§ United States

The Monroe Doctrine

• 1823 President James Monroe (in office 1817–1825) issued a proclamation that warned European states against imperialist designs in the western hemisphere

  • • Monroe claimed the Americas as a U.S. protectorate

• the United States mostly exercised informal influence in the Americas and sought to guarantee free trade in the region

• policy benefited U.S. entrepreneurs and their European counterparts who worked to bring the natural resources and agricultural products of the Americas to the world market.

Acquisition of territory

• Manifest Destiny

  • • belief that it was the destiny of the United States to spread west to the Pacific Ocean

• 1856 -- The Guano Acts

• 1867 -- the United States purchased Alaska from Russia

• 1875 -- claimed a protectorate over the islands of Hawai`i, where U.S. entrepreneurs had established highly productive sugarcane plantations.

  • • The Hawaiian kingdom survived until 1893, when a group of planters and businesspeople overthrew the last monarch, Queen Lili`uokalani (reigned 1891–1893)

    • 1898 -- President William McKinley agreed to acquire the islands as U.S. possession

• 1898-1899 -- The Spanish-Cuban American War

  • • anti-colonial tensions mounted in Cuba and Puerto Rico—the last remnants of Spain’s American empire— where U.S. business interests had made large investments

    • 1898 -- U.S. battleship Maine exploded and sank in Havana harbor. U.S. leaders claimed sabotage and declared war on Spain.

      • • actual reason for the incident was a boiler explosion

    • The United States easily defeated Spain and took control and possession of Cuba and Puerto Rico

    • After the U.S. navy destroyed the Spanish fleet at Manila in a single day, the United States also took possession of Guam and the Philippines

      • • official justification was to prevent them from falling under German or Japanese control

• 1899-1906 Filipino revolt

  • • initially against Spanish rule, but turned against the United States when the US established colonial rule

    • Led by Emilio Aguinaldo—known to his followers as the George Washington of his country

    • The result was a bitter insurrection that raged until 1902 and flared sporadically until 1906

    • The conflict claimed the lives of 4,200 American soldiers, 15,000 rebel troops, and some 200,000 Filipino civilians.

• Panama Canal (1903-1914)

  • • United States supported a rebellion against Colombia in 1903 and helped rebels establish the breakaway state of Panama

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

    • The 1904 “Roosevelt Corollary”

      • • added a corollary to the Monroe Doctrine that exerted the U.S. right to intervene in the domestic affairs of nations within the hemisphere if they demonstrated an inability to maintain the security deemed necessary to protect U.S. investments

§ Russia

• “Great Game”

  • • nineteenth century (1800s) Russia undertook a systematic effort to extend Russian authority south of the Caucasus

    • weakening of the Ottoman and Qing empires turned central Asia into a political vacuum and invited Russian expansion into the region

    • 1860s cossacks had overcome Tashkent, Bokhara, and Samarkand, the great caravan cities of the silk roads

    • approached the ill-defined northern frontier of British India

    • military officers and imperialist adventurers engaged in a risky pursuit of influence and intelligence against the British

      • • mapped terrain, scouted mountain passes, and sought alliances with local rulers from Afghanistan to the Aral Sea

        • all in an effort to prepare for the anticipated war for India

• outbreak of global war in 1914 and the collapse of the tsarist state in 1917 ensured that the contest for India never took place

• imperial expansion brought much of central Asia into the Russian empire and subjected the region to a Russian hegemony that persisted until the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991

§ Japan

• 1870s -- Japanese leaders consolidated their hold on Hokkaido and the Kurile Islands to the north, and they encouraged Japanese migrants to populate the islands to forestall Russian expansion there

• 1876 -- Japan purchased modern warships from Britain and began to flex its muscles in Korea

  • • resulted in unequal treaty of 1876, Japanese businesses had substantial interests in Korea

• 1879 -- established their hegemony over Okinawa and the Ryukyu Islands to the south

• 1893 -- anti-foreign rebellion broke out in Korea

  • • Meiji leaders feared that the land might fall into anarchy and become an inviting target of European and U.S. imperialism.

    • Qing rulers sent an army to restore order and reassert Chinese authority in Korea, but Meiji leaders were unwilling to recognize Chinese control over a land so important to Japanese business interests.

• August, 1894 -- Sino-Japanese War

  • • Japan declared war on China

    • Japanese navy quickly gained control of the Yellow Sea and demolished the Chinese fleet in a battle lasting a mere five hours.

    • Japanese army then pushed Qing forces out of the Korean peninsula

    • Results of peace in April 1895:

      • • Qing authorities recognized the independence of Korea, thus making it essentially a dependency of Japan

        • China ceded Taiwan, the Pescadores Islands, and the Liaodong peninsula

        • Japan gained unequal treaty rights in China like those enjoyed by European and American powers.

