11 IMPERIALISM

Revised June 2010

From Greenland’s Icy Mountains, a favorite 19th century hymn in Protestant churches, sometimes called “the Missionary Hymn:”

From Greenland’s icy mountains, from India’s coral strand,

Where Afric’s sunny fountains roll down their golden sand;

From many an ancient river, from many a palmy plain,

They call us to deliver their land from error’s chain.

What though the spicy breezes blow soft o’er Ceylon’s isle

Though every prospect pleases and only man is vile;

In vain with lavish kindness the gifts of God are strown;

The heathen in his blindness rows down to wood and stone.

Can we whose souls are lighted with wisdom from on high;

Can we to men benighted the lamp of life deny?

Salvation O Salvation! The joyful sound proclaim,

‘Till each remotest nation has learnt Messiah’s name.

Waft, waft ye winds, His story, and you ye waters roll;

‘Till like a sea of glory, it spread s from pole to pole.

“Till o’er our ransomed nature, the lamb for sinners slain;

Redeemer, King, Creator in bliss returns to reign.

This was what Saunders would call an old standard hymn. He remembers singing it in the Lutheran church when he was a kid. It has gone distinctly out of fashion. It isn’t in most hymnals any more, at least not the mainline churches; some of the more retro churches may still hang on to it. It sums up the state of the Western mind of the mid-19th century, that it was the West’s destiny (that is white peoples’ destiny) to dominate the earth, to spread their culture (including their religion) to light all souls “with wisdom from on high.”

We venture now into European IMPERIALISM. Keep the imperial hymn in your mind.

OVERVIEW

In the 19th century, despite having lost the United States, Britain would build the most sprawling empire the world had ever seen. That little island would control territory on every continent and dominate every ocean. In the next part of this unit, you meet France, Germany, Belgium and the United States who eventually got in on the New Imperialism, but when it came to imperialism, the British Empire was always the grandest.

You met empires in the first part of the course when Europeans along the Atlantic Coast sailed off mostly to the New World to make money—in spices, sugar, furs, fish, and gold. These were the MERCANTILE EMPIRES. They lived on through the era of the New Imperialism mostly as money-losing backwaters (except for the Dutch East Indies which remained profitable and would incorporate some of the features of the New Imperialism as well as the “old.”)

In this unit, you will meet two other kinds of empires. The first—we call them the OLD DOMINIONS—were places where Europeans went to make a new permanent home. What had begun with the 13 English colonies that became the United States continued in other places around the globe and culminated in the creation of Britain’s DOMINIONS—Canada, Australia and New Zealand and (with an asterisk) South Africa.

But the third kind of empire in this period was the NEW IMPERIALISM. It was something different—for the most part not a quest for resources or profits and not a place for Europeans to settle. It was driven by a complex mix of nationalism, a personal quest for adventure, by a missionary impulse and by great power rivalries. The British RAJ in INDIA was the most important example of these forces at work. The states that devolved from it—India, Pakistan and Bangladesh—are the second, sixth and seventh most populous countries on earth, so this is pretty important.

The story of the British Empire should be of more than passing interest to Americans. Indeed, it ought to ring some alarm bells. As the 20th century began the British Empire was at his peak of greatness, the greatest empire on earth and it certainly seemed like it would last forever. But it didn’t. It is gone now. Hong Kong, which was returned to China in 1997, was the last significant piece. Now all that is left are a few island rock piles—St. Helena, Pitcairn, the Falklands, South Georgia. Britain receded from imperial greatness with considerable dignity, lowering its own flags amid great pomp and ceremony and its legacy lives on in the British Commonwealth, a rather odd transnational organization to which countries that weren’t even a part of the empire want in. Great powers and great empires come and go. The United States is the world’s supreme power now. Saunders thinks it is not likely it will be an exception to history and will fade just like Britain. Just like Britain in 1900, it doesn’t manufacture much anymore and he thinks real wealth and real power derive from making real things. Whether you agree or not, the question is on the table and just because Sarah Palin and the Texas School Board insist America is EXCEPTIONAL, that doesn’t make it so.

Let’s start with some amazing statistics. In the 19th century, Europe exported capital (money) and people at a phenomenal rate unprecedented in all history. The number of people was the product of a falling death rate—people lived longer thanks to new medicine and sanitation, and a rising birth rate—new industrial wealth meant people could afford larger families. In today’s American and European consumer societies we want more stuff—boats & plasma TVs. Families are getting smaller—many adults opting not to be bothered with kids at all. In the 19th century, they wanted more children, but the economy could not absorb them all so they left Europe:

34 million to USA

15 million to Latin America

7 million to Asiatic Russia (Siberia)

5 million to Canada

4 million to Australia & New Zealand

2 million to South Africa

The study of this emigration (or immigration if you are studying it from the viewpoint of people coming into a country) includes some fascinating social and cultural history. Those going to Latin America were mostly Italians going to Argentina. The emigration to Siberia was mostly Russians going to make new homes on the frontier much in the way Americans went west. Those going to Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa were mostly British. (In South Africa, they would meet a tribe of white people who were already there—the Dutch Afrikaners. Their story later.) Those going to Canada in those years were mostly from the British Isles including Ireland. Those going to the USA were largely English and Scots up to the 1840s, largely Irish and German in the period 1848-1870, and mostly from southern and eastern Europe up to World War I—Italians, Greeks, Poles, Russians (mostly Russian Jews), Hungarians, Slovaks, and Armenians.

This was a movement of people, a folk movement, that sent white people flooding all over the globe and left big holes in the European villages from which they came, as most of them were young, leaving nothing but old folks in dying villages of old Europe. Change of this magnitude is not easy on anyone, neither for those gaining the population, those losing it, or those who are doing the migrating. Needless to say, movement of this magnitude had political and economic repercussions, and represented millions of often gut-wrenching personal stories. Unfortunately, we cannot pause any longer over them.

There was also an enormous export of capital. This was a product of industrial wealth. Industrialization made Europe so rich it could afford to send buckets of money overseas. Most of this was PRIVATE INVESTMENT done by individual British or French investors and they did it in the hopes of making money off these investments. Sometimes they did, sometimes they lost it all. In 1890 British pounds sterling, this amounted to:

10 billion to Asia and Africa

10 billion to USA and Canada

6 billion to Latin America

4 billion to Russia

2 billion to Austria-Hungary

1 billion to the Ottoman Empire

Multiply those numbers by about 60 to get today’s U.S. dollars.

