1. Colonial Encounters in Asia, Africa, and Oceania
Chapter 18, 1750 – 1950

2. Industry and Empire
As the British and other European economies began to specialize in industrial production, they had an increased demand for specific raw materials such as metals, oils, and cotton or rubber.
Conversely, colonies could be captive markets for European exports such as British cotton textiles. When the British began importing mass-produced cotton textiles to India, they reversed a centuries-long trade imbalance.

3. Industry and Empire (Cont’d)
As Western industrialization in the 19th century was closely tied to a new and expanding phase of capitalism, colonies naturally served as sources for investment.
With the rise of nationalism in Europe, average citizens suddenly felt they had a stake in imperial expansion. Viewing the struggles of European empires in Africa and Asia as a great game, they felt pride in acquiring more territories and hated seeing “real estate” go to a rival empire.

4. Industry and Empire (Cont’d)
Technological advances made new imperial expansions possible. Faster steamships, better guns, and global communication networks gave Europeans a marked tactical advantage over pre-industrial societies. Medical developments, such as using quinine to prevent and treat malaria.
For many European observers, the idea that technological superiority indicated some sort of larger racial superiority was obvious.
Racist justifications of empire hijacked the work of Charles Darwin, social Darwinism, arguing that competition among white nations and people of color was natural and the victors should not feel guilty.

5. Herbert Spencer
Spencer coined the phrase “survival of the fittest.” He was a pioneer of social Darwinism.

6. Quinine
Quinine was used alone or with other medications to treat malaria (a serious or life-threatening illness that is spread by mosquitoes in certain parts of the world).

7. A Second Wave of European Conquests
A second round of colonization, which focused on Asia and Africa.
There were several new players: - Germany, Italy, Belgium, U.S., and Japan.
It was not demographically catastrophic like the first phase.
The Industrial Revolution had a large impact.
In general, Europeans preferred informal control since it was cheaper and more diplomatically sound.

8. Imperialism in Asia (1914)

9. Imperialism in Africa (1914)

10. A Second Wave of European Conquests (Cont’d)
Original European military advantage lay in organization, drill, practice, and command structure.
Over the 19th century, Europeans developed an enormous firepower advantage with repeating rifles and machine guns.
Numerous wars of conquest: - the Westerners almost always won.

11. A Second Wave of European Conquests (Cont’d)
India and Indonesia grew from earlier interaction with European trading firms: - assisted by existence of many small and rival states. - British and Dutch had no clear-cut plan for conquest.
Most of Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific islands: - deliberate conquest in the later 19th century. - “the scramble for Africa” was based on inter-European rivalries and they partitioned Africa in only 25 years ( ).
Decentralized societies were the hardest to conquer.

12. A Second Wave of European Conquests (Cont’d)
Australia and New Zealand was more like the colonization of North America: - massive death due to disease became settler colonies with neo-European societies.
The United States and Russia continued to expand.
Taiwan and Korea: Japanese takeover was done European-style.
Liberia was settled by freed American slaves.
Ethiopia and Siam (Thailand) avoided colonization through military and diplomatic skills.

13. Map of Liberia

14. Cooperation and Rebellion
Often elite and/or governing families cooperated willingly with their new masters: - employment in the armed forces. - they often kept much of their status and privileges. - shortage of European administrators made it necessary to rely on them.
Governments and missionaries promoted European education: - growth of a small class with Western education. - governments relied on them increasingly over time.

15. Cooperation and Rebellion (Cont’d)
There were periodic rebellions everywhere.
The Indian Rebellion of 1857–1858 was based on a series of grievances: - it began as a mutiny among Indian troops. - rebel leaders advocated for the revival of the Mughal Empire. - widened India’s racial divide; the British became less tolerant of natives and more conservative in policy. - led to the British Government assuming direct control over India (the British Raj).

16. Indian Rebellion of 1857

17. The British Raj ( )

18. Colonial Empires with a Difference
Race was a prominent point distinguishing rulers from the ruled: - education for colonial subjects was limited and emphasized practical matters, not scientific. - the best-educated natives rarely made it into the upper ranks of the civil service.
Racism was rampant in areas with a large number of European settlers: - in South Africa, for example, whites attempted to industrialize based on cheap African labor this eventually led to apartheid.

