IMPERIALISM BY GERMANY AND AFRICA

IN 1877, THE YOUNG BRITISH EMPIRE builder Cecil Rhodes drew up his last will and testament. He  bequeathed his fortune, achieved as a diamond magnate in South Africa, to two of his close friends  and acquaintances. He also instructed them to use the inheritance to form a secret society with the  aim of bringing about “the extension of British rule throughout the world, the perfecting of a system  of emigration from the United Kingdom … especially the occupation of the whole continent of Africa, 

the Holy Land, the valley of the Euphrates, the Islands of Cyprus and Candia [Crete], the whole of  South America … the ultimate recovery of the United States as an integral part of the British Empire …  [and] finally the foundation of so great a power to hereafter render wars impossible and promote the 

best interests of humanity.”1 A fervent supporter of the British imperial vision, Rhodes actively  promoted the extension of British rule until his untimely death in 1902. Nowhere were Rhodes's 

ambitious ideas more evident than in Africa, as he and many of his contemporaries sought to bring  much of that enormous continent under the paternal sway of British colonial rule. During the last  quarter of the nineteenth century, British troops and civilian administrators fanned out across the 

region in a bid to create the most extensive empire the world had ever known. CRITICAL THINKING Q  What were the consequences of the new imperialism of the nineteenth century for the colonies of 

the European powers? How should the motives and stated objectives of the imperialist countries be  evaluated? The Spread of Colonial Rule Preposterous as Cecil Rhodes's ideas seem to us today, they 

serve as a graphic reminder of the hubris that characterized the worldview of Rhodes and many of  his European contemporaries during the Age of Imperialism, as well as the complex union of moral 

concern and vaulting ambition that motivated their actions on the world stage. During the nineteenth  and early twentieth centuries, Western colonialism spread throughout much of the non-Western  world. Spurred by the demands of the Industrial Revolution, a few powerful states—notably Great 

Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and the United States—competed avariciously for consumer  markets and raw materials for their expanding economies. By the end of the nineteenth century, 

virtually all of the traditional societies in Asia and Africa were under direct or indirect colonial rule.  The Myth of European Superiority To many Western observers at the time, the ease of the European 

conquest provided a clear affirmation of the innate superiority of Western civilization to its  counterparts elsewhere in the world. Influenced by the popular theory of social Darwinism, which 

applied Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection to the evolution of human societies (see Chapter  1 and “The Philosophy of Colonialism” later in this chapter), historians in Europe and the United 

States began to view world history as essentially the story of the inexorable rise of the West, from  the glories of ancient Greece to the emergence of modern Europe after the Enlightenment and the  Industrial Revolution. The extension of Western influence to Africa and Asia, a process that began 

with the arrival of European fleets in the Indian Ocean in the early sixteenth century, was thus viewed  as a reflection of Western cultural superiority and represented a necessary step in bringing 

civilization to the peoples of that area. The truth, however, was quite different, for Western global  hegemony was a relatively recent phenomenon. Prior to the age of Christopher Columbus, Europe 

was only an isolated appendage of a much larger world system of states stretching across the  Eurasian landmass from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific. The center of gravity in this trade network  was not in Europe or even in the Mediterranean Sea but much farther to the east, in the Persian Gulf  and in Central Asia. The most sophisticated and technologically advanced region in the world was  not Europe but China, whose proud history could be traced back several thousand years to the rise  of the first Chinese state in the Yellow River valley. As for the transcontinental trade network that 

linked Europe with the nations of the Middle East, South Asia, and the Pacific basin, it had not been  created by Portuguese and Spanish navigators but had already developed under the Arab empire, 

which had its capital in Baghdad. Later the Mongols took control of the land trade routes during their  conquest of much of the Eurasian supercontinent in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. During  the long centuries of Arabic and Mongolian hegemony, the caravan routes and sea lanes stretching  across Eurasia and the Indian Ocean between China, Africa, and Europe carried not only commercial  goods but also ideas and inventions such as the compass, paper, Arabic numerals, and gunpowder.  Inventions such as these, many of them originating in China or India, would later play a major role in  the emergence of Europe as a major player on the world's stage. Only in the sixteenth century, with  the onset of the Age of Exploration, did Europe become important in the process. For the next three 

centuries, the ships of several European nations crossed the seas in quest of the spices, silks,  precious metals, and porcelains of the Orient. For the first time since the decline of the Roman 

Empire, Europe now became a major player in the global trade network. In a few cases, Europeans  engaged in military conquest as a means of seeking their objective. They were aided by 

technological advances in shipbuilding and weaponry that gave them a distinct advantage over their  rivals. Spain, Portugal, and later other nations of western Europe divided up the Americas into 

separate colonial territories. During the eighteenth century, the islands of the Indonesian archipelago  were gradually brought under Dutch colonial rule, and the British inexorably extended their political  hegemony over the South Asian subcontinent. For the most part, however, European nations were 

satisfied to trade with their Asian and African counterparts from coastal enclaves that they had  established along the trade routes that threaded across the seas from the ports along the Atlantic  and the Mediterranean Sea to their far-off destinations. The Advent of Western Imperialism In the 

nineteenth century, a new phase of Western expansion into Asia and Africa began. Whereas  European aims in the East before 1800 could be summed up in the Portuguese explorer Vasco da  Gama's famous phrase “Christians and spices,” in the early nineteenth century, a new relationship  took shape: European nations began to view Asian and African societies as a source of industrial  raw materials and a market for Western manufactured goods. No longer were Western gold and 

silver exchanged for cloves, pepper, tea, silk, and porcelain. Now the prodigious output of European  factories was sent to Africa and Asia in return for oil, tin, rubber, and the other resources needed to 

fuel the Western industrial machine. THE IMPACT OF THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION The reason for  this change, of course, was the Industrial Revolution. Now industrializing countries in the West 

needed vital raw materials that were not available at home as well as a reliable market for the goods  produced in their factories. The latter factor became increasingly crucial as capitalist societies 

began to discover that their home markets could not always absorb domestic output. When  consumer demand lagged, economic depression threatened. As Western economic expansion into 

Asia and Africa gathered strength during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, it became  fashionable to call the process imperialism. Although the term imperialism has many meanings and  can trace its linguistic heritage back to the glories of ancient Rome, in this instance it referred to the  efforts of capitalist states in the West to seize markets, cheap raw materials, and lucrative areas for  capital investment beyond traditional Western countries. In this interpretation, the primary motives 

behind the Western expansion were economic. The best-known promoter of this view was the British  political economist John A. Hobson, who in 1902 published a major analysis, Imperialism: A Study.  In this influential book, Hobson maintained that modern imperialism was a direct consequence of  the modern industrial economy. In his view, the industrialized states of the West often produced 

more goods than could be absorbed by the domestic market and thus had to export their  manufactures to make a profit. The issue was not simply an economic one, however, since  economic concerns were inevitably tinged with political ones and with questions of national 

grandeur and moral purpose as well. In nineteenth-century Europe, economic wealth, national status,  and political power went hand in hand with the possession of a colonial empire, at least in the minds 

of observers at the time. To global strategists of the day, colonies brought tangible benefits in the  world of power politics as well as economic profits, and many nations became involved in the 

pursuit of colonies as much to gain advantage over their rivals as to acquire territory for its own  sake. The relationship between colonialism and national survival was expressed directly in a speech 

by the French politician Jules Ferry in 1885. A policy of “containment or abstinence,” he warned,  would set France on “the broad road to decadence” and initiate its decline into a “third- or fourth-rate 

power.” British imperialists agreed. To Cecil Rhodes, the extraction of material wealth from the  colonies was only a secondary matter. “My ruling purpose,” he remarked, “is the extension of the 

British Empire.”2 That British Empire, on which (as the saying went) “the sun never set,” was the envy  of its rivals and was viewed as the primary source of British global dominance during the latter half 

of the nineteenth century.TACTICS OF CONQUEST With the change in European motives for  colonization came a corresponding shift in tactics. Earlier, when their economic interests were more  limited, European states had generally been satisfied to deal with existing independent states rather  than attempt to establish direct control over vast territories. There had been exceptions where state 

power at the local level was on the point of collapse (as in India), where European economic  interests were especially intense (as in Latin America and the East Indies), or where there was no  centralized authority (as in North America and the Philippines). But for the most part, the Western 

presence in Asia and Africa had been limited to controlling the regional trade network and  establishing a few footholds where the foreigners could carry on trade and missionary activity. After  1800, the demands of industrialization in Europe created a new set of dynamics. Maintaining access 

to industrial raw materials, such as oil and rubber, and setting up reliable markets for European  manufactured products required more extensive control over colonial territories. As competition for  colonies increased, the colonial powers sought to solidify their hold over their territories to protect 

them from attack by their rivals. During the last two decades of the nineteenth century, the quest for  colonies became a scramble as all the major European states, now joined by the United States and 

