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Imperialism is when one country takes over and controls lands beyond its own borders. There are many reasons why a country would want to take over lands beyond its own borders, such as wanting to get resources in those other lands or controlling the other lands will make the country more secure. Imperialism has existed though out world history, as best shown by the ancient Roman Empire. The period of European Imperialism in the nineteenth century is important in the formation of the modern world because it was a time European countries were able to take over large parts of the rest of the world which resulted in European ideas being spread around the world. Many of the ideas associated with the modern world, such a freedom, democracy and capitalism, were introduced to other societies during this time. However, while the spread of these ideas was important to the development of the modern world, the process of European Imperialism during this time period was brutal and destroyed many societies around the world. Essentially, the Europeans were hypocritical in that they spoke of spreading democracy, freedom and capitalism, but often gave the people they ruled no say in their government and gave few ways to improve their lives. Whether European Imperialism did more harm than good to many parts of the world is an issue that is still debated.
The process of European countries taking lands around the world and building colonies began with the voyages of exploration in the fifteenth century – three hundred years before the period of European Imperialism. In the voyages of exploration, early European explorers (like Christopher Columbus) set out to find trade routes to other parts of the world where Europeans could buy things not available in Europe, like spices such as pepper and cinnamon. These explorers often established colonies in the Americas, Africa and Asia to engage in trade. These colonies were European settlements in which Europeans lived the way they would back in Europe. In North and South America, these colonies expanded to become European empires because Native Americans were not strong enough to stop European expansion and lots of Europeans were able to easily move across the Atlantic Ocean to live in these empires. The Europeans destroyed the American civilizations of the Aztecs and Inca in wars and through diseases they carried – like smallpox. However, in Africa and Asia the early European colonies stayed small because societies in those parts of the world were strong enough to fight back against Europeans and few Europeans were willing to travel to those parts of the world because they were so far away. In these colonies, Europeans tended to live and work alongside the existing societies in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.
Changes in Europe in the nineteenth century, such as the Industrial Revolution, gave Europeans the ability and desire to take over other parts of the world and establish empires in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. As a result of the Industrial Revolution, Europeans were able to build new weapons that made it possible for small numbers of Europeans to defeat large armies in other parts of the world. For example, the British used industrially produced rifles defeat Indian armies, maxim guns (early machine guns) to destroy African tribes and iron battleships to sink the Chinese navy. Many Europeans, like the British soldier Charles Gordon, became heroes Europe fighting in these colonial wars. The steam engine that drove the Industrial Revolution could also be used to power the ships and trains that made it easier for Europeans to travel to other parts of the world. Millions of poor Europeans left Europe to live and work in other parts of the world where they could enjoy a quality of life better than they could in Europe. These Europeans established farms to grow crops like cotton and cacao (used for making chocolate) or to build mines to get gold and diamonds – resources that they could not get in Europe. The Europeans built railroads and shipping ports around the world to help move these resources back to Europe.
In addition, the invention of the telegraph allowed European governments to quickly communication with their colonies in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, which made it easier to control these colonies. Basically, during the period of European Imperialism, more Europeans with better weapons were able to defeat the societies in Asia, Africa and the Middle East and then use the resources in those parts of the world to enrich Europe. Clearly, Europeans benefited from the period of Imperialism. The leaders of Europe during this time believed that it was important for countries to have large overseas empires because they made the country more powerful. Queen Victoria ruled the British Empire, which grew during this time period to cover a fifth of the world’s surface, actively supported British expansion in Asia, the Middle East and Africa. The British boasted that “The sun never sets on the British Empire”, which was true because the empire spanned the whole world. This pride in empire also affected the leaders of small European countries who had ambitions to be powerful. For example, Leopold II, the king of Belgium, took the region of the Congo in central Africa as to build his own colony (which was 80 times larger than Belgium).
