COLONIAL ENCOUNTERS IN ASIA AND AFRICA

1750 - 1950

AP WORLD HISTORY CHAPTER 18

WAYS OF THE WORLD R. STRAYER

@sofisandoval 2016

THE EUROPEAN MOVEMENT IN WORLD HISTORY, 1750 - 1914

INDUSTRY AND EMPIRE �  New economic needs found solutions abroad. – created

the need for extensive raw materials and agricultural products: �  Bananas from Central America �  Rubber from Brazil �  Meat from Argentina �  Cocoa and Palm oil from West Africa �  Gold and Diamonds from South Africa By 1840, Britain was exporting 60% of its cotton-cloth production, sending millions of yards to Europe. Between 1910 and 1914 Britain was sending about half of its savings overseas as foreign investment.

INDUSTRY AND EMPIRE �  Wealthy Europeans also saw benefits to foreign

markets.

�  Industrialization society led to serious redistribuiton of wealth.

�  What made imperialism so broadly? – Growth of NATIONALISM

�  Colonies and spheres of influence abroad became symbols of GREAT POWER, status for a nation.

�  Imperialism appealed on economic and social grounds to the wealthy or ambitious. = international power politics.

�  The construction of the Suez Canal in 1869 = to reach distan Asian and African ports more quickly.

RACE AND CULTURE �  Europeans had defined others largely in religious terms, now

they adopted the idea and techniques of more “advanced” societies. = precedented by wealth, and used both to produce unsurpassed military power.

�  Its not surprising that their opinions of other cultures dropped sharply. European eyes to the status of tribes led by chiefs as a means of emphasizing their “primitive” qualities.

�  Still Eurpeans used the apparatus of science to support their racial preferences and prejudices. (measure the size of the skull, white skull larger; therefore more advance and intelligent)

�  Race in this view, determined human intelligence, moral development, and destiny. “race is everything”.

RACIAL IMAGES FOR EUROPEANS

RACE IS EVERYTHING �  The sense of responsability to the “weaker” races.

Europeans had de “duty to civilize the inferior races”. “Discipline and production for the market to the lazy natives”.

�  Charles Darwin – “the survival of the fittest” led to the “social Darwinism” – destruction of backward races or “unfit” races.

SECOND WAVE OF EUROPEAN CONQUESTS

�  Between 1750 and 1914 was a second and quite distinct round of conquests: Asia and Africa.

�  Construction of these new empires in the Afro-Asian world, involved military force. – countless wars of conquest of colonial European states.

�  India and Indonesia, grew out of earlier interactions with European trading firms. British East India Company (took advantage of the fragmentation of Mughal Empire and facilitated penetration for them).

�  Dutch acquisition of Indonesia was also as traders and alliances. Slowly without a plan, soon they had conquered the islands.

SCRAMBLE FOR AFRICA �  Half a dozen European powers against one another

as they partitioned the entire continent for 25 years (1875-1900). = extensive bloody military action.

UNDER EUROPEAN RULE �  Australia and New Zealand, both taken over by

the British during the nineteenth century, were more similar to the earlier colonization of North America.

�  Diseases that reduced native numbers by 75%.

�  United States practiced a policy of removing, exterminating indian people. – Also there were boarding schools (many children removed, to civilize the remaining natives) = Kill the Indian, save the Man.

�  Filipinos acquired new colonial rulers when United Staes took over from Spain (Spanish American war 1898) – many freed migrated to West Africa.

UNDER EUROPEAN RULE �  Incorporation into European colonial empires was a

traumatic experience.

COOPERATION AND REBELLION

�  Although violence was a prominent feature of colonial life – many men found employment, status and security in European armed forces. – intermediaries.

�  African rulers or elite governing families found it possible to retain much of their earlier status and privileges while gaining wealth excercising authority.

�  Many converted also to Christian missionaries as teachers, translators to “upgrade” status.

�  In East Africa white men, were expected to be addressed as Bwanas (“master” in Swahili).

COLONIAL EMPIRES WITH DIFFERENCE

�  Patterns of racial separation was much more pronounced than in places such as Nigeria.

�  The most extreme case was South Africa, where a large European population and the widespread use of African labor in mines and insdustries brought to establich race as legal and separate “homelands”, educational systems, residential areas, public facilities. = apartheid.

�  New means of communication and transportation, imposed changes in landholding patterns, integration of colonial economies into a global network of exchange, public health and sanitation measures – all this touched the daily lives of many people far more deeply than in earlier empires.

WAYS OF WORKING: COMPARING

�  Colonial rule affected the lives of its subject people in many ways, but the most pronounced change was their WAYS OF WORKING.

�  Colonial state with its power to pay tax, to seize land for European enterprises, to force labor, to build railroads, ports and roads – played an important role in these transformations.

�  African societies got into the world wconomy with the demand of gold, diamonds, copper, rubber, coffee, cocoa and cotton etc.

�  Plantation workers, domestic servants, crop farmers, miners underwent profound changes.

ECONOMIES OF COERCION: FORCED LABOR

�  Unpaid labor on public projects, such as building railroads, constructing government buildings. All “natives” (blacks) were legally obligated for “statute labor” of 12 days a year until 1946.