Japan, engaged in a global land grab. In many cases, economic interests were secondary to security  concerns or national prestige. In Africa, for example, the British engaged in a struggle with their  rivals to protect their interests in the Suez Canal and the Red Sea. In Southeast Asia, the United 

States seized the Philippines from Spain at least partly to keep them out of the hands of the  Japanese, and the French took over Indochina for fear that it would otherwise be occupied by 

Germany, Japan, or the United States. By 1900, virtually all the societies of Africa and Asia were  either under full colonial rule or, as in the case of China and the Ottoman Empire, on the point of  virtual collapse. Only a handful of states, such as Japan in East Asia, Thailand in Southeast Asia, 

Afghanistan and Iran in the Middle East, and mountainous Ethiopia in East Africa, managed to  escape internal disintegration or political subjection to colonial rule. As the twentieth century began,  European hegemony over the ancient civilizations of Asia and Africa seemed complete. The Colonial 

System Once they had control of most of the world, what did the colonial powers do with it? As we  have seen, their primary objective was to exploit the natural resources of the subject areas and to 

open up markets for manufactured goods and capital investment from the mother country. In some  cases, that goal could be realized in cooperation with local political elites, whose loyalty could be 

earned (or purchased) by economic rewards or by confirming them in their positions of authority and  status in a new colonial setting. Sometimes, however, this policy of indirect rule was not feasible 

because local leaders refused to cooperate with their colonial masters or even actively resisted the 

foreign conquest. In such cases, the local elites were removed from power and replaced with a new  set of officials recruited from the mother country. The Company Resident and His Puppet. The 

British of the East India Company gradually replaced the sovereigns of the once independent Indian  states with puppet rulers who carried out the company's policies. Here we see the company's 

resident dominating a procession in Tanjore in 1825, while the Indian ruler, Sarabhoji, follows like an  obedient shadow. As a boy, Sarabhoji had been educated by European tutors and had filled his life  and home with English books and furnishings. The distinction between direct rule and indirect rule  was not always clearly drawn, and many colonial powers vacillated between the two approaches, 

sometimes in the same colonial territory. The decision often had fateful consequences for the  peoples involved. Where colonial powers encountered resistance and were forced to overthrow local 

political elites, they often adopted policies designed to eradicate the source of resistance and  destroy the traditional culture. Such policies often had corrosive effects on the indigenous societies  and provoked resentment that not only marked the colonial relationship but even affected relations 

after the restoration of national independence (see Part V). The situation in Latin America was a  special case. There the Western powers sought to protect their economic interests and preserve  access to crucial raw materials and markets by propping up pseudo-independent regimes. The 

United States, in particular, sent troops to protect its interests in Central America and the Caribbean  on several occasions. The Philosophy of Colonialism To justify their conquests, the colonial powers 

appealed, in part, to the time-honored maxim of “might makes right.” Western powers viewed  industrial resources as vital to national survival and security and felt that no moral justification was  needed for any action to protect access to them. By the end of the nineteenth century, that attitude  received pseudoscientific validity from the concept of social Darwinism, which maintained that only  societies that moved aggressively to adapt to changing circumstances would survive and prosper in  a world governed by the Darwinist law of “survival of the fittest.” THE WHITE MAN'S BURDEN Some 

people, however, were uncomfortable with such a brutal view of the law of nature and sought a  moral justification that appeared to benefit the victim. Here again, social Darwinism pointed the way: 

since human societies, like living organisms, must adapt to survive, the advanced nations of the  West were obliged to assist the backward peoples of Asia and Africa so that they, too, could adjust  to the challenges of the modern world. Few expressed this view as graphically as the English poet  Rudyard Kipling, who called on the Anglo-Saxon peoples (in particular, the United States) to take up 

the “white man's burden” in Asia (see the box on p. 29). Buttressed by such comforting theories,  humane souls in Western countries could ignore the brutal aspects of the colonial process and 

persuade themselves that in the long run, the results would be beneficial to both sides. Some saw  the issue primarily in religious terms. During the nineteenth century, Christian missionaries by the 

thousands went to Asia and Africa to bring the gospel to the “heathen masses.” To others, the  objective was the more secular one of bringing the benefits of Western democracy and capitalism to 

the tradition-ridden societies of the Orient. Either way, sensitive Western minds could console  themselves with the belief that their governments were bringing civilization to the primitive peoples  of the world. If commercial profit and national prestige happened to be by-products of that effort, so 

much the better. Few were as effective at making the case as the silver-tongued French colonial  official Albert Sarraut. Conceding that colonialism was originally an “act of force” taken for material 

profit, he declared that the end result would be a “better life on this planet” for conqueror and  conquered alike. OPPOSING VIEWPOINTS White Man's Burden, Black Man's Sorrow One of the 

justifications for modern imperialism was the notion that the supposedly “more advanced” white  peoples had the moral responsibility to raise presumably ignorant indigenous peoples to a higher 

level of civilization. Few captured this notion better than the British poet Rudyard Kipling  (1865–1936) in his famous poem The White Man's Burden. His appeal, directed to the United States,  became one of the most famous sets of verses in the English-speaking world. That sense of moral  responsibility, however, was often misplaced or, even worse, laced with hypocrisy. All too often, the 

consequences of imperial rule were detrimental to those living under colonial authority. Few  observers described the destructive effects of Western imperialism on the African people as well as  British journalist Edmund Morel. His book The Black Man's Burden, as well as a number of articles 

written during the first decade of the twentieth century, pointed out some of the more horrific  aspects of colonialism in the Belgian Congo. Morel's reports on the brutal treatment of Congolese 

workers involved in gathering rubber, ivory, and palm oil for export helped to spur the formation of an  investigative commission, whose report in 1904 ultimately led to reforms. Rudyard Kipling, The White  Man's Burden Take up the White Man's burden— Send forth the best ye breed— Go bind your sons to 

exile To serve your captives' need; To wait in heavy harness, On fluttered folk and wild— Your  new-caught sullen peoples, Half-devil and half-child. Take up the White Man's burden— In patience to 

abide, To veil the threat of terror And check the show of pride; By open speech and simple, An  hundred times made plain To seek another's profit, And work another's gain. Take up the White  Man's burden— The savage wars of peace— Fill full the mouth of Famine And bid the sickness 

cease; And when your goal is nearest The end for others sought,Watch Sloth and heathen Folly Bring  all your hopes to nought. Edmund Morel, The Black Man's Burden It is [the Africans] who carry the  “Black man's burden.” They have not withered away before the white man's occupation. Indeed … 

Africa has ultimately absorbed within itself every Caucasian and, for that matter, every Semitic  invader, too. In hewing out for himself a fixed abode in Africa, the white man has massacred the 

African in heaps. The African has survived, and it is well for the white settlers that he has. … What the  partial occupation of his soil by the white man has failed to do; what the mapping out of European 

political “spheres of influence” has failed to do; what the Maxim and the rifle, the slave gang, labour  in the bowels of the earth and the lash, have failed to do; what imported measles, smallpox and  syphilis have failed to do; whatever the overseas slave trade failed to do; the power of modern 

capitalistic exploitation, assisted by modern engines of destruction, may yet succeed in  accomplishing. For from the evils of the latter, scientifically applied and enforced, there is no escape 

for the African. Its destructive effects are not spasmodic; they are permanent. In its permanence  resides its fatal consequences. It kills not the body merely, but the soul. It breaks the spirit. It attacks  the African at every turn, from every point of vantage. It wrecks his polity, uproots him from the land, 

invades his family life, destroys his natural pursuits and occupations, claims his whole time,  enslaves him in his own home.But what about the possibility that historically and culturally, the 

societies of Asia and Africa were fundamentally different from those of the West and could not, or  would not, be persuaded to transform themselves along Western lines? After all, even Kipling had 

remarked that “East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.” Was the human  condition universal, in which case the Asian and African peoples could be transformed, in the quaint  American phrase for the subject Filipinos, into “little brown Americans”? Or were human beings so  shaped by their history and geographic environment that their civilizations would inevitably remain 

distinctive from those of the West? If so, a policy of cultural transformation could not be expected to  succeed. ASSIMILATION AND ASSOCIATION In fact, colonial theory never decided this issue one  way or the other. The French, who were most inclined to philosophize about the problem, adopted 

the terms assimilation (which implied an effort to transform colonial societies in the Western image)  and association (collaborating with local elites while leaving local traditions alone) to describe the 

two alternatives and then proceeded to vacillate between them. French policy in Indochina, for  example, began as one of association but switched to assimilation under pressure from liberal  elements who felt that colonial powers owed a debt to their subject peoples. But assimilation 

aroused resentment among the local population, many of whom opposed the destruction of their  culture and traditions. Most colonial powers were not as inclined to debate the theory of colonialism  as the French were. The United States, in formulating a colonial policy for the Philippines, adopted a 

strategy of assimilation in theory but was not quick to put it into practice. The British refused to  entertain the possibility of assimilation and generally treated their subject peoples as culturally and 

racially distinct (as Queen Victoria declared in 1858, her government disclaimed “the right and desire  to impose Our conditions on Our subjects”). Although some observers have ascribed this attitude to 

a sense of racial superiority, not all agree. In his recent book Ornamentalism: How the British Saw  Their Empire, historian David Cannadine argues that the British simply attempted to replicate their  own hierarchical system, based on the institutions of monarchy and aristocracy, and apply it to the 

peoples of the empire. India Under the British Raj The first of the major Asian civilizations to fall  victim to European predatory activities was India. An organized society (commonly known today as 

the Harappan civilization) had emerged in the Indus River valley in the fourth and third millennia  B.C.E. After the influx of Aryan peoples across the Hindu Kush into the Indian subcontinent around 

