Chapter 18

Industry and Empire

  • New economic needs found solutions abroad. – created the need for extensive raw materials and agricultural products:
    • Bananas from Central America
    • Rubber from Brazil
    • Meat from Argentina
    • Cocoa and Palm oil from West Africa
    • Gold and Diamonds from South Africa
  • By 1840, Britain was exporting 60% of its cotton-cloth production, sending millions of yards to Europe.
  • Between 1910 and 1914 Britain was sending about half of its savings overseas as foreign investment
  • Wealthy Europeans also saw benefits to foreign markets.
  • Industrialization society led to a serious redistribution of wealth.
  • Growth of nationalism
    • Colonies and spheres of influence abroad became symbols of great power, status for a nation.
  • Imperialism appealed on economic and social grounds to the wealthy or ambitious.
    • international power politics.
  • The construction of the Suez Canal in 1869
    • to reach distant Asian and African ports more quickly.
A Second Wave of European Conquests
  • Between 1750 and 1914 was a second and quite distinct round of conquests:
    • Asia
    • Africa.
  • Construction of these new empires in the Afro-Asian world involved military force.
    • countless wars of conquest of colonial European states.
  • India and Indonesia grew out of earlier interactions with European trading firms. British East India Company 
    • took advantage of the fragmentation of the Mughal Empire and facilitated penetration for them
  • Dutch acquisition of Indonesia was also as traders and alliances. Slowly without a plan, soon they had conquered the islands.
Under European Rule
  • Australia and New Zealand, both taken over by the British during the nineteenth century, were more similar to the earlier colonization of North America.
  • Diseases that reduced native numbers by 75%.
  • The United States practiced a policy of removing, exterminating Indian people.
    • Also, there were boarding schools (many children removed, to civilize the remaining natives) = Kill the Indian, Save the Man.
  • Filipinos acquired new colonial rulers when United Staes took over from Spain (Spanish American war 1898)
    • many freed migrated to West Africa.
  • Incorporation into European colonial empires was a traumatic experience.
Ways of Working: Comparing Colonial Economies
  • Colonial rule affected the lives of its subject people in many ways, but the most pronounced change was their ways of working
  • Colonial state with its power to pay tax, to seize land for European enterprises, to forced labor, to build railroads, ports, and roads
    • played an important role in these transformations.
  • African societies got into the world economy with the demand for gold, diamonds, copper, rubber, coffee, cocoa, and cotton, etc.
  • Plantation workers, domestic servants, crop farmers, miners underwent profound changes.
Believing and Belonging: Identity and Cultural Change in the Colonial Era
  • Through missionary or government schools, that generated a new identity. Education was a means of “uplifting native races”
  • Reading or writing of any king often suggested a magical power (especially if a native could read).
  • Better paying positions in government bureaucracies, or business firms
    • education provided social mobility and elite status.
  • Many ardently through education embraced European culture
    • learning to speak French or English.
  • Still Europeans declined to treat their Asian or African subjects as equal partners.
  • Widespread of Christianity conversion.
  • 10,000 missionaries had descended on Africa by 1910, by the 1960s about 50 million Africans claimed Christian identity.
  • Christianity was widely associated with modern education, and especially in Africa, mission schools were the primary providers of Western Education.
  • Missionary teaching and practice also generated conflict and opposition, particularly when they touched on gender roles.
  • Marriages between Christian and non-Christians, African sexual activity outside of monogamous marriage often resulted in expulsion from the church.
  • Female circumcision
    • Missionaries tried to ban it in 1929, but thousands abandoned mission schools and churches = creation of independent schools.
  • Christianity in Africa became Africanized.
  • The influence of Western culture led also to the idea of an “African identity” well educated Africans began to think in broader terms – African traditions.
  • African intellectuals pointed with pride to their ancient kingdoms of Ethiopia, Malo, Songhay and others.
  • Edward Blyden (1832-1912) a West African born in West Indies and educated in the United States became a prominent scholar and political officer. Pointing out the uniqueness of African culture
    • individualistic but cooperative, egalitarian societies within Africa.
  • African Identity
    • Africans that spoke similar languages shared a common culture, began to think of themselves as a single people, a new tribe.“Africans belong to tribes, African built tribes to belong to.”

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