Imperialism and Empire

Lsn 16

Imperialism

• Imperialism is a term associated with the expansion of the European powers, and later the US and Japan, and their conquest and colonization of African and Asian societies, mainly from the 16th through the 19th Centuries

• Was effected not just through the force of arms, but also through trade, investment, and business activities that enabled the imperial powers to profit from subject societies and influence their affairs without going to the trouble of exercising direct political control

Motivations

• Many Europeans came to believe that imperial expansion and colonial domination were crucial for the survival of their states and societies

• Motivations can be grouped as economic, political, and cultural

Economic Motives

• Overseas colonies could serve as reliable sources of raw materials not available in Europe that came in demand because of industrialization– Rubber in the Congo River

basin and Malaya– Tin in southeast Asia– Copper in central Africa– Oil in southwest Asia Rubber trees in Malaya

Political Motives

• Some overseas colonies occupied strategic sites on the world’s sea lanes

• Others offered harbors or supply stations for commercial and naval ships

• Foreign imperialist ventures were useful in defusing social tensions and inspiring patriotism at home, often between industrialists and socialists

Cultural Justifications

• Christian missionaries saw Africa and Asia as fertile ground for converts and often served as intermediaries between imperialists and subject peoples

• Other Europeans sought to bring “civilization” to subject peoples in the form of political order and social stability

• Cecil Rhodes believed, “We (the British) are the finest race in the world and the more of the world we inhabit, the better it is for the human race.”

Technologies that made Imperialism Possible

• Transportation• Military• Communications

Cartoon showing China being divided by the

United Kingdom, Germany, Russia,

France, and Japan

Transportation Technologies

• Steamships allowed imperial powers to travel upriver much further than sailboats so imperialists could project power deep into the interior regions of foreign lands

The USS Monocacy was

used to protect US interests along the Yangtze River in

China

Transportation Technologies

• The construction of new canals enhanced the effectiveness of steamships and the building of empires by enabling naval vessels to travel rapidly between the world’s seas and oceans

• They lowered the costs of trade between imperial powers and subject lands

Suez Canal• Between 1859 and 1869,

the British constructed the Suez Canal which links Port Said on the Mediterranean Sea and Suez on the Red Sea

• Allows two-way north-south water transport from Europe to Asia without circumnavigating Africa

• In 1882 the British army occupied Egypt to ensure the safety of the canal which was crucial to British communications with India

1869 opening of the Suez Canal at Port Said

Military Technologies

• Breech-loading firearms with rifled bores provided European armies with an arsenal vastly stronger than any other in the world

• European armies could impose colonial rule almost at will

British soldiers show a Maxim gun to an elderly Zulu chief in 1901

Communications Technologies

• Oceangoing steamships reduced the time required for imperial capitals to deliver messages to colonial lands

• In the 1850s engineers began developing submarine telegraph cables to carry messages through oceans

• By 1902, cables linked all parts of the British Empire throughout the world

Insignia of the British Indian Submarine

Telegraph Company

Case Study

Berlin Conference and European Imperialism in Africa

Africa

• Until 1875, Europeans maintained a limited presence in Africa

• Around then, the adventures and reports of explorers such as David Livingstone, Henry Stanley, Richard Burton, and John Speke began to excite merchants about business possibilities in Africa

Richard Burton explored east Africa with John

Speke, seeking the source of the Nile

Africa: Berlin Conference

• Tensions among the European powers seeking African colonies led to the Berlin West Africa Conference (1884-1885), during which delegates from 14 European states and the US (no Africans were present) devised the rules for the colonization of Africa

• The conference produced an agreement that any European state could establish African colonies after notifying the others of its intentions and occupying previously unclaimed territory

Africa: Berlin Conference

• The Berlin Conference gave European diplomats the justification they needed to draw lines on maps and carve Africa into colonies

• By the turn of the century, all of Africa was divided into European colonies except for Ethiopia, where native forces had fought off Italian efforts at colonization, and Liberia, a small republic populated by freed slaves that was effectively a dependency of the US

Colonial Rule

• Three types– Concessionary companies– Direct rule– Indirect rule

Concessionary Companies

• This was the earliest approach to colonial rule• European governments granted private companies large

concessions of territory and empowered them to undertake economic activities such as mining, plantation agriculture, or railroad construction

Stamps issued by the Mozambique Company which received a 50-year administrative charter from Portugal in 1891

Concessionary Companies

• This system allowed European governments to colonize and exploit immense territories with only a modest investment, but the brutal practices of the private companies produced a public outcry and the imperial countries decided to establish their own rule

The Imperial British East Africa Company began work on the

Uganda Railway in 1896. 2,500 workers died during the

construction.

