The environment shapes human societies, and as populations grow and change, these populations in turn shape their environments.

LEARNING OBJECTIVE

Explain how various environmental factors contributed to the development of the global economy from 1750 to 1900.

HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENTS

KC-5.1.II.A The need for raw materials for factories and increased food supplies for the growing population in urban centers led to the growth of export economies around the world that specialized in commercial extraction of natural resources and the production of food and industrial crops. The profits from these raw materials were used to purchase finished goods.

ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLES

Resource export economies:

§ Cotton production in Egypt

§ Rubber extraction in the Amazon and the Congo basin

§ The palm oil trade in West Africa

§ The guano industries in Peru and Chile

§ Meat from Argentina and Uruguay

§ Diamonds from Africa

§ Cotton production in Egypt

• Egypt went to war against the Ottoman Empire in 1839

  • • Britain intervened and forced Muhammad Ali to eliminate all import duties in the name of free trade

    • Unprotected, Egypt’s fledgling industries could not compete with the flood of cheap British products.

    • Egypt exported raw cotton, imported manufactured goods, and became, in effect, an economic dependency of Britain.

• during the Civil War in the United States (1861-1865), Egypt restructured their economy to grow “cash crops”

• • revenues increased thirty-fold and exports doubled (largely because of a huge increase in cotton exports during the American Civil War)

  • Egypt took loans from French and British lenders at high interest rates (25%+) to fund irrigation projects for cotton production

• By 1870 Egypt had a network of new irrigation canals, 800 miles (1,300 kilometers) of railroads, a modern postal service, and the dazzling new capital city of Cairo

• • when the US Civil War ended, commodity prices for cotton dropped and Egypt was left with the debt

• Egypt’s debts to British and French investors led to the country’s partial occupation

§ Rubber extraction in the Amazon and the Congo basin

• Rubber trees were indigenous to the Amazon River basin, but imperialists established colonial rubber plantations in the Congo River basin and Malaya

  • • originally came from the latex of Hevea trees growing wild in the Brazilian rain forest

    • used for for rain-wear, belt on industrial machines and engines, and tires

• Congo Free State, where a rubber boom lasting from 1895 to 1905 made it profitable for private companies to coerce Africans to collect latex from vines that grew in the forests

  • • After 1906 the British press began publicizing the horrors.

    • The public outcry that followed, coinciding with the end of the rubber boom, convinced the Belgian government to take over Leopold’s private empire in 1908.

• 1870s -- British agents stole seeds of rubber trees from the Amazon rain forest and transferred them to Malaya and Sumatra

  • • European planters had the forests cut down and replaced with thousands of acres of commercially profitable trees and bushes, all lined up in perfect rows and tended by thousands of indigenous laborers to satisfy the demands of customers in faraway lands

    • By 1914 much of the world’s supply of these valuable products—in the case of rubber, almost all—came from Southeast Asia (Vietnam) and Indonesia

§ The palm oil trade in West Africa

• a vegetable oil used by British manufacturers for soap, candles, and lubricants.

• Though still a major source of slaves until the mid-1830s, the trading states of the Niger Delta simultaneously emerged as the premier exporters of palm oil.

• In inland forests men climbed tall oil palms and cut down large palm-nut clusters, which women pounded to extract the thick oil.

• Coastal African traders bought the palm oil at inland markets and delivered it to European ships at the coast

• The dramatic increase in palm-oil exports—from a few hundred tons at the beginning of the 1800s to tens of thousands of tons by mid-1800s—did not require any new technology, but it did alter the social structure of the coastal trading communities.

  • • Coastal traders grew rich and used their wealth to buy large numbers of male slaves to paddle the giant dugout canoes that transported palm oil from inland markets along the narrow delta creeks to the trading ports

    • Niger Delta slavery could be as harsh and brutal as slavery on New World plantations, but it offered some male and female slaves a chance to gain wealth and power

    • Some female slaves who married big traders exercised great authority over junior members of trading households

    • Male slaves who supervised canoe fleets were well compensated, and a few even became wealthy enough to take over the leadership of the coastal “canoe houses” (companies)

      • • The most famous, known as “Jaja” (ca. 1821–1891), rose from canoe slave to become the head of a major canoe house.

          • • In 1869, to escape discrimination by free-born Africans, he founded the new port of Opobo, which he ruled as king.