The money going to the USA and Canada came mostly from Britain. North American railroads and steel industries were built much sooner than they could have been without this investment. Americans like to think they did it all themselves, but they didn’t; they had a lot of help from British investors. Many of those early railroads were overbuilt and undercapitalized and went bankrupt, and British investors were told to go take a hike. Somehow they kept coming back for more. Investment inLatin America was mostly British investment in Argentina and Chile, later some American investment in Brazil. Investment in Asia and Africa came from the British, French, Dutch, Belgians and Germans, with some from Italians. Investment in the Russian and Austro-Hungarian Empires was mostly French. Investment in theOttoman Empire was mostly French and British up to 1896, mostly German thereafter.

So this is the moment promised in the first part of the course (with the rise of science) when Western Civilization became so rich and so powerful it could envelop the globe and leave its footprint everywhere—for better or for worse. There were upsides and downsides. Your job will be to sort them out.

THE ECONOMIC EMPIRE

British money and influence poured into a few areas that never became part of the formal empire—of enormous importance to Britain but the Union Jack didn’t fly there. These areas were full of British businessmen and engineers however and were a lot more important to British wealth and power than many of the money-losing colonies where the Union Jack did fly. One of these, by the mid 19th century, was the ARGENTINE PAMPAS, the fertile grain growing and mostly cattle-raising plains south and west of BUENOS AIRES. The British built the Argentine railroad system to get the grain and the beef out. After oil was discovered in PERSIA (now called IRAN) in 1908, it was developed by the Anglo-Persian Oil Co., later the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co., known to you today as BP (for British Petroleum). But Iran never became a formal British colony.

THE BRITISH DOMINIONS

Some of these overseas possessions became a destination for white settlers (SETTLER COLONIES) whose purpose was to create a new permanent life for settlers and their families and who intended to make this their permanent home. These places were mostly British and included Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa (although that was a more complex situation), and late in the 19th century, Southern Rhodesia and Kenya in Africa. The French had one settler colony, Algeriain North Africa, across the Mediterranean from France. In all these places, white people met, mingled with and eventually displaced native people from their land, the identical process that caused the Americans to fight and displace Native Americans described in the last unit. These conflicts worked out differently in different places usually depending on the number of Europeans arriving versus the number of natives displaced. The large British settler colonies—Canada, Australia and New Zealand—eventually developed their own government, were granted full independence by Britain although they chose to retain the British monarch as their own symbol of state, and were called the

THE OLD DOMINIONS: CANADA

Canada was pieced together by those British subjects living in North America—some of them American Loyalists and English-speaking and some of them inhabitants of the former New France (Quebec) and French-speaking. “Canada” was a geographical concept that was created in this process of stringing together different colonies established for different purposes. There were NOVA SCOTIA, Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick along the Atlantic, all of them established in the mercantile age with an economy based largely on fish, with a heavy influx of American loyalists in New Brunswick. (NEWFOUNDLAND, a large island on Canada’s east coast, Britain’s first colony, rich in codfish, one of the world’s great protein resources, remained an independent colony until it reluctantly voted to join Canada in 1949).There was French QUEBEC with the thriving metropolis of MONTREAL. You already know its story. There was “Upper Canada” that would become ONTARIO, along the north shore of Lake Ontario, with its large settlement of American loyalists at York which would become TORONTO. On the West Coast, 3000 miles away, that was the old British fur-trading post in BRITISH COLUMBIA with a thriving port at VANCOUVER. There wasn’t much in between. For 1500 miles north of Toronto, across the tops of Lakes Huron and Superior, is forest that remains mostly uninhabited to this day. (Road signs even today on the one road across the region, the Trans-Canada Highway, warn you to check your gas—next gas 212 kilometers (130 miles). West of the forest are the plains, across the provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. These would become one the greatest wheat-growing areas in the world and would make Canada the world’s second largest food exporter (after the United States). But Canadian wheat had to wait until late in the 19th century a) for hybrid wheat that would mature in a shorter growing season and b) railroads to transport it out.

Britain and the United States agreed on their border in 1846, “British North America” was all the territory north of the Great Lakes in the east and the 49th parallel in the west. But the border was a very fluid thing; there were no fences. There was nobody to enforce it. The Americans were an exceptionally dynamic force sprawling out onto the prairies. That provided some of the impetus to unite these scattered British holdings into a new nation that would have the institutional strength to halt American expansion. Ontario and Quebec, which are the twin hearts of Canada to this day, reached a general agreement on “confederation”—not a tight union like American federalism, but a looser association of PROVINCES. The Maritime Provinces on the Atlantic would join only if a railroad was built to link them to Montreal (the Intercolonial Railway, now a part of Canadian National). British Columbia also required a railroad linkage, hence the construction of the CANADIAN PACIFIC RAILWAY, yet another of those imperial railroads whose original purpose was not so much economic but to lay claim to land. (You’ve already met the American’s Union Pacific and Russia’s Trans-Siberian.) The Canadian Pacific, known in Canada as the CPR, was an engineering feat, completed in 1883. As you scrolled down on this website, you passed a picture that Saunders took of modern freight trains in Kicking Horse Canyon in the Canadian Rockies along the CPR, although some of its most difficult engineering was north of Lake Superior crossing that empty rock-bound forest known as the Canadian Shield. It opened up vast wheat lands of the Canadian prairies that fed the factory workers of Britain. It is today one of the busiest railroads in the world (and very profitable). In fact it was so successful Canada plunged into an orgy of railroad construction, completing two more transcontinental lines, now both part of the Canadian National Railways which is today the world’s single most profitable railroad and with routes not only across Canada but also to Chicago, St Louis, Memphis, Jackson (Mississippi) and New Orleans.

In the American Civil War, Britain came very close to recognizing the Southern Confederacy, and York (Toronto) was seething with Confederate agents hoping to make a British alliance a reality. If Britain had gone to war against the United States, the battleground would have shifted from Northern Virginia to the Great Lakes.Britain went so far as to dispatch reinforcements into Canada, and to this day, there are huge armories at Buffalo and Detroit, the borders with the Empire (used today for National Guard training and high school dances). In the wake of that, a strengthened union of these British holdings seemed urgent as a hedge against American encroachments. The various British colonies sent representatives to a meeting at Charlottetown on Prince Edward Island in 1864, beginning the process that culminated in CONFEDERATION. George Etienne Cartier of Quebec and SIR JOHN A. MacDONALD of Ontario led the Confederation movement.

