25 Africa, India, And the New British Empire

Africa, India, and the New British Empire, 1750-1870

Changes and Exchanges in Africa

India Under British Rule

Britain’s eastern Empire

Saturday, March 10, 12

Learning Objectives:

After reading and studying this chapter you should be able to discuss:

1. Understand the concepts of "New Imperialism" and "colonialism" and be able to analyze them in terms of motives, their methods, and their place in the development of the world economy and the global environment.

2. Understand the "Scramble for Africa" and be able to use concrete examples to illustrate the process of colonization and reactions to colonization in Africa.


3. Understand the process by which Central and Southeast Asia and the Pacific islands were brought under the domination of the great powers.

4. Understand and be able to analyze the causes and significance of free-trade imperialism in Latin America.


Focus and Essential Questions:

How did different African leaders and peoples interact with each other, and how did European nations' relationship to African peoples change during this period?

How did Britain secure its hold on India, and what colonial policies led to the beginnings of Indian nationalism?

What role did the abolition of slavery and the continued growth of British overseas trade play in the immigration to the Caribbean and elsewhere of peoples from Africa, India, and Asia?


Changes and Exchanges in Africa


In 1870, Africa underwent dynamic political changes

in a great expansion in trade.

the continent’s external slave trades to the Americas

and to Islamic lands died slowly under British

pressure.

The trade goods: Palm oil, Ivory, Timber , Gold, rubber


New States in Southern and Inland West Africa

The changes in warfare of Southern Africa gave rise to a powerful Zulu kingdom

and other new states.

An upstart military genius named Shaka created the Zulu kingdom in 1818 out of the conflict for grazing

and farming lands.

Zulu Kingdom


They were the most powerful and most feared fighters in Southern Africa because of

their strict military drill and close combat warfare

featuring:Oxhide shields

Lethal stabbing spears

Shaka expanded his kingdom by raiding his African

neighbors, seizing their cattle, and capturing their women

and children.


Shaka succeeded in creating a new national identity as well as a new

kingdom even though he only ruled for a little more than a decade.

He grouped all his people in his domain by age into regiments.

Regiments members lived together and immersed themselves in

learning Zulu lore and customs, including fighting methods for the

males.

Parades showed off the kings enormous herds of cattle, a Zulu

measure of wealth.


Islamic Reform Movements

Movements were creating another cluster of powerful states

in the Savannas of West Africa. Most Muslim rulers had found it

prudent to tolerate the older religious practices of their rural

subjects.

In the 1770’s, local Muslim scholars began preaching the need for vigorous reform of

Islamic practices.


The reformers followed a classic Muslim pattern of a Jihad (holy

war) added new lands were governments enforced Islamic

laws and promoted the religion which spread among conquered

people. The largest of the new reform movements occurred in the

Hausa states under the leadership of Usuman dan Fodio

(a Muslim cleric of the Fulani people).

The king of Gobir

Usuman issued a call in 1804 for Jihad to over throw him.


The successful armies united the conquered

Hausa states and neighboring areas under a caliph who ruled from the

city of Sokoto. These new Muslims states became centers of Islamic

learning and reform. They suppressed public performances of dances

and ceremonies associated with the tradition

religions of non-Muslims


During the Jihads, many who resisted the expansion of Muslim

rule were killed, enslaved, or forced to

convert.

Sokoto’s leaders sold some captives into the

Atlantic slave trade and many more into

the trans-Saharan slave trade.


Modernization and Expansion in Egypt and Ethiopia

The ancient African states of Egypt and Ethiopia in

Northeastern Africa were…

Napoleon’s invading army had withdrawn from Egypt by 1801

The successor to Napoleon’s rule was Muhammad Ali, who

eliminated his rivals and ruled Egypt from, 1805-1848 and

began the political, social, and economic, reforms that created

modern Egypt. Saturday, March 10, 12

He set up a European style state school system and opened a

military college at Aswan and required Egyptian peasants to

cultivate cotton and other crops for export to pay for these ventures.

The technical expertise of the west was combined with Islamic

religious and cultural traditions for example the Egyptian printing

industry, began to provide Arabic translations of technical manuals,

turned out critical additions of Islamic classics and promoted a

revival of Arabic writing and literature later in the century.


