High Tide of Imperialism:
Africa and Asia
 Industrialists and governments found:
 they needed more and more marketplaces for all the
goods they were producing
 they needed sources of raw materials for their factories
As a result, many European countries and the United
States set out to find both
 By the end of the 19th century, most traditional
societies in Asia and Africa had been taken as colonies
by European nations like Great Britain, France, Italy,
Belgium, Germany, and Portugal, plus the United
States
** Why did they feel they could do this?
The Myth of Western Superiority
 Western societies believed they were direct
descendants of the magnificent civilizations of Greece
and Rome
 Didn’t the Enlightenment take place in Europe?
 Didn’t the Industrial Revolution take place in Europe?
 Didn’t Europe invent the “tools” necessary to easily
take over more primitive people?
 Doesn’t that prove Europe’s innate superiority?
 Not exactly, if you look at the whole picture
 Europe did not invent or discover everything
 Europe did not start the world trade network; they
began some parts of it
 Asia and Africa already had an established trade
network
 Mongols controlled the land-based trade routes in
Eurasia in the 13th and 14th centuries
 Muslims controlled many of the sea lanes in the East
 These trade routes carried not only commercial goods
like silk and spices, but also inventions and ideas like
Arabic numerals and gunpowder
 Many of these, including what we call Arabic numerals,
originated in China or India
 Europeans had become familiar with these goods and
ideas and wanted more, especially the spices
 To get them, they needed to reach India
 In 1498 Vasco da Gama representing the Portuguese
reached India
 They found trading difficult there because the Indians
were not interested in European trade goods like wool
and cast iron pots, and they didn’t wish to convert to
Christianity
 Asians would, however, trade their goods for European
silver bullion
 Vasco da Gama also discovered that there was an
already established trading network, and European
countries would have to find a way to fit into it
The Trading Network
 Stretched from the Middle East and Africa to East Asia
and was divided into 3 main zones: an Arab region,
an Indian region, and a Chinese region
 There were peripheral regions in Japan, S.E. Asia, and
East Africa
 The spices bearing the highest prices came from Sri
Lanka and Indonesia
 The Portuguese realized they couldn’t keep paying
silver bullion for Asian goods, so they decided to force
their way into the network
 They had superior ships and weapons
 They took advantage of divisions or factions among the
Asians in order to break into the trade network
 From 1507 onward, the Portuguese took towns and
built forts in a number of places like Ormuz (1507),
Goa (1510), and Malacca (1511)
Goa
Malacca
 Asians tried to fight back but were defeated
 The Portuguese goal was to establish a monopoly over
the spice trade and to license all vessels trading in their
area
 The Portuguese had limited success
 In the 17th century, the Dutch and the English entered
the trade network challenging Portugal
 The Dutch took over Malacca and Batavia (today’s
Jakarta, Indonesia)
 The English took India after failing to take the “Spice
Islands”
 India was the first major Asian civilization to fall to a
European power
The Rise of India
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Aryans
Harappans, 1500 BCE (had agriculture)
Mauryas,
3rd century BCE (laid the foundation for technology)
Guptas,
300 CE
(Hinduism enters)
Turks in the north, 11th century CE (Islamic)
Mughal,
15th century CE
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Islamic
Had organized politics and culture
Peaked under Akbar in 17th century
Hindus began to challenge them
Mughals were severely weakened by the end of 18th century
 Into this weakened area came the British who took
over because they had better firepower and guile
 By 1900, European nations had taken most of S.E. Asia
as colonies
 European nations weren’t the only ones taking new
territory; the United States began taking colonies as
well but called them territories
 1898 – U.S. Naval Forces under Commodore George
Dewey took the Philippines
 So European powers practiced Imperialism
 Why?