THE DOMINION OF CANADA was created by the BRITISH NORTH AMERICA ACT in 1867. The BNA (an act of the British Parliament) became the new country’s constitution. It granted what was called DOMINION STATUS, meaning self government for all internal affairs, but foreign and military affairs were still controlled from London. A new capital was chosen between the two biggest cities of Montreal and Toronto known as OTTAWA. (Know it.) Canada’s government was modeled on the British, with two-houses of parliament—the House of Commons and the Senate (whose members are appointed). A prime minister (who is the leader of the party with the majority in the House of Commons) serves as the chief executive officer. A governor general appointed by the British government is the king’s (or queen’s) personal representative, today a figurehead function. English-speaking Canadians wrapped themselves in the mysteries of the monarchy mainly to prove to Americans they were not “junior Americans” but part of the world’s largest empire. The importance of the monarchy has faded dramatically in modern Canada. French Canadians were conservative Catholics who had little in common with post-Revolutionary France and were content to live under the British monarchy so long as they could keep their culture and their language. They were co-founding members of the Confederation and did not regard themselves as junior members, or special members, but full-fledged members, period. The British tossed into the original package its huge claims to the Arctic. These were rather dubious claims since there was no permanent European settlement in these remote areas where polar bears outnumber people. Canada tamed her west with more order than the Americans in their cowboy & gunslinger age, order kept by the ROYAL CANADIAN MOUNTED POLICE. In contrast to America’s motto of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” Canada’s guiding principle was always “peace, order and good government,” a contrast that tells a great deal about both countries. Complete independence (including an independent foreign policy) was affirmed by the STATUTE OF WESTMINSTER in 1931, although by that time Canada was effectively independent of Britain on all matters.

For many English, Scottish and Irish working class families, Canada became a dream of a new life and new opportunity. Better off English people chuckled at it like it was a bad joke—it was called the “empire’s refrigerator,” a land for n’er-do-wells who were trying recycle their miserable lives. But for those who came, it was a drop-dead gorgeous land without the cruel restraints of class snobbery. In the 20th century, plenty of others besides British came to Canada from all over the world and created a country as dynamic as the U.S. though on a smaller scale (39 million Canadians vs. 300 million Americans). Canadian culture is heavily shaped by U.S.advertising, U.S. television, U.S. movies, U.S. music, although as the U.S. grew more stridently conservative in the early 21st century, the two country’s paths parted dramatically. Canadians generally are appalled at the conservative turn the U.S. has taken in recent years and have determined to carve out a separate and more humane path for themselves with less division between rich and poor. (For example, if you say you believe in freedom, say Canadians, let people actually be free to define themselves as they wish, pointedly on issues such as marijuana use and gay marriage). Americans are still welcome in Canada, but the welcome is a lot less warm than it was even a few years ago.

AUSTRALIA

The big, empty sub-continent in the South Pacific known as Australia became an even more dynamic destination for British working class families dreaming of a new life on a frontier where individuals could truly measure themselves against other individuals. Australia was hot, not cold like Canada, and largely desert, not largely forest like Canada. Its original European settlers, beginning in 1788, were prisoners, men “SENTENCED TO TRANSPORTATION” in the days of the original enclosures in England when they were driven from the land as vagrants. They were sent (without their families) to BOTANY BAY, now SYDNEY. Other settlements came later—Western Australia in 1824, South Australia (1834) and VICTORIA (the city of MELBOURNE) in 1851, both as commercial enterprises. The Australian colonies were widely separated from each other and built rail lines to connect with their own hinterlands, not with each other (and built them to different widths (or gauges) to be sure no other colony encroached on its commerce).

In discussing the United States, Canada and Australia, we have to talk about the dispossession of the original inhabitants. The land was not empty just waiting to be occupied as though it were the Garden of Eden. Of all those places, the ABORIGINES of Australia had probably the roughest lot. Nearly a quarter of them died from disease within weeks of the white’s arrival. Since they used land communally, in Europeans eyes they were nomads who had no land and therefore not entitled to land ownership. They were chased off their land and thus rendered unable to provide for themselves. Then they were massacred. The U.S. Canada and Australia have all tried to make amends for what they did to these people in the 19th century, to mixed success. It happened. It is impossible to re-write history. It will remain forever a blot on all three countries. Regarding another aspect of racism in Australia, in 1888 the British Privy Council agreed to an Australian request to exclude Chinese from immigration to Australia, the policy meant to retain and all-white Australia.

As in Canada, the desire for union and for independence came from within Australia.

It was achieved January 1, 1901 over great reservation on the part of the separate colonies that would now become states. The new country was called the COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA with a government built on a combination of the Canadian and American models. A capital was to be built at a neutral site, neither Sydney nor Melbourne, eventually CANBERRA. Like Canada, Australia became a vision of a new life, new opportunity for many a British working class stiff who longed for freedom and adventure. The ROMANTIC spirit of adventure, the craving for something more than a hum-drum life, looms large in the settlement of all these British dominions. There were wild places to be tamed, railroads to be built, and lives to build with one’s own hands. It was a near-spiritual call to a life of adventure. Australia developed its own strong sense of national identity, a testosterone-driven culture of which the song Waltzing Matilda became its symbol, recognized the world over.

NEW ZEALAND was a thousand miles east of Australia in the South Pacific Ocean, consisting of two large islands and one small one. It did not have the vast desert expanses of Australia, but it had high craggy mountains rising out of the sea, an incredibly gorgeous place to live. British missionaries arrived in 1814 to minister to the MAORI, New Zealand natives, a Polynesian people. The Maori presence is much more obvious in modern New Zealand than the Indian presence in North America or the Aboriginal presence in Australia. The first permanent white settlers came in 1840 following the signing of the TREATY OF WAITANGI with the Maori chiefs, and a capital established at Auckland. There would be two wars with the Maori across the 19th century. New Zealand produced meat and diary products for Britain and became an especially vital link in food supplies for the mother country. Full “dominion status” came in 1907 with a new capital at WELLINGTON. Complete independence came with the Treaty of Westminster of 1931, the same time as it did for Canada and Australia. All continued to recognize the British monarch as their monarch, but as having no more real authority in their affairs than the monarch does in Britain itself. The term “British Commonwealth began to be used in the 1920s referring to Britain and all its dominions. A formal organization, the BRITISH COMMONWEALTH OF NATIONS, was formed in 1947.