1500 B.C.E., a new civilization based on sedentary agriculture and a regional trade network gradually  emerged, with its central focus in the Ganges River basin in north central India. A religious faith 

brought to the subcontinent by the Aryan people, known today as Hinduism, evolved into the  dominant religion of the Indian people. Beginning in the eleventh century, much of northern India fell  under the rule of Turkic-speaking people who penetrated into the subcontinent from the northwest 

and introduced the Islamic religion and civilization. Indian society, however, was not entirely  receptive to the new faith. Where Islam was fiercely monotheistic, the Indian cosmos was peopled 

with a multiplicity of deities, each representing different aspects of an all-knowing world spirit known  as Brahma. While Islam was egalitarian, Indian society since early times had been divided into 

several classes (known as varna, or “color”), each historically identified with a particular economic or  social function— priests, warriors, merchants, and farmers. Although such functions had blurred over 

time, the system also possessed a religious component that determined not only one's status in  society but also one's hope for heavenly salvation. At the bottom of the social and religious scale  were the “untouchables,” individuals who were assigned to carry out the myriad “unclean” tasks in 

Indian society. The Indian people did not belong to one of the classes as individuals, but as part of a  larger kinship group, a system of extended families known in English as castes. Each caste was 

identified with a particular varna, creating a highly stratified society in which social movement along  the scale was extremely unusual; individuals thus lived their entire lives within the boundaries of  caste distinctions. At the end of the fifteenth century, a powerful new force penetrated the Indian 

subcontinent from the mountains to the north. The Mughals, as they were known, were a  Turkic-speaking people whose founding ruler Babur (1483–1530) traced his ancestral heritage back 

to the great Mongol chieftain Genghis Khan. Although foreigners and Muslims like many of their  immediate predecessors, the Mughals nevertheless brought India to a level of political power and 

cultural achievement that inspired admiration and envy throughout the entire region. MAP 2.1 India  Under British Rule, 1805–1931. This map shows the different forms of rule that the British applied in  India under their control. The Sikhs, located primarily in the Punjab, were adherents of a religion that 

began in the sixteenth century as an attempt to reconcile the Hindu and Muslim traditions and  ultimately developed into an alternative to both. Where were the major cities of the subcontinent 

located, and under whose rule did they fall? The Mughal Empire reached the peak of its greatness  under the famed Emperor Akbar (r. 1556–1605). Eventually, however, the dynasty began to weaken 

as Hindu forces in southern India sought to challenge the authority of the Mughal court in Delhi. This  process of fragmentation was probably hastened by the growing presence of European traders, who 

began to establish enclaves along the fringes of the subcontinent. By the end of the eighteenth  century, the British and the French had begun to seize control of the regional trade routes and to 

meddle in the internal politics of the subcontinent. Soon nothing remained of the empire but a shell.  Into the vacuum left by its final decay stepped the British, who used a combination of firepower and  guile to consolidate their power over the subcontinent. Some territories were taken over directly by 

the privately run East India Company, which at that time was given authority to administer Asian  territories under British occupation, while others were ruled indirectly through their local maharajas 

(see Map 2.1). British rule extended northward as far as present-day Afghanistan, where British fears  of Russian expansionism led to a lengthy imperialist rivalry that was popularly labeled “the Great  Game.” The Nature of British Rule British rule in India brought stability to a region that had been  wracked by civil strife, as the British adopted reforms that led to a relatively honest and efficient 

government that in some respects operated to the benefit of the average Indian. For example,  heightened attention was given to education. Through the efforts of the British administrator and 

historian Lord Macaulay, a new school system was established to train the children of Indian elites,  and the British civil service examination was introduced (see the box on p. 32). British rule also  brought an end to some of the more inhumane aspects of Indian tradition. The practice of sati  (cremation of a widow on her husband's funeral pyre) was outlawed, and widows were legally 

permitted to remarry. The British also attempted to put an end to the brigandage (known as thuggee,  which gave rise to the English word thug) that had plagued travelers in India since time immemorial.  Railroads, the telegraph, and the postal service were introduced to India shortly after they appeared 

in Great Britain. A new penal code based on the British model was adopted, and health and  sanitation conditions were improved. Indian in Blood, English in Taste and Intellect Thomas 

Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) was named a member of the Supreme Council of India in the early  1830s. In that capacity, he was responsible for drawing up a new educational policy for British 

subjects in the area. In his Minute on Education, he considered the claims of English and various  local languages to become the vehicle for educational training and decided in favor of the former. It  is better, he argued, to teach Indian elites about Western civilization so as “to form a class who may  be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and 

color, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect.” Later Macaulay became a  prominent historian. Thomas Babington Macaulay, Minute on Education We have a fund to be 

employed as government shall direct for the intellectual improvement of the people of this country.  The simple question is, what is the most useful way of employing it? All parties seem to be agreed 

on one point, that the dialects commonly spoken among the natives of this part of India contain  neither literary or scientific information, and are moreover so poor and rude that, until they are 

enriched from some other quarter, it will not be easy to translate any valuable work into them. …  What, then, shall the language [of education] be? One half of the Committee maintain that it should 

be the English. The other half strongly recommend the Arabic and Sanskrit. The whole question  seems to me to be, what language is the best worth knowing? I have no knowledge of either Sanskrit  or Arabic—I have done what I could to form a correct estimate of their value. I have read translations  of the most celebrated Arabic and Sanskrit works. I have conversed both here and at home with men 

distinguished by their proficiency in the Eastern tongues. I am quite ready to take the Oriental 

learning at the valuation of the Orientalists themselves. I have never found one among them who  could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of 

India and Arabia. … It is, I believe, no exaggeration to say that all the historical information which has  been collected from all the books written in the Sanskrit language is less valuable than what may be  found in the most paltry abridgments used at preparatory schools in England. How does Macaulay 

justify the teaching of the English language in India? How might a critic respond? SOURCE: From  Speeches by Lord Macaulay, With His Minute on Indian Education by Thomas B. MacAuley. AMS  Press, 1935. AGRICULTURAL REFORMS But in some ways the Indian people paid dearly for the  peace and stability brought by the British raj (from the Indian raja, or prince). Perhaps the most  flagrant cost was economic. In rural areas, the British adopted the existing zamindar system, 

according to which local landlords were authorized to collect taxes from peasants and turn the taxes  over to the government. The British mistakenly anticipated that by continuing the system, they would  not only facilitate the collection of agricultural taxes but also create a landed gentry that could, as in 

Britain itself, become the conservative foundation of imperial rule. But the local gentry took  advantage of their authority to increase taxes and force the less fortunate peasants to become 

tenants or lose their land entirely. When rural unrest threatened, the government passed legislation  protecting farmers against eviction and unreasonable rent increases, but this measure had little  effect outside the southern provinces, where it was originally enacted. MANUFACTURING British 

colonialism was also remiss in bringing modern science and technology to India. Industrial  development was still in its infancy during the Mughal era, although foreign trade thrived, as Indian  goods, notably textiles, tropical food products, spices, and precious stones, were exported in return 

for gold and silver. Under the British, limited forms of industrialization took place, notably in the  manufacturing of textiles and rope. The first textile mill opened in 1856; seventy years later, there 

were eighty mills in the city of Bombay (now Mumbai) alone. Nevertheless, the lack of local capital  and the advantages given to British imports prevented the emergence of other vital new commercial 

and manufacturing operations, and the introduction of British textiles put thousands of Bengali  women out of work and severely damaged the village textile industry.A CIVILIZING MISSION? 

