Africa, India, and the New British Empire, 1750-1870
Changes and Exchanges in Africa
India Under British Rule
Britain’s eastern Empire
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.
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
Africa
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 colonies
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.