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Hi and welcome back to Heimler’s History.
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Now in the last video we began Unit 6 by talking
about the rationales and the motivations for
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imperialism between 1750 and 1900.
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In this video we’re going to look at the
imperial expansion itself into Africa and
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into Asia.
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So if you’re ready, I’m ready, let’s
get to it.
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So let’s begin by defining the thing.
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Imperialism is when a country extends its
power and influence into other lands, sometimes
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by diplomacy, and sometimes by force.
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And now that we’ve got it defined, let’s
look at the imperial expansion into Africa
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and China.
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First, Africa.
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Now if you’ve been paying attention since
Unit 4, you’ll remember that Europe had
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been expanding its influence into Africa since
the 1800’s.
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However, for much of the nineteenth century,
European influence in Africa was restricted
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to trading posts.
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But by the late 1800s Europeans began to desire
more than that.
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And why?
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Well you know why—DADDY’S HUNGRY!
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And here’s how they got what they wanted.
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Let’s start with the British.
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One of their chief desires during this period
(and they were certainly not alone in this)
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was a shorter sea-based route to Asian trading
posts.
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Because hey, this is the Industrial Revolution,
baby.
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We got raw materials to import and manufactured
goods to export and ain’t nobody got time
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to sail all the way around Africa.
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And so they began to look with hungry eyes
at building a canal across Egypt to connect
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the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea.
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And so in 1869 the Suez Canal was completed
and that dream became a reality.
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But by 1882 because of unrest in the region,
Britain got a little twitchy about its interests
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in the canal and went ahead and seized control
of it from the Ottomans.
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Now on the other side of Africa, Britain already
had some colonies, but they desired more.
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In those existing colonies Britain had entered
into diplomatic agreements with the African
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leaders that were in general, favorable to
both sides.
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But when the imperialistic fervor for Africa
began to heat up, the British tossed those
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agreements out the window and began taking
over by force.
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And they did this because Africans were being
so rude as to resist their imperial influence.
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And by these means they established colonial
holdings in Sierra Leone, Gambia, Lagos, and
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the Gold Coast.
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And the French operated similarly in West
Africa.
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France ousted the Ottomans from Algeria in
1830 and they established there a settler
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colony.
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Now remember, a settler colony is one in which
people from the imperial country actually
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relocate to that place in order to live there.
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And so as a result of that, you have a huge
influx of French and Spanish and Italian immigrants
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coming to live in Algeria.
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Now so far I’ve just been hinting at it,
but now let’s bring the whole of the imperialistic
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fervor for Africa into the light.
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It became known as the Scramble for Africa.
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So as more and more lands were claimed by
European powers in Africa, competition for
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said claiming began to heat up.
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And because the Europeans began fighting over
Africa like children fighting over a toy in
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a sandbox, some people were wise enough to
see that all this land-grabbing was going
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to cause a war.
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One such person was Otto von Bismarck of Germany.
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And so he decided to call the Berlin Conference
in 1884.
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And at this meeting, imperial leaders would
decide how to carve up Africa in a way that
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pleased everyone and avoided war.
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And in doing so they drew colonial boundaries
according to their own pleasure, and this
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became a real problem because they drew boundaries
that divided long united Africans and combined
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long standing rival groups.
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And that would cause them endless trouble
and unrest in the future.
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But you know what, that can’t be their fault.
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Why didn’t the Africans at the conference
speak up and offer their wisdom?
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Come again?
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The Europeans didn’t invite any Africans
to the Berlin Conference?
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Well that was stupid.
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Regardless, by 1875 Western European nations
were set and poised to push into the interior
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of Africa to establish colonies.
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And it was our Belgian friends who began this
effort, but they did it in kind of a strange
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way.
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The Belgian king Leopold II pushed into the
Congo and claimed it as his own personal holding,
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which is to say, not a colony of his state.
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As the sole owner of this colony Leopold grew
extraordinarily rich, but don’t worry, he
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gained his wealth in a completely humane and
dignified way.
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Yeah right [laugh].
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No, Leopold profited by enacting policies
of brutality towards the Congolese.
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He used forced labor to extract ivory and
rubber from the land.
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And under his brutal policies, over eight
million people died.
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However, by 1908 the Belgian state took over
this colony and conditions improved somewhat.
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Okay, there’s way more to say about the
Scramble for Africa, but that will have to
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suffice for illustrative purposes.
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Now let’s shift our attention to the imperialistic
push into Asia.
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And we’ll begin with the British presence
in India.
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So under the auspices of the British East
India Company, Britain, over time, began to
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claim more and more territory from the weakened
Mughal Empire.
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And eventually they went ahead and conquered
all of India.