Foreign rule also had an effect on the psyche of the Indian people. Although many British colonial  officials sincerely tried to improve the lot of the people under their charge, the government made few 

efforts to introduce democratic institutions and values to the Indian people. Moreover, British  arrogance and contempt for local traditions cut deeply into the pride of many Indians, especially 

those of high caste who were accustomed to a position of superior status in India. By the end of the  nineteenth century, increasingly disillusioned with the failure of the British to live up to their 

“civilizing mission,” educated Indians began to clamor for a greater role in the governance of their  country, and in 1885 a new organization designed to represent the interests of the indigenous 

population—the Indian National Congress—was born (see Chapter 5). The Colonial Takeover of  Southeast Asia Southeast Asia had been one of the first destinations for European fleets en route to 

the East. Lured by the riches of the Spice Islands (at the eastern end of present-day Indonesia),  European adventurers sailed to the area in the early sixteenth century in the hope of seizing control  of the spice trade from Arab and Indian merchants. A century later, the trade was fast becoming a 

monopoly of the Dutch, whose sturdy ships and ample supply of capital gave them a significant  advantage over their rivals. Well before the arrival of the first Europeans, however, Southeast Asia 

had been an active participant in the global trade network, purchasing textiles from India and luxury  goods from China in return for spices, precious metals, and various tropical woods and herbs. 

Although no single empire had ever controlled all of Southeast Asia, several powerful states had 

emerged in the region since the early centuries of the first millennium C.E. Some, like Sailendra and  Srivijaya in the Indonesian archipelago, were primarily trading states. Others, like Vietnam, Angkor (in  present-day Cambodia), and the Burmese empire of Pagan on the subcontinent, were predominantly  agricultural. Most had patterned their political systems and their religious beliefs after those of the 

Indian subcontinent. Vietnam was strongly influenced by China. Then, by the thirteenth century,  Islam began to make inroads into the southern part of the region, promoted by Muslim merchants  from India and the Middle East who were active in the spice trade. In 1800, only two societies in 

Southeast Asia were under effective colonial rule: the Spanish Philippines and the Dutch East Indies.  The British had been driven out of the Spice Islands trade by the Dutch in the seventeenth century 

and possessed only a small enclave on the southern coast of the island of Sumatra and some  territory on the Malay peninsula. The French had actively engaged in trade with states on the Asian 

mainland, but their activity in the area was eventually reduced to a small missionary effort run by the  Society for Foreign Missions. The only legacy of Portuguese expansion in the region was the  possession of half of the small island of Timor. The remainder of the region continued to be  governed by indigenous rulers. The Imposition of Colonial Rule During the second half of the 

nineteenth century, however, European interest in Southeast Asia grew rapidly, and by 1900, virtually  the entire area was under colonial rule (see Map 2.2). The process began after the Napoleonic wars,  when the British, by agreement with the Dutch, abandoned their claims to territorial possessions in  the East Indies in return for a free hand in the Malay peninsula. In 1819, the colonial administrator  Stamford Raffles founded a new British colony on a small island at the tip of the peninsula. Called 

Singapore (“City of the Lion”), it had previously been used by Malay pirates as a base for raiding  ships passing through the Strait of Malacca. When the invention of steam power enabled merchant  ships to save time and distance by passing through the strait rather than sailing with the westerlies  across the southern Indian Ocean, Singapore became a major stopping point for traffic to and from 

China and other commercial centers in the region. A few decades later, the British took over the  kingdom of Burma and placed it under the colonial administration in India. The British advance into  Burma was watched nervously in Paris, where French geopoliticians were ever anxious about British  operations in Asia and Africa. The French still maintained a clandestine missionary organization in  Vietnam despite harsh persecution by the local authorities, who viewed Christianity as a threat to 

imperial rule and internal stability. But Vietnamese efforts to prohibit Christian missionary activities  were hindered by the internal rivalries that had earlier divided the country into two separate and 

mutually hostile governments in the north and south. In 1857, the French government decided to  compel the Vietnamese to accept French protection to prevent the British from obtaining a 

monopoly of trade in South China. A naval attack launched a year later was not a total success, but  the French eventually forced the Vietnamese court to cede territories in the southern part of the 

country. A generation later, French rule was extended over the remainder of Vietnam. By the end of  the century, French seizure of neighboring Cambodia and Laos had led to the creation of the 

French-ruled Indochinese Union. MAP 2.2 Colonial Southeast Asia. European colonial rule spread  into Southeast Asia between the sixteenth century and the end of the nineteenth. What was the 

significance of Malacca? With the French conquest of Indochina, Thailand—then known as  Siam—was the only remaining independent state on the Southeast Asian mainland. During the last 

quarter of the century, British and French rivalry threatened to place the Thai, too, under colonial rule.  But under the astute leadership of two remarkable rulers, King Mongkut (familiar to millions in the 

West as the monarch—played by actor Yul Brynner—in the 1956 film The King and I) and his son King  Chulalongkorn, the Thai sought to introduce Western learning and maintain relations with the major 

European powers without undermining internal stability or inviting an imperialist attack. In 1896, the  British and the French agreed to preserve Thailand as an independent buffer zone between their 

possessions in Southeast Asia. The final piece of the colonial edifice in Southeast Asia was put in  place in 1898, when U.S. naval forces under Commodore George Dewey defeated the Spanish fleet  in Manila Bay on the island of Luzon in the Spanish Philippines. Since gaining independence in the 

late eighteenth century, the United States had always considered itself to be an anticolonialist  nation, but by the end of the nineteenth century, many Americans believed that the United States was 

ready to expand abroad. The Pacific islands were the scene of great-power competition and  witnessed the entry of the United States on the imperialist stage. Eastern Samoa became the first 

important American colony; the Hawaiian Islands were the next to fall. Soon after an American naval  station had been established at Pearl Harbor in 1887, American settlers gained control of the sugar  industry on the islands. When the local Hawaiians tried to reassert their authority, the U.S. Marines 

were brought in to “protect” American lives. Hawaii was annexed by the United States in 1898 during  the era of American nationalistic fervor generated by the Spanish-American War, which broke out  after an explosion damaged a U.S. battleship anchored at Havana on the Spanish-held island of  Cuba. The defeat of Spain encouraged the Americans to extend their empire by acquiring Puerto 

Rico, Guam, and the Philippine Islands. Although President William McKinley justified the seizure of  the Philippines on moral grounds, the real reason was to prevent them from falling into the hands of  the Japanese. In fact, the Americans (like the Spanish before them) found the islands a convenient 

jumping-off point for the China trade (see Chapter 3). Although guerrilla forces led by Emilio  Aguinaldo fought bitterly against U.S. troops to maintain independence, the resistance collapsed in  1901. President McKinley had his stepping-stone to the rich markets of China. Colonial Regimes in 

Southeast Asia In Southeast Asia, economic profit was the immediate and primary aim of the  colonial enterprise. For that purpose, colonial powers tried wherever possible to work with local  elites to facilitate the exploitation of natural resources. Indirect rule reduced the cost of training 

European administrators and had a less corrosive impact on the local culture. COLONIAL  ADMINISTRATION In the Dutch East Indies, for example, officials of the Dutch East India Company  (VOC, from the initials of its Dutch name) entrusted local administration to the indigenous landed 

aristocracy, known as the priyayi. The priyayi maintained law and order and collected taxes in return  for a payment from the VOC. The British followed a similar practice in Malaya. While establishing 

direct rule over areas of crucial importance, such as the commercial centers of Singapore and  Malacca and the island of Penang, the British signed agreements with local Muslim rulers to 

maintain princely power in the interior of the peninsula. In some instances, however, local resistance  to the colonial conquest made such a policy impossible. In Burma, faced with staunch opposition 

from the monarchy and other traditionalist forces, the British abolished the monarchy and  administered the country directly through their colonial government in India. In Indochina, the French 

used both direct and indirect means. They imposed direct rule on the southern provinces in the  Mekong delta, which had been ceded to France as a colony after the first war in 1858–1860. The 

northern parts of the country, seized in the 1880s, were governed as a protectorate, with the emperor  retaining titular authority from his palace in Hué. The French adopted a similar policy in Cambodia 

and Laos, where local rulers were left in charge with French advisers to counsel them. Even the  Dutch were eventually forced into a more direct approach. When the development of plantation 

agriculture and the extraction of oil in Sumatra made effective exploitation of local resources more  complicated, they dispensed with indirect rule and tightened their administrative control over the  archipelago. Whatever method was used, colonial regimes in Southeast Asia, as elsewhere, were 

slow to create democratic institutions. The first legislative councils and assemblies were composed  almost exclusively of European residents in the colonies. The first representatives from the 

indigenous population were wealthy and conservative in their political views. When Southeast Asians  began to complain, colonial officials gradually and reluctantly began to broaden the franchise, but 

even such liberal thinkers as Albert Sarraut advised patience in awaiting the full benefits of colonial  policy. “I will treat you like my younger brothers,” he promised, “but do not forget that I am the older 

brother. I will slowly give you the dignity of humanity.”3 ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT Colonial powers  were equally reluctant to shoulder the “white man's burden” in the area of economic development. 