The strange part is that Europeans believed that it was good for the other people of the world to be conquered by the Europeans. While the Europeans often looked down on the societies they conquered and felt that their success in taking over these other societies demonstrated that their ways were superior, they also believed in, what they called, the “civilizing mission” – which meant that they had a mission to “civilize” the rest of the world. They believed that they had a responsibility to rule their empires around the world with the purpose of teaching the people who lived there about the European ways of doing things. They thought that in the long run, these people would adopt European ways. Some Europeans, like the explorer David Livingstone, were very interested in African cultures and societies and dedicated his life to trying to find ways to improve the lives of Africans – such as working to end slavery. However, other Europeans, like the explorer Henry Stanley and the miner Cecil Rhodes, used the idea of the “civilizing mission” to justify the way they brutalized and destroyed African societies. They believed that Europeans and European ways of doing things were superior and that this gave Europeans the right to rule over people and these people should serve Europeans.
While European Imperialism was largely about the Europeans acting for their own benefit, European rule did bring several benefits to the people who lived in the lands that they took over. First, the Europeans built railroads and telegraph systems which connected people in these places to the wider world. Second, the Europeans opened schools and taught their languages to the people in this place which allowed people in these regions to talk to each other. For example, there were many different languages in India and only when English became the common language were Indians in one part of the country able to communicate with those in other parts of the country. Third, the Europeans introduced modern medicine and built hospitals.
While the European Imperialism was similar around the world in how it used military force to take lands and force the populations in those lands to work for Europeans, how this happened was very different around the world.
The British took over India through a gradual process that began in the 1600’s with a private British trading company, called the East India Company, setting up colonies on the coast of India. The company, by making treaties with Indian rulers and fighting wars, slowly expanded to takeover large parts of India. The East India Company controlled its colony in India with an army of Indian soldiers called Sepoy. Indian anger at the way the East India Company ruled its Indian territory resulted in the Sepoys revolting against the East India Company and attacking British people in India. The British government, under Queen Victoria, sent the British army to brutally crush the Sepoy Mutiny in 1857. After this, India was made part of the British Empire. The British government directly controlled India and built railroads and cotton farms in India to support British industry.
The Europeans, lead by Britain, took over China through a series of wars over the course of the 19th century. Europeans had been in contact with China since the 1600’s, when the first European voyages of exploration reached China. However, the Chinese looked down upon the Europeans and refused to trade with them because they did not think the Europeans had anything worth buying. However, the Europeans wanted to buy a lot of things from the Chinese, especially tea and silk. The British began to smuggle opium (made in India) into China to trade for tea and silk. The Chinese government fought back against this in the First Opium War in 1839. The British used their modern navy to crush the Chinese and force the Chinese to give the British the right to trade freely in China. Other European colonies saw this and attacked China and there were a series of Opium Wars in which the Chinese government slowly lost control of large parts of China. The weakness of the Chinese government angered many Chinese people and they revolted against the government. The Europeans countries supported the Chinese government in crushing these rebellions because they wanted a weak Chinese government they could control. In 1899, the United States forced China to accept the Open Door Policy which meant that any country had the right to trade with China. The United States did this because it was afraid that the European countries would chop China up into little colonies and it would not be able to get part of China.
The Europeans did not become interested in talking over large parts of Africa until the end of the 19th century. This was because large parts of Africa were unexplored, it was hard to travel across Africa and Europeans had little resistance to African diseases, like malaria. Historically, the Europeans had been interested in Africa as a source of slaves, which they bought on the coast of Africa, and did not go into the interior of the country. However, the Industrial Revolution changed that situation. Europeans became interested in getting resources from Africa that were not available in Europe, such as ivory, rubber and coca (for making chocolate). In addition, Africa had a lot of gold and diamonds. In the second half of the 19th century, the Europeans participated in what has been described as the “scramble for Africa” in which European countries each tried to seize part of Africa. In this scramble, some of the European countries almost went to war with each other over African territory. In 1884, the German leader Otto von Bismarck held a meeting called the Berlin Conference in which the European countries agreed how to divide Africa between them. Even though they knew little about Africa or the people who lived there, they drew borders and established their colonies. The result was that often African tribes were divided by these borders or forced to live in colonies with their historic enemies. The conflicts among Africans living in these colonies was made worse by the way Europeans would favor one tribe, by giving them schools, jobs and guns, and use that tribe to suppress other tribes in the colony. The Europeans generally tricked Africans out of their land and violently crushed any rebellion against their rule. They also did little to improve the lives of Africans and only developed Africa enough to get the resources they needed.
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