history
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HIST1060lecture17.pptxThe New Power Balance, 1850-1900
Lecture 17
The New Power Balance, 1850-1900
1. Great Power status required colonies, and competition with other nations spurred imperialism, which means stronger nations extend their economic, political, or military control over weaker territories;
The New Power Balance, 1850-1900
2. Due to a negative trade balance, British allowed the East India Company exported opium illegally into China, which caused the Opium War in 1839 between China and the Great Britain. China’s defeat in the Opium War forced it to open to the West and inaugurated a new era in Western imperialism. It was the first time a Western nation had emerged victorious in battel in East Asia;
The New Power Balance, 1850-1900
3. Commodore Matthew Perry forced Japan to enter into trade with the United States, and he also demanded a treaty permitting trade and the opening of Japanese ports to U.S. merchant ships in 1853. In 1858, Townsend Harries convinced the shogun’s government to sign a commercial treaty with the U.S.;
The New Power Balance, 1850-1900
4. “Extraterritoriality” meant foreigners in China/Japan were subject to foreign laws, judges, courts, and prisons, which became the hallmarks of the unequal treaty system;
The New Power Balance, 1850-1900
5. Imperialism in Asia entered a new phase when China and Japan fought over Korea in 1894-1895, Japan became an imperialism nation after Meiji Restoration;
The New Power Balance, 1850-1900
6. Western imperialism led directly and indirectly to increased migration within Asia and between Asia and the rest of the world, but Chinese were brutally exploited, such as “The Chinese Exclusion Act” in 1882 and “Gentlemen’s Agreement” 1907 for Japanese;
The New Power Balance, 1850-1900
7. The nineteenth century marked the heyday of Western imperialism as practice and ideology, and Social Darwinism provide new justification for White’s racial superiority. They believed not just species but also nations stood in danger of extinction unless they emerged victorious in the ceaseless competition between them. Therefore, some Westerners felt it their duty to bring civilization to the heathen, others used this notion to justify brutal exploitation of native populations;
The New Power Balance, 1850-1900
8. Western imperialism in East Asia took a different form than in the rest of the world, which imposed unequal treaties rather than established colonies (Hong Kong and Macao being the exception). Westernization for Japan meant Western-style commercial, civil, and criminal legal codes as well as the creation of a modern army. Japan’s victory in war with Russia in 1904-1905 gave hope to people all over Asia that Western dominance might pass.
New Technologies and the World Economy
What new technologies and industries appeared between 1850 and 1900, and how did they affect the world economy?
New Technologies and the World Economy
Industrialization spread throughout the world through trade and new technologies.
Railroads, almost always financed by Western nations, spread to all continents, changing and enlarging cities and facilitating economic growth.
1. By 1850 the first railroads had proved so successful that every industrializing country began to build railroad lines. Railroad building in Britain, France, Germany, Canada, Russia, Japan, and especially in the United States fueled a tremendous expansion in the world’s rail networks from 1850 to 1900;
2. In the non-industrialized world, railroads were also built wherever they would be of value to business or to government. Railroads consumed huge amounts of land and timber for ties and bridges. Throughout the world, railroads opened new land to agriculture, mining, and other human exploitation of natural resources.
New Technologies and the World Economy
Steamships and telegraph cables connected continents and encouraged trade.
3. Steamships and Telegraph Cables In the mid-nineteenth century a number of technological developments in shipbuilding made it possible to increase the average size and speed of ocean-going vessels. These developments included the use of iron (and then steel) for hulls, propellers, and more efficient engines;
4. Entrepreneurs developed a form of organization known as the shipping line in order to make the most efficient use of these large and expensive new ships. Shipping lines also used the growing system of submarine telegraph cables in order to coordinate the movements of their ships around the globe.
New Technologies and the World Economy
Steamships and telegraph cables connected continents and encouraged trade.
New Technologies and the World Economy
In three new industries-steel, chemicals, and electricity-the Unites States and Germany surpassed Great Britain.
5. Steel is an especially hard and elastic form of iron that could be made only in small quantities by skilled blacksmiths before the eighteenth century. A series of inventions in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries made it possible to produce large quantities of steel at low cost;
6. Until the late eighteenth century chemicals were also produced in small amounts in small workshops. The nineteenth century brought large- scale manufacture of chemicals and the invention of synthetic dyes and other new organic chemicals;
7. Nineteenth century advances in explosives (including Alfred Nobel’s invention of dynamite) had significant effects on both civil engineering and on the development of more powerful and more accurate firearms;
New Technologies and the World Economy
In three new industries-steel, chemicals, and electricity-the Unites States and Germany surpassed Great Britain.
8. The complexity of industrial chemistry made it one of the first fields in which science and technology interacted on a daily basis. This development gave a great advantage to Germany, where government-funded research and cooperation between universities and industries made the German chemical and explosives industries the most advanced in the world by the end of the nineteenth century;
9. Industrialization brought vast amount of new wealth, without environmental regulations it also caused considerable damage to nature and to the health of nearby human population;
New Technologies and the World Economy
In three new industries-steel, chemicals, and electricity-the Unites States and Germany surpassed Great Britain.