Direct Rule

• The concessionary companies gave way to direct or indirect imperial rule

• Under direct rule, administrative districts headed by European personnel collected taxes, recruited labor and soldiers, and maintained law and order

• Direct rule was typical of the French colonies

French colonial administrator Louis Léon César Faidherbe

served as governor of Senegal from 1854 to 1861 and from 1863

to 1865. He transformed the colony into the dominant political

and military power in West Africa.

Direct Rule

• Administrative boundaries intentionally cut across existing African political and ethnic boundaries in order to divide and weaken potentially powerful indigenous groups

• Direct rule aimed at removing strong kings and other leaders and replacing them with more malleable people

• The underlying principle was to keep African populations in check and permit European administrators to engage in a “civilizing mission”

Indirect Rule

• Indirect rule exercised control over subject populations through indigenous institutions such as existing “tribal” authorities and “customary laws”

• Indirect rule work in places where Africans had already established strong and highly organized states, but elsewhere erroneous assumptions about the “tribal” nature of African societies caused problems

Later Problems

• The invention of rigid tribal categories and the establishment of artificial tribal boundaries became one of the greatest obstacles to nation building and regional stability in much of Africa during the second half of the 20th Century

• The arbitrary boundaries of the Berlin Conference did not take into consideration the natural divisions of the African people (religion, culture, language, ethnicity, etc)

Later Impacts

• When decolonization began in the 1950s, loyalties to these natural groups were often stronger than those to the arbitrarily-created state, leading to civil unrest in many countries

• After independence, the dominant nationalist movements and their leaders tended to install themselves in virtually permanent power and tried to establish single-party states

Berlin Conference

• Explain the European imperialism in Africa in terms of the economic, political, and cultural justifications of imperialism

Case Study:

Mahan, the Spanish-American War, and US Imperialism

Albert Thayer Mahan• US naval officer who lived from 1840 to

1914• Wrote The Influence of Sea Power Upon

History, 1660-1783 and The Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire, 1793-1812

• Considered “sea power” to include the overlapping concepts of command of the sea through naval superiority and that combination of maritime commerce, overseas possessions, and privileged access to foreign markets that produces national “wealth and greatness”

Albert Thayer Mahan

• Advocated – “that overbearing power on the sea which drives the

enemy’s flag from it, or allows it to appear only as a fugitive”

– “(1) Production; (2) Shipping: (3) Colonies and Markets– in a word, sea power”

• Thought the Navy should be used offensively and that its principle object should be destruction of the enemy’s fleet– Destroying the enemy’s battle fleet would in turn

cause his merchant fleet to find the sea untenable

Albert Thayer Mahan

• Increasingly became an imperialist in order to gain control of the resources the US needed to best use its naval power– “by 1890 the study of the influence of sea power and

its kindred expansive activities upon the destiny of nations converted me” to an imperialist (Mahan, 1901)

• Wrote “The Isthmus and Sea Power” in 1893 in which he argued that building a Central American canal would require the US to vastly increase its naval strength to protect its interests from European competition

Albert Thayer Mahan

• In 1890 Mahan warned that opening the canal would immediately place the West Coast in jeopardy and that “it should be an inviolable resolution of our national policy, that no foreign state should henceforth acquire a cooling position within three thousand miles of San Francisco,-- a distance which includes the Hawaiian and Galapagos islands and the coast of Central America”

US and Hawaii

• In 1875 the US claimed a protectorate over Hawaii, where US entrepreneurs had established highly productive sugarcane plantations

• In 1893 a group of businessmen and planters overthrew Queen Liliuokalani and invited the US to annex Hawaii

• Hawaii became a US possession in 1898

Queen Liliuokalani

US: Spanish-American War (1898-1899)

• The US had large business interests in Puerto Rico and Cuba, the last remnant’s of Spain’s American empire

• In 1898 the US battleship Maine exploded and sank in Havana harbor

• US leaders suspected sabotage and declared war

• It was an easy US victory and after the Spanish-American War the US emerged as a major imperial and colonial power

