AND SLAVERY IN THE

FREDERICK LAW OLMSTED.

JOHN STUART MILL, ESQ.