As we have seen, their primary goals were to secure a source of cheap raw materials and to  maintain markets for manufactured goods. So colonial policy concentrated on the export of raw 

materials—teakwood from Burma; rubber and tin from Malaya; spices, tea, coffee, and palm oil from  the East Indies; and sugar and copra from the Philippines. The Production of Rubber. Natural rubber  was one of the most important cash crops in the European colonies in Asia. Rubber trees, native to 

the Amazon River basin in Brazil, were eventually transplanted to Southeast Asia, where they  became a major source of profit. Workers on the plantations received few benefits, however. Once  the sap of the tree, called latex, was extracted, as shown on the left, it was hardened and pressed 

into sheets (right photo) and then sent to Europe for refining.In some Southeast Asian colonial  societies, a measure of industrial development did take place to meet the needs of the European 

population and local elites. Major manufacturing cities, including Rangoon in lower Burma, Batavia  on the island of Java, and Saigon in French Indochina, grew rapidly. Although the local middle class 

benefited in various ways from the Western presence, most industrial and commercial  establishments were owned and managed by Europeans or, in some cases, by Indian or Chinese  merchants who had long been active in the area. In Saigon, for example, even the manufacture of 

nuoc mam, the traditional Vietnamese fish sauce, was under Chinese ownership. Most urban  residents were coolies (laborers), factory workers, or rickshaw drivers or eked out a living in family 

shops as they had during the traditional era. RURAL POLICIES Despite the growth of an urban  economy, the vast majority of people in the colonial societies continued to farm the land. Many 

continued to live by subsistence agriculture, but the colonial policy of emphasizing cash crops for  export also led to the creation of a form of plantation agriculture in which peasants were recruited to 

work as wage laborers on rubber and tea plantations owned by Europeans. To maintain a  competitive edge, the plantation owners kept the wages of their workers at the poverty level. Many  plantation workers were “shanghaied” (the English term originated from the practice of recruiting 

laborers, often from the docks and streets of Shanghai, by the use of force, alcohol, drugs, or other  unscrupulous means) to work on plantations, where conditions were often so inhumane that 

thousands died. High taxes, enacted by colonial governments to pay for administrative costs or  improvements in the local infrastructure, were a heavy burden for poor peasants. The situation was  made even more difficult by the steady growth of the population. Peasants in Asia had always had  large families on the assumption that a high proportion of their children would die in infancy. But 

improved sanitation and medical treatment resulted in lower rates of infant mortality and a  staggering increase in population. The population of the island of Java, for example, increased from  about a million in the precolonial era to about 40 million at the end of the nineteenth century. Under  these conditions, the rural areas could no longer support the growing populations, and many young 

people fled to the cities to seek jobs in factories or shops. The migratory pattern gave rise to  squatter settlements in the suburbs of the major cities. IMPERIALISM IN THE BALANCE As in India, 

colonial rule did bring some benefits to Southeast Asia. It led to the beginnings of a modern 

economic infrastructure, and the development of an export market helped create an entrepreneurial  class in rural areas. On the outer islands of the Dutch East Indies (such as Borneo and Sumatra), for 

example, small growers of rubber, palm oil, coffee, tea, and spices began to share in the profits of  the colonial enterprise. A balanced assessment of the colonial legacy in Southeast Asia must take 

into account that the early stages of industrialization are difficult in any society. Even in western  Europe, industrialization led to the creation of an impoverished and powerless proletariat, urban  slums, and displaced peasants driven from the land. In much of Europe, however, the bulk of the  population eventually enjoyed better material conditions as the profits from manufacturing and 

plantation agriculture were reinvested in the national economy and gave rise to increased consumer  demand. In contrast, in Southeast Asia, most of the profits were repatriated to the colonial mother 

country, while displaced peasants fleeing to cities such as Rangoon, Batavia, and Saigon found little  opportunity for employment. Many were left with seasonal employment, with one foot on the farm  and one in the factory. The old world was being destroyed, and the new had yet to be born. Empire 

Building in Africa The last of the equatorial regions of the world to be placed under European  colonial rule was the continent of Africa. European navigators had first established contacts with 

Africans south of the Sahara during the late fifteenth century, when Portuguese fleets sailed down  the Atlantic coast on their way to the Indian Ocean. During the next three centuries, Europeans 

established port facilities along the coasts of East and West Africa to facilitate their trade with areas  farther to the east and to engage in limited commercial relations with African societies. Although 

European exploration of the area was originally motivated by the search for gold and a route to the  Spice Islands of the mysterious Orient, eventually the trade in slaves took precedence, and over the  next three centuries several million unfortunate Africans were loaded onto slave ships destined to 

serve on the sugar and cotton plantations of the Americas. For a variety of reasons, however,  Europeans made little effort to penetrate the vast continent and were generally content to deal with 

African intermediaries along the coast to maintain their trading relationship. The Western psyche  developed a deeply ingrained image of “darkest Africa”—a continent without a history, its people  living out their days bereft of cultural contact with the outside world. Africa Before the Europeans  There was a glimmer of truth in the Western image of sub-Saharan Africa as a region outside the  mainstream of civilization on the Eurasian landmass. Although Africa was the original seedbed of  humankind and the site of much of its early evolutionary experience, the desiccation of the Sahara 

during the fourth and third millennia B.C.E. had erected a major obstacle to communications  between the peoples south of the desert and societies elsewhere in the world. The barrier was never 

total, however. From ancient times, caravans crossed the Sahara from the Niger River basin to the  shores of the Mediterranean carrying gold and tropical products in exchange for salt, textile goods, 

and other manufactured articles from the north. By the seventh century C.E., several prosperous  trading societies, whose renown extended to medieval Europe and the Middle East, had begun to 

arise in the savanna belt (a region of grasslands on the southern edge of the desert) of West Africa.  One crucial consequence of this new trade network was the introduction of Islam to the peoples of  the region. Arab armies sweeping westward along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea had already 

brought the message of the Prophet Muhammad as far as Morocco and the Iberian peninsula. Soon,  Islamic religion and culture began to cross the Sahara in the baggage of Muslim merchants. Along 

with the Qur'an, Islam's holy book, the new faith introduced its African converts to a new code of law  and ethics—the Shari'a—and to the Prophet's uncompromising message of the equality of all in the  eyes of God. The city of Timbuktu, on the banks of the Niger River, soon became a major center of  Islamic scholarship and schools providing education in the Arabic language. In the eastern half of 

the continent, the Sahara posed no obstacle to communication beyond the seas. The long eastern  coast had played a role in the trade network of the Indian Ocean since the time of the pharaohs 

along the Nile. Ships from India, the Persian Gulf, and as far away as China made regular visits to the  East African ports of Kilwa, Malindi, and Sofala, bringing textiles, metal goods, and luxury articles in  return for gold, ivory, and various tropical products from Africa. With the settlement of Arab traders  along the eastern coast, the entire region developed a new synthetic culture, known as Swahili, that 

combined elements of Arabic and indigenous cultures. Although the Portuguese briefly seized or  destroyed most of the trading ports along the eastern coast, by the eighteenth century the 

Europeans had been driven out, and local authority was restored. The Spread of Islam in Africa In the  vast interior of the continent, from the Congo River basin southward to the Cape of Good Hope, 

contacts with the outside world were rare, and the majority of the population lived in autonomous  villages organized by clans or a local chieftain; they supported themselves by farming, pastoral 

pursuits, or hunting and gathering. In a few cases, some of these individual communities had begun  to consolidate into small states, which took part in a growing interregional trade network based on  the exchange of metal goods and foodstuffs. It was here, above all, that the Western image of “the  dark continent” carried the most plausibility. The Growing European Presence in West Africa By the 

beginning of the nineteenth century, the slave trade was in decline. One reason was the growing  sense of outrage in Europe over the purchase, sale, and exploitation of human beings. Traffic in 

slaves by Dutch merchants effectively came to an end in 1795 and by Danes in 1803. The slave trade  was declared illegal in Great Britain in 1807 and in the United States in 1808. The British began to 

apply pressure on other nations to follow suit, and most did so after the end of the Napoleonic wars  in 1815, leaving only Portugal and Spain as practitioners of the trade south of the equator. 