Egyptians were replacing many of the foreign exports, and

the fledgling program of industrialization was providing the

country with its own textiles, paper, weapons, and

military uniforms


Ismail (1863-1879)

His effort increased the number of European

advisors in Egypt—and Egypt’s debts to French and

British banks.

By 1870 there was a network of new irrigation

canals, 800 miles of railroads, a modern postal service, and the dazzling new capital city of Cairo.


Under emperor Tewodros II and his successor Yohannes IV

most highland regions were brought back under imperial

rule.

In the 1840’s Ethiopian rulers purchased modern weapons from European sources and

created strong armies loyal to the ruler.

Tewodros committed suicide to avoid being taken as a

prisoner.


West Africa

Before 1880, Europeans controlled little of the

African continent directly

Intensive European rivalries led to the conquest and

control of Africa

Following the end of slavery, peanuts, timber,

hides, and palm oil became important exports


In 1874, Great Britain *annexed (incorporating a country into another state) the west coastal

states

France had added the huge area of French

West Africa to its colonial empire

Germany controlled Southwest and East

Africa


Central AfricaExplorers aroused popular

interest in the dense tropical jungles of Central Africa

*David Livingstone—explorer and missionary

*Henry Stanley—British explorer in Central Africa and

the Congo River

King Leopold II of Belgium led the colonization of Central

AfricaSaturday, March 10, 12

East and South Africa 1885, Britain and Germany had becoming the chief rivals

in East Africa

The Boers, or *Afrikaners—descendants of the original Dutch settlers were called—

had occupied Cape Town

Boers formed two independent republics—

Orange Free State and Transvaal

*indigenous peoples were often moved to reservations


Colonial Rule in Africa

Most European governments ruled their new territories in Africa with the least effort

and expense possible

indirect rule kept the old African elite in power

British indirect rule showed the seeds for class and tribal

tensions


Rise of African Nationalism

A new class of leaders emerged in Africa by the beginning of the

twentieth century

Members of this new class admitted Western culture and

sometimes disliked the ways of their own countries

Westerners had exalted democracy, equality, and political freedom but did not apply these

values in the coloniesSaturday, March 10, 12

Europeans expressed their superiority—segregated clubs,

schools, and churches

Western educated Africans fiercely

hated colonial rule and were determined

to assert their own nationality and cultural identity


India Under British Rule


The people of South Asia felt the impact of European commercial,

cultural, and colonial expansion more immediately and profoundly than did

the people of Africa.

During the 250 years after the founding of the East India Company

in 1600, British interests commandeered the colonies and trade

of the Dutch, fought off French and Indian challenges, and picked up the

pieces of the decaying Mughal Empire.

In 1795 the Dutch East India Company was dissolved.


Indian states took advantage of Mughal

weakness to assert their independence.

Ruling their own powerful states were the

Nawabs.

British, Dutch, and French companies were

also eager to expand their profitable trade into India in the eighteenth century.


To protect their fortified warehouses from attack by

other Europeans or by native states, the companies hired and trained Indian troops

known as sepoys.

The weak Mughal emperor was persuaded to rule

Bengal in 1765.

Along with Calcutta and madras, the third major

center of British power in India was Bombay.


The Raj and the Rebellion1818-1857

In 1818 the East India Company controlled an

Empire with more people than in all of western

Europe and the fifty times the population of the

colonies the British had lost in North America.

The main policy was to create a powerful and

efficient system of government.


Another policy very much in the interest of India’s new rulers was

to disarm approximately 2 million warriors who

had served India’s many states.

A third policy was to give freer rein to

Christian missionaries eager to convert and uplift India’s masses.


Another key British policy was to substitute ownership of private

property for India’s complex and overlapping patterns of

landholding.

Such policies of “westernization, Anglicization, and modernization,”

The other side was the bolstering of “tradition”

Princes, holy men, and other Indians frequently used claims of tradition

to resist British rule as well as to turn it to their advantage.


Women of every status, member of subordinate Hindu caste system, the

“untouchables” and “tribal” outside the caste system.

