Imperialism

Lesson 18

ID & SIG:

• Berlin Conference, Boer War, Boxer Rebellion, imperialism, Mahan, Meiji’s Reforms, Opium War, Panama Canal, Perry, Rape of Nanjing, Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, Russo-Japanese War, Spanish-American War, Unequal treaties, Western advantages, Zulus

Agenda• Imperialism• The Western Advantage• Imperialism in Asia

– Opium War– Opening of Japan– Sino-Japanese War– Boxer Rebellion– Russo-Japanese War– Manchuria

• Imperialism in Africa– Zulus– Boer War

• Imperialism in Latin America– Spanish-American War– Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine

Imperialism

• Imperialism is a term associated with the expansion of the European powers, and later the US and Japan, and their conquest and colonization of African and Asian societies, mainly from the 16th through the 19th Centuries

• Was effected not just through the force of arms, but also through trade, investment, and business activities that enabled the imperial powers to profit from subject societies and influence their affairs without going to the trouble of exercising direct political control

Imperialism

• Many Europeans came to believe that imperial expansion and colonial domination were crucial for the survival of their states and societies

• Superior transportation (steamships and canals), military (breech-loading rifles), and communications (undersea telegraph) technologies gave the West a huge advantage

The USS Monocacy was used to protect US interests along the Yangtze River in

China

Imperialism Against China: The Opium War

• In the late 18th and early 19th Centuries, Europeans wanted to trade with the Chinese much more than the Chinese wanted to trade with the Europeans

• Since the Chinese had little demand for European products, the European merchants had to trade with silver bullion

Imperialism Against China: The Opium War

• As an alternative, Europeans gradually began to trade in opium instead

• The trade was illegal and created both an economic and a social problem in China Illustration from an early

19th century book showing an opium addict

Imperialism Against China: Opium War

• In 1839, the Chinese took serious measures to halt the opium trade

• The British protested and launched the Opium War (1839-1842)

The British shell Guangzhou

Imperialism Against China: Opium War

• The war showed the military differential between China and Europe

• The British used steam-powered gunboats to attack the Grand Canal, and China sued for peace

• China suffered other military setbacks with Britain and France (1856-1858), France (1884-1885), and Japan (1894-1895) Cartoon showing China being

divided by the United Kingdom, Germany, Russia, France, and

Japan

Imperialism Against China: Unequal Treaties

• As a result of these defeats, China was subjected to what were collectively known as the “unequal treaties”

• China was forced to – Cede Hong Kong to Britain– Open ports to commerce and residence– Permit the establishment of Christian missions– Legalize the opium trade– Not levy tariffs on imports

Imperialism Against China: Unequal Treaties

• By 1900, ninety Chinese ports were under the effective control of foreign powers, foreign merchants controlled much of the Chinese economy, Christian missionaries were converting Chinese throughout the country, and foreign gunboats patrolled Chinese waters

The Treaty of Nanjing (1842) ceded Hong Kong to the

British in perpetuity

Imperialism Against Japan: Foreign Pressure

• The Tokugawa Shogunate of Japan was able to control foreign interaction until the early 19th Century

• However, beginning in 1844, British, French, and US ships visited Japan to establish relations– The US in particular wanted

ports where its Pacific whaling and merchant fleets could stop for fuel and provisions

Imperialism Against Japan: Foreign Pressure

• The Tokugawas refused all requests for expanded relations and stuck to their policy of limiting European and American visitors to a small number of Dutch at Nagasaki

• In the late 1840s the Japanese began making military preparations in case of attack

The artificial island Dejima in Nagasaki Bay where the

Dutch were allowed to trade

Imperialism Against Japan: Commodore Perry

• In 1853, Commodore Matthew Perry led a US naval squadron into Tokyo Bay and demanded that the shogun open Japan to diplomatic and commercial relations and sign a treaty of friendship

• The shogun had no good alternative and acquiesced to Perry’s demands Commodore Matthew Perry

Imperialism Against Japan: The Opening of Japan

• Representatives of Britain, the Netherlands, and Russia soon won similar rights

• Like the Chinese, the Japanese were subjected to a series of unequal treaties which opened Japanese ports to foreign commerce, deprived the government of control over tariffs, and granted foreigners extraterritorial rights

Japan’s Response: End of Tokugawa Rule

• The sudden intrusion of foreign powers in Japan resulted in the collapse of the Tokugawa and the restoration of imperial rule

• The dissident slogan was “Revere the emperor, expel the barbarians.”