Meanwhile, the demand for slaves began to decline in the Western Hemisphere, although an illegal  trade in slaves across the Atlantic persisted for some time (see the box on p. 38). By the 1880s, 

slavery had been abolished in all major countries of the world. The decline of the slave trade in the  Atlantic during the nineteenth century, however, did not lead to an overall reduction in the European 

presence in West Africa. On the contrary, European interest in what was sometimes called  “legitimate trade” in natural resources increased. Exports of peanuts, timber, hides, and palm oil  increased substantially during the first decades of the century, and imports of textile goods and  other manufactured products also rose. Tragedy at Caffard Cove The slave trade was declared 

illegal in France in 1818, but the clandestine shipment of Africans to the Americas continued for  many years afterward. At the same time, slavery was widely tolerated in the French colonies, 

especially in the Caribbean, where sugar plantations on the islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique  depended on cheap labor for their profits. It was not until 1849 that slavery was abolished 

throughout the French Empire. Among the tragic events that characterized the shipment of slaves to  the Americas (often called the “Middle Passage”), few are as poignant as the incident described in  the passage below, which took place in 1830 on the island of Martinique. The text, which includes 

passages from the original official report of the incident, is taken from a memorial erected at the site  many years later. Laurent Valère, a local sculptor, erected fifteen statues to commemorate the  victims. The name of the ship and the name and nationality of the ship's captain, as well as the 

ultimate fate of the surviving victims, remain a mystery to this day. The Caffard Memorial Around  noon on the 8th of April 1830, a sailing ship [was observed] carrying out odd maneuvers off the 

coast of [the town of] Diamant [on the southern coast of Martinique]; at about five p.m. [the vessel]  cast anchor off the dangerous coast of nearby Caffard Cove. François Dizac, a resident of the 

neighborhood and manager of the Plage du Diamant, a plantation owned by the Count de 

Latournelle, realized that the ship's situation was perilous, but a heavy swell prevented him from  launching a boat to warn the captain that the vessel was in imminent danger of running aground. He 

therefore sent signals that the captain either could not, or chose not, to acknowledge. At 11 P.M.  that evening, anguished cries and cracking sounds suddenly began to shatter the silence of the 

night. Dizac and a party of slaves from the nearby plantation rushed promptly to the scene, only to  encounter a horrifying sight: the ship had been dashed on the rocks and its passengers thrown into  the fury of the raging seas. The rescuers on shore then observed a large number of panic-stricken  males clinging desperately to the ship's foremast, which suddenly broke in two, tossing them into 

the foam or onto the rocks. Broken masts lying on the rocks, fragments of torn sails floating  alongside ropes caught in the reef where the ship itself lay on the rocks all provided visual evidence 

of the frightful incident that had just occurred. Forty-six bodies, four of whom were white males,  were lying amidst the rocks. … “I ordered the bodies of the black victims to be buried at a short 

distance from the shore, then directed that those of the white males be carried to the cemetery of  Diamant parish, where they received a Christian burial. I was then taken to the cabin of a certain 

Borromé, a free man of color, where those black castaways who had been rescued from the  shipwreck had been given temporary shelter. Among the victims, six were found to be in such poor 

condition that they could not be taken to the Latournelle plantation. The other 80 survivors were  handed over to the naval authorities at Fort Royal. In all, 86 African captives, of whom 60 were 

women or girls, were rescued out of a ship's “cargo” estimated at nearly 300 persons. “I ordered the  interrogation of the surviving black castaways by interpreters, and it became clear from their 

testimony that the ship had been at sea for four months, and that most of the white sailors on board  had died during the crossing [of the Atlantic], and that an additional 70 blacks had died from illness  and had been thrown overboard during the voyage. Another 260 individuals remained on the ship 

when it was sunk off the coast of Diamant. … Only a few males had thus survived, since all of them  were shackled together in the ship's hold with irons on their feet at the time of the wreck.” At that 

point, a legal issue was raised: what should be done with the surviving castaways who, although they  could not be classified as slaves under existing law (since they were victims of illegal trade), yet 

could not be considered in this colony as men and therefore couldn't be freed. In May 1830, the Privy  Council of Martinique ordered that the captured Negroes were to be shipped to Cayenne [the capital  of French Guiana] in order to avoid having in the [French] West Indies a special class of people who 

could not be classified either as slaves or as free individuals. … Thus, in July 1830, a second  deportation followed the first, adding to the ordeal of the [African] slaves who had survived the 

shipwreck at Caffard Cove. How were the surviving victims of the shipwreck at Caffard Cove dealt  with by the government authorities in Martinique? Under what provisions of the law was the decision 

reached? SOURCE: Association de Sauvegarde du Patrimoine du Diamant. Text by Merlande,  MOANDA SATURNIN, historian. Translation from the original French by the author.Stimulated by 

growing commercial interests in the area, European governments began to push for a more  permanent presence along the coast. During the first decades of the nineteenth century, the British  established settlements along the Gold Coast (present-day Ghana) and in Sierra Leone, where they 

attempted to set up agricultural plantations for freed slaves who had returned from the Western  Hemisphere or had been liberated by British ships while en route to the Americas. A similar haven for 

ex-slaves was developed with the assistance of the United States in Liberia. The French occupied  the area around the Senegal River near Cape Verde, where they attempted to develop peanut 

plantations. The growing European presence in West Africa led to tensions with African  governments in the area. British efforts to increase trade with Ashanti, in the area of the present-day 

state of Ghana, led to conflict in the 1820s. British influence in the area intensified in later decades.  Most African states, especially those with a fairly high degree of political integration, were able to 

maintain their independence from this creeping European encroachment, called “informal empire” by  some historians, but eventually, in 1874, the British stepped in and annexed the Ashanti kingdom as 

Britain's first African colony of the Gold Coast. At about the same time, the British extended an  informal protectorate over warring tribal groups in the Niger delta. Imperialist Shadow over the Nile A  similar process was under way in the Nile valley. Ever since the voyages of the Portuguese explorers 

at the close of the fifteenth century, European trade with the East had been carried on almost  exclusively by the route around the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa. But from the 

outset, there was interest in shortening the route by digging a canal east of Cairo, where only a low,  swampy isthmus separated the Mediterranean from the Red Sea. The Ottoman Turks, who 

controlled the area, had considered constructing a canal in the sixteenth century, but nothing was  accomplished until 1854, when the French entrepreneur Ferdinand de Lesseps signed a contract to  begin construction of the canal, which was completed in 1869. The project brought little immediate  benefit to Egypt, however, which was attempting to adopt reforms on the European model under the 

vigorous rule of the Ottoman official Muhammad Ali. The costs of construction imposed a major  debt on the Egyptian government and forced a growing level of dependence on foreign financial 

support. When an army revolt against the increasing foreign influence broke out in 1881, the British  stepped in to protect their investment (they had bought Egypt's canal company shares in 1875) and 

set up an informal protectorate that would last until World War I. Rising discontent in the Sudan  added to Egypt's internal problems. In 1881, the Muslim cleric Muhammad Ahmad, known as the 

Mahdi (in Arabic, the “rightly guided one”), led a religious revolt that brought much of the upper Nile  under his control. The famous British general Charles Gordon led a military force to Khartoum to 

restore Egyptian authority, but his besieged army was captured in 1885 by the Mahdi's troops,  thirty-six hours before a British rescue mission reached Khartoum. Gordon himself died in the battle 

(see the Film & History feature on p. 40). The weakening of Turkish rule in the Nile valley had a  parallel farther along the Mediterranean coast to the west, where autonomous regions had begun to 

emerge under local viceroys in Tripoli, Tunis, and Algiers. In 1830, the French, on the pretext of  reducing the threat of piracy to European shipping in the Mediterranean, seized the area surrounding 

Algiers and annexed it to the kingdom of France. By the mid-1850s, more than 150,000 Europeans  had settled in the fertile region adjacent to the coast, though Berber resistance continued in the 

desert to the south. In 1881, the French imposed a protectorate on neighboring Tunisia. Only Tripoli  and Cyrenaica (Ottoman provinces that make up modern-day Libya) remained under Turkish rule 

until the Italians took them in 1911–1912. The Suez Canal The Scramble for Africa At the beginning  of the 1880s, most of Africa was still independent. European rule was limited to the fringes of the  continent, and a few areas, such as Egypt, lower Nigeria, Senegal, and Mozambique, were under 

various forms of loose protectorate. But the trends were ominous, as the pace of European  penetration was accelerating and the constraints that had limited European rapaciousness were fast  disappearing. The scramble began in the mid-1880s, when several European states engaged in what 

today would be called a feeding frenzy. All sought to seize a piece of African territory before the  carcass had been picked clean. By 1900, virtually the entire continent had been placed under one 

form or another of European rule (see Map 2.3). The British had consolidated their authority over the  Nile valley and seized additional territories in East Africa. The French retaliated by advancing 

eastward from Senegal into the central Sahara, where they eventually came eyeball to eyeball with  the British in the Nile valley They also occupied the island of Madagascar and other coastal 

territories in West and Central Africa. In between, the Germans claimed the hinterland opposite  Zanzibar, as well as coastal strips in West and Southwest Africa north of the Cape, and King Leopold 

