AP WORLD HISTORY - Chapter 18 colonial encounters in asia and africa 1750 1950

AP WORLD HISTORY: Book: Ways of the World by R. Strayer.
Summary of Chapter 18: Colonial Encounters in Asia and Africa 1750-1950. The European moment in world history 1750-1914.

1. COLONIAL
ENCOUNTERS IN
ASIA AND AFRICA
1750 - 1950
AP WORLD HISTORY
CHAPTER 18
WAYS OF THE WORLD
R. STRAYER
@sofisandoval 2016
THE EUROPEAN MOVEMENT IN WORLD HISTORY, 1750 - 1914

2. INDUSTRY AND EMPIRE
— New economic needs found solutions abroad. – created
the need for extensive raw materials and agricultural
products:
— Bananas from Central America
— Rubber from Brazil
— Meat from Argentina
— Cocoa and Palm oil from West Africa
— Gold and Diamonds from South Africa

By 1840, Britain was exporting 60% of its cotton-cloth
production, sending millions of yards to Europe.
Between 1910 and 1914 Britain was sending about half of its
savings overseas as foreign investment.

3. INDUSTRY AND EMPIRE
— Wealthy Europeans also saw benefits to foreign
markets.
— Industrialization society led to serious
redistribuiton of wealth.
— What made imperialism so broadly? – Growth of
NATIONALISM
— Colonies and spheres of influence abroad
became symbols of GREAT POWER, status for a
nation.
— Imperialism appealed on economic and social
grounds to the wealthy or ambitious. =
international power politics.
— The construction of the Suez Canal in 1869 = to
reach distan Asian and African ports more
quickly.

4. RACE AND CULTURE
— Europeans had defined others largely in religious terms, now
they adopted the idea and techniques of more “advanced”
societies. = precedented by wealth, and used both to produce
unsurpassed military power.
— Its not surprising that their opinions of other cultures
dropped sharply. European eyes to the status of tribes led by
chiefs as a means of emphasizing their “primitive” qualities.
— Still Eurpeans used the apparatus of science to support their
racial preferences and prejudices. (measure the size of the
skull, white skull larger; therefore more advance and
intelligent)
— Race in this view, determined human intelligence, moral
development, and destiny. “race is everything”.

5. RACIAL IMAGES FOR
EUROPEANS

6. RACE IS EVERYTHING
— The sense of responsability to the “weaker” races.
Europeans had de “duty to civilize the inferior
races”. “Discipline and production for the market to
the lazy natives”.
— Charles Darwin – “the survival of the fittest” led to
the “social Darwinism” – destruction of backward
races or “unfit” races.

8. SECOND WAVE OF
EUROPEAN CONQUESTS
— Between 1750 and 1914 was a second and quite
distinct round of conquests: Asia and Africa.
— Construction of these new empires in the Afro-Asian
world, involved military force. – countless wars of
conquest of colonial European states.
— India and Indonesia, grew out of earlier interactions
with European trading firms. British East India
Company (took advantage of the fragmentation of
Mughal Empire and facilitated penetration for them).
— Dutch acquisition of Indonesia was also as traders
and alliances. Slowly without a plan, soon they had
conquered the islands.

9. SCRAMBLE FOR AFRICA
— Half a dozen European powers against one another
as they partitioned the entire continent for 25 years
(1875-1900). = extensive bloody military action.

10. UNDER EUROPEAN RULE
— Australia and New Zealand, both taken over by
the British during the nineteenth century, were
more similar to the earlier colonization of North
America.
— Diseases that reduced native numbers by 75%.
— United States practiced a policy of removing,
exterminating indian people. – Also there were
boarding schools (many children removed, to
civilize the remaining natives) = Kill the Indian,
save the Man.
— Filipinos acquired new colonial rulers when
United Staes took over from Spain (Spanish
American war 1898) – many freed migrated to
West Africa.

11. UNDER EUROPEAN RULE
— Incorporation into European colonial empires was a
traumatic experience.

12. COOPERATION AND
REBELLION
— Although violence was a prominent feature of colonial
life – many men found employment, status and security
in European armed forces. – intermediaries.
— African rulers or elite governing families found it
possible to retain much of their earlier status and
privileges while gaining wealth excercising authority.
— Many converted also to Christian missionaries as
teachers, translators to “upgrade” status.
— In East Africa white men, were expected to be addressed
as Bwanas (“master” in Swahili).

13. COLONIAL EMPIRES WITH
DIFFERENCE
— Patterns of racial separation was much more
pronounced than in places such as Nigeria.
— The most extreme case was South Africa, where
a large European population and the widespread
use of African labor in mines and insdustries
brought to establich race as legal and separate
“homelands”, educational systems, residential
areas, public facilities. = apartheid.
— New means of communication and
transportation, imposed changes in landholding
patterns, integration of colonial economies into
a global network of exchange, public health and
sanitation measures – all this touched the daily
lives of many people far more deeply than in
earlier empires.

14. WAYS OF WORKING:
COMPARING
— Colonial rule affected the lives of its subject
people in many ways, but the most pronounced
change was their WAYS OF WORKING.
— Colonial state with its power to pay tax, to seize
land for European enterprises, to force labor, to
build railroads, ports and roads – played an
important role in these transformations.
— African societies got into the world wconomy with
the demand of gold, diamonds, copper, rubber,
coffee, cocoa and cotton etc.
— Plantation workers, domestic servants, crop
farmers, miners underwent profound changes.

