25 nineteenth-century empires
TRANSCRIPT
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Nineteenth-Century Empires
The Birth of the Liberal
Empire
European Expansion in
Mid-Century
The New Imperialism,
1870-1914
Imperialism at its Peak
Guiding Questions:
European colonial rule changed the face of
much of the non-Western world during the
nineteenth century. How did the imperial
experience affect European identity?
European colonialism caused immense
suffering among subject peoples. Did any
segments of colonized societies benefit from
colonial rule?
In what ways did Europeans themselves
contribute to the eventual downfall of their
empires?
The Birth of the Liberal Empire
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Europeans lost their Atlantic
empires and built new ones in
Asia and Africa
The expansionism of this period
had its economic foundation in thegrowth of a capitalist market
economy and its philosophical
roots in the Enlightenment culture
of liberal universalism
New sources of raw materials andnew markets for their industrial
manufactures as an opportunity to
civilize the non-Western world
The Decline of
the Mercantile
Colonial World
The threat toempire came
primarily in the
form of
independence
movements and
slave revolts
and the gradual
rise of a market
economy
External Challenges
Independence movements
drove European colonial
powers from much of the
New World
Slave agitation constituted a
central part of the assault on
the mercantile colonial world
Haitian Revolution in the
French colony of Saint-
Domingue in 1791
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The Antislavery
Movement in Europe
A rapidly expanding
European movement to end
slavery further threatened
the Atlantic colonial system
during the late eighteenth
century
Quakerism condemned
slavery as a sin antitheticalto religious tenets of
brotherly love and spiritual
equality
The influence of the
Enlightenment
Secular reformers joined forces
with religious abolitionists
John Lockeshaped argumentsmounted against slavery by
Enlightenment humanists
Enlightenment universalism, or
belief in the basic sameness of
all humans, undermined the
acceptance of slavery andallowed eighteenth century
thinkers to link oppressed
Africans to the disenfranchised
poor of Europe
Equality before the law
clashed deeply with the
concept of human bondage
The new Western sentiment
cast the slave as innocent
victim and the civilized
European as heroic savior
Elite women and men of
the late eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuryjoined abolitionist circles
and signed antislavery
petitions
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The Free-Trade Lobby
European manufacturers
objected increasingly to
protective tariffs
Capitalists in favor of free
trade based their arguments
on both theory and real-
world experience
market competition wasboth natural and rational
because it afforded
economic liberty to
individuals
The End of European
Slavery
The convergence ofreligious and
humanitarian sentimentand economic support forfree market competitionled to the abolition of the
European slave trade
Britain abolished slaveryitself in 1834,
emancipating theremaining 780,000 British-owned slaves in the West
Indies
New Sources of Colonial
Legitimacy
The Growth of the Market
Economy
New economic rationale
to empire
From 1830 to 1870,
European nation-states
competed with oneanother for spheres of
economic influence
abroad
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Enlightenment Universalism
Liberal empire had roots inEnlightenment theories of
human biological and
cultural sameness and
belief in human
improvement through the
application of reason tosocial reform
Enlightened Europeans
posited that all societies
developed along a similar
path and could be guidedand accelerated
Cultural Relativism
Cultural relativism
exalted New World
societies as models of
virtue and freedom for a
decadent Europe
European cultural
relativists still insisted on
their own supremacy,
even while
acknowledging the
achievements of other
cultures
Assimilation to a European
way of life had occurred
largely as an unintended
consequence of missionary
efforts to impart Christianfaith to New World peoples
universalism had
humanized the colonial
subject
Assimilation became a moralimperative and colonial
domination became the ideal
means to achieve this end
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The Civilizing Mission in India
India was the laboratory inwhich Britain conducted its
most ambitious civilizing
experiments
They sought to stamp out
Indian superstition anderadicating the barbaric
Indian laws and customs such
as Sati
British civilizing efforts came to
an abrupt halt with the IndianRebellion of 1857
European Expansion in Mid-
Century
Europeans acted
to protect their
economic
interests in new,
more assertive
ways
This
intensification
was drivenprimarily by
industrialization
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India and the Rise of British
Sovereignty
The British East India Company
The British conquest thustransformed the Indianeconomy into a closedsystem, forcing Indiathrough taxation to
effectively give away itsexports to Britain and
serving its independenttrade connections with the
outside world
India is transformed into asupplier of war materialsfor British textile mills as
well as a major market forBritish manufactures
Further British Expansion
in Asia
The British East India Companys
conquest of India also promoted
British expansionism elsewhere incentral Asia
Their chief adversary was Russia
When the British tried to do the
same to Afghanistan, they met
with stubborn resistance in theAfghan Wars (1839-42 and
1878-1880) leading to it becoming
a client state by the 1880s
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The Sick Man: The Ottoman
Empire and China
Europeans took a fundamentally
different approach to the other
two major non-Western empires
the Ottomans and the Qing China
Sick Man of Europe and Sick
Man of the East
Europeans exploited the Chineseand Ottoman empires through
financial subjugation and politicalmaneuvering
The Ottoman Empire
The empire was still vast and its
power had declined sharply
from its peak point in the 16th
century
The ambitions of provincial
governors were challenging the
authority of the Sultan,
Mahmud II
Administrative, legal, and
technological Westernization
Tanzimat (reorganization)
ChinaQing Dynasty, members of theforeign Manchu minority whohad ruled China since the mid-
seventeenth century
They hand no interest inEuropean manufactures
Opium smoking became anentrenched practice at all levels
of Chinese society and wasexploited by Britain
The Opium War (1840-42) andthe Second Opium War (1856-58)
Taiping Rebellion of 1850-64
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The European
Awakening to Africa
New Interest in Africa
European ignorance and
indifference stemmed from a lack
of contact with Africa
Africa came into focus as a
potential marketplace and source
of raw materials to feed its
industrial economy
Dysentery, yellow fever, typhoid,
and malariaThe White Mans
Grave
Missionaries and
Explorers
Abolitionist evangelicals
seeking to end slavery inAfrica
They strove not merely to
save souls, as their early
modern predecessors had,
but to Europeanize natives
David Livingstone and
Henry Stanley
The New Imperialism, 1870-1914