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Industrialization and Imperialism: The...
Outline
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- Introduction
Industrialism changed European expansion. Instead of luxury goods, Europe sought raw materials for its factories and markets for its manufactured goods. While Christian missionary work continued, European governments, no longer threatened by Islam, did not promote it. Industrialization made it possible to build true overseas empires on a much wider scale than before.
- The Shift to Land Empires in Asia
- Introduction
In the early stages of imperial advance, the great trading companies sought to avoid involvement in political rivalries in those civilizations brought into the world trade system. Wars and the need to establish political administrations cut into company profits. Inevitably, the local representatives of the great merchant companies were drawn into regional conflicts. With the slow communications that existed prior to industrialization, however, local commanders conquered large regions before officials in their home countries knew what was happening.
- Prototype: The Dutch Advance on Java
The Dutch at Batavia were initially satisfied to be the vassals of the sultan of Mataram, the kingdom that controlled much of Java's interior. By intervention in succession wars within Mataram in the 1670s, the Dutch received greater control over the region immediately around Batavia. After 1670, repeated interventions in the succession to the throne of Mataram won the Dutch most of Java. The sultans were able to retain only a small kingdom on the south central portion of the island. Java became the core of the Dutch Asian empire.
- Pivot of World Empire: The Rise of the British Rule in India
As with the Dutch in Java, the British only gradually assumed a position of superiority over indigenous rulers in India. The establishment of British control in India had much to do with an imperial rivalry with the French that spanned the globe. It was a contest from which the British emerged as victors and masters of an Asian empire. The British representative of the East India Company was Robert Clive. After winning initial victories in southern India, Clive won a major battle over the ruler of Bengal at Plassey in 1757. Clive had, with the help of Hindu bankers, successfully bought off the chief general and most important allies of his Muslim enemy, Sirãj-ud-daula. Clive's victory sealed the British supremacy over the French in India.
- The Consolidation of British Rule
After Plassey, the British representatives of the East India Company involved themselves in succession disputes and wars among the Indian rulers who bordered Bengal. Bit by bit, the British wrested control of the Indian kingdoms from the declining Mughal Empire. Madras, Bombay, and Calcutta became the administrative centers of the British Presidencies, which incorporated most of the territory actually controlled by the East India Company. Other Indian states were left as dependent allies. Despite their awareness of the growing power of the British, Indian princes continued to squabble among themselves and to supply recruits for the British armies. Armies recruited from Indian peoples became a potent force in the creation of a worldwide British empire. By the 19th century, Indian armies served British masters throughout the colonial empire.
- Early Colonial Society in India and Java
At first the British and Dutch colonial representatives simply established themselves atop the indigenous social hierarchies in Asia. Europeans living in tropical climates had to accommodate themselves to an unaccustomed ecology. New types of housing, dress, and work habits were adopted. Because most of the colonial representatives were male, liaisons with indigenous women were common.
- Social Reform in the Colonies
By the 1770s, rampant corruption within the East India Company forced the British government to enact reforms. The most sweeping of these reforms were undertaken by Lord Charles Cornwallis in the 1790s. Cornwallis' reforms resulted in the cleansing of the East India Company administration but also constricted the participation of Indians in their own government. Evangelical religious movements in Britain also induced reform. Slavery was abolished, and campaigns were launched against what were viewed as Indian social abuses. British utilitarians supported the cries for social reform and plans for the erment of the Indian population. Both Evangelicals and Utilitarians pressed for the introduction of English-language instruction in India and an infusion of British technology. At the center of the social reform program was the abolition of the practice of sati. Despite some resistance, the British insisted on an end to the practice. The British intentionally transmitted to India what they regarded as the centerpieces of Western civilization, including education, technology, and administrative organization, in an attempt to recast Indian civilization in the Western image.
- Industrial Rivalries and the Partition of the World, 1870-1914
- Introduction
Industrialization increased Europe and North America's military and technological advantage over other regions, and it also heightened competition among European nations and the United States. One of the fields of competition was the race to establish international empires. Colonies were regarded as economic insurance for industrialized nations. They supplied raw materials, markets, and places to which disgruntled workers could potentially be shipped. Improved transportation and communications permitted national leaders to play more direct roles in imperial conquest. National presses gave governments the ability to build up public support and to publicize victories abroad.
- Unequal Combat: Colonial Wars and the Apex of European Imperialism
By the late 19th century, European nations could wage war with devastating effect. The peoples of Asia and Africa were no longer able to provide effective resistance to determined colonialists. Machine guns, steam power, and iron hulls gave the Europeans insurmountable technological advantages. Despite overwhelming odds, Asian and African leaders continued to resist the European advance. Although they were able to win some victories, indigenous peoples could not sustain conventional wars against European forces. In many cases, most effective resistance was offered by guerrillas.
- Patterns of Dominance: Continuity and Change
- Introduction
Widespread conquest led to a growing sense among Europeans of their superiority and of a desire for Western learning among Asian and African elites and middle classes. There were two primary types of colonies: tropical dependencies and settlement colonies. In the first type, small numbers of Europeans ruled large numbers of indigenous peoples. Within the settlement colonies there were two patterns. In the White Dominions, such as Canada and Australia, much of the population descended from European immigrants. In contested settler colonies, such as Algeria, Kenya, New Zealand, and Hawaii, large numbers of European immigrants vied with indigenous populations for control of the land and its natural resources.