19. Apartheid

20. Colonial Empires with a Difference (Cont’d)
There was a more profound impact on the daily life of the colonized subjects. More efficient means of tax collecting, transportation, and communication, as well as more invasive changes to landowning, economic systems, administration, and public health, meant that the foreign presence was felt much stronger than in earlier forms of empire.
Colonizers were fascinated with counting and classifying their new subjects for better governance: - In India, appropriated an idealized caste system. - In Africa, identified or invented distinct “tribes.”

21. Colonial Empires with a Difference (Cont’d)
Colonial policies contradicted European core values and practices at home: - colonies were essentially dictatorships. - colonies were the anti-thesis of “national independence.” - racial classifications were against Christian and Enlightenment ideas of human equality. - many colonizers were against spreading “modernization” to the colonies. - in time, European contradictions undermined colonial rule.

22. Ways of Working: Comparing Colonial Economies
Demand for African and Asian raw materials: - subsistence farming diminished. - need to sell goods for money to pay taxes. - desire to buy new products.
Artisans were largely displaced by manufactured goods.

23. Economies of Coercion: Forced Labor and the Power of the State
Forced Labor: - states demanded unpaid labor on public projects. - caused widespread starvation (no time to grow crops).
King Leopold II’s Congo Free State, the Belgian Congo, was the worst case of forced labor and cost millions of African lives. State-backed private companies used a variety of abusive tactics, including mutilation, to force the local population to collect ivory and rubber. Eventually the abuses became public, and the Belgian government took control of the colony in 1908.

24. Leopold in the Congo

25. Colonial violence in the Congo

26. Economies of Coercion (Cont’d)
In Indonesia, Java and Sumatra, the Dutch forced peasants to devote 20% of their land to cash crops (coffee and sugar) and to sell them at a low fixed price to government contractors. The Dutch made huge profits by selling these crops on the global market for much higher prices. This system indebted many peasants to moneylenders, and resulted in a series of famines in what was a very productive land.
Many areas resisted the forced cultivation of cash crops: - in German East Africa, a major rebellion in 1905 against forced cotton cultivation was successful. - in Mozambique, peasant sabotage and smuggling kept the Portuguese from achieving their goals there.

27. Economies of Cash-Crop Agriculture: The Pull of the Market
Many were happy to increase production for world markets: - considerable profit to small farmers increased public works and labor migration.
In British Burma, the lower Irrawaddy became a major rice exporter thanks to public works and immigration from India and upper Burma. Burma saw several decades of a rising standard of living and food.
In French Vietnam, however, the expansion of rice fields in the Mekong Delta had a negative impact on various fish and shellfish and hurt the local diet.

28. Economies of Cash-Crop Agriculture (Cont’d)
In the British southern Gold Coast, modern-day Ghana, African farmers developed export agriculture: - leading supplier of cocoa by created a hybrid peasant-capitalist society.
Labor shortages led to exploitation of former slaves. This also created an influx of migrant labor, generating ethnic and class tensions.
Many colonies specialized in one or two cash crops, creating dependence.

29. Cocoa Farming

30. Economies of Wage Labor: Migration for Work
Wage labor in European enterprises was common: - low pay, bad conditions, and high death rates - massive migration to Asian plantations.
Especially in Africa, people moved to European plantations because they had lost their own land.
In colonies with significant white settler communities such as South Africa and Kenya, the natives were frequently pushed off the land as the colonial state gave vast tracts of real estate to the Europeans. Many of the natives were directed toward reservation-style settlements where they could seek out work on European farms or mines. Others tried to stay on their land, but were viewed as squatters and not given full protection of the law.

31. Economies of Wage Labor: Migration for Work (Cont’d)
Working in mines: - South African diamond mines created worker migration. - African miners were exploited, and kept on short-term contracts Malaysian tin mines attracted millions of Chinese workers, with appallingly high death rates.
Filling the labor void after the end of slavery, some 29 million Indians left their homeland to work as plantation laborers and miners in British colonies from East Africa to Jamaica. A smaller wave of South Asians made a living as merchants, especially in British East Africa.

