Imperialism RoundupName: - MR. BEST WORLD HISTORY



Imperialism RoundupName:The purpose of this reading is to take a look at some of the places of the world experiencing imperialism during the era of new imperialism. We will look specifically into a few places that we won’t be able to spend much time with.Africa: very little of Africa had ever been conquered by Europeans even as late as 1870. North of the Sahara Desert the aging Ottoman Empire, heir of the Caliphate, still ruled though its power was slipping. As it faded France, Britain, and Italy eagerly gobbled up its lost territories. South of the Sahara, the small kingdoms of Africa were protected most by their bitterest foe, Malaria. Spread by mosquito, Malaria was devastating to Europeans but Africans had grown resistant over the years. It was not until the invention of the first anti-malarial drug quinine that European conquest of Africa began in full. The former Ottoman dependency Algeria in the north was the only realm to resist Europe for long. It took France 3 decades to fully conquer Algeria. In the rest of Africa, even the stiff resistance of the Ashanti and Zulu were not enough to do anything but delay and disturb European rule.What were the main speed bumps on European conquest of Africa? How did were they removed?Ethiopia: of all the countries of Africa, only Ethiopia managed to throw the Europeans back to the sea. It could do this because of a few reasons. 1) it was a large kingdom unlike most of Sub-Saharan Africa and could therefore summon tens of thousands of soldiers. 2) It is a mountainous country, making it more defensible and more difficult to get to. 3) Its emperor, Menelik, was very clever and realized he needed to adapt European tactics. So Ethiopia modernized its army and sought out allies in Europe, which it found in France and Russia. Ironically when Italian soldiers made their way to Ethiopia, they found themselves with older more outdated equipment than the Ethiopians, who were armed by the newest French rifles and vastly outnumbered the Italians. It won the war and remained independent for another 40 years, but would eventually be conquered by Italy during the Fascist period. How was Ethiopia able to resist conquest?Latin America: the conquest of the Americas by Spain belongs to the older wave of European imperialism. By 1830, all of Latin America had freed itself from European control during its revolutionary period. But being free from control did not make them free from imperialism. America and Britain eagerly swooped in to fill the void. Neither wanted to conquer, instead their businesses exploited the new countries, buying up huge swaths of land and turning them into fruit or sugar plantations. American businesses especially became quite predatory. Huge corporations like United Fruit became more powerful than the governments they operated under. In countries where United Fruit held its monopolies, the so-called “Banana Republics,” there was no effective method for controlling them. They paid dirt-cheap wages for grueling, unsafe work. When countries tried to reform their laws, disallowing such practices, United Fruit bribed officials to vote against the law or supported political rivals in their attempts to overthrow the country. Another fruit company, the Cuyamel fruit company, even kept a private mercenary army to enforce its controlHow did the nature of Imperialism change in Latin America?Describe the nature of Western control in the Banana RepublicsOceania: far to the East had become the realm of the Dutch, who ruled almost all of Indonesia from the opposite side of the world. There were a few other major imperial holdings when our period begins such as the Spanish Phillipines. But during the age of New Imperialism, all of Oceania would be conquered. The British, chief power in the world for most of this period, took Australia and New Zealand, both countries whose people had not even started farming yet and were easily swept away by European armies. The rest of the islands of Oceania were gobbled up by Germany and France. America too got into the game, seizing Hawaii in 1898 and taking control of all the pacific territories of the Spanish Empire a year later in 1899 (most of which are still held by America). For most of the people of Oceania, the question of resistance was simple. These were small islands and nowhere was too far from the sea, where ironclads and armored warships were so supreme that most countries never even tried.Which countries took control of Oceania?Where did most of the American colonies come from?Why was resistance difficult?Philippines: When America went to war with Spain over Spanish control of Cuba, the oppressed people of the Philippines believed their savior had arrived. And indeed within weeks of the war’s beginning, an American fleet arrived in the waters of the Philippines and annihilated the Spanish Fleet (suffering only one casualty). Led by Aguinaldo, the Filipinos rose up against their Spanish conquerors and helped America to win its own war. But after the war was over, they discovered America had no intention of granting them independence but rather saw them as America’s newest colony. Aguinaldo named America the new colonizer and the mostly forgotten Philippine-American War began. It quickly became a brutal, bloody war. American soldiers were often unable to find the Philippine army, which used knowledge of the jungles and lowlands to disappear after battle. So Americans turned against the civilians they could find. Villages were butchered, churches looted, forests burned down—in a pattern that very much predicted the later Vietnam War. Most of the Philippines surrendered after three years but other parts such as the Muslim Moro population of the south would continue resistance for another decade. 10X more Americans died fighting the Philippines than had died fighting Spain. Meanwhile anywhere from 200,000 to a million Filipinos (mostly civilians) died due to American military operations.What was the relationship between Spain, the Philippines, and America?Why did the Philippines support America against Spain?Why did the Philippines eventually turn against America?What was the war like?East Asia: in 1800, East Asia was solidly in the era of isolation. China had closed its doors to trade almost 400 years prior, though there were periods where this had been lightened. Korea and Japan had both joined China in isolation by 1700. And so the vast seas of East Asia were oddly empty when the armored frigates began arriving. East Asia was an oddity during this period because all of the states of East Asia had the unity and strength to fight off European conquest but did not have the ability to fight off European fleets. None of these countries were conquered but all were exploited. But East Asia is also odd because its greatest imperializer came from East Asia itself—Japan. After the Opium War (1839-1842) all the powers of East Asia began programs of modernization to begin industrializing and building a modern army. But when they did, these countries found resistance among their own population—the great lords of the countryside, the monarchs, the nobles, social conservatives—the very people who had also resisted industrialization most fiercely in Europe as well. And so time and again the modernization programs failed. Except Japan.What were most of the powers of East Asia like in 1800?Why were none of these countries directly conquered by Western countries?Why was modernizing difficult?Japan: the shogun of Japan and his closest allies resisted modernization quite fiercely. Had nothing changed, Japan probably would have gone the way of many kingdoms—resentfully signing away land and rights under the threat of Western warships. But the shogun had rivals—lords of the South who had been political outsiders for generations and had grown bitter. These southern lords, called the Tozama, had grown to favor Western ideas to the traditions of their own country and had been trading with the West (often in secret) and learning from the West for decades now. With backing from the British, they rose up and overthrew the Shogun—putting the symbolic Emperor back in charge. This new Japan brutally oppressed those who would resist industrialization and within just 40 years had caught up to the West. Japan now became the great power of East Asia. It helped push Western imperialism out of Asia, but only so it could fill that void. By 1900 Japan had conquered Korea, Taiwan, and many islands in between. It had its eyes fixed on China, the Philippines, and the Pacific but would not make its move until the World Wars.How did Japan’s government change?Why was that government so successful at modernizing?What did it do with all this new power? ................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download