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Now, how did they do that?
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Well they started by using their own troops,
but as the campaign grew they recruited Indian
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soldiers called sepoys to join their effort.
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And later that’s going to turn into a big
mistake, but we’ll have to save that story
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for another video.
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Okay, what about China?
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In China, European powers exercised a different
kind of imperialism, namely, economic imperialism.
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Now, during this time China was experiencing
a period of instability due to natural disasters
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and internal rebellion.
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So western powers moved in to help stabilize
China, get them back on their feet, because
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everybody benefits from a strong China….
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Not.
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No, the western powers were like sharks that
smelled blood in the water and then pounces
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on a weakened China in order to chew its face
off.
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They flexed their military might and demanded
trading rights with China, and China had little
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choice but to agree.
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And so the result of this endeavor was that
Western powers carved up China into what’s
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called spheres of influence.
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The Qing Dynasty remained in power, but these
Western powers had exclusive trading rights
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in their own sphere.
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And since we’re in Asia, let’s talk about
Japan.
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Japan was not in fact colonized during this
time, but became a colonizer.
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As you may remember, they modernized their
military during a period of reform called
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the Meiji Restoration and once they became
powerful, they started looking around for
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other peoples that they could crush like grapes
between their powerful thighs.
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And chief among their desires was colonial
holdings rich in raw materials.
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And so Japan’s imperial expansion eventually
included Korea, holdings in Southeast Asia,
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and some Pacific islands, and parts of China.
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But Japan wasn’t the only power to expand
into Southeast Asia, the Dutch got on that
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too.
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The Dutch East India Company established dominance
in some of these places, but due to corruption
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in the company itself, they eventually failed.
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And so once that failure was complete, the
Dutch government stepped in and took all those
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colonial holdings for themselves.
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Alright how about Australia and New Zealand?
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Well, the British colonized both.
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Australia was established as a penal colony,
which is to say that that’s where Britain
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sent all of its convicts.
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They sent their first convicts there in 1788
in a few contained locations, but by the 1820s
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the British had conquered the whole dang continent.
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But when they discovered that Australia’s
climate was well suited for the production
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of wool and once they had discovered copper
and gold below the surface, many non-criminals
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arrived and it became a proper colony.
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New Zealand on the other hand was established
as a settler colony.
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And this was a little tricky because the islands
were already inhabited by the Maori people.
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And so in their boundless benevolence, the
British created a separate colony for the
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Maori and told them to go live there.
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And I don’t even have to tell you the rest
of the story.
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You know the rest of the story: Europeans
be Europeans.
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You cannot stop a European from being a European.
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They simply could not help themselves from
encroaching on the Maori land, and so a war
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broke out between the British and the Maori.
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The Maori were the losers in the New Zealand
Wars, and that caused a deep and abiding resentment
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in them towards their colonizers.
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Alright, now let’s hop over the Pacific
Ocean and see how the United States is getting
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their imperialistic itch scratched.
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The first wave of expansion for the United
States was on their own continent.
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Deep inside the American identity was an urge
to push westward, and they did so until they
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conquered the whole of the territory from
sea to shining sea.
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Now, of course, the western lands weren’t
uninhabited.
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The natives who lived there from time immemorial,
though they resisted the American expansion,
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were the losers of that conflict.
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For example, in 1830 the American Congress
passed the Indian Removal Act which led to
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the systematic removal of American Indians
from the east onto reservations in the midwest.
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This migration was along what became known
as the Trail of Tears because of the abuse
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and death the Indians experienced as they
made the trek.
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All of this was the result of what Americans
believed to be their Manifest Destiny.
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In their minds, Providence had given them
the rights to all of this land and it was
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theirs therefore to taking.
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Now once the Americans possessed the nation
from sea to shining sea, that impulse for
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expansion didn’t just die away.
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If being part of the cool kids’ club meant
gaining overseas empires, then the will to
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expand could in no wise cease.
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And so in the late part of the 19th century
America gathered for itself an overseas empire.
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Chief among these efforts was the Spanish-American
War in 1898.
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The Americans declared war on Spain with some
trumped up charges, went to war, and ended
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up winning a lot of territory including the
Philippines, Guam, Puerto Rico, and Cuba.
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And not to miss out on all this fun, Russia
jumped into the imperialistic expansion game
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as well.
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Catherine II expanded the Russian empire thusly:
she won half of Poland from the Ottomans,
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and later Alexander I annexed Azerbaijan,
Georgia, Moldova, Finland, and part of Armenia.
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And even later Russia acquired a large portion
of Manchuria from China.
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Alright, that’s what you need to know about
Unit 6 Topic 2 of AP World History.
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Heimler out.
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