§ Túpac Amaru II’s rebellion in Peru

• 1780 -- José Gabriel Condorcanqui Peruvian Amerindian leader who initiated a rebellion against the Spanish

• he took the name of his Inca ancestor Tupac Amaru, who had been executed as a rebel in 1572.

• Tupac Amaru II was well connected in Spanish colonial society

  • • He had been educated by the Jesuits

    • was actively involved in trade with the silver mines at Potosí

    • Despite these connections, he still resented the abuse of Amerindian villagers

debate over the objectives of this rebellion

• Tupac Amaru’s own pronouncements did not clearly state whether he sought to end local injustices or overthrow Spanish rule

• It appears that a local Spanish judge who challenged Tupac Amaru’s hereditary rights provided the initial provocation

• Believed that Tupac Amaru was ultimately driven by the conviction that colonial authorities were oppressing the indigenous people

• As thousands joined him, he dared to contemplate the overthrow of Spanish rule.

  • • Amerindian communities suffering under the mita and tribute obligations provided the majority of Tupac Amaru’s army

    • He also received some support from creoles, mestizos, and slaves

• After his capture, he was brutally executed, as were his wife and fifteen other family members and allies.

  • • after his execution, Amerindian rebels continued the struggle for more than two years.

• By the time Spanish authority was firmly reestablished, more than 100,000 lives had been lost and enormous amounts of property destroyed

§ Samory Touré’s military battles in West Africa

• western Sudan (now Mali)

• 1868 - Samory Touré proclaimed himself a religious chief and led a band of warriors in establishing a powerful chiefdom

  • • established the Wassoulou Empire

    • he attempted to create a single Islamic administrative system

      • • 162 former chiefdoms organized into 10 provinces

        • maintained an intelligence network that kept him informed of developments from what is today Mauritania to Nigeria

        • army was well equipped with European firearms and a complex structure of permanent units

    • 1880 - began a jihad to convert the pagans and push out the Europeans if necessary

    • His attempts to impose Islam on all his people resulted in a revolt in 1888

• opposed French ambitions to build an empire in West Africa

  • • fought French forces periodically from 1882-1898.

    • 1898-he was captured by the French and exiled to Gabon

§ Yaa Asantewaa War in West Africa

Context

• Fourth Anglo-Ashanti War (1894-1895)

  • • Ashanti refusal to sign a letter consenting to become a British protectorate

    • lopsided war that was decided by overwhelming British firepower, in which Maxim machine guns and the latest in field artillery were pitted against spears and obsolescent muzzle loading firearms.

    • Ashanti king, Prempeh I was exiled to the Seychelles islands in the Indian Ocean with his supporters

Yaa Asantewaa

• Yaa Asantewaa was a Ghanaian warrior queen, born around 1840, who rose up to lead an army against the invading British.

• In 1900, the British governor of the Gold Coast in west Africa – today’s Ghana – travelled to Kumasi, capital of the Ashanti tribe

  • • he delivered a provocative speech, in which he demanded that the Ashanti produce the Golden Stool, the tribe’s most sacred object, so he could sit upon it

    • Golden Stool - a mystical seat that supposedly summoned from the sky by Osei Tutu’s chief priest, to fall into the lap of the Ashanti Confederacy’s founder, thus confirming his right to rule. The Golden Stool became the Ashanti state’s most sacred object, and its chief unifying symbol.

    • Nana Yaa Asantewaa, an Ashanti queen mother, rallied her people into resistance, in what came to be known as the War of the Golden Stool.

    • Thousands took up arms, and Asantewaa was appointed war leader of the Ashanti.

    • The Ashanti were eventually defeated and annexed to the Gold Coast, but retained their autonomy. They also did not produce the Golden Stool.

• Yaa Asantewaa was exiled to the Seychelles islands

§ 1857 rebellion in India

Context

• 1707 - After the death of the emperor Aurangzeb, the Mughal state entered a period of decline, and many local authorities asserted their independence of Mughal rule.

• The East India Company took advantage of Mughal weakness to strengthen and expand its trading posts.

• In the 1750s company merchants began campaigns of outright conquest in India, largely to protect their commercial interests from increasing disorder in the subcontinent

  • • From their forts at Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay, the merchants extended their authority inland and won official rights to rule from the Mughal emperors and local authorities

    • They enforced their rule with a small British army and a large number of Indian troops known as sepoys.

• Overall: : local rulers who had lost power; landlords deprived of their estates or their rent; peasants overtaxed and exploited by urban moneylenders and landlords alike; unemployed weavers displaced by machine-manufactured textiles;and religious leaders exposed to missionary preaching

Revolt in 1857

A revolt by the sepoys led to the establishment of direct British imperial rule in India

• In 1857 -- sepoy regiments received new Enfield rifles that fired bullets from cartridges. To protect them from moisture, the cartridges came in paper waxed with animal fat, and British officers instructed the sepoys to tear the paper off with their teeth.

