History 105    Lecture 11               16 October 2002              Prof. Popkin

 

Europe and the Non-Western World in the Age of Imperialism (1870-1914)

 

            European countries had explored the non-European world and established colonies in many parts of it from the time of the voyages of discovery (1450 onward) to the eighteenth century.  After the revolutions that led to the creation of the United States, Haiti, and the independent countries of South and Central America (1776-1826), however, European efforts to acquire new overseas colonies came to a halt for almost half a century.  During this period of liberalism and belief in free trade, many European leaders argued that acquiring overseas colonies was too expensive and brought few advantages for the ‘mother’ countries.

            A new and very dramatic stage in European imperialism, so different from what had come before that it was often called the new imperialism, began in the last decades of the 19th century.  The major European powers began to compete more strenuously to gain control of non-European territories.  By 1900, European countries had claimed control of almost the entire continent of Africa, as well as much of South and Southeast Asia and the islands of the Pacific.

In these new colonies, Europeans were no longer content just to be able to trade;; they now wanted to exert direct political control over these territories.  Increasingly, they also set out to introduce European technology in their colonies and to change the way of life of their populations.  The age of the new imperialism brought an unprecedented extent of contact between Europeans and the non-European world.

 

 

I.                    The Stages of the New Imperialism

A.    India: from the East India Company to the Raj

B.     European Domination of North Africa (Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco)

C.    French expansion in Indochina (Viet Nam, Laos, Cambodia)

D.    The ‘scramble for Africa’ (1885-1900)

E.     Russian expansion in east and central Asia

F.     Colonialism in Oceana

 

II.                 The Impact of the New Imperialism

A.    The Breakdown of Indigenous Institutions

B.     Export of European Technology

C.    Introduction of European Ideas

1.      the ‘civilizing mission’

2.      European political institutions

3.      criticisms of imperialism

 

III.               The Debate about the Causes of Imperialism

A.    The Economic Explanation of Imperialism

1.      ‘mature’ capitalism and the demand for markets

2.      the role of special interest groups

3.      theorists of economic imperialism—Hobson and Lenin

B.     Cultural and Political Explanations of Imperialism

1.      imperialism and the impact of Charles Darwin’s ideas

2.      nationalism and political competition

3.      colonial lobbies:  missionaries, geographers, journalists, civil servants, military officers

 

 

 

Paul Leroy-Beaulieu (French economist and advocate of imperialism):  “Colonization is for France a question of life and death:  either France will become a great African power, or in a century or two she will be no more than a secondary European power; she will count for about as much in the world as Greece and Romania in Europe.”

 

Rudyard Kipling, “The White Man’s Burden” (1899)

“Take up the White Man’s burden—

Send out 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.”