- Colonial Regimes and Social Hierarchies in the Tropical Dependencies
During the 19th century, European colonizers followed models already established in India and Java. By exploiting religious or ethnic divisions, the Europeans gained control over vast regions of Asia and Africa. Administrators rigidified differences by the division of indigenous peoples into artificial tribes. Small numbers of Europeans governed masses of indigenous peoples with the help of Western-educated African and Asian subordinates. The British also drew on a ready supply of educated Indians to supplement the administrative cadre of the empire. In Africa, unlike other colonized regions, education was left in the hands of missionaries rather than the state, a policy which stunted the growth of an African middle class. Such policies intentionally eliminated the development of nationalist leaders among the colonized peoples.
- Changing Social Relations Between Colonizer and Colonized
After 1850, Europeans in the colonies of Asia and Africa tended to isolate themselves from indigenous peoples. The inclusion of European women in the colonies ended the earlier practice of easy liaisons between European males and indigenous females. Laws were established forbidding mixed marriages. Measures were passed to prevent social interactions between European women and the indigenous peoples. Social exclusivity was fostered by the growing acceptance of theories of white racial supremacy. Administrators and colonists both attempted to create European enclaves in the midst of what they increasingly saw as savagery.
- Shifts in Methods of Economic Extraction
Economic administration continued to rely on the support of indigenous subordinates to manage colonial economies. Efforts were made to increase the production of exportable products, in many cases by coercive means. Head and hut taxes were imposed payable only in commodities. In the worst circumstances, such as in the Belgian Congo, labor quotas represented little more than slavery. To facilitate the movement of raw materials and agricultural crops, imperial nations built roads and railroads from colonial interiors to ports. Mining and agricultural productivity increased in the colonies, but profits went to European imperialists. African and Asian workers scarcely benefited from their labor. Colonial economies were rapidly reduced to dependence on industrialized Europe.
- Settler Colonies in South Africa and the Pacific
As in the White Dominions, contested settler colonies attracted large numbers of European immigrants. Unlike earlier settler colonies, where disease decimated indigenous populations, 19th-century settler colonies were in areas with large indigenous populations that remained intact. Thus conflict and competition between indigenous and settler populations would shape the history of these colonies.
- South Africa
From their initial foothold at Cape Colony, Boer farmers penetrated the South African interior in search of farm land. As in Australia, the Boers found much of the interior sparsely settled and encountered little resistance to their advance. The Boers enslaved the first indigenous people they encountered, the Khoikhoi. The arrival of the British and their annexation of Cape Colony in 1815 set South Africa on a separate course. By the 1830s, the Boers fled the Cape Colony to seek independence and the right to continue a pattern of life now long established. In the Great Trek, the Boer population crossed the Great Fish River into the South African plains, where they encountered for the first time the Bantu states of the Zulus and the Xhosa. War between the Bantu states and the Boer settlers was common during the middle decades of the 19th century. At the same time, the British established a second colonial outpost on the eastern coast of South Africa at Natal. In the 1850s, the Boers established two independent republics, the Orange Free State and the Transvaal. When gold and diamonds were discovered in the Boer republics, the finds drew British investors, such as Cecil Rhodes, into the region. Relations between the British colonies and the Boer republics deteriorated until war was declared in 1899. The Boer War paved the way for decolonization in South Africa and established the political dominance of the Boers over indigenous Africans.
- Pacific Tragedies
In the Pacific, European, American, and Japanese colonialism resulted in demographic disasters and social disruption. The cases of New Zealand and Hawaii serve as examples of the impact of imperialism in the Pacific.
- New Zealand.
The first contact between Europeans and the indigenous Maoris occurred at the end of the 18th century. Although European settlement was not extensive, exposure to European diseases and dissemination of firearms among the militant Maori tribes resulted in massive population loss. By the middle of the 19th century, the surviving Maoris had begun to establish sedentary agricultural communities based on European technology and domesticated animals. British settlement began in earnest in the 1850s. As the European immigrants seized the most fertile lands, the Maoris were driven to the interior of the islands. The Maoris survived by acculturating to British law and government. New Zealand was able to construct a multiracial society in which elements of the Maori culture flourished.
- Hawaii.
Captain James Cook opened Hawaii to Western development in 1777. With the use of Western weapons, King Kamehameha united the various clans of Hawaii between 1794 and 1810. Kamehameha encouraged economic exchange with Western merchants. Beginning in 1819, missionaries from the eastern United States began a vigorous campaign to convert the Hawaiians to Christianity. The missionaries brought in their wake cultural change and Western education. As in New Zealand, exposure to Western diseases decimated the population of the Hawaiian islands. Westerners soon began to experiment with plantation crops. As the Hawaiian monarchy declined, planter groups called for more active U.S. intervention. The United States formally annexed Hawaii as a colony in 1898.
- Global Connections: A European-Dominated World Order
Industrialization provided the motive and the means for global empire. Political power made it possible for Europeans to reorganize the global economy around their own industrial societies. This was the first true globalization. By pressing to inculcate European culture among the colonized peoples, Europeans produced resistance to colonial rule. Successful mobilization of nationalist sentiment in colonized nations often came from the ranks of men educated in Western schools. European dependence on indigenous subordinates to manage colonial economies made the imperialists vulnerable to challenges from within.
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