In the eighteenth century India had been the world’s greatest exporter of cotton

textiles.

Many high-caste Hindus objected to a new law in 1856 requiring new recruits to be

available for service overseas. Saturday, March 10, 12

The rebels asserted old traditions to challenge

British authority: sepoy officers in Delhi

proclaimed their loyalty to the Mughal emperor.

Concentrating on the technical fact that the

uprising was an unlawful action by soldiers;

nineteenth-century British historians labeled it the

“Sepoy Rebellion” or the “Mutiny”.


Political Reform and Industrial Impact

1858-1900

In its wake Indians gained a new

centralized government, entered a

period of rapid economic growth.

In 1858 Britain eliminated the last

traces of Mughal and Company rule.


A new secretary of state for India in London oversaw Indian policy, and a new

government-general in Delhi acted as the British monarch’s

viceroy on the spot.

British rule continued to emphasize both tradition and

reform after 1857.

When Queen Victoria was proclaimed “Empress of

India” in 1877, the viceroys put on great pageants known

as durbars.Saturday, March 10, 12

Members of the elite Indian Civil Service (ISC), mostly graduates of

Oxford and Cambridge Universities..

Recruitment into the ISC was by open eliminations. In theory any British subject could take these exams; Subsequent reforms by

Viceroy Lord Lytton led to 57 Indian appointments by 1887..

The key reason blocking qualified Indians’ entry into the upper

administration of their country was the racist contempt most British

officials felt for the people they ruled. Saturday, March 10, 12

A second transformational of

India after 1857 resulted from

involvement with industrial Britain.

Most of the exports were agricultural commodities for

processing elsewhere: Cotton fiber, Opium,

Tea, Silk, Sugar


In return India imported manufactured goods from Britain, including flood of

machine-made cotton textiles that severely undercut Indian

hand-loom weavers.

Beginning in the 1840s, a railroad boom (paid for out of government revenues) gave

India its first national transportation network,

followed shortly by telegraph lines; By 1900 India’s trains were carrying 188 million

passengers a year. Saturday, March 10, 12

Cholera deaths rose rapidly during the nineteenth century, and

eventually the disease spread to Europe..

In many Indian minds kala mari (“the black death”) was a divine

punishment for failing to prevent the British takeover.

The installation of a new sewage system (1865) and filtered water

supply (1869) in Calcutta dramatically reduced cholera deaths there; In 1900 an extraordinary four out of every thousand residents of

British India died of cholera. Saturday, March 10, 12

Rising Indian Nationalism1828-1900

Both the successes and the failures of British India stimulated the

development of Indian nationalism.

Individuals such as Rammohun Roy (1772-1833) had promoted

development along these lines a generation earlier.

Many Indians intellectuals turned to Western secular values and

nationalism as the way to reclaim India for its people.


Many of the new nationalist came from the Indian middle

class, which had prospered from the increase of trade and

manufacturing.

They convened the first Indian National Congress in 1885.

The congress effectively voiced the opinions of the elite Indians, but until it attracted the support of the elite Indians, but until it

attracted the support of the masses, it could not hope to

challenge British rule. Saturday, March 10, 12

Britain’s Eastern Empire


Colonization of Australia and New Zealand

The development of new ships and shipping

contributed to the colonization of

Australia and New Zealand by British

settlers

This resulted in the displacement of the

indigenous population


Portuguese mariners sighted Australia in the early 17th C. and Capt. James Cook surveyed New Zealand and the

eastern coast of Australia between 1769 and 1778

Unfamiliar diseases brought by new overseas

contacts substantially reduced the population

of the Aborigines and the Maori.


Australia received British convicts and, after the

discovery of gold 1851, a flood of free European

(and some Chinese) settlers.

British settlers came more slowly to New

Zealand until defeat of the Maori, faster ships

and a gold rush brought more immigrants after

1860


The British crown gradually turned

governing power over to the British settlers, but

Aborigines and the Maori experienced

discrimination.

However, Australia did develop powerful trade unions, New Zealand

promoted availability of land for the common person, both granted

suffrage to women in 1894.Saturday, March 10, 12

25 Africa, India, And the New British Empire

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