Case Study: The New Imperialism
From the earliest stages of history, civilizations have extended beyond their boundaries to conquer neighboring peoples. Historians use the term empire to describe this process of domination and what results from it. It is easy to chronicle human history as a series of eras in which one or more civilizations display dominance and maintain it until they are conquered by a more powerful force. With the development of nation-states in the early modern period, the nation replaced civilization. But the process of conquest and dominance continued; perhaps there were more players in the game, but things didn't change very much.
The term imperial is used to characterize this empire building. Derived from the Latin imperium (command), it denotes the process by which a group of people extend their control over a larger area. For example, when the small Roman republic extended its control over vast territories, it assumed the title Imperium Romanum.
The last half of the nineteenth century is considered to be imperialism's apex. During that era European nations (and ultimately the United States) began to extend their influence over the non-Western world. The results were swift and decisive; within a generation there were few areas in Asia and Africa that were free from European intrusion. The mad scramble for colonies had begun.
From the earliest stages of history, civilizations have extended beyond their boundaries to conquer neighboring peoples. Historians use the term empire to describe this process of domination and what results from it. It is easy to chronicle human history as a series of eras in which one or more civilizations display dominance and maintain it until they are conquered by a more powerful force. With the development of nation-states in the early modern period, the nation replaced civilization. But the process of conquest and dominance continued; perhaps there were more players in the game, but things didn't change very much.
The term imperial is used to characterize this empire building. Derived from the Latin imperium (command), it denotes the process by which a group of people extend their control over a larger area. For example, when the small Roman republic extended its control over vast territories, it assumed the title Imperium Romanum.
The last half of the nineteenth century is considered to be imperialism's apex. During that era European nations (and ultimately the United States) began to extend their influence over the non-Western world. The results were swift and decisive; within a generation there were few areas in Asia and Africa that were free from European intrusion. The mad scramble for colonies had begun.
Guiding Question:
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Topics for Discussion:
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Reading:
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For this case study you are to analyze Chapter 24 Western Imperialism, 1880 - 1914 and review the sources provided below. You are expected to be able to answer the guiding question in full depth with specific historical evidence and supporting details.
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Sources:
Source 1 : Lance E. Davis & Robert A. Huttenback, Imperium Economicum: In Retrospect, Cambridge University Press, 1988
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The British as a whole certainly did not benefit economically from the Empire. On the other hand, individual investors did. In the empire itself, the level of benefits depended upon whom one asked and how one calculated. For the colonies of white settlement the answer is unambiguous: They paid for little and received a great deal. In the dependent Empire the white settlers, such as there were, almost certainly gained as well. As far as the indigenous population was concerned, while they received a market basket of government commodities at truly wholesale prices, there is no evidence to suggest that, had they been given a free choice, they would have bought the particular commodities offered, even at the bargain-basement rates.
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Source 2 : John M. MacKenzie, The Partition of Africa, 1880 - 1900, Methuen & Company Ltd., 1983
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The Scramble for Africa seems to have emerged from a combination of exaggerated hope and over-heated anxiety. The economic conditions of the day, the trough between the first industrial revolution of coal, cotton and iron, and the second of electricity, copper, steel: the appearance of new industrial states protecting themselves with tariffs; the decline in some commodity prices; and the heightened commercial competition everywhere produced all the alarms associated with the transition from one economic system to another. At the same time there were many publicists concerned to argue that Africa was a tropical treasure house, capable of producing plantation crops, base and precious metals, as well as other valuable commodities like rubber and ivory. Verney Lovett Cameron, who had been sent to find Livingstone, published just such an ecstatic account in his Across Africa in 1877, Many others wrote in similar vein. The growth in the palm oil trade, the buoyant prices of rubber and ivory, the discovery of diamonds and then of gold, all seemed to confirm this view. Africa could solve some of the problems of the age. A state which missed out on these opportunities might be imperiled in the future. These hopes and anxieties took some time to foment fully, but by the mid-1880's they were ready to blow the lid off the politicians' restraint. Politicians do not so much act as react to the forces round about them.
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Source 3 : The Maxim Gun
"Whatever happens, we have got The Maxim gun, and they have not."
