Introduction

In this chapter we can survey the working of two types of European imperialism. The first transplants European people to overseas locations and the second attempts to dominate and manipulate the economies of other peoples for European profit. In Latin America Spanish and Portuguese so completely displaced native institutions that they were able to create a new version of their European homelands, complete with a new Hispanic culture, religion society and politics. The English seventeenth century concept of "plantation" applies to Hispanic America just as it did to the transplanting of English and French institutions to North America. The Latin American experience parallels that in North America-displacement of native culture (although without the genocidal overtones of the latter), revolution and break with Europe, and, finally, nation-building in the New World. This begs the question of how the differences between North and Latin America came into being from their respective histories. Latin America experienced more Indian influence, a more disjointed politics and less economic progress than its northern neighbors. See Chapter 23 for a comparison to the European "plantation" in South Africa.

The second type of imperialism, which reached its zenith in the nineteenth century, was the energetic effort of European commercial and industrial systems to reach out and control the economies of the non-industrialized world. Just as the industrial leaders in Europe and the U.S. were creating new systems to manipulate and monopolize their own economies, so other Europeans and Americans were striving to impose new systems on Asians, Africans and Middle Easterners in the name of free trade and material progress. It is doubtful that the idea of actually exploiting other people crossed their minds, but that is how later history interpreted these efforts. In any case, Asians were certainly forced to respond. Southeast Asia responded mostly passively, Ottoman Turkey tentatively and uncertainly, China defensively and reluctantly, Mughul India with confusion and Japan proactively. In Japan the arrival of Westerners set in motion a revolt against the old order (out of fear of becoming like the exploited Chinese), which rapidly established a unified national state that came to match European imperialists.

None of these societies were weak in the broad sense; the people were tough and hardworking and had durable cultural institutions. No society collapsed completely; each retained its cultural roots in the face of the superior military, industrial, and scientific strength of the West. The weakness lay in having a durable traditional culture badly out of step with the twentieth century. In India and Southeast Asia leadership was disunited. In China it was bogged down in self-satisfied orthodoxy. In Japan it was divided and uncertain. All these countries were undergoing economic difficulties that reduced public faith in the leadership. The country that changed its leadership fastest was first off the mark into the modern world. That was Japan.