            • In the 1870s Jaja of Opobo was the greatest palm oil trader in the Niger Delta.

§ The guano industries in Peru and Chile

• many small Pacific islands had abundant deposits of guano—bird droppings that made excellent fertilizer

  • • The World's Bird Poop Obsession

    • Chincha Islands

      • • dry climate of coastal Peru allows the guano to harden and pile up in layers

    • bird guano is a rich source of fixed nitrogen and phosphorus (better than cow and horse dung)

    • Large numbers of Chinese laborers went to guano mines in Peru

    • a smaller group of Japanese migrants went to work in guano mines in Peru

• 1856 - THE GUANO ACTS (United States)

  • • Why You Can Claim Islands for the US if They Have Bird Poop

• The End of the Boom:

  • • miners ate the birds and their eggs and destroyed their habitat resulting in a population decline of the

    • German chemist Fritz Haber discovered method to extract fixed Nitrogen from the air and turn it into ammonia, which could in turn be used to develop synthetic fertilizers

§ Meat from Argentina and Uruguay

Opposition to ranching

• • • native peoples of Argentina and Chile effectively checked the southern expansion of agriculture and ranching until the 1860s

    • Herds of wild cattle provided indigenous peoples with a limitless food supply, and horses and metal weapons increased their military capacities

    • Amerindian raiders operated within 100 miles (160 kilometers) of Buenos Aires into the 1860s

    • governments of Argentina and Chile relied on an elaborate system of gift giving and prisoner exchanges to maintain peace on the frontier

1870's Transition to a Ranching society

• the government of Argentina used overwhelming military force to crush native resistance

  • • Thousands of Amerindians were killed, and survivors were driven onto marginal land

    • government authorities justified military campaigns against native peoples by demonizing them. Newspaper editorials and the speeches of politicians portrayed Amerindians as brutal and cruel, and as obstacles to progress.

• By the 1880s the Argentine economy was being transformed by the growing demands of European consumers for meat and grain

• modernization and expansion came with the high cost because this technology often increased dependence on foreign capital.

  • • Argentina had had abundant livestock herds since the colonial period, the distance from Europe’s markets prevented Argentine cattle raisers from exporting fresh meat or live animals

      • • Technology overcame these obstacles. The combination of railroads and the telegraph lowered freight costs and improved information about markets.

        • Steamships shortened trans-Atlantic crossings. Refrigerated ships made it possible to sell meat in the markets of Europe

    • government promoted railroads by granting tax benefits, free land, and monopoly rights to both domestic and foreign investors

    • In Argentina the railroad, the telegraph, barbed wire, and refrigeration all appeared in the 1870s and 1880s

• As land values rose and livestock breeding improved, new investments were protected by barbed wire, the first inexpensive fencing available on the nearly treeless plains of the Argentine pampas.

§ Diamonds from Africa

• large mineral deposits in South Africa discovered by the British

  • • 1867 - diamonds

      • • Cecil Rhodes (1853–1902), who once declared that he would “annex the stars” if he could

        • Rhodes made his fortune in the Kimberley diamond fields, founding De Beers Consolidated, a company that has dominated the world’s diamond trade ever since

        • He encouraged a concession company, the British South Africa Company, to push north into Central Africa, where he named two new colonies after himself: Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia)

          • • The Ndebele and Shona peoples, who inhabited the region, resisted this invasion, but the machine guns of the British finally defeated them

    • 1886 - gold

    • Result:

      • • The influx of thousands of British miners and prospectors led to tensions between British authorities and Afrikaners (Dutch), culminating in the South African War (1899–1902; sometimes called the Boer War)

        • the brutal conflict pitted whites against whites, it also took a large toll on black Africans, who served both sides as soldiers and laborers

          • • The internment of 100,000 black Africans in British concentration camps left more than 10,000 dead

        • The Afrikaners conceded defeat in 1902, and by 1910 the British government had reconstituted the four former colonies as provinces in the Union of South Africa, a largely autonomous British dominion

Download the file “6.4 & 6.5 Homework” from the Google link.

For this DBQ:

1.) Write a thesis paragraph that has a minimum of THREE distinct claims that each applies a Historical Reasoning Skill.

2.) write a minimum of THREE sentences of contextualization.

3.) Then come up with TWO pieces of outside evidence that would be relevant to TWO claim (one outside information per claim).