Albert Thayer Mahan

• In the Caribbean, the US took possession of Puerto Rico and Cuba

• Mahan predicted Puerto Rico was to the future Panama Canal and to the West Coast what Malta was to British interests in India and beyond

US and Panama

• In 1903 the US supported a rebellion against Colombia and helped rebels establish a breakaway state of Panama

• In exchange for the support the US won the right to build a canal across Panama and control the adjacent territory known as the Panama Canal Zone

• The Canal opened in 1914

Panama Canal

• Between 1904 and 1914, the US built the Panama Canal which links the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans without having to transit Cape Horn Gatun locks under construction in 1910

US and Central America

• The Canal was part of a long tradition of US interest in the Caribbean area

• In 1823 President James Monroe issued the Monroe Doctrine that warned European states against imperialist designs in the western hemisphere– Any European attempt to reassert control over former

colonies or to establish new ones would be considered as a threat against the US and an act of provocation

• The Monroe Doctrine served as a justification for US intervention in hemispheric affairs

Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine

• In 1904 the government of the Dominican Republic went bankrupt

• President Theodore Roosevelt feared that Germany and other nations might intervene forcibly to collect their debts 

• Roosevelt asserted that “in the Western Hemisphere the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine may force the United States, however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence, to the exercise of an international police power....” Cartoon portraying Roosevelt

as an international policeman wielding his “big stick”

Early 20th Century US Interventions in Latin America

• Cuba

• Dominican Republic

• Nicaragua

• Honduras

• Haiti

US and the Pacific

• The Spanish-American War also resulted in American victories in the Pacific where the US took possession of the Philippines and Guam

• Prior to that Mahan’s expansionist vision had “reached not past Hawaii,” but now it encompassed the Asiatic mainland

Commodore Dewey destroyed the Spanish fleet in a single day at the Battle of Manila.

Mahan and the Pacific

• Mahan saw US expansion in Asia as being not the product of military force but of peaceful commercial penetration

• He saw US control of the Panama Canal, Hawaii, and the Philippines as “stepping stones to the two great prizes: the Latin American and Asian markets”

The “Open Door”

• Secretary of State John Hay issued a series of notes to the European powers in 1899-1900 articulating the concept of the “Open Door” in China

• The idea was to secure international agreement to the US policy of promoting equal opportunity for international trade and commerce in China

• Hay proposed a free, open market and equal trading opportunity for merchants of all nationalities operating in China

The “Open Door”

• European acceptance of the proposal was largely conditional but Hay nonetheless declared agreement

• The Boxer Rebellion of 1900 threatened the principle of the Open Door as foreign powers, including the US, intervened in China and in some cases secured their own concessions and areas of special interest along the way

• Still the Open Door policy represented the growing American interest and involvement in East Asia at the turn of the century

Mahan, the Spanish-American War, and US Imperialism

• Discuss US imperialism around the turn of the century in terms of the diplomatic, informational, economic, and military instruments of power

Practical Exercise:

China and a North Korean Collapse

The Collapse of North Korea

• Kim Jong Il’s “Hermit Kingdom” in North Korea will one day inevitably collapse and various world powers will rush to fill the vacuum– The US, which has maintained a substantial troop

presence in South Korea since the end of the Korean War, will likely seek to reunite the Korean Peninsula under a democratic government. It will also want to ensure North Korea’s nuclear weapons do not end up in the wrong hands.

– South Korea will be divided in its desire for reunification. On the one hand it will want to reunify based on historic nationalism. On the other, it certainly will not want to absorb North Korea and all its economic and social problems immediately.

The Collapse of North Korea (cont)

– China will desire to maintain some sort of a buffer between itself and democratic South Korea and will also want to avoid a destabilizing flood of North Korean refugees across its border. It will also want to maximize economic gain from any outcome, especially access to the ports in northern Korea.

– Russia will want to prevent any further encroachment by China on Russia’s already declining influence in the Far East.

– Japan’s proximity to Korea would likely cause Japan to suffer from the potential economic competition posed by a reunified Korea. Also Koreans have a longstanding hatred for Japan as a result of Japan’s brutal occupation of Korea before and during WWII.

The Collapse of North Korea

• Role Players– South Korea– China– US– Russia– Japan

• How will each nation respond to the struggle to fill the vacuum created by a North Korean collapse?