II of Belgium claimed the Congo. FILM & HISTORY Khartoum (1966) The tragic mission of General  Charles “Chinese” Gordon to Khartoum in 1884 was one of the most dramatic news stories of the  last quarter of the nineteenth century. Gordon was already renowned in his native Great Britain for 

his successful efforts to bring an end to the practice of slavery in North Africa. He had also attracted  attention for helping the Manchu Empire suppress the Taiping Rebellion in China in the 1860s (see 

Chapter 3), hence his nickname. The Khartoum affair not only marked the culmination of his storied  career but also symbolized in broader terms the epic struggle in Britain between advocates and 

opponents of imperial expansion. The battle for Khartoum thus became an object lesson in modern  British history. Proponents of British imperial expansion argued that the country must assert its 

power in the Nile River valley to protect the Suez Canal as its main trade route to the East. Critics  argued that imperial overreach would inevitably entangle the country in unwinnable wars in far-off  places. The movie Khartoum (1966) dramatically captures the ferocity of the battle for the Nile as  well as its significance for the future of the British Empire. General Gordon, stoically played by the  American actor Charlton Heston, is a devout Christian who has devoted his life to carrying out the  moral imperative of imperialism in the continent of Africa. When peace in the Sudan (then a British 

protectorate in the upper Nile River valley) is threatened by the forces of radical Islam led by the  Muslim mystic Muhammad Ahmad—known as the Mahdi—Gordon leads a mission to Khartoum 

under orders to prevent catastrophe there. But Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone, admirably  portrayed by the British actor Sir Ralph Richardson, fears that Gordon's messianic desire to save the  Sudan will entrap his government in an unwinnable war; he thus orders Gordon to lead an evacuation 

of the city. The most fascinating character in the film is the Mahdi himself (played brilliantly by Sir  Laurence Olivier), who firmly believes that he has a sacred mandate to carry the Prophet's words to 

the global Muslim community. General Charles Gordon (Charlton Heston) astride his camel in  Khartoum, Sudan. The conclusion of the film, set in the breathtaking beauty of the Nile River valley, 

takes place as the clash of wills reaches a climax in the battle for control of Khartoum. Although the  film's portrayal of a face-to-face meeting between Gordon and the Mahdi is not based on fact, the 

narrative serves as an object lesson on the dangers of imperial overreach and as an eerie foretaste  of the clash between militant Islam and Christendom in our own day.■ MAP 2.3 Africa in 1914. By  the beginning of 1900, virtually all of Africa was under some form of European rule. The territorial  divisions established by colonial powers on the continent of Africa on the eve of World War I are  shown here. Which European countries possessed the most colonies in Africa? Why did Ethiopia  remain independent? THE MOTIVES What had happened to spark the sudden imperialist hysteria  that brought an end to African independence? Economic interests in the narrow sense were not at  stake as they had been in South and Southeast Asia: the level of trade between Europe and Africa 

was simply not sufficient to justify the risks and the expense of conquest. Clearly, one factor was the  growing rivalry among the imperialist powers. European leaders might be provoked into an 

imperialist takeover not by economic considerations but by the fear that another state might do so,  leaving them at a disadvantage. Another consideration might be called the “missionary factor,” as 

European religious interests lobbied with their governments for a colonial takeover to facilitate their  efforts to convert the African population to Christianity. In fact, considerable moral complacency 

was inherent in the process. The concept of the “white man's burden” persuaded many that it was in  the interests of the African people to be introduced more rapidly to the benefits of Western 

civilization. Even the highly respected Scottish missionary David Livingstone had become convinced 

that missionary work and economic development had to go hand in hand, pleading to his fellow  Europeans to introduce the “three Cs” (Christianity, commerce, and civilization) to the continent.  How much easier such a task would be if African peoples were under benevolent European rule! 

There were more prosaic reasons as well. Advances in Western technology and European superiority  in firearms made it easier than ever for a small European force to defeat superior numbers. 

Furthermore, life expectancy for Europeans living in Africa had improved. With the discovery that  quinine (extracted from the bark of the cinchona tree) could provide partial immunity from the  ravages of malaria, the mortality rate for Europeans living in Africa dropped dramatically in the 

1840s. By the end of the century, European residents in tropical Africa faced only slightly higher risks  of death by disease than individuals living in Europe. Under these circumstances, King Leopold of 

Belgium used missionary activities as an excuse to claim vast territories in the Congo River  basin—Belgium, he said, as “a small country, with a small people,” needed a colony to enhance its 

image.4 The royal land grab set off a desperate race among European nations to stake claims  throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Leopold ended up with the territories south of the Congo River, while  France occupied areas to the north. Rapacious European adventurers establishedplantations in the 

new Belgian Congo to grow rubber, palm oil, and other valuable export products. THE BERLIN  CONFERENCE As rivalry among the competing powers heated up, a conference was convened at 

Berlin in 1884 to avert war and reduce tensions among European nations competing for the spoils of  Africa. It proved reasonably successful at achieving the first objective but less so at the second. 

During the next few years, African territories were annexed without provoking a major confrontation  between Western powers, but in the late 1890s, Britain and France reached the brink of conflict at  Fashoda, a small town on the Nile River in the Sudan. The French had been advancing eastward 

across the Sahara with the transparent objective of controlling the regions around the upper Nile. In  1898, British and Egyptian troops seized the Sudan and then marched southward to head off the 

French. After a tense face-off between units of the two European countries at Fashoda, the French  government backed down, and British authority over the area was secured. Except for Djibouti, a tiny 

portion of the Somali coast, the French were restricted to equatorial Africa. Bantus, Boers, and  British in South Africa Nowhere in Africa did the European presence grow more rapidly than in the 

south. During the eighteenth century, Dutch settlers from the Cape Colony began to migrate  eastward into territory inhabited by local Khoisan- and Bantu-speaking peoples, the latter of whom 

had recently entered the area from the north. Internecine warfare among the Bantus had largely  depopulated the region, facilitating occupation of the land by the Boers, the Afrikaans-speaking  farmers descended from the original Dutch settlers in the seventeenth century. But in the early 

nineteenth century, a Bantu people called the Zulus, under the talented ruler Shaka, counterattacked,  setting off a series of wars between the Europeans and the Zulus. Eventually, Shaka was overthrown, 

and the Boers continued their advance northeastward during the so-called Great Trek of the  mid-1830s (see Map 2.4). By 1865, the total European population of the area had risen to nearly  200,000 people. The Boers' eastward migration was provoked in part by the British seizure of the 

Cape from the Dutch during the Napoleonic wars. The British government was generally more  sympathetic to the rights of the local African population than were the Afrikaners, many of whom  saw white superiority as ordained by God and fled from British rule to control their own destiny. 

Eventually, the Boers formed their own independent republics, the Orange Free State and the South  African Republic (usually known as Transvaal). Much of the African population in these areas was 

confined to reserves. THE BOER WAR The discovery of gold and diamonds in the Transvaal  complicated the situation. Clashes between the Afrikaner population and foreign (mainly British) 

miners and developers led to an attempt by Cecil Rhodes, prime minister of the Cape Colony and a  prominent entrepreneur in the area, to subvert the Transvaal and bring it under British rule. In 1899, 

the so-called Boer War broke out between Britain and the Transvaal, which was backed by the  Orange Free State. Guerrilla resistance by the Boers was fierce, but the vastly superior forces of the 

British were able to prevail by 1902. To compensate the defeated Afrikaner population for the loss of  independence, the British government agreed that only whites would vote in the now essentially 

self-governing colony. The Boers were placated, but the brutalities committed during the war (the  British introduced an institution later to be known as the concentration camp) created bitterness on  both sides that continued to fester for decades. MAP 2.4 The Struggle for Southern Africa. Shown  here is the expansion of European settlers from the Cape Colony into adjacent areas of southern  Africa in the nineteenth century. The arrows indicate the routes taken by the Afrikaans-speaking  Boers. Who were the Boers, and why did they migrate eastward? Colonialism in Africa In general, 

Western economic interests were more limited in Africa than elsewhere. As a result, most colonial  governments settled down to govern their new territories with the least effort and expense possible. 