  • • Hindu sepoys refused to comply out of concern that the protective fat came from cows, which they held sacred

    • Muslim sepoys refused on grounds that the fat might have come from pigs, which they considered foul

    • both groups viewed the innovation as a plot to render them defiled and to convert them to Christianity

• Even though British officials soon changed the procedures for packing and opening cartridges, in May 1857 Hindu sepoys staged a mutiny, killed their British officers, and proclaimed restoration of Mughal authority.

• Peasants and disgruntled elites joined the fray and transformed a minor mutiny into a large-scale rebellion that seriously threatened British rule in India

  • • the rebels had different interests and could not agree on a common program

• British forces benefited from powerful weapons and telegraphic communications, which enabled them to rush troops to trouble spots.

Results:

• The conflict produced some horrifying episodes of violence

  • • At Cawnpore, near Lucknow, sepoys quickly overcame the British garrison and its population of 60 soldiers, 180 civilian men, and some 375 women and children.

    • The rebels killed all the men—many of them as they surrendered—and two weeks later massacred the women and children

    • When a fresh British force arrived, it exacted revenge by subjecting rebels and suspects to summary execution by hanging

• Elsewhere British forces punished mutineers by blowing them to bits with a cannon.

• By May 1858 the British had crushed the rebellion and restored their authority in India.

• British Raj

  • • the British government preempted the East India Company and imposed direct imperial rule in India. In 1858 Queen Victoria (reigned 1837–1901) assigned responsibility for Indian policy to the newly established office of secretary of state for India

    • A viceroy represented British royal authority in India and administered the colony through an elite Indian civil service staffed almost exclusively by the English.

    • Indians served in low-level bureaucratic positions, but British officials formulated all domestic and foreign policy in India.

    • they extended their authority to all parts of India and Ceylon (modern Sri Lanka)

    • British officials cleared forests, restructured landholdings, and encouraged the cultivation of crops, such as tea, coffee, and opium, that were especially valuable trade items.

    • They built extensive railroad and telegraph networks that tightened links between India and the larger global economy.

    • They also constructed new canals, harbors, and irrigation systems to support commerce and agriculture.

Raj Cultural Transformation

• British colonial authorities made little effort to promote Christianity

• established English-style schools for the children of Indian elites, whom they sought as supporters of their rule

• o suppressed Indian customs that conflicted with European law or values

  • • sati - the practice of widows burning themselves on their husbands’ funeral pyres

    • not universally observed, sati was not an uncommon practice among upper-class Hindus, who believed that women should serve their husbands loyally and follow them even in death.

    • Under pressure from the East India Company, Indian law banned sati as early as 1829, but effective suppression of the practice came only after a long campaign by colonial authorities.

§ Establishment of independent states in the Balkans

In the eighteenth century Russia had claimed to be the protector of Ottoman subjects of Orthodox Christian faith in Greece and the Balkans

• 1875-Slavic peoples in the Ottoman provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina led an uprising against the Ottomans to gain their freedom.

  • • Montenegro and Serbia aided the rebellion and within a year, rebellion spread to the Ottoman province of Bulgaria. The rebellion became part of a larger pan-Slavic movement.

• 1878 - Austria-Hungary took over Bosnia and Herzegovina

• 1877-1878 - Romanian War of Independence (part of Russo-Turkish war)

• 1878 -- Bulgaria became an autonomous state of the Ottomans

• 1908 - Austrian annexation of the former Turkish province of Bosnia-Herzegovina worsened relations between the Austro-Hungarian and Russian Empires.

Analysis

• 19th century-5-6 million Muslims in the Balkans die or flee to Anatolian Peninsula

• Ottoman Empire as the “Sick Man of Europe”

  • • Ottoman were unable to “modernize” as to enable free elections or free press would result in their own demise.

    • European Intervention (ie. Russia on behalf of Slavs and England/France on behalf of Christians and Jews) resulted in the demise of the decentralized Millet system which had enabled the Ottoman Empire to maintain its diverse religious and ethnic communities for centuries.

§ Sokoto Caliphate in modern-day Nigeria

• Sokoto Caliphate (1809–1906) was the largest state in West Africa since the fall of Songhai in the sixteenth century

• Hausa˚ states (in what is now northern Nigeria) under the leadership of Usuman dan Fodio˚ (1745–1817)

  • • a Muslim cleric of the Fulani˚ people. He charged that the Hausa kings, despite their official profession of Islam, were “undoubtedly unbelievers . . . because they practice polytheistic rituals and turn people away from the path of God."

    • 1804 -- Usuman dan Fodio˚called for a jihad to overthrow the king of Gobir

    • Muslims unhappy with their social or religious position spread the movement to other Hausa states

• The successful armies united the conquered Hausa states and neighboring areas under a caliph (sultan) who ruled from the city of Sokoto.