SOUTH AFRICA also became a dominion as the UNION OF SOUTH AFRICA, but its story is special and we will tell it later.

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NEW IMPERIALISM

The story of the dominions is similar to the story of the United States—European settlements that eventually matured into self governing countries with their own sense of national identity. The differences were a) they did not have quite the vast amount of rich land and resources as the U.S. and thus remained proportionally smaller, 2) they never broke decisively with Britain the way the U.S. did, but instead retained the bond of the monarchy and a genuine affection for the mother country, and 3) their settlement was fueled somewhat more by the 19th century’s romantic quest for adventure and somewhat less by a pure money-making ideal.

The “NEW IMPERIALISM” that was a phenomenon of the LATE 19th century was different. Europeans laid claim to lands with old, often dense populations that could not be displaced for European settlements the way North America or the Australian Outback was. Europeans would go as soldiers, missionaries, civil servants, construction engineers, sometimes as merchants, but never with the idea of owning land and making this their permanent home (although some who went as soldiers or civil servants fell in love with the place they were posted to and remained there most of their life).

You should recall from the first part of the course that empires were not a brand new idea in the 19th century. The 16th and 17th centuries had seen the creation of the MERCANTILE EMPIRES that included the spice colonies of Southeast Asia, particularly the DUTCH EAST INDIES, the SUGAR COLONIES of theCaribbean, the FUR COLONIES of the Canadian Arctic, and had included the THIRTEEN AMERICAN COLONIES until they won their independence. Those colonies had been established for purposes of TRADE and MAKING MONEY, part of the interest in trade that followed the discovery of the New World. In the 19th century, the Europeans still held those possessions (and the Americans became part of the Western World as an independent nation). The fur trade was dying. The sugar colonies had become money-losing backwaters populated mostly by former slaves. The spice trade was still thriving, although the Dutch East Indies had lots of other resources, notably wood for a Europe that did not have a lot of available wood (and then oil was discovered late in the 19th century, where Royal Dutch Shell gets much of its oil).

1. MERCANTILE INTERESTS continued in the 19th century. There were resources or commodities to exploit. There were railroads to build, and that meant big orders to the British steel makers and the North British Locomotive Works. Railroads were built first to get out the resources the Europeans wanted and only secondarily to connect places where native people might want to travel or create a healthy internal economy. The STEAMSHIP companies made out like bandits ferrying people and goods back and forth. Early in the 20th century, British historian J.A. HOBSON asserted economics was the main reason for imperialism. Hobson was far from the last word on the subject and is largely debunked today.

Why? By and large, the new colonies of the 19th century LOST MONEY, even if some private fortunes were made. Colonies required a big navy to keep the sea lanes open. They required an army stationed in the colony to keep order and protect European’s property. There was a civil service to administer the colony—that cost a lot of money. All these expenses were borne by the government and therefore came out of the taxpayers’ pockets. When you balance the total cost of these economies with the revenues that came in, they were mostly not profitable. So PROFIT was not the motive for the New Imperialism, or at least it was only one of several motives and not necessarily at the top. But sometimes economic considerations and non-economic ones overlap and intermingle. For example, building imperial railroads meant money and jobs for some. And blasting those railroad lines across deserts and mountain passes, protecting construction crews from lion attack, etc, leads us to our next imperial motive—ADVENTURE.

2. The Spirit of ADVENTURE is a large part of the New Imperialism. It’s not as if nobody ever had adventures before, but the 19th century had a special fondness for it. This is a pet thesis of Saunders: what reason was to the 18th century, adventure was to the 19th century. Adventures can be scientific, they can be industrial, but they are also the old-fashioned ones of going to exotic places, surviving all kind of dangers, emerging a hero and coming back to tell everyone about it. In the 19th century, a newly-literate European population devoured tales of exotic places and great dangers. They were thrilled. We are still thrilled by it even if we never do it ourselves.

Some of the adventure of the 19th century was military in nature. It was a call of manhood—girls were generally not invited, so a good bit of homo-eroticism is in play. Homo-eroticism, or MALE BONDING, is not sexual and is not homosexuality although it isn’t quite the standard world of boy-girl, boy-girl in cozy cottages with white picket fences. It is the lure, strong in many men, of doing things with other men, measuring themselves against other men, doing manly things. It is the same lure offered by sports teams and military careers (and yes, part of the reason the military is so skittish about gays in the military is because there are some fine lines here). The BOY SCOUTS and the YMCA were all born in that movement for “MUSCULAR CHRISTIANITY” that was intertwined with imperialism. They grew out of this same vision of manly adventure. Romanticism fueled it. The whole thrust of romantic music, art and literature was a call to adventure far from the hum-drum world of making a living or working in a factory or farm.

Some of the most spectacular of these high adventures that sparked a European imagination were officially for science, particularly the science of geography. Geography has faded as a discipline because there are no new places to discover and map. Geographers today have a hard time explaining what they do anymore (and frankly Saunders wonders too.) But in the 19th century, vast parts of Africa and Asia were as yet unmapped and as such “undiscovered.” Britain’s ROYAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY, for example, was a very exciting place and sent out expeditions to meet head hunters on New Guinea and Eskimos in the high Arctic. (“Eskimo” means raw meat-eater, is considered pejorative today and has been replaced by the word “Inuit.” On the other hand, how do you prepare meals when you live on ice floes and there is no wood for fires?) Early in the century, there was a great quest to find the source of the NIGER RIVER of West Africa. Africans from the interior wore lots of gold jewelry, so there was obviously gold up there somewhere although the leader of the first expedition, Mungo Park, got swept over the Bussa Rapids to his death (1805). In 1858-1859, Richard BURTON and John SPEKE discovered the source of the NILE RIVER at Lake Victoria. Here was a river prominent in the Bible, the great river that makes life in Egypt possible, but no Europeans knew where it came from. Burton & Speke endured any number of horrors. Half of Burton’s face rotted off after being hit by a poison spear thrown by a native. A beetle got into Speke’s ear as he slept on the ground and it caused a roaring sound in his ear until he nearly went crazy and the beetle had to be cut out, after which he was stone deaf in that ear. Speke fell in love with Burton while on their big adventure, which complicated things. It is arrogant of course for Europeans to say Burton & Speke “discovered” the source of the Nile when native Africans had seen it for centuries. On the other hand, Africans never mapped it. They never explored where the Nile went to or why it was important. They never told anyone about their discovery. It is not even clear they knew they had discovered anything. So who does get the credit for discovery? I mention this just to suggest that it is wrong to claim, as most textbooks used to, that nothing is really discovered until white people discover it. It’s also wrong to say Africans are denied the credit for discovery only because white people are racists when they (Africans) did nothing to record and make public their discovery or find out why it was important.

