Imperialism in Asia (1830-1900)
By the
Summary
Europe's scramble for Africa did not leave South
and East Asia at peace. Beginning in the
seventeenth century, Great Britain formed and
maintained an economic relationship with India.
By the end of the eighteenth century, British
rule of India was firmly planted and London
came to view India as the jewel of its empire.
This view guided its foreign policy. For decades,
Britain used its military victories and naval
superiority to ensure uninterrupted routes to
India and beyond, hence its island holdings in
the Mediterranean, along the west African
coast, at the southern tip of Africa, and, most
importantly, the Suez Canal. By the end of the
eighteenth century, Indo-British economic ties
were so entrenched in a neo-mercantile system
that India provided a stepping stone for British
trade with China. Britain traded English wool
and Indian cotton for Chinese tea and textiles;
however, as Chinese demand slackened, Britain
sought other means of attracting trade with
China.
By the 1830s, Britain realized it could make up
the trade deficit with China by selling Indian
opium into the Chinese market, making opium
Britain's most profitable and important crop in
world markets. Eventually, opium poured into
China faster than tea poured into British hands;
soon, Chinese merchants, already addicted
themselves and buying for an addicted
population, paid British opium traders in pure
silver.
Concerned with the sharp rise in opium
addiction and the associated social costs and
rise in criminal acts, the Chinese government,
led by the aging Manchu dynasty, took action
against the British. In 1839, the Chinese
destroyed British opium in the port city of
Canton, sparking the Opium Wars of 1839-
1842. Easily dominating the backward Chinese
forces, the British expeditionary force
blockaded Chinese ports, occupied Shanghai,
and took complete control of Canton. The 1842
Treaty of Nanking granted Britain extensive
trading and commercial rights in China, marking
the first in a series of unequal treaties between
China and European imperial powers.
end of the century, after five wars between
China and various European powers, France,
Britain, Germany, Japan, and Russia held
territorial and commercial advantages in their
respective spheres of influence. These spheres
of influence comprised territories, ports,
shipping lines, rivers, et cetera in which one
nation held exclusive rights to profits and
investment. In 1899, the United States, freshly
anointed as an inernational force by its crushing
victory over Spain in the 1898 Spanish-American
War, objected to the prevalence of spheres of
influence. The US advocated and pushed
through a new Open Door Policy, an effectively
imperial policy that demanded that all nations
be given equal and complete rights to Chinese
markets.
In addition, and most irritating to the Chinese,
Europeans maintained extraterritoriality inside
thousands of Chinese port cities.
Extraterritoriality meant that foreigners were
exempt from Chinese law enforcement and
that, though on Chinese land, they could only
be judged and tried by officials of their own
nation who generally looked the other way
when profit was the goal. The resulting
lawlessness on the part of the Europeans,
combined with the actuality of European
economic, political, and military domination of
the Chinese, contributed to a virulent anti-
imperial sentiment. In 1900, the Boxer
Rebellion saw that sentiment explode into mass
social unrest and war. With secret
encouragement from the Chinese empress, the
Boxers, dedicated to ending foreign exploitation
in north China, killed scores of European and
seized the large foreign legation in Beijing.
Reacting immediately, an international
expeditionary force of Japanese, Russian,
British, American, German, French, Austrian,
and Italian troops put down the revolt and
sacked Beijing to protect the interests of their
respective countries. Afterward, the European
powers propped up a weak central government
for their own economic benefit.
Beyond China, European imperialism in Asia
remained strong. Britain moved into Hong Kong
in 1842, into Burma in 1886, and into Kowloon
in 1898. France took direct control over the
provinces of Indochina--Annam, Tonkin, and
Cochinchina (which together make up modern
day Vietnam), Laos, and Cambodia.
Commentary
What were the effects of the European imperial
adventure? Some look at the world today
through an economic lens and see both great
successes and great disasters that emerged
from the imperial era: some primitive nations
received the necessary infrastructure to
develop, as the successful capitalist states in
east Asia seem to suggest, while others were
destroyed by economic and social exploitation,
as the countries of Africa seem to suggest.
However, we are looking in the very long run.
Let us consider a few contemporaneous
consequences of imperialism for European and
world society.
An interdependent world economy developed
with Europe at its center. Colonies provided
necessary raw materials for the advanced
industrial production in European factory
centers such as London, Manchester, and
Berlin. Capital flowed out of the wealthy
nations of Western Europe and into colonial
areas to support projects that required heavy
capital investment and promised strong returns,
such as railroad construction, industrial
development, et cetera. London became the
financial center of the world, serving as a
clearing-house for billions of dollars worth of
world-wide investment. Capital became fluid
throughout the world, loans were extended for
the long run, domestic stock markets
skyrocketed and, depending upon the extent of
empire, remained somewhat insulated from the
boom and bust cycles of late nineteenth
century capitalism.
Barely a handful of countries, outside of the
western hemisphere, remained independent.
Ethiopia, Siam, and Liberia were three
conspicuously colorless locations on a world
map tinted with imperial ink. Europe was at the
epicenter of political domination of the world
due to its imperial successes. It could leverage
trade, strategic bases, and access to necessary
waterways in order to achieve diplomatic
success.
The dark side of imperialism, the arguments for
cultural and racial superiority of the European
peoples, were common throughout the imperial
world. Rudyard Kipling, writing about the
American imperial venture in the Philippines,
spoke of a "White Man's burden" to civilize,
improve, and educate the native populations
that was in large part based on the social
Darwinism advanced by Herbert
Spencer's Social Statics.
The ecological effects of imperialism were
mixed throughout the world. Imperialism led to
the dislocation of thousands of small societies--
especially in Africa--when the Europeans drew
haphazard and illogical lines on the colonial
maps. Industrial development disturbed the
pristine environment of previously undamaged
territories, the traditional societies were
replaced by European businessmen and
investors. While slavery had gone out of favor
some time ago, African and Asian men and
women were viewed as cheap labor for
European factories; therefore, slavery
conditions persisted.
On an intellectual level, the rapid proliferation
of empire in the late nineteenth century
contributed to a growing critique of capitalism
from the Marxist left. In, 1916, Vladimir I. Lenin,
the revolutionary communist leader in Russia,
argued in his pamphlet Imperialism, the Highest
Stage of Capitalism that capitalist states
required vast empires to maintain enough
markets with whom to trade. This, in turn,
contributed to the exploitation of native
populations and, as capitalist investors brought
industry to the empire, the awakening of the
native workers to their destiny under the
Marxist scheme of economic development.
With workers of the world--from Europe to the
farthest reaches of the empire--then united
against capitalism, socialism will follow after
imperialism.