Asian Thought and Culture

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Imperialism

Chapter 11 & 12

India: The Mughal Empire

Zahir al-Din Muhammad (Babur the Tiger), Chagatai Turk, invades northern India for plunder, 1523
Gunpowder technology gives Babur advantage
Founds Mughal (Persian for Mongol) dynasty
Expands through most of Indian subcontinent
http://sun.menloschool.org/~sportman/westernstudies/first/1718/2000/eblock/mughal/

Akbar (r. 1556-1605)

Grandson of Babur
Wins fear and respect after throwing Adham Khan, leader of the army, out the window twice
Second time just to make sure he was dead
Created centralized government
Destroyed Hindu kingdom of Vijayanagar
Religiously tolerant, promoted “Divine Faith”
Syncretic form of Islam and Hinduism

Aurangzeb (r. 1659-1707)

Expands Mughal empire into southern India
Hostile to Hinduism
Demolished Hindu temples, replaced with mosques
Tax on Hindus to encourage conversion

Islamic Empires & Agriculture and Trade

American crops effect less dramatic change in Muslim empires
Coffee, tobacco important
Initial opposition from conservative circles, fearing lax morality of coffee houses
Trade with English East India Company, French East India Company, and Dutch VOC

Population Growth

Portuguese Breakthroughs

Prince Henry of Portugal (1394-1460)
Promoted exploration of west African coast
Established fortified trading posts
1488 Barolomeo Dias rounds Cape of Good Hope, enters Indian Ocean basin
Storms, restless crew force return
Vasco de Gama reaches India by this route, 1497
By 1500, a trading post at Calicut

Establishment of Trading-Post Empires

Portuguese first to set up trading posts
50 by mid-16th century
Not to establish trade monopolies, rather to charge duties
Alfonso d’Alboquerque major naval commander
Architect of trade duties policy; violators would have hands amputated
Yet Arab traders continue to operate
Portuguese control declines by end of 16th c.

English and Dutch Trading Posts

Rival, parallel trading networks
English concentrate on Indian trade & China

European trading posts in Africa and Asia, about 1700

European Conquests in Southeast Asia

Spanish conquer Philippines, name them after King Philip II
Manila becomes major port city
Influx of Chinese traders, highly resented by Spanish, Indigenous Peoples
Frequent massacres throughout 17th, up to 19th century
Significant missionary activity
Dutch concentrate on spice trade in Indonesia
Establish Batavia, trading post in Java
Less missionary activity

The Seven Years’ War (1756-1763)

Commercial rivalries between empires at sea
Global conflict erupts: multiple theatres in Europe, India, Caribbean, North America
North America: merges with French and Indian War, 1754-1763
British emerge victorious, establish primacy in India, Canada

Imperialism in Asia, ca. 1914

The idea of Imperialism

Term dates from mid-19th century
In popular discourse by 1880s
Military imperialism
Later, economic and cultural varieties
US imperialism

Motivation for Imperialism

Military
Manifest Destity
Political
Economic
European capitalism
Religious
Demographic
criminal populations
Dissident populations

The “White Man’s Burden”

Rudyard Kipling (1864-1936)
Raised in India, native Hindi speaker
Boarding school in England, then return to India (1882)
French: mission civilisatrice

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 hope to nought.

Take up the White Man's burden--

No iron rule of kings,

But toil of serf and sweeper--

The tale of common things.

The ports ye shall not enter,

The roads ye shall not tread,

Go, make them with your living

And mark them with your dead.

Take up the White Man's burden,

And reap his old reward--

The blame of those ye better

The hate of those ye guard--

The cry of hosts ye humour

(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:--

"Why brought ye us from bondage,

Our loved Egyptian night?"

Take up the White Man's burden--

Ye dare not stoop to less--

Nor call too loud on Freedom

To cloak your weariness.

By all ye will or whisper,

By all ye leave or do,

The silent sullen peoples

Shall weigh your God and you.

Take up the White Man's burden!

Have done with childish days--

The lightly-proffered laurel,

The easy ungrudged praise:

Comes now, to search your manhood

Through all the thankless years,

Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,

The judgment of your peers.