The missionary David LIVINGSTONE crossed southern Africa, up the ZAMBEZI RIVER, by VICTORIA FALLS and overland to LUANDA in Portuguese Angola, all to the vast thrill of folks at home. The age of this kind of adventure drew to a close with the exploration of ANTARCTICA by Britain’s R.F. SCOTT and ERNEST SHAKLETON, although the first to the South Pole was Norway’s Roald AMUNDSEN, Dec. 16, 1911.

3. JINGOISM and the GREAT GAME are inter-related concepts of romantic nationalism and diplomacy. Like adventure, these probably explain a lot more about the new imperialism than economics. JINGOISM was a particularly aggressive form of nationalism by which a nation’s status in the world is measured by the size of the empire it rules. The term came from a British barracks ballad in the Crimean War. The British (or the French, or the Germans or the Americans —the same emotion can be plugged into any nationality) took breast-beating pride in the fact that my little island is so rich and so powerful its flag flies over every continent and over every race of humanity. Yes, they said, it is worth every penny that it costs in taxes to know that I am part of the greatest empire on earth. This is an irrational form of national pride because the very values of national independence and national self worth that it values for itself it denies to others.The others in question were all non-whites, and were regarded as “little” people, inferior people, not nations but mere tribes, to be ruled over by the “real” nations of European white people. So jingoism carries with it a heavy baggage of arrogance and, though it was rarely so stated, of racism.Jingoism today is regarded as somewhere between an embarrassment and outright immorality, although Americans practice a 21st century variation of it when they demand their government send in the Marines to any “little” country that harbors terrorists or won’t sell its oil cheaply or doesn’t have proper respect for the rights of American corporations. At its heart, jingoism was raw power; on the surface, it was wild, flag-waving pride in one’s nation’s triumphs around the globe.

4. The GREAT GAME was a phrase coined by a British officer of the 6th Bengal Light Cavalry, Capt. Arthur Conolly who was put to death in 1842 in Bukhara, in what is now Uzbekistan. In the 19th century the region came under the control of the Russian tsar as Russia extended its power into the Muslim lands to its south. Connolly was an agent of the British Empire pushing north out of India. The world, according to the concept, was a great chessboard on which the stakes are the control of the world. Empires will bring local warlords, chiefs, emirs or maharajahs under their protection, by persuasion or by force, to keep them away from a rival empire. The British will take a pawn, as one would take a pawn in a chess game, so the Russians (or anyone else) can’t have it. Then the Russians will take a pawn. Then the French and the Germans will get into the game. The concept was given its most popular expression in the novel Kim by the British poet-of-empire RUDYARD KIPLING.

The concept of the Great Game applied specifically to the contest by the British Empire in India, pushing north, and the Russian Empire in Siberia pushing south, in Central Asia—Afghanistan, Persia, and what we know as the “stans” of the former Soviet Union—Kazakhstan, Kirghizstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, with the KHYBER PASS in the mountains between India’s Northwest Frontier Province (now in Pakistan) and Afghanistan as the flashpoint. But it can also be applied generically to all the empires—in Africa and the Pacific as well. It is imperialism as Great Power rivalries. The “SCRAMBLE FOR AFRICA” which you will meet shortly, was a grand exercise of the principles of the Great Game—take a piece of leafy jungle, no matter how unimportant it might be, so somebody else doesn’t get it. The Great Powers said we will measure our greatness by the size of the leafy jungles we control. The importance is not the leafy jungle, but the fact that our rival didn’t get it. As for the “stans,” American troops are on the ground in all those places right now as part of the war in Afghanistan. You could argue the Great Game is still going on, only the players have changed.

5. WHITE MAN’S BURDEN.

The concept of White Man’s burden is generally regarded today as arrogant and racist and is very much out of fashion. Saunders would plead with you to understand it for an idea that was relevant in a certain time and place that meant well. If today we see the idea as misguided, it was practiced by mostly by good people who wanted to help others and who did make important, even noble contributions to the colonial regions where they were posted. And if you come from a church background where missionary work is important, or if you yourself intend to go abroad to do missionary work, you are practicing the old White Man’s Burden (even if you are not white). The impulse springs from a desire to do the right thing and do good for others at sacrifice to yourself.

The idea is this: Europe has built this rich, powerful, productive civilization. The great idea of Christianity has provided it with a firm moral foundation. The great ideas of the Enlightenment have given it political, social and economic direction. Science has taught it how to control its environment so as to make life better and safer and happier. Technology has brought forth wondrous gadgets that can make life better. So what greater gift could Europeans give the world than to bring the blessings of this civilization to all the poor peoples of the world? Europe will send out teachers and doctors and missionaries who will teach and save lives and save souls. The peoples of the world will all be uplifted and enjoy a more fulfilling life.

What’s wrong with that? First, it sprung from a lot of arrogance by assuming that European ways did it best and that other cultures were inferior. Americans fall for this trap all the time in their belief that everybody would be just like them if they could. Unfortunately, westerners sometimes have to learn tough lessons that no, everybody doesn’t want to be just like them and they are often appalled by Western values and culture. This rub was especially touchy when missionaries who were so convinced they were saving people’s souls ran up against other very sophisticated religions like Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism. People with complex and nuanced belief systems like that did not want Christianity which many of them saw as inferior. Muslims and Hindus are still appalled at a religion that holds as its basic tenet that God came down to earth and fornicated with the Virgin Mary and had a bastard child. Missionaries made little headway against those religions. (They did have more success in Africa with animist religions.)