10. Electricity In the 1870s inventors devised efficient generators that turned mechanical energy into electricity that could be used to power arc lamps, incandescent lamps, streetcars, subways, and electric motors for industry. Electricity helped to alleviate the urban pollution caused by horse-drawn vehicles;
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New Technologies and the World Economy
World trade boomed in an age of globalization.
11. The growth of trade and close connections between the industrial economies of Western Europe and North America brought greater prosperity to these areas, but it also made them more vulnerable to swings in the business cycle. One of the main causes of this growing interdependence was the financial power of Great Britain;
12. Non-industrial areas were also tied to the world economy. The non-industrial areas were even more vulnerable to swings in the business cycle because they depended on the export of raw materials that could often be replaced by synthetics or for which the industrial nations could develop new sources of supply. Nevertheless, until World War I, the value of exports from the tropical countries generally remained high, and the size of their populations remained moderate.
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Social Changes
How did the societies of the industrial countries change during this period?
Social Changes
As European population grew, millions migrated to other continents.
1. Between 1850 and 1914 Europe saw very rapid population growth. Emigration from Europe spurred population growth in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Argentina. As a result, the proportion of people of European ancestry in the world’s population rose from one-fifth to one-third;
2. Reasons for the increase in European population include: a drop in the death rate, improved crop yields, the provision of grain from newly opened agricultural land in North America, and the provision of a more abundant year-round diet as a result of canning and refrigeration;
3. Asians also migrated in large numbers during this period, often as indentured laborers.
Social Changes
As European population grew, millions migrated to other continents.
Social Changes
Cities grew to enormous size, changing in character and posing difficult housing, sanitation, and environmental problems.
1. In the latter half of the nineteenth century European, North American, and Japanese cities grew tremendously both in terms of population and of size. In areas like the English Midlands, the German Ruhr, and around Tokyo Bay, towns fused into one another, creating new cities;
Social Changes
Cities grew to enormous size, changing in character and posing difficult housing, sanitation, and environmental problems.
2. Urban growth was accompanied by changes in the character of urban life. Technologies that changed the quality of urban life for the rich (and later for the working class as well) included: mass transportation networks, sewage and water supply systems, gas and electric lighting, police and fire departments, sanitation and garbage removal, building and health inspection, schools, parks, and other amenities;
Social Changes
Cities grew to enormous size, changing in character and posing difficult housing, sanitation, and environmental problems.
3. New neighborhoods and cities were built (and older areas often rebuilt) on a rectangular grid pattern with broad boulevards and modern apartment buildings. Cities were divided into industrial, commercial, and residential zones, with the residential zones occupied by different social classes;
4. While urban environments improved in many ways, air quality worsened. Coal used as fuel polluted the air, while the waste of the thousands of horses that pulled carts and carriages lay stinking in the streets until horses were replaced by streetcars and automobiles in the early twentieth century.
Social Changes
Middle-class women inhabited a “separate sphere” from men and devoted their lives to their homes and families, but a few fought for equal rights.
1. The term “Victorian Age” refers not only to the reign of Queen Victoria (1837–1901), but also to the rules of behavior and the ideology surrounding the family and relations between men and women. Men and women were thought to belong in “separate spheres,” the men in the workplace, the women in the home;
Social Changes
Middle-class women inhabited a “separate sphere” from men and devoted their lives to their homes and families, but a few fought for equal rights.
2. Before electrical appliances, a middle-class home demanded lots of work. The advent of modern technology in the nineteenth century eliminated some tasks and made others easier. But rising standards of cleanliness meant that technological advances did not translate into a decrease in the housewife’s total workload;
3. The most important duty of middle-class women was to raise their children. Victorian mothers lavished much time and attention on their children, but girls received an education very different from that of boys;
Social Changes
Middle-class women inhabited a “separate sphere” from men and devoted their lives to their homes and families, but a few fought for equal rights.
4. Governments enforced legal discrimination against women throughout the nineteenth century. Society frowned on careers for middle-class women. Women were excluded from jobs that required higher education. Teaching was a permissible career, but women teachers were expected to resign when they got married. Some middle-class women were not satisfied with home life and became involved in volunteer work or in the women’s suffrage movement. By 1914 U.S. women had won the right to vote in twelve states, and British women did not gain the right to vote until 1918.
Revolution Spreads, Conservatives Responded, 1789-1850
Working-class women, who had to keep a home while earning a living, led hard lives.
1. Working-class women led lives of toil and pain. Many became domestic servants, facing long hours, hard physical labor, and sexual abuse from their masters or their masters’ sons;
2. Many more young women worked in factories, where they were relegated to poorly paid work in the textiles and clothing trades. Married women were expected to stay home, raise children, do housework, and contribute to the family income by taking in boarders, doing sewing or other piecework jobs, or by washing other people’s clothes. Many poor women work at home ten to twelve hours a day. Without electric lighting and indoor plumbing, household duties, such as cooking and washing, remained heavy burdens.
