American History: A Survey (Brinkley), 13th Edition

Chapter 19: FROM CRISIS TO EMPIRE

America in the World

Imperialism

Empires were not, of course, new to the nineteenth century, when the United States acquired its first overseas colonies. They have existed since the early moments of recorded history—in Greece, Rome, China, and many other parts of the world—and continued into the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with vast imperial projects undertaken by Spain, Portugal, France, the Netherlands, and Great Britain in the Americas.

But in the midand late nineteenth century, the construction of empires took on a new and different form from those of earlier eras, and the word "imperialism" emerged for the first time to describe it. In many places, European powers now created colonies not by sending large numbers of migrants to settle and populate new lands but, instead, by creating military, political, and business structures that allowed them to dominate and profit from the existing populations. This new imperialism changed the character of the imperial nations themselves, enriching them greatly and producing new classes of people whose lives were shaped by the demands of imperial business and administration. It changed the character of colonized societies even more, by drawing them into the vast nexus of global industrial capitalism and by introducing European customs, institutions, and technologies to the subject peoples.

As the popularity of empires grew in the West in the late nineteenth century, efforts to justify it grew as well. Champions of imperialism argued that the acquisition of colonies was essential for the health, even the survival, of their own industrializing nations. Colonies were sources of raw materials vital to industrial production, they were markets for manufactured goods, and they could be suppliers of cheap labor. But defenders of the idea of empire also argued that imperialism was good for the colonized people. Many saw colonization as an opportunity to export Christianity to "heathen" lands, and great new missionary movements emerged in Europe and America in response. Secular apologists argued that imperialism helped bring colonized people into the modern world. The British poet Rudyard Kipling was perhaps the most famous spokesman for empire. In his celebrated poem "The White Man's Burden," he spoke of the duty of the colonizers to lift up primitive peoples, to "fill full the mouth of famine and bid the sickness cease."

The growth of the idea of empire was not simply a result of need and desire. It was also a result of the new capacities of the imperial powers. The invention of steamships, railroads, telegraphs, and other modern vehicles of transportation and communication; the construction of canals (in particular the Suez Canal, completed in 1869, and the Panama Canal, completed in 1914); the birth of new military technologies (repeating rifles, machine guns, and modern artillery)—all contributed to the ability of Western nations to reach, conquer, and control distant lands.

The greatest imperial power of the nineteenth century, indeed one of the greatest imperial powers in all of human history, was Great Britain. By 1800, despite its recent loss of the colonies that became the United States, it already possessed vast territory in North America, the Caribbean, and the Pacific—most notably Canada and Australia. But in the second half of the nineteenth century, Britain greatly expanded its empire. Its most important acquisition was India, one of the largest and most populous countries in the world. Britain had carried on a substantial trade with India for many years and had gradually increased its economic and military power there. In 1857, when native Indians revolted against British authority, British forces brutally crushed the rebellion and established formal colonial control over the land. British officials, backed by substantial military power, now governed India through a large civil service staffed mostly by people from England and Scotland, but with some Indians serving in minor or symbolic positions. The British invested heavily in railroads, telegraphs, canals, harbors, and agricultural improvements to enhance the economic opportunities available to them. They created schools for Indian children in an effort to draw them into British culture and make them supporters of the imperial system.

In those same years, the British extended their empire into Africa and other parts of Asia. The great imperial champion Cecil Rhodes expanded a small existing British colony at Cape Town into a substantial colony that included what is now South Africa.

In 1895, he added new territories to the north, which he named Rhodesia (and which today are Zimbabwe and Zambia). Other imperialists spread British authority into Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, and much of Egypt. British imperialists simultaneously extended the empire into east Asia, with the acquisition of Singapore, Hong Kong, Burma, and Malaya; and they built a substantial presence—although not formal colonial rule—in China.

Other European states, watching the vast expansion of the British empire, quickly jumped into the race for colonies. France created colonies in Indochina (Vietnam and Laos), Algeria, west Africa, and Madagascar. Belgium moved into the Congo in west Africa. Germany established colonies in the Cameroons, Tanganyika, and other parts of Africa, and in the Pacific islands north of Australia. Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Russian, and Japanese imperialists created colonies as well in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific—driven both by a calculation of their own commercial interests and by the frenzied competition that had developed among rival imperial powers. And in 1898, the United States was drawn into the imperial race. Americans entered it in part inadvertently, as an unanticipated result of the SpanishAmerican War. But they also sought colonies as a result of the deliberate efforts of homegrown proponents of empire (among them Theodore Roosevelt), many of them heavily influenced by British friends and colleagues, who believed that in the modern industrial-imperial world a nation without colonies would have difficulty remaining, or becoming, a true great power.

http://www.cusd.chico.k12.ca.us/~bsilva/projects/scramble/ - Scramble for Africa

1
The "scramble for Africa" is one of the more famous eras in imperialist history. Explore this site, which includes both events and individuals. Why do you think this race for territorial gain was termed a "scramble"? Which individuals seemed to be most influential in the "scramble"? How was Kipling's idea of a "white man's burden" at work here?
2
One of the more intriguing historical reactions to the global experience of imperialism is the recent "postcolonial" movement. What is postcolonialism? What do postcolonial scholars aim to understand? Do you find this a useful area of inquiry? Why or why not?
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