In many cases, they pursued a form of indirect rule reminiscent of the British approach to the  princely states in the Indian peninsula. BRITISH RULE IN NIGERIA Nigeria offers a typical example of 

British-style indirect rule. British officials operated at the central level, but local authority was  assigned to Nigerian chiefs, with British district officers serving as intermediaries with the central  administration. The local authorities were expected to maintain law and order and to collect taxes 

from the indigenous population. A dual legal system was instituted that applied African laws to  Africans and European laws to foreigners. One advantage of such an administrative system was that 

it did not severely disrupt local customs and institutions. At the same time, it was misleading  because all major decisions were made by the British administrators while the African authorities 

served primarily as the means of enforcing the decisions. Moreover, indirect rule served to  perpetuate the autocratic system that often existed prior to colonial takeover since there was a  natural tendency to view the local aristocracy as the African equivalent of the traditional British 

ruling class. Such a policy provided few opportunities for ambitious and talented young Africans  from outside the traditional elite and thus sowed the seeds for class tensions after the restoration of  independence in the twentieth century. THE BRITISH IN EAST AFRICA The situation was somewhat 

different in Kenya, which had a relatively large European population attracted by the temperate  climate in the central highlands. The local government had encouraged Europeans to migrate to the  area as a means of promoting economic development and encouraging financial self-sufficiency. To  attract them, fertile farmlands in the central highlands were reserved for European settlement while,  as in South Africa, specified reserve lands were set aside for Africans. The presence of a privileged  European minority had an impact on Kenya's political development. The European settlers actively 

sought self-government and dominion status similar to that granted to such former British  possessions as Canada and Australia. The British government, however, was not willing to run the 

risk of provoking racial tensions with the African majority and agreed only to establish separate  government organs for the European and African populations. SOUTH AFRICA The situation in South  Africa, of course, was unique, not only because of the high percentage of European settlers but also 

because of the division between English-speaking and Afrikaner elements within the European  population. In 1910, the British agreed to the creation of the independent Union of South Africa, 

which combined the old Cape Colony and Natal with the two Boer republics. The new union adopted  a representative government, but only for the European population. The African reserves of 

Basutoland (now Lesotho), Bechuanaland (now Botswana), and Swaziland were subordinated 

directly to the crown. The union was now free to manage its own domestic affairs and possessed  considerable autonomy in foreign relations. Remaining areas south of the Zambezi River, eventually  divided into the territories of Northern and Southern Rhodesia, were also placed under British rule. 

British immigration into Southern Rhodesia was extensive, and in 1922, after a popular referendum, it  became a crown colony. DIRECT RULE Most other European nations governed their African 

possessions through a form of direct rule. The prototype was the French system, which reflected the  centralized administrative system introduced in France by Napoleon. As in the British colonies, at the 

top of the pyramid was a French official, usually known as a governor-general, who was appointed  from Paris and governed with the aid of a bureaucracy in the capital city. At the provincial level, 

French commissioners were assigned to deal with local administrators, but the latter were required  to be conversant in French and could be transferred to a new position to meet the needs of the 

central government. After World War I, European colonial policy in Africa entered a new and more  formal phase. Colonial governments paid more attention to improving social services, including 

education, medicine, sanitation, and communications. More Africans were now serving in colonial  administrations, though relatively few were in positions of responsibility. On the other hand, race 

consciousness probably increased during this period. Segregated clubs, schools, and churches were  established as more European officials brought their wives with them and began to raise families in 

the colonies. More directly affected by the colonial presence than the small African elite were  ordinary Africans, who were subjected to countless indignities reminiscent of Western practices in 

Asia. While the institution of slavery was discouraged in much of the continent, African workers were  routinely exposed to unbelievably harsh conditions as they were put to use as manual laborers to 

promote the cause of imperialism. Legacy of Shame. By the mid-nineteenth century, most European  nations had prohibited the trade in African slaves, but slavery continued to exist in Africa well into 

the next century. In the Belgian Congo, the mistreatment of conscript laborers led to a popular outcry  and the formation of a commission to look into the situation and recommend reforms. Shown here 

are two manacled members of a chain gang in the Belgian Congo. The photograph was taken in  1904. The most flagrant example was in the Belgian Congo. Conditions on the plantations there 

were so abysmal that an international outcry eventually led to the formation of a commission under  British consul Roger Casement to investigate. The commission's report, issued in 1904, helped to 

bring about reforms (see the box on p. 29). WOMEN IN COLONIAL AFRICA Colonial rule had a mixed  impact on the rights and status of women in Africa. Sexual relationships changed profoundly during 

the colonial era, sometimes in ways that could justly be described as beneficial. Colonial  governments attempted to put an end to forced marriage, bodily mutilation such as clitoridectomy, 

and polygyny. Missionaries introduced women to Western education and encouraged them to  organize to defend their interests. But the colonial system had some unfavorable consequences as  well. African women had traditionally benefited from the prestige of matrilineal systems and were 

empowered by their traditional role as the primary agricultural producers in their community. Under  colonialism, European settlers not only took the best land for themselves but also, in introducing 

new agricultural techniques, tended to deal exclusively with males, encouraging the latter to develop  lucrative cash crops, while women were restricted to traditional farming methods. Whereas African  men applied chemical fertilizer to the fields, women continued to use manure. While men began to 

use bicycles, and eventually trucks, to transport goods, women still carried their goods on their  heads, a practice that continues today. In British colonies, Victorian attitudes of female 

subordination led to restrictions on women's freedom, and positions in government that they had  formerly held were now closed to them. CONCLUSION BY THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY, 

virtually all of Africa and a good part of South and Southeast Asia were under some form of colonial  rule. With the advent of the Age of Imperialism, a global economy was finally established, and the 

domination of Western civilization over those of Africa and Asia appeared to be complete. Defenders  of colonialism argue that the system was a necessary if sometimes painful stage in the evolution of 

human societies. Although its immediate consequences were admittedly sometimes unfortunate,  Western imperialism was ultimately beneficial to colonial powers and subjects alike because it 

created the conditions for global economic development and the universal application of democratic  institutions. Critics, however, charge that the Western colonial powers were driven by an insatiable  lust for profits. They dismiss the Western civilizing mission as a fig leaf to cover naked greed and  reject the notion that imperialism played a salutary role in hastening the adjustment of traditional  societies to the demands of industrial civilization. Rather, it locked them in to what many social 

scientists today describe as a “dependency relationship” with their colonial masters. “Why is Africa  (or for that matter Latin America and much of Asia) so poor?” asked one Western critique of 

imperialism. “The answer is very brief: we have made it poor.”5 Between these two irreconcilable  views, where does the truth lie? It is difficult to provide a simple answer to this question, as the 

colonial record varied from country to country. In some cases, the colonial experience was probably  beneficial in introducing Western technology, values, and democratic institutions into traditional 

societies. As its defenders are quick to point out, colonialism often laid the foundation for  preindustrial societies to play an active and rewarding role in the global economic marketplace. Still, 

the critics have a point. Although colonialism did introduce the peoples of Asia and Africa to new  technology and the expanding economic marketplace, it was unnecessarily brutal in its application 

and all too often failed to realize the exalted claims and objectives of its promoters. Existing  economic networks—often potentially valuable as a foundation for later economic 

development—were ruthlessly swept aside in the interests of providing markets for Western  manufactured goods. Potential sources of local industrialization were nipped in the bud to avoid  competition for factories in Amsterdam, London, Pittsburgh, or Manchester. Training in Western  democratic ideals and practices was ignored out of fear that the recipients might use them as 

weapons against the ruling authorities. The fundamental weakness of colonialism, then, was that it  was ultimately based on the self-interests of the citizens of the colonial powers. When those 

interests collided with the needs of the colonial peoples, the former always triumphed. However  sincerely the David Livingstones, Albert Sarrauts, and William McKinleys of the world were convinced  of the rightness of their civilizing mission, the ultimate result was to deprive the colonial peoples of 

the right to make their own choices about their destiny. In general, the peoples of Latin America were  able to avoid some of the worst consequences of the era of Western imperialism by virtue of having  won their independence from colonial control during the nineteenth century. As we saw in Chapter 1, 

however, some imperialist nations continued to exert influence over regional economies through  their dominant position in local export markets. When those interests were threatened, as occurred 

frequently in Central America and the Caribbean, imperialist governments—and especially the United  States—were not shy about employing military force to protect them. Eventually, this form of 

“informal empire” would come to be known as neocolonialism, provoking sharp criticism from  commentators in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. In one area of Asia, the spreading tide of 

imperialism did not result in the establishment of formal Western colonial control. In East Asia, the  traditional societies of China and Japan were buffeted by the winds of Western expansionism during 

the nineteenth century but successfully resisted foreign conquest. In the next chapter, we will see  how they managed this and how they fared in their encounter with the West.