Second, White Man’s Burden is condescending. It set out with the belief, sometimes stated, sometimes not, that other people are inferior, are “little” people who are to be molded into “little” (i.e. not equal to) Europeans. To these little people, Europeans will hand things down as a parent hands things to a child. It is not a relationship of equals but profoundly of unequals. Third, it is racist. Its premise is that white people are smarter and “better” and will take pity on their “little brown brother.”

The concept of White Man’s Burden was solidified in RUDYARD KIPLING’s 1899 poem of the same name:

Take up the White Man’s burden; send forth the best ye breed.

Go bind your sons to exile to serve your captive’s need.

To wait in heavy harness on fluttered folk and wild,

Your new-caught sullen peoples half devil and half child.

Take up the White Man’s burden, the savage wars of peace.

Fill full the mouth of famine and bid the sickness ease.

And when your goal is nearest (the end for others sought),

Watch sloth and heathen folly bring all your hope to naught.

Take up the White Man’s Burden! Have done with childish days--

The lightly-proffered laurel, the easy ungrudged praise.

Comes now to search your manhood through all the thankless years

Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom, the judgment of your peers.

Pick that one apart—“new-caught sullen peoples half devil and half child,” “sloth and heathen folly,” “search your manhood,” etc. All the concepts and catch-phrases of imperialism are there.

And while we’re here, before we get to the specifics of the New Imperialism, let’s stand for a rousing chorus of LAND AND HOPE AND GLORY, the anthem of empire, the thrilling melody that was probably played at your high school graduation and will be played at your Clemson graduation. The music was by the great English composer Sir Edward Elgar.

Land of hope and glory, mother of the free.

How may we extol thee who are born of thee?

Wider still and wider shall thy bounds be set.

God who made thee mighty, make thee mightier yet.

God who made thee mighty, make thee mightier yet.

In case you didn’t get the point—“wider still and wider” means this empire is destined to get bigger and bigger, and who ordains this be so? God, that’s who. “God who made the mighty make thee mightier yet.” God chose Britain to be the greatest empire on earth, the greatest country of the greatest people chosen by God to rule the earth. That usually jolts Americans who normally think God chose them even if God did choose to give most of the world’s oil to the Muslims. Wonder what the Chinese version will sound like?

INDIA

India became the jewel of the British Empire. In mercantile days, British influence stayed mostly at the seaports—notably Bombay (1661) (now called Mumbai) and Calcutta (1690), places to trade for tea, cottons and silks. This trade was the monopoly of the EAST INDIA COMPANY, one of those mercantile joint stock companies (like the Virginia Company). You met it in the first part of the course. Interest in empire waned after the American Revolution, but by the early 19thcentury, interest in India began to pick up in tandem with ROMANTICISM. It was exotic. It was colorful. Britishers back home were fascinated with elephants and ancient legends and all the adventure. This was called ORIENTALISM, a fascination with oriental (eastern) culture.

India was ruled by local princes—maharajahs (Hindu) or nizams (Muslim). There was no such thing as an Indian nation. The SUB-CONTINENT was divided politically and linguistically, with two main language trunks (HINDI and URDU) and hundreds of local dialects. The British began their penetration of the interior by offering protection to princes who had recently been beat up by their neighbors. They signed treaties making a PRINCELY STATE a PROTECTORATE of Britain (this strategy is called “divide and conquer”) and thus altering the local power equation. With that leverage, the East India Co. was able to extend its domain into other areas that were of interest to it. TEA gave way to OPIUM as the main revenue crop. The “Drug Problem” is not new. Most of the opium was sold in China turning millions into addicts. It was one of the moral low-points of imperialism. It occurred simultaneously with the arrival of missionaries, one of the more obvious moral ambiguities of imperialism. The British trained an Indian army (called the Sepoy Army by the British, not unlike the new Iraqi Army the U.S. is trying to create) but it mutinied in 1857. The INDIAN MUTINY (or SEPOY MUTINY) was put down, after which the British created a central administration for India, kicking the East India Company out for good. It seriously trained a professional INDIAN ARMY to enforce internal (British) order. That was the creation of what came to be known as the RAJ, the British rule of all that is now India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Burma.

India was 75% Hindu, 25% Muslim. On the upside, Hinduism is a beautiful religion with infinite shadings to its teachings and multiple gods, with the promise of reincarnation which means hope and renewal. On the downside, it practiced the CASTE system by which you are born into a caste (class) low or high, BRAHMIN at the top, DALIT (or Untouchable) at the bottom. Born into a caste, you will stay there forever with no chance to move up. Islam arrived in India late, in the 8thcentury, with a message of equality for all. As you might expect, it attracted the more ambitious of the underdogs, just as Calvinist Protestantism did in the Christian world. The two communities got along generally, although they stuck to themselves and in private expressed annoyance to outright hatred of the other over such things as: 1) Muslims ate beef; the cow is sacred to Hindus. 2) Muslims regard idolatry as a crime against God; Hindus find it very natural that a spirit of this or that God lives in a statue. 3) Muslims always circumcise young men. East of the Arab world males are circumcised at age 12 as a becoming-a-man ritual. Hindus believe it is genital maiming and are appalled. Whether one had or did not have that little flap of skin was reason for communities to loathe each other. To this day in that part of the world a man detained by police for any small infraction is required to have a “medical” examination, and whether or not he is circumcised is what they are looking for. It is physical proof of what community he belongs in.

Into India poured missionaries, teachers, nurses, all carving out careers for themselves while pursuing the ambitions of White Man’s Burden. Railroad builders came. India was about to get one of the best railroad systems in the world. Those who built it were professionals, building a career for themselves and having a high adventure at the same time, all the while feeling they were doing something good for mankind. I took you on a railroad journey in class, across the western portions of the Raj through what is Pakistan today so you could see the mighty bridges across the Indus River, the deserts, the BOLAN PASS, the KHYBER PASS. You rode rail lines built by the British to Quetta and the Khyber Pass for their military needs, a single train doing the work formerly done by about 3000 camels. This is the country where Osama bin-Laden is presumably holed up today. It is land controlled by tribes who hate just about everyone. If you, a westerner, venture into those tribal areas today you will shortly wind up in a shallow grave.