32. Economies of Wage Labor: Migration for Work (Cont’d)
Large numbers of Asians moved into the colonial world by crossing international boundaries. Some 19 million Chinese sought a new life in Southeast Asia, the Indian Ocean Basin, and the Pacific region.
Colonial cities attracted many workers: - they were seen as centers of opportunity. - segregated, unsanitary, and overcrowded. - created a place for a native, Western-educated middle class. - created an enormous class of urban poor that could barely survive.

33. Women and the Colonial Economy: Examples from Africa
In pre-colonial Africa, women were usually active farmers and had some economic autonomy.
In the colonial economy, women’s lives diverged ever more from men: - men tended to dominate the lucrative export crops. - women were left with almost all of the subsistence production.
Large numbers of men migrated to work elsewhere:       - women were left home to cope, including supplying food to men in the cities. - women coped by planting, milking cows; herding.

34. Women and the Colonial Economy (Cont’d)
The colonial economy also provided some opportunities to women: - especially in small-scale trade and marketing. - sometimes women’s crops (cassava) came to have greater cash value. - some women escaped the patriarchy of husbands or fathers. - led to greater fear of witchcraft and efforts to restrict female travel and sexuality.

35. Assessing Colonial Development
What was the overall economic impact of colonial rule? - Defenders: it jump-started modern growth. - Critics: long record of exploitation and limited, uneven growth.
Colonial rule did help integrate Asian and African economies into the world: - though in many cases, that process had already been underway.
Colonial rule did introduce some modernizing elements: - administrative and bureaucratic structures. - communication and transportation infrastructure. - schools. - health care.

36. Assessing Colonial Development (Cont’d)
Colonial rule did not lead to a breakthrough to modern industrial societies: - when India won independence, it was still one of the poorest developing countries.
British rule did not help overcome poverty.
National movements claimed that independence represented a grand opening to new and more hopeful possibilities.

37. Education
Receiving a Western education created a new identity for many: - the almost magical power of literacy. - escape from obligations like forced labor. - access to better-paying jobs. - social mobility and elite status.
Many people embraced European culture: - it created a cultural divide between them and the “pagan” majority of the population.

38. Education (Cont’d)
Many of the Western-educated elite saw colonial rule as the path to a better future: - in India, they organized reform societies to renew Indian culture. - combined Western ideas and classic Hindu texts. - European education was viewed as a tool to win freedom from oppressive tradition. - hopes for renewal through colonial rule were bitterly. disappointed
Europeans did not treat their Asian and African subjects as equal partners: - denigrated the colonized cultures.

39. Religion
Widespread conversion to Christianity in New Zealand, the Pacific islands, and non-Muslim Africa: - around 10,000 missionaries had gone to Africa by by the 1960s, some 50 million Africans were Christian.
Christianity was attractive to many Africans: - military defeat shook belief in their old gods. - Christianity was associated with modern education. - Christianity gave opportunities to the young, the poor, and many women. - Christianity spread mostly through native African teachers, catechists, and pastors.

40. Religion (Cont’d)
Christianity was Africanized: - continued use of charms and medicine men. - some simply demonized their old gods. - a wide array of “independent churches” were established; a 20th century African Reformation.
Christianity did not spread widely in India: - but it led intellectuals and reformers to define Hinduism the British inadvertently forged a separate Muslim unity.

41. African Religious Distribution

42. “Race” and “Tribe”
Notions of race and ethnicity were central to new ways of belonging.
By 1900, some African thinkers began to define an “African identity:” - united for the first time by the experience of colonial oppression. - some argued that African culture and history had the characteristics valued by Europeans such as large empires and complex political systems.
Some praised the differences between Africa and Europe: - Africa’s contribution was communal, cooperative, and egalitarian societies.

43. “Race” and “Tribe” (Cont’d)
In the 20th century, such ideas reached a broader public: - hundreds of thousands of Africans took part in World War I and encountered other Africans. - some Africans traveled widely and met American black leaders (Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois).
The most important new sense of belonging was the idea of “tribe” (ethnic identity): - ethnic groups were defined much more clearly, thanks to the Europeans (British tribal policy in Tanzania).
Africans found ethnic identity useful: - migrants categorized themselves ethnically. - organized mutual assistance based on ethnicity.