Professional Documents
Culture Documents
The Birth of the Liberal Empire European Expansion in Mid-Century The New Imperialism, 1870-1914 Imperialism at its Peak
Sunday, March 4, 12
Guiding Questions: European colonial rule changed the face of much of the non-Western world during the nineteenth century. How did the imperial experience affect European identity? European colonialism caused immense suffering among subject peoples. Did any segments of colonized societies benet from colonial rule? In what ways did Europeans themselves contribute to the eventual downfall of their empires?
Sunday, March 4, 12
Sunday, March 4, 12
Europeans lost their Atlantic empires and built new ones in Asia and Africa The expansionism of this period had its economic foundation in the growth of a capitalist market economy and its philosophical roots in the Enlightenment culture of liberal universalism New sources of raw materials and new markets for their industrial manufactures as an opportunity to civilize the non-Western world
Sunday, March 4, 12
The Decline of the Mercantile Colonial World The threat to empire came primarily in the form of independence movements and slave revolts and the gradual rise of a market economy
Sunday, March 4, 12
External Challenges Independence movements drove European colonial powers from much of the New World Slave agitation constituted a central part of the assault on the mercantile colonial world Haitian Revolution in the French colony of SaintDomingue in 1791
Sunday, March 4, 12
Secular reformers joined forces with religious abolitionists John Lockeshaped arguments mounted against slavery by Enlightenment humanists Enlightenment universalism, or belief in the basic sameness of all humans, undermined the acceptance of slavery and allowed eighteenth century thinkers to link oppressed Africans to the disenfranchised poor of Europe
Sunday, March 4, 12
Equality before the law clashed deeply with the concept of human bondage The new Western sentiment cast the slave as innocent victim and the civilized European as heroic savior Elite women and men of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century joined abolitionist circles and signed antislavery petitions
Sunday, March 4, 12
New Sources of Colonial Legitimacy The Growth of the Market Economy New economic rationale to empire From 1830 to 1870, European nation-states competed with one another for spheres of economic inuence abroad
Sunday, March 4, 12
Enlightenment Universalism
Liberal empire had roots in Enlightenment theories of human biological and cultural sameness and belief in human improvement through the application of reason to social reform Enlightened Europeans posited that all societies developed along a similar path and could be guided and accelerated
Sunday, March 4, 12
Cultural Relativism Cultural relativism exalted New World societies as models of virtue and freedom for a decadent Europe European cultural relativists still insisted on their own supremacy, even while acknowledging the achievements of other cultures
Sunday, March 4, 12
Assimilation to a European way of life had occurred largely as an unintended consequence of missionary efforts to impart Christian faith to New World peoples universalism had humanized the colonial subject Assimilation became a moral imperative and colonial domination became the ideal means to achieve this end
Sunday, March 4, 12
The Civilizing Mission in India India was the laboratory in which Britain conducted its most ambitious civilizing experiments They sought to stamp out Indian superstition and eradicating the barbaric Indian laws and customs such as Sati British civilizing efforts came to an abrupt halt with the Indian Rebellion of 1857
Sunday, March 4, 12
Sunday, March 4, 12
Europeans acted to protect their economic interests in new, more assertive ways This intensication was driven primarily by industrialization
Sunday, March 4, 12
Sunday, March 4, 12
The British conquest thus transformed the Indian economy into a closed system, forcing India through taxation to effectively give away its exports to Britain and serving its independent trade connections with the outside world India is transformed into a supplier of war materials for British textile mills as well as a major market for British manufactures
Sunday, March 4, 12
The Ottoman Empire The empire was still vast and its power had declined sharply from its peak point in the 16th century The ambitions of provincial governors were challenging the authority of the Sultan, Mahmud II Administrative, legal, and technological Westernization Tanzimat (reorganization)
Sunday, March 4, 12
China
Qing Dynasty, members of the foreign Manchu minority who had ruled China since the midseventeenth century They hand no interest in European manufactures Opium smoking became an entrenched practice at all levels of Chinese society and was exploited by Britain The Opium War (1840-42) and the Second Opium War (1856-58) Taiping Rebellion of 1850-64
Sunday, March 4, 12
Missionaries and Explorers Abolitionist evangelicals seeking to end slavery in Africa They strove not merely to save souls, as their early modern predecessors had, but to Europeanize natives David Livingstone and Henry Stanley
Sunday, March 4, 12
Sunday, March 4, 12