Every Britisher, whether coming as a railroad builder or a soldier or a civil servant, could live a class above what he would have been able to live in Britain. Middle class people could pretend they were upper class, and working class could pretend they were middle. The British generally did not mingle with the “natives.” They thought of themselves being there to teach the natives, not learn from them. They lived in all-white communities (except for the myriad of household servants they could afford in this place where labor was so cheap). They built their own schools for their children, and their own clubs. Their culture clashed with local cultures particularly over gender roles and the use of alcohol. They were arrogant and could be extremely annoying, particularly to educated, cultivated and sophisticated Indians. The British who went were usually captivated by India. It is a land of exotic culture, mystery, teeming life, elephants, cobras, wild tigers and natural wonder. Well-to-do British especially liked SIMLA, a high mountain resort with a bracing climate, against the Hindu Kush Mountains in a drop dead gorgeous setting.

At the same time, the British were frequently admired by Indians. The British, unwittingly perhaps, had brought their powerful ideas of freedom, equality, justice and democracy. They brought the idea of the nation, the nation-state and of nationalism. Obviously, they didn’t believe in native people having such rights, although some English had come to love India and believed deeply that what was good for the English was good for everyone. The English brought the English language that would become a common second language that enabled at least educated Indians from all parts of India, speaking many different dialects, to communicate with each other. India’s great newspaper today, the Times of India, is an English language paper. It was the Englishman A.O. Hume and Indian Surendraneth Banerjee who founded the INDIAN NATIONAL CONGRESS (or just CONGRESS) in 1885 as an Indian nationalist organization. (The most famous Congress leader would be Mohandas Gandhi, but he came later. It has been the dominant political party in India since its independence in 1947.) The British, meanwhile, by constructing this railway system, began to create an Indian nation that came to see itself as part of a whole, not just separate parts.

The Raj was a dynamic thing, constantly pushing outward. The NORTHWEST FRONTIER PROVINCE along what is now the Pakistan-Afghan border is a wild place, wild to this day—the area where Osama bin Laden is most likely hiding—and for the British was nothing but trouble, mostly a military garrison. Beyond the mountain passes lay the wild tribes of Afghanistan and beyond them lay the Russian Empire expanding southward. The flashpoint was the KHYBER PASS, one of the few mountain gateways. The British fought two wars for Afghanistan in the 19th century (and one in the 20th) but never could defeat the Afghan tribes. Neither could the Soviets in the 1980s. It has been called the graveyard of empires. Guess who is there now.

Every British solider was killed in the first British venture beyond the Khyber Pass, save one who was kept alive to go back to Lahore (inside the Raj) to inform the authorities there were certain “risks” in going beyond the pass. Rudyard Kipling wrote:

When you are bleeding and dying on Afghanistan’s plain,

And the women come out to cut up what remains,

Just roll to your rifle and blow out your brains

And go to your God like a soldier.

The film you saw in class took you to the top of the KHYBER PASS (on the railway built by the British in the 1920s, near the end of the Raj) and there you saw the Pakistani Army of today, one of the descendents of the British-trained Indian Army, on full-dress parade in kilts, marching to bagpipes, their British military traditions still very much intact. The Khyber Pass, this incredibly dramatic mountain setting, was the flashpoint of the GREAT GAME between the British and the Russians. I don’t know how you could explain this without putting manly romantic adventure in the mix. This was another testosterone-driven campaign of which the British were the masters.

POWERPOINT “IMPERIALISM 2” PICKS UP AT THIS POINT.

The route from Britain to India was a long run around the southern tip of Africa (the CAPE OF GOOD HOPE). Between the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea through which ships can pass into the Indian Ocean, lay only a hundred miles of low-lying desert sand. There are no mountain ranges to cross (like there is in Panama where another famous canal will be built 35 years later). A canal across that desert would shorten the route to India by 3000 miles. It was the French engineer Ferdinand DE LESSUPS who conceived of a canal across the isthmus, and it was built by a private French company. The SUEZ CANAL was completed in 1869 (opened Nov. 16 of that year). It was an engineering achievement. The French were obviously proud that it had been done with their ingenuity and their engineering. But to pass through a desert that was officially ruled by the Khedive of Egypt (himself a vassal under the Ottoman Sultan), the Khedive received a majority of the shares in the French company. When he went broke from his spendthrift ways, he sold his shares. It was Prime Minister Disraeli of Britain who immediately perceived the value. Disraeli had the British Government buy the shares at which point the British government effectively ruled the canal. It was of vital importance to the British Empire, the mainline, so to speak to India and the Far East. The British built an enormous naval and military garrison at Suez and it would be one of the most heavily defended parts of the Empire. (It is run by Egypt today and remains and an important point in global commerce which figured heavily in wars between the Arabs and Israel in 1956, 1967 and 1972.)

Indeed, wherever ships had to pass through narrow straits, it seemed the British were there. They had established themselves at GIBRALTAR way back in 1713, predating the New Imperialism. Gibraltar is the western entrance into the Mediterranean, the narrow gap between Spain and Morocco in North Africa. The huge rock (the Rock of Gibraltar) remains British to this day. Spain wants it back but the Gibraltarians—there are about 16,000 of them, ethnic Spaniards—prefer British rule. The British seized ADEN, the great harbor at the Strait of Bab al-Mandeb where the Red Sea enters into the Gulf of Aden (Indian Ocean). Aden, in the Arab country of Yemen, a desert land then and now of tribes none too hospitable to the West or to Christians, became a British naval port. YOU BETTER LOOK AT A MAP AND FIND OUT WHERE THESE PLACES ARE. The U.S.S. Cole was blown up in ADEN just a few years back (in 2000). A lot of Americans died there. It is a flashpoint now. It was a flashpoint in imperial days. You should know about places like this. The British seized SINGAPORE (on the Strait of Malacca, close by the Dutch East Indies), again where ships sailing to China have to pass through a narrow waterway (or take a 2000 mile detour into the Pacific Ocean).Singapore became the biggest British naval port in the Far East. Remember, navies are what project power outward. The British almost alone could truly project power outward. They seized HONG KONG on the Chinese coast.