• 1904-1905 Russo-Japanese War

  • • Japanese forces overran Russian installations before reinforcements could arrive from Europe

    • Japanese navy destroyed the Russian Baltic fleet, which had sailed halfway around the world to support the war effort

    • Results--1905

      • • Japan won international recognition of its colonial authority over Korea and the Liaodong peninsula

        • Russia ceded the southern half of Sakhalin island to Japan,

        • railroad and economic interests in southern Manchuria

§ Shift from the private ownership of the Congo by King Leopold II to the Belgium government

Anglo-Belgian India Rubber and Exploration Company (A.B.I.R.)

• King Leopold II began to seize control of the Congo River basin for ivory

• Rubber trees

  • • Between 1890-1904-Rubber earnings Increased 96-times over.

    • ABIR spent 1.35 francs per kilo to harvest Rubber in the Congo and ship it to the companies Headquarters in Antwerp, where it sold for 10 Francs per kilo (more than 700% profit)

    • Demographic impact:

      • • 1885 est. population=20-40 million

        • 1910 est. population=8.5 million

    • Labor system=hostage-taking.

      • • This would Be similar to the later Soviet gulag system; Another slave labor system for extracting Raw Materials and operated by quotas.

§ Shift from the Dutch East India Company to Dutch government control in Indonesia and Southeast Asia

• In 1799, the Dutch India Company was liquidated and the Dutch government took control of its possessions

• 1816 -- following the Napoleonic Wars (British had taken control of the islands) the Netherlands regained responsibility for the East Indies

Java War (1825-30)

• During the VOC period, the Dutch depended on the compliance of the Javanese aristocratic class, which allowed them to rule in an indirect manner.

  • • The Dutch government didn't contine this hands-off approach

Cause:

• immediate cause was the Dutch decision to build a road across a piece of property that contained a sacred tomb

Result:

• as many as 200,000 Javanese died in fighting or from indirect causes

• Dutch adopted the "fortress system"

  • • the posting of small units of mobile troops in forts scattered through the contested territory

• a quarter of its cultivated land was laid waste

• end of Java’s old social and political order

• Netherlands assumed full sovereignty

  • • Dutch regime consisted of a hierarchy in which the top levels were occupied by European civil servants and a native administration occupied the lower levels.

    • bupati -- Java was divided into a number of residencies, each headed by a Dutch chief administrator; each of these was further subdivided into a number of regencies that were formally headed by a Javanese regent assisted by a Dutch official

§ The Berlin Conference (1884–1885)

• delegates of twelve European states as well as the United States and the Ottoman empire—not a single African was present—devised the ground rules for the colonization of Africa

  • • Half the nations represented, including the United States, had no colonial ambitions on the continent, but they had been invited to give the proceedings a veneer of unbiased international approval.

• The Berlin Conference produced agreement for future claims on African lands:

1.) each colonial power had to notify the others of its claims

2.) each claim had to be followed up by “effective occupation” of the claimed territory.

• Occupation was commonly accomplished either by getting a signed agreement from a local African ruler or by military conquest

3.) Conference participants also spelled out noble-minded objectives for colonized lands:

• an end to the slave trade

• the extension of civilization and Christianity

• commerce and trade

• Although the conference did not parcel out African lands among the participant nations, it nevertheless served public notice that European powers were poised to carve the continent into colonies

During the next twenty-five years, European imperialists sent armies to consolidate their claims and impose colonial rule. Armed with the latest weapons technology, including the newly developed machine gun and artillery with explosive shells, they rarely failed to defeat African forces. All too often, battles were one-sided.

§ Britain in West Africa

• British involvement in this area was chiefly the result of her need to safeguard her trading interests.

• In the establishment a colonial regime in West Africa, educated Africans were regarded as allies in the task by the British

• 1840's to the 1880's Africans rose to high positions in the colonial service.