�  One of the cruelties of forced labor, in Congo, governend by king Leopold II of Belgium, forced villagers to collect rubber and starved them to death, or if not collected a certain amount would cut ears, arms, body parts.

�  Commerce in rubber and ivory made possible by the massive use of forced labor in Congo and Cameroon. = causing AIDS epidemic jump from chimpanzees to humans. – Congo main city Kinshasa (networks of sexual interaction) -= spread.

�  Indonesia: Forced labor took shape in the so called cultivation system of the Netherlands East Indies. Peasants required to give 20%-40% of their land in crops and government payed them fized prices, low prices.

ECONOMIES OF CASH-CROP AGRICULTURE

�  In some places, colonial rule created conditions that facilitated and increased cash-crop production to the advantage of local farmers.

�  Since they provided irrigation and transportation, they started laws that facilitated private ownership of small farms.

�  Local farmers benfited considerably because they were now able to own their own land, rice production increased so much that fed millions world wide.

�  But on the other side, in Vietnam and many other places these led to the destruction of mangrove forests and swamplands along with the fish and shellfish.

�  Still these led to a shoratge of labor, fostered to exploit workers and generate tensions between the sexes. Men (interested) married women since they were most hired in agriculture, food process.

ECONOMIES OF WAGE LABOR: MIGRATION

�  Colonization in Africa and Asia led to vast streams of migration. The globalizing world of the colonial era was one of people in motion.

�  Africans migrated to European farms or plantations (since they lost theirs). Inside Africa many moved to different parts: Kenya, Algeria, Rhodesia and South Africa.

�  88% of the land belonging to whites – 20% of population.

�  Babtustans (black lived) became greatly overcrowded: soil fertility declined, forests shrank and hillsides cleared.

�  Some 29 million indians and 19 million Chinese migrated to Southeast Asia – paid poorly but better conditions.

�  Mines were another source of wage labor for many Asians.

�  Australia, New Zealand and United States enacted measures to restrict or end Chinese migration in the late 20th century.

WOMEN AND COLONIAL ECONOMY

�  Women were almost everywhere active farmers with responsability for planting, weeding, and harvesting.

�  Women were expected to feed their own families and were usually allocated their own fields with that pourpose.

�  Camerron estimated that womens´working hours increased from 46 hours per week to 70 hours by 1934.

�  Women also had to supply food to men in the cities to compensate for very low urban wages.

�  Married couples in South Africa rarely lived together 1930. Only a couple of months a year.

ASSESSING COLONIAL DEVELOPMENT

�  Colonial rule served for better or worse to further integration of Asian and African economies into a global network of exchange.

�  Schools trained the army of intermediaries on which colonial rule depended, and modest health care fulfilled some of the “civilizing mission”.

�  When India became independent after two centuries of colonial rule by the world´s first industrial society, it was still one of the poorest of the world´s developing countries.

�  Debate: Was it the result of deliberate British policies? Or was it due to the conditions of Indian Society?

�  Whatever earlier promise, had become an ECONOMIC DEAD END.

EDUCATION �  Through missionary or government schools, that

generated a new identity. Education was a means of “uplifting native races”

�  Reading or writing of any king often sugggested a magical power (specially if a native could read).

�  Better paying positions in government bureaucracies, or business firms – education provided a social mobility and elite status.

�  Many ardetly through education embraced European culture – learning to speak French, or English.

�  Still Europeans declined to treat their Asian or African subjects as equal partners.

RELIGION �  Widespread of Christianity conversion . 10,000 missionaries

had descended on Africa by 1910, by 1960s about 50 million Africans claimed Christian identity.

�  Christianity was widely associated with modern education, and especially in Africa, mission schools were the primary providers of Western Education.

�  Missionary teaching and practice also generated conflict and opposition, particularly when they touched on gender roles.

�  Marriages between Christian and non-Christians, African sexual activity outside of monogamous marriage often resulted in expulsion from the church.

�  Female circumcision – Missionaries tried to ban it in 1929, but thousands abandoned mission schools and churches = creation of independent schools.

�  Christianity in Africa became Africanized.

RACE AND TRIBE �  The influence of Western culture led also to the

idea of an “African identity” well educated Africans began to think in broader terms – African traditions.

�  African intellectuals pointed with pride to their ancient kingdoms of Ethiopia, Malo, Songhay and others.

�  Edward Blyden (1832-1912) a West African born in West Indies and educated in the United States became a prominent scholar and political officer. Pointing out the uniqueness of African culture- individualistic but cooperative, egalitarian societies within Africa.

�  African Identity – Africans that spoke similar languages, shared common culture, began to think of themselves as a single people, new tribe.

�  “Africans belong to tribes, African built tribes to belong to.”

WHO MAKES HISTORY? �  Slaves, workers, peasants, women,

the colonized have been able to act in their own interests, even within the most oppressive conditions. This king of “history from below” found expression in a famous book “the world the slaves made”.

�  Colonized people in any number of ways actively shaped the history of colonial era. Transformed Christianity.

�  Karl Marx: “men make their own history” “but they do not make it as they please nor under conditions of their choosing”.

�  Both colonizers and conolized MADE HISTORY, but neither was able to do so as they pleased.