The FRENCH EMPIRE

Meanwhile the jewel of the French Empire became INDOCHINA, also in Southeast Asia, that was composed of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Early mercantile contacts dating back to the 17th century became full-fledged imperial rule in the 19th century. The French actually came late to imperialism. It wasn’t until the 1860s that they decided it was time to fly the tricolor flag over Indochina. Their interest kicked into high gear following their defeat by the Germans in 1870, for empire now was used to prove to themselves that they were still a great and proud power. Southern Vietnam became an ideal place for Michelin’s rubber plantations. But French colonialism was not really about Michelin and its rubber plantations. It was about the hot humid climate, the gorgeous turquoise waters of the South China Sea, the misty mountaintops, the exotic and mysterious Orient. All this captivated the French imagination just as India captivated the British. The colonial lure was a lot more spiritual than producing some rubber. The city of SAIGON was built as a miniature Paris of the Orient, a gorgeous, dirty, exotic, a city of mystery where Europeans and Asians dressed in fine French clothes and spoke French and sipped the finest French wines and ate fine French food, in a city seething in intrigue, deals, nationalist movements (starting in the 1920s) and murder. It is a pretty heady combination, a hell of a lot more exciting than getting a business degree at Clemson and spending your life as a financial consultant.Later, Vietnam would captivate the Americans in the same way it had the French and just like the French, the Americans were eventually kicked out of Vietnam in disgrace. Indochina was like a roach motel for westerners—they were lured in but the only way out was in their coffins.

ALGERIA

It is hard to organize this complex material in a logical way that makes sense. Lets follow through with the French Empire so we don’t have to come back to it. It was back in the 1830s that France took a shine to Algeria, right across the Mediterranean from France itself. Algeria had been ruled by the Ottomans, but Ottoman power was fading and for France, this was a matter of the Great Game (although the term had not been coined yet) that if French power did not flow into the power vacuum left by the Ottomans, somebody else’s power would, probably the British. The French fought hard to gain control of Algeria and it became over time a “SETTLER COLONY” like Britain’s old dominions, a place where Frenchmen went to farm land and make it their permanent home. The settlers would be called the COLONS and would vastly complicate France’s exit from Algeria in the 1950s when the imperial age was over.

Tunisia is also in North Africa, just east of Algeria. When the Bey (prince) of Tunis got into financial trouble from borrowing too much money, the French bailed him out and effectively took over his kingdom. French rule over Tunis was formalized by the other Great Powers at the Congress of Berlin in 1878. Early in the 20thcentury, a secret agreement between the French and the British gave France a free hand in Morocco if the French would give up all claims to Egypt. Morocco is also in North Africa, just west of Algeria. The king of Morocco wasn’t particularly consulted, or at least, since French naval guns could lay waste to any Moroccan port, he didn’t have much choice. The Germans, however, tried to make their own secret deal with the Moroccan king to pull the rug from under the French. The Germans were clumsy about this, dispatched warships, but their little adventure blew up in their face at the Algeciras Conference in 1907. Algeciras is a place in Spain where the conference was held. You’ve just learned two things if you paid attention. 1) These land deals were struck at these conferences (or congresses) and were how the Great Game worked in practice, and 2) by the early 20th century, a game that had been formerly played mostly by the British and French was now joined by the Germans.

AFRICA

Lets move our focus to the African continent. First a word about African geography and terminology, then a brief return to French colonization in Africa, and then to the much larger role of the British.

When speaking of Africa, distinction is usually made between North Africa, along the Mediterranean Coast, and the rest of Africa. North Africa is cut off from the rest of Africa by the SAHARA DESERT, the largest desert on earth and one of the most extreme. It is not impenetrable. Camel caravans can make it across. But there is nothing out there. Civilizations north of the Sahara were Arab and Muslim (the Moors) and in contact with Europe. Moving south, there is the empty desert, and then, on the south shore of this desert “ocean,” “black,” or sub-Saharan Africa begins. North Africans are not all ethnically Arab (but they are Muslim), but are racially distinct from the (black-skinned) Negroid and Nilotic people to the south. Most of North Africa, particularly ALGERIA (with the city of Algiers divided into the European Section and the Kasbah, or Muslim section), came under French influence. Libya came under Italian influence, and the British were in Egypt (for the Suez Canal).

Black Africans in the SAHEL, the south shore of the Sahara’s ocean of sand, a dry belt but not a desert, are also Muslim. Islamic influence extends over most of the northern half of Africa on both sides of the Sahara. In the southern half of Africa, tribes practiced their own religions, frequently described as animist (which attributes a soul to plants, animals or inanimate objects) many of whom converted to Christianity with the arrival of the Europeans. While the original peoples of southern Africa were all of what is formally called the Negro race, they are grouped in tribes of many different physical and linguistic variations. The colonies that Europeans carved out of Africa usually did not divide a tribe on two sides of a border but often combined tribes in a single colony, tribes that were not necessarily friendly to each other, often practicing (or not) customs and rituals that annoyed each other, circumcision both male and female being a frequent one that divided them bitterly.

SENEGAL

Continuing with the French Empire, France was familiar with the port of DAKAR, the great port on the westernmost bulge of Africa, through the slave trade. Dakar was in SENEGAL. In 1855 the French built a military fort there and turned the port into a naval harbor. With that as a base, French colonial influence would eventually extend throughout Senegal, which became the jewel of France’s African Empire, and then over all the Sahara and much of the Sahel. On the map, the French Empire in Africa, usually colored in green, looked huge, but since it included so much uninhabitable land, was less important than it appeared.

SOUTH AFRICA

There had been substantial European settlement at the CAPE OF GOOD HOPE at the southern tip of Africa long before the 19th century. Back in the 1600s when Europeans first began to trade with the Far East by sea, it was important on this long voyage for ships to have a place to put in for fresh supplies and fresh water. The Dutch, who were developing their nutmeg colony in the East Indies, planted a colony of dirt farmers at the Cape of Good Hope, at what became Kapstadt (CAPE TOWN), for the purpose of re-supplying ships. The farmers’ job was to grow fresh fruits and vegetables to keep down the vitamin deficiency diseases (notably scurvy) that plagued sailors on these long voyages. The farmers who went were plain people. They went when the fervency of the Calvinist Dutch Reformed Church was at its peak. That faith would mellow in Holland, but the simple farm folk who went to South Africa kept it in its purest form. Their Dutch language remained frozen as 17th century Dutch

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History 173 Note on History Notes for Final Part 1, created by abclark on 23/04/2014.

History Notes for Final Part 1