Professor Brophy
History 102

European Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century

Introduction
-European powers and control of globe
1500: 7 percent
1800: 35 percent
1914: 84 percent
-British Empire: ¼ of world, 66 million people, 4.5 m. sq. mile

Imperial Activity before 1880
-decline of formal European colonies, 1780-1870
 -‘informal’ and ‘formal’
    imperialism
-India: Britain’s East India Co.; Mutiny (1857); formalized rule in 1858
-China: Britain’s Opium War (1840-42); economic penetration of mainland
-France conquers Algeria (1830); Indochina (1880s)

Orientalism
-British and French contact with North Africa and Near East
-Orientalism as cultural construct of west
-Orient as vehicle to define Europe in its contrasting idea, image, and personality; Orient as despotic, erotic, and exotic foil for western civilization
-real vs. imagined Orient
-the misunderstanding of Orient and Islamic civilization as part of imperial project

U.S. Imperialism
-the Monroe Doctrine, 1823
-“Manifest Destiny” after 1840
-wars against Mexico and Spain
-informal presence in Latin America
-U.S. presence in Pacific; the Panama Canal (1904-14)
-the Roosevelt Corollary: U.S. role of ward and policeman in Caribbean and Latin America

The Scramble for Africa
-era of formal colonization: 1880-1914
-Why?  The three Gs
-geopolitics (e.g. Fashoda, 1898)
-economic motivation: Eur. depression, 1873-96
-the ‘civilizing mission’

Legacies of Imperialism I
-economic spheres of influence in Africa, Middle East, and Far East
-ruthless domination of indigenous peoples; e.g. Boxer Rebellion & the Congo ‘Free State’
-colonial administrations and indigenous culture
-the twentieth-century ‘revolt from the West’ grounded in longer history

Legacies of Imperialism II
-imperialism’s domestic political uses: ‘social imperialism’ to allay domestic discontent; colonies as integral element of Eur. nationbuilding after 1870
-ideology of cultural superiority: Social Darwinism and race theory in 19th century Europe
-the West’s perception of nonwestern world:  exotic ‘orientalism,’ barbaric ‘savages,’ the ‘yellow peril’

Conclusions
-empire and European politics, 1870-1914
-worlds undone by imperialism and the new syncretic culture of imperialism
-continuing legacy of economic imbalance
-the continuing legacy of world’s ambivalence toward western imperialism