• On Jan 3, 1868, the boy emperor Mutsuhito took power– He later became known as

Meiji (“Enlightened Rule”)

Japan’s Response: Meiji Reforms

• The Meiji government strived to gain parity with foreign powers behind the motto “rich country, strong army”

• It looked to the industrial lands of the United States and Europe to obtain knowledge and expertise to strengthen Japan and win revisions of the unequal treaties– The Meiji sent many students and officials abroad to

learn everything from technology to construction and hired foreign experts to facilitate economic development and indigenous expertise

Japan’s Response: Meiji Reforms

• The Meiji transformed Japan by:– abolishing the feudal order and therefore centralizing

political power,– revamping the tax system to put the regime on a firm

financial footing– creating a constitution which gave the emperor

effective power and the parliament the ability to advise but not control him

– creating a modern transportation, communications, and educational infrastructure

Japan’s Response: Sino-Japanese War

• From 1894-1895 Japan defeated China in a war over Korea which showed how modern and powerful Japan had become and how weakened China had become– The Japanese navy quickly gained control of the

Yellow Sea and then the Japanese army pushed Chinese forces off the Korean Peninsula

– In the peace treaty, China recognized Korean independence which made Korea a virtual dependency of Japan

• The Japanese victory alarmed European powers, especially Russia, who shared interests with Japan in Korea and Manchuria

Japan’s Response: Parity with the West

• In 1899 Japan was able to end extraterritoriality

• In 1902 Japan concluded an alliance with Britain as an equal power

• By the early 20th Century, Japan had joined the ranks of the world’s major industrial powers Toyoda Type-G

Automatic Loom invented in 1924

China’s Response: Boxer Rebellion

• Eventually an anti-foreign society called the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists (called the “Boxers” by the foreign press) emerged to protest the increasing Western presence in China

• In 1899 the Boxers organized to rid China of “foreign devils”

• They went on a rampage killing foreigners, Chinese Christians, and Chinese who had ties to foreigners

China’s Response: Boxer Rebellion

• In 1900 they besieged the foreign embassies in Beijing

• A heavily armed force of British, French, Russian, US, German, and Japanese troops crushed the rebellion

Calvin P. Titus won the Medal of Honor leading the American

attack over the Chinese City Wall

The Rise of Japanese Imperialism: Russo-Japanese War

• When Russia refused to withdraw its troops from Manchuria after the Boxer Rebellion, Japan attacked and defeated the Russian Far Eastern Fleet anchored at Port Arthur

• It was the first time in modern history an Asian military force had soundly whipped the army and navy of a major non-Asian imperial power

• With the victory, Japan gained recognition as a major imperial power

President Theodore Roosevelt meets with Japanese and

Russian envoys to discuss peace at the end of the Russo-

Japanese War.

The Rise of Japanese Imperialism: World War I

• On August 23, 1914, Japan entered World War I on the side of the Allies

• It captured several German-occupied locations in China and the Pacific

• Building on this momentum, Japan presented the Chinese government with a secret list of Twenty-One Demands which would have reduced China to a protectorate of Japan

The Rise of Japanese Imperialism: World War I

• The Chinese leaked the note to the British who spoke up for the Chinese and prevented complete capitulation, but still China acquiesced to many of the demands

• The Twenty-One Demands reflected Japan’s determination to dominate east Asia and served as a basis for future Japanese pressure on China Japanese Prime Minister

Okuma Shigenobu presented the demands to China

The Rise of Japanese Imperialism: Naval Power

• Britain and the US began to see Japan as a threat to their naval dominance

• In 1922 the Five-Power Naval Limitation Treaty established a ratio of capital ships as– Britain 5– United States 5– Japan 3– France 1.67– Italy 1.67

• In the 1930s, an increasingly militant Japan demanded parity with the U.S. and Britain.

• When the request was denied, Japan gave notice in 1934 that it would withdraw from the treaty in two years and did so

The Rise of Japanese Imperialism: Manchuria

• The increasing Japanese power and its continued hostility toward China came to a head in the 1930s when for the most part civilians lost control of the government and the military in Japan

• In the 1937 Japan invaded Manchuria and waged a brutal war against civilians and a repressive occupation

The Rise of Japanese Imperialism: Manchuria

• The Japanese brutality was epitomized by the “Rape of Nanjing”

• Over a two month period, Japanese soldiers inflamed by war passion and a sense of racial superiority raped 7,000 women, murdered hundreds of thousands of unarmed soldiers and civilians, and burned 1/3 of the homes in Nanjing Chinese man being beheaded

A Chinese baby cries amid the rubble of the Japanese bombing of Shanghai

The Rise of Japanese Imperialism: World War II

• Japan continued to see the US and others as a threat to its influence in Asia and in 1940 the Japanese began developing plans to destroy the US Navy in Hawaii

• On Dec 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor– We’ll discuss this in

Lesson 27

In May 1940, the main part of the US fleet was transferred to Pearl

Harbor from the west coast

Imperialism in Africa: Sudan

• Muhammad Ahmad Abdullah declared himself the Mahdi (rightly guided one) and unified Sudanese tribes under the banner of Islam to attack Ottoman, Egyptian, and British invaders Abdullah was both a religious

and a Sudanese nationalist leader

Imperialism in Africa: Sudan

• After a protracted siege, Abdullah took the Sudanese capital of Khartoum and beheaded the British General George Gordon– Gordon became a martyr for the

British imperial cause and the British government vowed to avenge his death

• In 1898 General Kitchener invaded the Sudan and eradicated the Mahdist movement

• The vast Sudanese territories were incorporated into the British Empire

Painting of Gordon facing his death

Imperialism in Africa: Zulus

• In South Africa, the Zulu King Shaka subdued other tribes in the early 19th Century and built a kingdom as large as all of western Europe