Technology and Imperialism

Transportation
Steamships
Railroads
Infrastructure
Suez Canal (1859-1869)
Panama Canal (1904-1914)

Weaponry

muzzle-loading muskets
Mid-century: breech-loading rifles
Reduce reloading time
1880s: Maxim gun, 11 rounds per second

The Military Advantage

Battle of Omdurman (near Khartom on Nile), 1898
Five hours of fighting
British: six gunboats, twenty machine guns, 368 killed
Sudanese: 11,000 killed

Communications

Correspondence
1830 Britain-India: 2 years
After Suez Canal, 2 weeks
Telegraph
1870s, development of submarine cables
Britain-India: 5 hours

The Jewel of the British Crown: India

East India Company
Monopoly on India trade
Original permission from Mughal emperors
Mughal empire declines after death of Aurangzeb, 1707

Home of a Wealthy Family in Calcutta

British Conquest

Protection of economic interests through political conquest
British and Indian troops (sepoys)

British Colonial Soldiers

Sepoy Revolt, 1857

Enfield rifles
Cartridges in wax paper greased with animal fat
Problem for Hindus: beef
Problem for Muslims: pork
Sepoys capture garrison
60 soldiers, 180 civilian males massacred (after surrender)
Two weeks later, 375 women and children murdered
British retake fort, hang rebels

Britain establishes direct rule

Pre-empts East India Company
Established civil service staffed by English
Low-level Indian civil servants

British Rule in India

Organization of agriculture
Crops: tea, coffee, opium
Stamp of British culture on Indian environment
Veneer on poor Muslim-Hindu relations

Imperialism in Central Asia

British, French, Russians complete for central Asia
France drops out after Napoleon
Russia active after 1860s in Tashkent, Bokhara, Samarkand, and approached India
The “Great Game”: Russian vs. British intrigue in Afghanistan
Preparation for imperialist war
Russian Revolution of 1917 forestalled war

Imperialism in Southeast Asia

Dutch: Indonesia (Dutch East Indies)
British establish presence from 1820s
Conflict with kings of Burma (Myanmar) 1820s, established colonial authority by 1880s
Thomas Stamford Raffles founds Singapore for trade in Strait of Melaka
Base of British colonization in Malaysia, 1870s-1880s
French: Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, 1859-1893
Encouraged conversion to Christianity

Early Japanese Expansion

Resentment over Unequal Treaties of 1860s
1870s colonized northern region: Hokkaido, Kurile islands, southern Okinawa and Ryukyu islands as well
1876 Japanese purchase warships from Britian, dominate Korea
Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895) over Korea results in Japanese victory
Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905) also ends in Japanese victory

Economic Legacies of Imperialism

Colonized states encouraged to exploit natural resources rather than build manufacturing centers
Encouraged dependency on imperial power for manufactured goods made from native raw product
Indian cotton
Introduction of new crops
Tea in Ceylon

Imperialism and migration during the nineteenth and early twentieth century

Labor Migrations

Europeans move to temperate lands
Work as free cultivators, industrial laborers
32 million to the US 1800-1914
Africans, Asians, and Pacific islanders move to tropical/subtropical lands
Indentured laborers, manual laborers
2.5 million between 1820 and 1914

Colonial Conflict

Thousands of insurrections against colonial rule
Tanganyika Maji Maji Rebellion against Germans (1905-1906)
Rebels sprinkle selves with magic water (maji maji) as protection against modern weapons; 75000 killed
“Scientific” Racism developed
Count Joseph Arthurd de Gobineau (1816-1882)
Combines with theories of Charles Darwin (1809-1882) to form pernicious doctrine of Social Darwinism

Nationalism and Anticolonial Movements

Ram Mohan Roy (1772-1883), Bengali called “father of modern India”
Reformers call for self-government, adoption of selected British practices (e.g. ban on sati)
Influence of Enlightenment thought, often obtained in European universities
Indian National Congress formed 1885
1906 joins with All-India Muslim League

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Mughal

Safavid

Ottoman