 to control certain goods
 to spread Christianity
 to make a profit
 to bring prestige to their nations
 to get raw materials for industry and new marketplaces
 Some call it God, Gold, & Glory -- the 3 Gs
 It is sometimes explained in higher terms:
 Moral obligation
 Might makes right
 Survival of the fittest
 To bring stability and organization
 To bring God to the heathen masses
Africa
 Although Europeans didn’t really take territory in
Africa until the 19th century, they had traded with
Africans since the 15th century
 The Portuguese were the first Europeans to have
investigated the African coast; they established trade
and set up forts
 The Portuguese first traded in slaves
 Other Europeans later joined in this trade of slaves
 Europeans weren’t the only ones to deal in slavery;
nearly every pre-modern society around the globe has
depended on slavery to some extent
 It is linked to warfare and the taking of captives
 Since ancient times, slaves from Africa have been
taken and used by those around the Mediterranean
 Slaves were also taken from other areas: Eastern
Europe and Central Asia
 All slavery, however, involved the forceful exploitation
and degradation of some humans for the profit of
others, the denial of basic freedoms, and the break-up
of families
 Before the 15th century, Africans were taken as slaves
into Islamic lands of the Mediterranean, S.W. Asia,
and S. Asia; it was called the Oriental Trade
 European slave trade was called the Occidental Trade
 from 1650-1850, the European slave trade surpassed all
others
 European nations and the United States began to
outlaw the importation of slaves in the early 19th
century; demand dropped and prices dropped
 The formal end to slavery by Europeans occurred over
a long period beginning in 1874 in the Gold Coast and
ending only in 1928 in Sierra Leone in West Africa
The Effects on Africans
 Millions were taken
 Talent gone
 Africans acted as middlemen
 Africans had a different idea of what a slave was
 They were captives who more or less became a member
of the family to be used as a sacrifice if needed
 As Europeans began outlawing slavery, legitimate
trade began – trade in raw materials like palm nuts,
palm oil, peanuts, timber, and hides
 Europeans sent in traders, explorers, and missionaries
 To protect their interests, Europeans set up
settlements and sent in government officials
 This caused tension with the Africans
 When Africans tried to protect and defend their
territory, Europeans annexed their territory
 Ex.: the Gold Coast was the first British colony taken in
1874
 British had superiors
 Used direct and indirect rule
 Quinine made exploration and capture of the interior of
Africa possible
White Settlement of South Africa
 17th century: Dutch East India Company set up a
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station at the Cape of Good Hope
1657: colonization was allowed; a Dutch-speaking,
slave-owning, agricultural community developed
They were called the Boers ( Dutch for peasant)
They felt entitled to 6,000 acres each
The Boers moved in and pushed out the Bantu tribe
Bantus moved into Zulu territory which resulted in a
conflict called the Mfecane or crushing
 Zulus fought back in one of the most widely
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devastating upheavals of the 19th century
Zulus remained independent until the late 1870s
As a result of the Napoleonic Wars, the British were
given control of the Cape of Good Hope in 1806
Boers resented the British presence
1820s: British settlers arrived and disapproved of the
Boer lifestyle - slavery
 1830s: some Boers began to move away from the Cape
of Good Hope and founded a new colony called Natal
 1830s: British gave the Cape of Good Hope a
constitution and a parliamentary government; this
included a non-racial franchise
 Differences between the 2 groups gave rise to Afrikaner
nationalism
 1845: British annexed Natal
 The Boers moved again and set up 2 new republics :
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the Orange Free State and the Transvaal
The British recognized them in 1852 and 1854
At this point South Africa had 2 British and 2 Dutch
colonies
1867: diamonds were discovered near the junction of
the Orange and Vaal Rivers on the western edge of the
Orange Free State
Both the British and the Dutch wanted this diamond
territory; British got it
 1886: gold was discovered in the Transvaal at
Witwatersrand near Johannesburg and a gold rush
ensued
 British built railroads to get to the gold; the Boers felt
threatened
 Many British entrepreneurs like Cecil Rhodes moved
in
 Cecil Rhodes became the Prime Minister of Cape
Colony in the 1890s and tried to destabilize the
Transvaal government; it didn’t work & ended Rhodes
political career
 War broke out between the British and the Boers,
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called the Boer War, 1899-1902
The British won
After the war, the British moved towards unification
Natal, Cape Colony, Transvaal, and Orange Free State
became the Union of South Africa, a dominion
Dutch and English were the official languages
Voting rights would remain as they had been before
the war, so there would be no voting by blacks in
former Boer republics
Connections
 Industrial Revolution
 A need for raw materials
 A need for marketplaces
 New inventions that made take-over easier
 Colonies
 New culture imposed
 The old is destroyed