25 nineteenth-century empires

7/31/2019 25 Nineteenth-Century Empires

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Nineteenth-Century Empires

The Birth of the Liberal

Empire

European Expansion in

Mid-Century

The New Imperialism,

1870-1914

Imperialism at its Peak

Guiding Questions:

European colonial rule changed the face of

much of the non-Western world during the

nineteenth century. How did the imperial

experience affect European identity?

European colonialism caused immense

suffering among subject peoples. Did any

segments of colonized societies benefit from

colonial rule?

In what ways did Europeans themselves

contribute to the eventual downfall of their

empires?

The Birth of the Liberal Empire


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Europeans lost their Atlantic

empires and built new ones in

Asia and Africa

The expansionism of this period

had its economic foundation in thegrowth of a capitalist market

economy and its philosophical

roots in the Enlightenment culture

of liberal universalism

New sources of raw materials andnew markets for their industrial

manufactures as an opportunity to

civilize the non-Western world

The Decline of

the Mercantile

Colonial World

The threat toempire came

primarily in the

form of

independence

movements and

slave revolts

and the gradual

rise of a market

economy

External Challenges

Independence movements

drove European colonial

powers from much of the

New World

Slave agitation constituted a

central part of the assault on

the mercantile colonial world

Haitian Revolution in the

French colony of Saint-

Domingue in 1791


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The Antislavery

Movement in Europe

A rapidly expanding

European movement to end

slavery further threatened

the Atlantic colonial system

during the late eighteenth

century

Quakerism condemned

slavery as a sin antitheticalto religious tenets of

brotherly love and spiritual

equality

The influence of the

Enlightenment

Secular reformers joined forces

with religious abolitionists

John Lockeshaped argumentsmounted against slavery by

Enlightenment humanists

Enlightenment universalism, or

belief in the basic sameness of

all humans, undermined the

acceptance of slavery andallowed eighteenth century

thinkers to link oppressed

Africans to the disenfranchised

poor of Europe

Equality before the law

clashed deeply with the

concept of human bondage

The new Western sentiment

cast the slave as innocent

victim and the civilized

European as heroic savior

Elite women and men of

the late eighteenth and

early nineteenth centuryjoined abolitionist circles

and signed antislavery

petitions


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The Free-Trade Lobby

European manufacturers

objected increasingly to

protective tariffs

Capitalists in favor of free

trade based their arguments

on both theory and real-

world experience

market competition wasboth natural and rational

because it afforded

economic liberty to

individuals

The End of European

Slavery

The convergence ofreligious and

humanitarian sentimentand economic support forfree market competitionled to the abolition of the

European slave trade

Britain abolished slaveryitself in 1834,

emancipating theremaining 780,000 British-owned slaves in the West

Indies

New Sources of Colonial

Legitimacy

The Growth of the Market

Economy

New economic rationale

to empire

From 1830 to 1870,

European nation-states

competed with oneanother for spheres of

economic influence

abroad


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Enlightenment Universalism

Liberal empire had roots inEnlightenment theories of

human biological and

cultural sameness and

belief in human

improvement through the

application of reason tosocial reform

Enlightened Europeans

posited that all societies

developed along a similar

path and could be guidedand accelerated

Cultural Relativism

Cultural relativism

exalted New World

societies as models of

virtue and freedom for a

decadent Europe

European cultural

relativists still insisted on

their own supremacy,

even while

acknowledging the

achievements of other

cultures

Assimilation to a European

way of life had occurred

largely as an unintended

consequence of missionary

efforts to impart Christianfaith to New World peoples

universalism had

humanized the colonial

subject

Assimilation became a moralimperative and colonial

domination became the ideal

means to achieve this end


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The Civilizing Mission in India

India was the laboratory inwhich Britain conducted its

most ambitious civilizing

experiments

They sought to stamp out

Indian superstition anderadicating the barbaric

Indian laws and customs such

as Sati

British civilizing efforts came to

an abrupt halt with the IndianRebellion of 1857

European Expansion in Mid-

Century

Europeans acted

to protect their

economic

interests in new,

more assertive

ways

This

intensification

was drivenprimarily by

industrialization


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India and the Rise of British

Sovereignty

The British East India Company

The British conquest thustransformed the Indianeconomy into a closedsystem, forcing Indiathrough taxation to

effectively give away itsexports to Britain and

serving its independenttrade connections with the

outside world

India is transformed into asupplier of war materialsfor British textile mills as

well as a major market forBritish manufactures

Further British Expansion

in Asia

The British East India Companys

conquest of India also promoted

British expansionism elsewhere incentral Asia

Their chief adversary was Russia

When the British tried to do the

same to Afghanistan, they met

with stubborn resistance in theAfghan Wars (1839-42 and

1878-1880) leading to it becoming

a client state by the 1880s


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The Sick Man: The Ottoman

Empire and China

Europeans took a fundamentally

different approach to the other

two major non-Western empires

the Ottomans and the Qing China

Sick Man of Europe and Sick

Man of the East

Europeans exploited the Chineseand Ottoman empires through

financial subjugation and politicalmaneuvering

The Ottoman Empire

The empire was still vast and its

power had declined sharply

from its peak point in the 16th

century

The ambitions of provincial

governors were challenging the

authority of the Sultan,

Mahmud II

Administrative, legal, and

technological Westernization

Tanzimat (reorganization)

ChinaQing Dynasty, members of theforeign Manchu minority whohad ruled China since the mid-

seventeenth century

They hand no interest inEuropean manufactures

Opium smoking became anentrenched practice at all levels

of Chinese society and wasexploited by Britain

The Opium War (1840-42) andthe Second Opium War (1856-58)

Taiping Rebellion of 1850-64


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The European

Awakening to Africa

New Interest in Africa

European ignorance and

indifference stemmed from a lack

of contact with Africa

Africa came into focus as a

potential marketplace and source

of raw materials to feed its

industrial economy

Dysentery, yellow fever, typhoid,

and malariaThe White Mans

Grave

Missionaries and

Explorers

Abolitionist evangelicals

seeking to end slavery inAfrica

They strove not merely to

save souls, as their early

modern predecessors had,

but to Europeanize natives

David Livingstone and

Henry Stanley

The New Imperialism, 1870-1914

25 nineteenth-century empires

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