The Maxim gun was a weapon invented by American-British inventor Hiram Stevens Maxim in 1883: it was the first recoil-operated machine gun. It has been called "the weapon most associated with the British imperial conquest". |
Source 4 : Eugenics Education Society of London, Eugenics for Citizens: Aim of Eugenics (1907)
Social Darwinists were vocal in their warnings of racial decay. Among the most famous of these was Charles Darwin's cousin Sir Francis Galton, who reasoned that society's efforts to protect the weakest, most vulnerable members of humanity were in fact at odds with natural selection - meaning that far from evolving to become a stronger and more talented people, society risked reverting toward mediocrity, or experiencing a "regression toward the mean." Galton created the term eugenics, defining it as "the study of the Agencies under social control, that improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations either physically or mentally." |
Source 5 : The I-ho-ch'uan (Boxers), The Boxers Demand Death for All "Foreign Devils" (1900)
The following placard written and circulated by the Boxers at the height of their mass revolt in 1900, exposes the beliefs driving one such uprising in China, where European nations had recently made significant inroads |
The Gods assist the Boxers,
The Patriotic Harmonious corps, It is because the "Foreign Devils" disturb the "Middle Kingdom?' Urging the people to join their religion, To turn their backs on Heaven, Venerate not the Gods and forget the ancestors. Men violate the human obligations, Women commit adultery, "Foreign Devils" are not produced by mankind, If you do not believe, Look at them carefully. The eyes of all the "Foreign Devils" are bluish, No rain falls, The earth is getting dry, This is because the churches stop Heaven, The Gods are angry; The Genii are vexed; Both come down from the mountain to deliver the doctrine. |
This is no hearsay,
The practices of boxing will not be in vain; Reciting incantations and pronouncing magic words, Burn up yellow written prayers, Light incense sticks To invite the Gods and Genii of all the grottoes. The Gods come out from grottoes, The Genii come down from mountains, Support the human bodies to practice the boxing. When all the military accomplishments or tactics Are fully learned, It will not be difficult to exterminate the "Foreign Devils" then. Push aside the railway tracks, Pull out the telegraph poles, Immediately after this destroy the steamers. |
Source 6 : Friedrich Fabri's Bedarf Deutschland der Kolonien?, 1879
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But the German nation, which is fundamentally seaworthy and adept both commercially and industrially, which is more skillful at agricultural colonization than others, and is provided with a workforce more abundant and avail-able than that of any other civilized people, should that nation not now successfully set off on this new path? We doubt this all the less the more we are convinced that today the colonial question has already become a vital question for the development of Germany. Dealing thoughtfully but also forcefully with this question will have profitable results for our economic situation and for our entire national development. Just the fact that we are dealing with a new question, whose multifaceted importance for the German people represents still untrodden virgin soil, can prove beneficial in many ways. In the new German Reich many things are already so embittered and soured and poisoned by sterile partisan squabbles that opening up a new, promising path of national development could have a liberating effect in many areas because it could be a powerful stimulant to the spirit of the people, propelling them in new directions. That too would be a joy and a plus. Of greater consequence is the consideration that a people guided to the height of its political power can maintain its historical position successfully only as long as it can both recognize itself as and prove itself to be the bearer of a cultural mission. At the same time this is the only course that guarantees the durability and growth of national prosperity, the necessary basis of a lasting development of power. The times in which Germany contributed to the challenges of our century only through intellectual and literary activity are past. We have become political and we have also become powerful. But political power, when it pushes itself into the foreground of our national ambitions as an end in itself, leads to harshness, even to barbarity, if it is not ready and willing to serve the spiritual and the moral as well as the economic cultural missions of its time.
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Source 7 : Joseph Chamberlain, Speech to the West Birmingham Relief Association, 1894
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All that is wanted to restore this country to a state of prosperity, to a com-mercial position which it has never attained before, is settled peace and order. (Hear, hear.) That peace and order which we have maintained for so long in India we could secure by a comparatively slight exertion in Uganda, and, when this is proposed to us, the politicians to whom I have referred would re-pudiate responsibility and throw back the country into the state of anarchy from which it has only just emerged; or they would allow it to become an appendage or dependency of some other European nation, which would at once step in if we were to leave the ground free to them. I am opposed to such a craven policy as this. (Applause.) I do not believe it is right. I do not believe it is worthy of Great Britain; and, on the contrary, I hold it to be our duty to the people for whom at all events we have for the time accepted responsibility, as well as to our own people, even at some cost of life, some cost of treasure, to maintain our rule and to establish settled order, which is the only foundation for permanent prosperity. When I talk of the cost of life, bear in mind that any cost of life which might result from undertaking this duty would be a mere drop in the ocean to the bloodshed which has gone on for generations in that country before we ever took any interest in it.
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Source 8 : Merriman, John. A History of Modern Europe: From the Renaissance to the Present, Lecture 15: Imperialism and the Boy Scouts
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But there is a point to all of this, so the rest of this is about Baden-Powell and the Boy Scouts. Robert Baden-Powell was a soldier. He came up with the idea of scouting as a way of preparing British youth for imperialism and for the next war. The origins of the Scouts, in terms of its timing, that is the first decade of the twentieth century, has to be seen in terms of these international conflicts, these international great power rivalries with which we began. It comes at the time of the Moroccan Affair, the first Moroccan Affair and the second Moroccan Affair in 1905, 1911, when it seems like the French and the Germans will go to war against each other and they will bring in the other great powers.
Robert Baden-Powell was a professional soldier. When he went back to England he thought that British youth were cigarette-smoking, heavy-drinking, flabby weaklings, whether they were upper classes and, even worse, his few lower classes, because they were underfed and therefore smaller. He hated the Oxbridge common rooms; he said, "With its town life, buses, hot and cold water laid on, everything is done for you." The British working classes, like the upper classes, tended to drink a lot. He was sure that there'd be a war fought in the lifetime of these same people, and he came to the idea of scouting. |