• Shaka had the military power to deal with Western envoys as equals and was interested in establishing mutually beneficial ties with the West

Imperialism in Africa: Zulus

• However, Shaka was not a benevolent ruler and his reign was called Mfecane or “the time of troubles”

• When he was assassinated by rivals there was no peaceable system of succession

• The Zulu kingdom was torn apart by internal disputes which weakened its ability to resist Dutch and British expansion into South Africa

British soldiers show a Maxim gun to an elderly

Zulu chief in 1901

Imperialism in Africa: South Africa

• The Dutch East India Company had established a supply station at Cape Town in 1652 and settlers began expanding outward to take up ranching and farming

• These settlers were called “Boers” (the Dutch word for farmer) or “Afrikaners” (the Dutch word for African)

• During the Napoleonic Wars (1799-1815), the British took over the Cape and established British rule in 1806

Imperialism in Africa: South Africa

• British rule disrupted Boer society because it brought in English law and language

• When Britain abolished slavery in 1833, Boer financial viability and lifestyles were further threatened

• Chafing under British rules the Boer began migrating eastward where they established several independent colonies such as the Orange Free State (1854) and the South African Republic or Transvaal territories (1860)

Imperialism in Africa: South Africa

• The lenient British attitude toward this changed when diamonds were discovered on Boer-populated territories in 1867 and gold in 1886

• Two “Boer Wars” were fought from 1880-1881 and 1899-1902 with the British winning and putting an end to the Boer independent republics

• By 1910, Britain had consolidated the provinces into the Union of South Africa Boer guerrillas during

the Second Boer War

Imperialism in Africa: Berlin Conference

• Tensions among the European powers seeking African colonies led to the Berlin West Africa Conference (1884-1885), during which delegates from 14 European states and the US (no Africans were present) devised the rules for the colonization of Africa

• The conference produced an agreement that any European state could establish African colonies after notifying the others of its intentions and occupying previously unclaimed territory

Imperialism in Latin America: US

• In 1823 President James Monroe issued the Monroe Doctrine that warned European states against imperialist designs in the western hemisphere– Any European attempt to reassert control over former

colonies or to establish new ones would be considered as a threat against the US and an act of provocation

• The Monroe Doctrine served as a justification for US intervention in hemispheric affairs

US: Spanish-American War (1898-1899)

• The US had large business interests in Puerto Rico and Cuba, the last remnants of Spain’s American empire

• In 1898 the US battleship Maine exploded and sank in Havana harbor

• US leaders suspected sabotage and declared war on Spain

US: Spanish-American War

• The US easily defeated Spain and took possession of Puerto Rico and Cuba

• In the Pacific, the US took possession of the Philippines and Guam

• After the Spanish-American War the US emerged as a major imperial and colonial power

Commodore Dewey destroyed the Spanish fleet in a single day at the Battle of Manila.

US: Naval Growth• Protected by two oceans,

the US at the turn of the 20th Century needed only a small army

• However, to protect its expanding overseas interests it built the world’s third largest navy

• Men like Alfred Thayer Mahan argued that the navy represented the key to American power and championed imperialism

As Assistant Secretary of the Navy, future US President Theodore Roosevelt had been strongly influenced by Mahan’s writings

US: Imperialism in the Western Hemisphere

• Dating back to the Monroe Doctrine, the US had a keen interest in dominating the Western Hemisphere

• It had three policy goals:– Prevent European domination over the Caribbean– Obtain land for a canal across Central America– Dominate trade with Latin America and Canada

• US success in obtaining these goals was based on no nation in the Americas being strong enough to oppose the US and European nations being preoccupied with their own imperialistic ventures in Africa and Asia

US: Imperialism in Panama

• In 1903 the US supported a rebellion against Colombia and helped rebels establish a breakaway state of Panama

• In exchange for the support, the US won the right to build a canal across Panama and control the adjacent territory known as the Panama Canal Zone

US: Imperialism in Panama

• Between 1904 and 1914, the US built the Panama Canal which links the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans without having to transit Cape Horn Gatun locks under construction in 1910

US: Imperialism Elsewhere in Latin America

• In addition to military ventures, the US practiced “Dollar Diplomacy” in Latin America whereby Latin American governments were pressured to support US business interests

• By 1913 the US had displaced Great Britain as the leading exporter to Latin America

US: Imperialism Elsewhere in Latin America

• To protect their investments, US businessmen encouraged compliant, pro-American governments in Latin America

• When order was threatened, the US did not hesitate to intervene– Between 1903 and 1934 the

US sent armed forces one or more times to six nations in the Caribbean, occupying three of them for more than a decade

Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine

• In 1904 the government of the Dominican Republic went bankrupt

• President Theodore Roosevelt feared that Germany and other nations might intervene forcibly to collect their debts 

• Roosevelt asserted that “in the Western Hemisphere the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine may force the United States, however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence, to the exercise of an international police power....” Cartoon portraying Roosevelt

as an international policeman wielding his “big stick”

Review

• Explain imperialism in terms of the DIME

Next

• World War I