15. ECONOMIES OF COERCION:
FORCED LABOR
— Unpaid labor on public projects, such as building railroads,
constructing government buildings. All “natives” (blacks) were
legally obligated for “statute labor” of 12 days a year until 1946.
— One of the cruelties of forced labor, in Congo, governend by king
Leopold II of Belgium, forced villagers to collect rubber and
starved them to death, or if not collected a certain amount would
cut ears, arms, body parts.
— Commerce in rubber and ivory made possible by the massive use
of forced labor in Congo and Cameroon. = causing AIDS epidemic
jump from chimpanzees to humans. – Congo main city Kinshasa
(networks of sexual interaction) -= spread.
— Indonesia: Forced labor took shape in the so called cultivation
system of the Netherlands East Indies. Peasants required to give
20%-40% of their land in crops and government payed them fized
prices, low prices.

16. ECONOMIES OF CASH-
CROP AGRICULTURE
— In some places, colonial rule created conditions that facilitated
and increased cash-crop production to the advantage of local
farmers.
— Since they provided irrigation and transportation, they started
laws that facilitated private ownership of small farms.
— Local farmers benfited considerably because they were now able
to own their own land, rice production increased so much that fed
millions world wide.
—  But on the other side, in Vietnam and many other places these
led to the destruction of mangrove forests and swamplands along
with the fish and shellfish.
— Still these led to a shoratge of labor, fostered to exploit workers
and generate tensions between the sexes. Men (interested)
married women since they were most hired in agriculture, food
process.

17. ECONOMIES OF WAGE
LABOR: MIGRATION
— Colonization in Africa and Asia led to vast streams of migration.
The globalizing world of the colonial era was one of people in
motion.
— Africans migrated to European farms or plantations (since they
lost theirs). Inside Africa many moved to different parts: Kenya,
Algeria, Rhodesia and South Africa.
— 88% of the land belonging to whites – 20% of population.
— Babtustans (black lived) became greatly overcrowded: soil fertility
declined, forests shrank and hillsides cleared.
— Some 29 million indians and 19 million Chinese migrated to
Southeast Asia – paid poorly but better conditions.
— Mines were another source of wage labor for many Asians.
— Australia, New Zealand and United States enacted measures to
restrict or end Chinese migration in the late 20th century.

18. WOMEN AND COLONIAL
ECONOMY
— Women were almost everywhere active farmers
with responsability for planting, weeding, and
harvesting.
— Women were expected to feed their own families
and were usually allocated their own fields with
that pourpose.
— Camerron estimated that womens´working hours
increased from 46 hours per week to 70 hours by
1934.
— Women also had to supply food to men in the
cities to compensate for very low urban wages.
— Married couples in South Africa rarely lived
together 1930. Only a couple of months a year.

19. ASSESSING COLONIAL
DEVELOPMENT
— Colonial rule served for better or worse to further integration
of Asian and African economies into a global network of
exchange.
— Schools trained the army of intermediaries on which colonial
rule depended, and modest health care fulfilled some of the
“civilizing mission”.
— When India became independent after two centuries of
colonial rule by the world´s first industrial society, it was still
one of the poorest of the world´s developing countries.
— Debate: Was it the result of deliberate British policies? Or was
it due to the conditions of Indian Society?
— Whatever earlier promise, had become an ECONOMIC DEAD
END.

20. EDUCATION
— Through missionary or government schools, that
generated a new identity. Education was a means of
“uplifting native races”
— Reading or writing of any king often sugggested a
magical power (specially if a native could read).
— Better paying positions in government bureaucracies,
or business firms – education provided a social
mobility and elite status.
— Many ardetly through education embraced European
culture – learning to speak French, or English.
— Still Europeans declined to treat their Asian or
African subjects as equal partners.

21. RELIGION
— Widespread of Christianity conversion . 10,000 missionaries
had descended on Africa by 1910, by 1960s about 50
million Africans claimed Christian identity.
— Christianity was widely associated with modern education,
and especially in Africa, mission schools were the primary
providers of Western Education.
— Missionary teaching and practice also generated conflict
and opposition, particularly when they touched on gender
roles.
— Marriages between Christian and non-Christians, African
sexual activity outside of monogamous marriage often
resulted in expulsion from the church.
— Female circumcision – Missionaries tried to ban it in 1929,
but thousands abandoned mission schools and churches =
creation of independent schools.
— Christianity in Africa became Africanized.

22. RACE AND TRIBE
— The influence of Western culture led also to the
idea of an “African identity” well educated
Africans began to think in broader terms –
African traditions.
— African intellectuals pointed with pride to their
ancient kingdoms of Ethiopia, Malo, Songhay
and others.
— Edward Blyden (1832-1912) a West African
born in West Indies and educated in the United
States became a prominent scholar and
political officer. Pointing out the uniqueness of
African culture- individualistic but cooperative,
egalitarian societies within Africa.
— African Identity – Africans that spoke similar
languages, shared common culture, began to
think of themselves as a single people, new
tribe.
— “Africans belong to tribes, African built tribes to
belong to.”

23. WHO MAKES HISTORY?
— Slaves, workers, peasants, women,
the colonized have been able to act
in their own interests, even within
the most oppressive conditions. This
king of “history from below” found
expression in a famous book “the
world the slaves made”.
— Colonized people in any number of
ways actively shaped the history of
colonial era. Transformed
Christianity.
— Karl Marx: “men make their own
history” “but they do not make it as
they please nor under conditions of
their choosing”.
— Both colonizers and conolized
MADE HISTORY, but neither was
able to do so as they pleased.