• During the jihads, many who resisted the expansion of Muslim rule were killed, enslaved, or forced to convert

Sokoto Caliphate in Practice

• became centers of Islamic learning and reform

• Schools for training boys in Quranic subjects spread rapidly, and the great library at Sokoto attracted many scholars

• officials permitted non-Muslims within the empire to follow their religions in exchange for paying a special tax, they suppressed public performances of dances and ceremonies associated with traditional religions

• Sokoto’s leaders sold some captives into the Atlantic slave trade and many more into the trans-Saharan slave trade, which carried ten thousand slaves a year, mostly women and children, across the desert to North Africa and the Middle East

• Slavery also increased greatly within the Sokoto Caliphate and other new Muslim states.

  • • estimated that by 1865 there were more slaves in the Sokoto Caliphate than in any remaining slaveholding state in the Americas

    • Most of the enslaved persons raised food, making possible the seclusion of free women in their homes in accordance with reformed Muslim practice

§ Cherokee Nation

• 1830 Congress passed the Indian Removal Act, forcing the resettlement of the "Five Civilized Tribes"—Choctaw, Chickasaw, Cherokee, Creek, and Seminole to land west of the Mississippi River.

  • • so named by people of the time because they had to some degree assimilated into white European culture and society

• The removal was carried out in the 1830s, and nearly half of the forced migrants died on this journey, known as the Trail of Tears

  • • Choctaws in 1830 became the first tribe to sign a treaty and voluntarily relocate to the territory that would become the state of Arkansas

    • 1835 -- Seminoles refused to leave their ancestral lands in Florida, sparking the Second Seminole War

      • • US Army ultimately emerged victorious and forced remaining Seminoles out of Florida and into the area west of the Mississippi River that became known as Indian Territory

    • Chickasaws agreed to leave their lands in exchange for a monetary settlement of $3 million, which the United States refused to pay until almost 30 years later

    • Creeks signed over the rest of their lands after the enactment of the Indian Removal Act and relocated to Indian Territory through the Trail of Tears

    • Cherokees

      • • 1828 -- white settlers in Georgia revoked the constitution of the Cherokee nation and declaring that indigenous people were subject to the laws of the state of Georgia.

          • • 1830, the Cherokee nation took the state of Georgia to the Supreme Court, arguing that it was an independent nation and as such, was not subject to the authority of the state of Georgia

            • Worcester v. Georgia -- declared that the state of Georgia had no authority over the Cherokee, which as a sovereign nation could only be subject to the authority of the federal government.

            • Federal Government took action: Indian Removal Act of 1830

        • a small faction had signed a treaty with the US government in 1835, but that faction did not represent Cherokee leadership, who refused to leave their lands voluntarily

        • US government forcibly relocated Cherokees to the Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River

          • • Of the 17,000 Cherokees who were forced to move, at least 4,000—and possibly as many as 8,000—perished

§ Zulu Kingdom

Zulu kingdom in 1818 by Shaka (r. 1818–1828)

• originated out of the conflict for grazing and farming lands

• Nguni˚ peoples pursued a life based on cattle and agriculture in the fertile coastlands of southeastern Africa (in modern South Africa)

• Small independent chiefdoms suited their political needs until a serious drought hit the region at the beginning of the nineteenth century

• Shaka expanded his kingdom by raiding his African neighbors, seizing their cattle, and capturing their women and children

  • • Strict military drill and close-combat warfare featuring ox-hide shields and lethal stabbing spears made the Zulu the most powerful and most feared fighters in southern Africa

• Shaka ruled for little more than a decade, but he succeeded in creating a new national identity as well as a new kingdom.

  • • grouped all the young people in his domains by age into regiments

    • Regiment members lived together and immersed themselves in learning Zulu lore and customs, including fighting methods for the males.

    • public festivals of loyalty to Shaka at which regiments of young men and women numbering in the tens of thousands danced around the king for hours

    • Parades showed off the king’s enormous herds of cattle, a Zulu measure of wealth.

§ Abyssinia (Ethopia)

The only indigenous African state to resist colonization successfully was Ethiopia.

• 1889 -- emperor of Ethiopia, Menelik II, undertook a program of modernization that included a modern Army

  • • Treaty of Wichale (Uccialli) in 1889 made Ethiopia an Italian protectorate

    • 1893 - When Menelik II learned of the Italian interpretation of the treaty, which was gaining some acceptance in Europe, he at once denied it and renounced the whole treaty

• 1893 weapons -- support came from Orthodox Russia in the form of Berdan rifles, Gewehr 88 and Karabiner 88 rifles and carbines

• 1895 - Italian forces invaded Ethiopia, anticipating an easy victory

• any designs to establish a colony were abandoned when the well equipped Ethiopian army annihilated the Italians at the Battle of Adwa in 1896

• Besides Ethiopia, the only African state to remain independent was Liberia, a small republic in west Africa populated by freed slaves that was effectively a dependency of the United States.