• Each example of outside information must be at least TWO sentences long and directly support the claim you establish.

Prompt: Evaluate the extent to which railroads affected the process of empire-building in Afro-Eurasia between 1860 and 1918.

Document 1

Source: Petition in English to the British colonial government of India from the British-Indian Association, an organization consisting of high-caste Indians, 1866.

Railway travel for [Indian] natives has for a long time been full of the most bitter and serious grievances. The miseries suffered equal the horrors of the ‘middle passage.’ We would beg to draw your attention to the bad treatment of native passengers, with no distinctions being made between them. Indiscriminate abuse is lavished freely without regard to differences in rank and social scale. Passengers have often been struck and otherwise treated with great indignity.

Passengers traveling in second class are not even allowed to get to the platform, but are made to herd with the masses outside. We would like to emphasize the painful fact that the most respectable natives are liable to personal ill-treatment and loss from their European fellow passengers in the second-class carriages. Native gentlemen of birth and respectability, in striving to avoid the large crowds to be found in third-class carriages, find themselves even worse off in a second-class seat. In a variety of ways attempts are incessantly made to degrade and insult second-class passengers. We want to draw attention here to the present impossibility of native ladies of respectable birth and breeding taking advantage of railways. The honor of our wives and families is very dear and sacred to us, and the advent of the railway has cut off old modes of transit without providing adequate ones for respectable women.

Document 2

Source: Shen Baozhen, Qing dynasty official and advocate of domestic reforms, memorandum to the Qing court, 1867.

What shall we do about telegraphs and railroads? The Qin dynasty built the Great Wall, and at the time it was considered a disaster, but later generations relied on it. If telegraphs and railroads are built, China will likewise enjoy great benefits from them in the future. Moreover, as the work of constructing them is enormous, it will be quite beneficial to the poor people now. However, although the foreigners plead with the Court to conclude a formal treaty permitting them to begin this work, this absolutely must not be done. Perhaps the government could give its generous permission, but only if the Western [interests] can devise a plan that would guarantee that no arable fields, houses, and ancestral graves would be harmed in the least. Otherwise, permission should decidedly not be given.

Document 3

Source: Ottoman government report concerning a proposal to build a railway from Damascus to Mecca, 1893.

Unless an alternative way, other than the Suez Canal controlled by the British, is found to connect the holy cities [of Mecca and Medina] to the rest of the empire, the Red Sea coast of Arabia might fall prey to the evils of those who strive to overthrow the very foundations of the caliphate.* At present, Muslims going on pilgrimage must either use foreign ships, where they are subjected to humiliation, or travel by camel, a very challenging journey through months of drought. It has become necessary to construct a railway in this region, both to solve these problems and to show the power of the caliph. The railway has to be built solely by Muslim involvement, by obtaining a huge amount of finance from the Islamic world and recruiting Muslim engineers in its construction. Our sultan must personally lead this highly significant undertaking. Muslims across the world hold our sultan in very high regard; therefore people of political and economic influence will not hesitate to allocate some of their assets to this cause when they see our sultan personally leading the initiative. *The Ottoman sultan claimed the title of caliph of all Muslims.

Document 4

Source: Ernest Roume, governor of French West Africa, speech delivered before the colonial administrative council, Dakar, 1904.

We wish to truly open up to civilization the immense regions that the foresight of our statesmen and the bravery of our soldiers and explorers have passed down to us. The necessary condition for achieving this goal is the creation of lines of penetration, a perfected means of transportation to make up for the absence of natural means of communication that has kept this country in poverty and barbarism. True economic activity cannot even be conceived without railroads. It is, therefore, our duty as a civilized nation to take those steps that nature itself imposes and that are the only effective ones. It is now everyone’s conviction that no material or moral progress is possible in our African colonies without railroads.

Document 5

Source: “The Cape to Cairo Railway, and Rhodes’* Gigantic Proposal,” article illustration from the Auckland Weekly News, a newspaper published in British New Zealand, 1899.

• see google doc for image

Key Takeaways

A.) imperialism impacted states that were not directly taken over

• Regions were dragged into the global economy whether they want to be or not

B.) Industrialists are on the hunt for:

• natural resources

• food for urban areas

• markets for finished goods

Make sure to understand the relationship between industrialization, urbanization, and imperialism!