  • • In Sierra Leone, for example, William Ferguson, Afro-West Indian by origin and a medical graduate of Edinburgh, was appointed its governor in 1844

    • John Ezzidio, a Nupe ex-slave who had become a wealthy trader and a pillar of the Colony's Wesleyan Church, was appointed a member of the Sierra Leone Legislative Council in 1863

• British colonial administrator Frederick D. Lugard (1858–1945) was the driving force behind the doctrine of indirect rule, which the British employed in many of their African colonies

  • • his book The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa (1922), he stressed the moral and financial advantages of exercising control over subject populations through indigenous institutions

    • He was particularly keen on using existing “tribal” authorities and “customary laws” as the foundation for colonial rule

    • Forms of indirect rule worked in regions where Africans had already established strong and highly organized states

Impact on Women

• Ghana

  • • In colonies where cash-crop agriculture was dominant, men often withdrew from subsistence production in favor of more lucrative export crops

    • women assumed near total responsibility for domestic food production

• Ivory Coast

  • • women had traditionally grown cotton for their families’ clothing; but when that crop acquired a cash value, men insisted that cotton grown for export be produced on their own personal fields

    • men acted to control the most profitable aspects of cash-crop agriculture and in doing so greatly increased the subsistence workload of women

• Cameroon

  • • One study estimated that women’s working hours increased from forty-six per week in precolonial times to more than seventy by 1934

• Nigeria

  • • By the 1930s, Nupe women had gained sufficient wealth as itinerant traders that they were contributing more to the family income than their husbands and frequently lent money to them

    • some Igbo groups in southern Nigeria, men were responsible for growing the prestigious yams, but women’s crops—especially cassava—came to have a cash value during the colonial era, and women were entitled to keep the profits from selling it

• Overall:

  • • As more and more men sought employment in the cities, on settler farms, or in the mines, their wives were left to manage the domestic economy almost alone

    • women also had to supply food to men in the cities to compensate for very low urban wages.

    • took over such traditionally male tasks as breaking the ground for planting, milking the cows, and supervising the herds, in addition to their normal responsibilities

    • women came to dominate this sector of the economy by selling foodstuffs, cloth, and inexpensive imported goods, while men or foreign firms controlled the more profitable wholesale and import-export trade.

      • • Such opportunities sometimes gave women considerable economic autonomy

§ Belgium in the Congo

• Belgian parliament established control in 1908 and ruled the Belgian Congo until 1960.

  • • government took control after international outrage over abuses there brought pressure for supervision and accountability

• The official Belgian attitude was paternalism:

  • • Africans were to be cared for and trained as if they were children

    • Africans had no role in legislation

• traditional rulers were used as agents to collect taxes and recruit labor

  • • uncooperative rulers were deposed

• Private European and American corporations invested heavily in the Belgian Congo after WWI

  • • Large plantations (growing cotton, oil palms, coffee, cacao, and rubber) and livestock farms were developed

    • In the interior, gold, diamonds, copper, tin, cobalt, and zinc were mined; the colony became an important source of uranium for the United States during WWII

• African resistance:

  • • challenged the colonial regime from the beginning

    • rebellion broke out in several eastern districts in 1919 and was not suppressed until 1923

    • Anti-European religious groups were active by the 1920s, including Kimbanguism and the Negro Mission in the west and Kitawala in the southeast

§ French in West Africa Settler colonies established in empires:

• thirty-six hundred Europeans tried to rule over an African population of more than nine million

  • • The combination of long distances and slow transport limited effective communication between regional authorities and officials in remote areas.

    • An inability to speak local languages and a limited understanding of local customs among European officials further undermined their effective administration

• Coerced labor

  • • all “natives” were legally obligated for “statute labor” of ten to twelve days a year, a practice that lasted through 1946.

    • unpaid labor on public projects, such as building railroads, constructing government buildings,and transporting goods

§ New Zealand

• Europeans first visited New Zealand while hunting whales and seals, but the islands’ fertile soils and abundant stands of timber soon attracted their attention and drew large numbers of migrants.

• Diseases such as smallpox and measles devastated indigenous peoples at the same time that European migrants flooded into their lands

• the population of indigenous Maori in New Zealand fell from about 200,000 in 1800 to 45,000 a century later, while European numbers climbed to 750,000.

• Increasing migration also fueled conflict between European settlers and native populations.

• Large settler societies pushed indigenous peoples from their lands, often following violent confrontations

Maori King Movement (or Kingitanga)

• Representatives of the British government encouraged Maori leaders in 1840 to sign the Treaty of Waitangi, presumably designed to place New Zealand under British protection

• Interpreted differently by the British and the Maori, the treaty actually signaled the coming of official British colonial control in New Zealand (1841) and thereafter inspired effective and long-lasting Maori opposition to British attempts to usurp their land and sovereignty.

• Conflicts over land confiscations and disputed land sales, for example, helped to spark the New Zealand Wars, a series of military confrontations between autonomous Maori groups and British troops and settlers that extended from the mid- to the late nineteenth century.

• Various Maori also cooperated in the Maori King Movement (or Kingitanga), beginning in 1856, as a means of forwarding Maori unity and sovereignty.

• While political and military battles continued, the British managed by the end of the century to force many Maori into poor rural communities separated from European settlements.