• Under Menelik II:

  • • destroyed notorious slave market towns and punishing slavers with amputation

    • creation of government ministries

    • the initiation of modern education

    • the construction of telephone and telegraph systems

    • a railway from Djibouti, on the Gulf of Aden to Addis Ababa, the emperor’s new capital in the highlands of Shewa

§ Ghost Dance in the U.S.

• 1888 - a Paiute named Wovoka fell sick with scarlet fever. He died and traveled to heaven. Returning to the earth, he said he was commanded to tell his people to love one another, live in peace with the whites and devote themselves to work.

• If they followed these instructions and danced a dance that the Supreme Being taught him, the messiah would come, they would be reunited with the dead, death would be no more, and the whites would disappear forever.

  • • This apparent contradiction of living in peace with the whites and them then being swept away is explained two ways. One, Wovoka sugar coated the account to the whites he talked to, and two, his apostles introduced the doctrine to garner support for the dance among their various tribes.

• News of the Indian Messiah spread and as Native Americans came from great distances to hear the good news, they spread the Ghost Dance across the country, clear to the reservations of Oklahoma.

• Encouraged by promises of the renewal of buffalo herds, fish, and traditional ways of life, tribes alarmed settlers and government officials by joining in the dance

  • • the Ghost Dance became a cause for concern to the US government when the Sioux embraced it.

    • Commissioner Morgan of the Bureau of Indian Affairs recognized the reasons for Sioux discontent, among many others, to be the loss of large portions of their land, including the sacred Black Hills and the cutting in half of their beef rations in 1889.

    • crop failures in 1889 led many to kill breeding stock and steal from whites to avoid starvation

• the Ghost Dance led to the ruthless massacre of Big Foot’s band of Sioux at Wounded Knee which effectively conveyed the message to Native Americans everywhere that open resistance to the United States government and their agenda would not be tolerated

§ Xhosa Cattle-Killing Movement in Southern Africa

Context

• 1652 - Dutch East India Company established Cape Town as a supply station for ships en route to Asia

• former company employees plus newly arrived settlers from Europe moved into lands beyond company control to take up farming and ranching

• Many of these settlers, known first as Boers (the Dutch word for “farmer”) and then as Afrikaners (the Dutch word for “African”), believed that God had predestined them to claim the people and resources of the Cape.

• The area under white settler control expanded during the eighteenth century as a steady stream of European migrants—chiefly Dutch, Germans, and French Huguenots fleeing religious persecution—continued to swell the colony’s population.

• As European settlers spread beyond the reaches of the original colony, they began encroaching on lands occupied by Khoikhoi and Xhosa peoples

• Competition for land soon led to hostility, and by the early eighteenth century, intermittent warfare, enslavement, and smallpox epidemics had led to the virtual extinction of the Xhosa, losing lives, land, and resources to European settlers.

Cattle Killing Movement

• In 1856, a fourteen year old girl named Nongqawuse (non-see) had a vision on the banks of the Gxarha River in southern Africa

• Entranced, she saw dearly departed ancestors, their cattle hiding in the rushes, and she heard other cattle underground waiting to come forth.

• She was told that if her people would but kill all their cattle, their ancestors would arise from the dead, the cattle lowing in the subterranean passages would come forth, and all the whites would be swept into the sea.

• Nongqawuse’s prophecy provoked the colonially embittered Xhosa (cōesăh) people to rise up and kill their cattle.

Result:

• • • around 400,000 cattle had been slaughtered and an estimated 80,000 Xhosa died of starvation.

    • Those that remained were reduced to working as laborers throughout the Cape Colony after being pushed off some 600,000 acres of their ancestral lands.

§ Mahdist wars in Sudan

Causes

• theocratic regime commanded by al-Mahdī from 1881 until his death in June 1885.

  • • deemed himself a new prophet divinely appointed to restore Islam

• His disciple, Abd Allah succeeded al-Mahdī

British Response

• New Technology: By the 1870s Europeans were experimenting with rifled machine guns, and in the 1880s they adopted the Maxim gun, a light and powerful weapon that fired eleven bullets per second.

• In 1898, a British army unit with twenty machine guns and six gunboats encountered a Sudanese force at Omdurman, near Khartoum on the Nile River

• During five hours of fighting, the British force lost a few hundred men while machine guns and explosive charges fired from gunboats killed 20,000 Sudanese in a matter of hours.

• The battle of Omdurman opened the door for British colonial rule in Sudan

  • • 1899 - Abd Allah was killed in the final Battle of Umm Dibaykarat

    • the movement persisted until 1970.