Chapter 32 Saq
1. What role did Cecil Rhodes play in African History between 1889 and 1896?
Cecil Rhodes in 1889, at age thirty-five, he had almost completely monopolized diamond mining in South Africa, and he controlled 90 percent of the world's diamond production. With ample financial backing, Rhodes built up a healthy stake in the gold-mining business, although he did not seek to monopolize gold the way he did diamonds. He also entered politics, serving as a prime minister (1890-1896) of the British Cape Colony.
17. Why did colonized lands in Southeast Asia and Africa become hotbeds of resistance?
Colonized lands in southeast Asia and Africa also became hotbeds of resistance, as subject peoples revolted against foreign rule, tyrannical behavior of colonial officials, the introduction of European schools and curricula, high taxation, and requirements that subject peoples cultivate certain crops or provide compulsory labor for colonists' enterprises.
5. How did the English East India Company gain a foothold in India?
After the death of the emperor Aurangzeb in 1707, the Mughal state entered a period of decline and many local authorities asserted their independence of Mughal rule. The East India Company took advantage of Mughal weakness to strengthen and expand its trading posts. In the 1750s company officials embarked on the outright conquest of India. Through diplomacy or military campaigns, the company conquered autonomous Indian kingdoms and reduced Mughal rule to only a small area around Delhi. By the mid-nineteenth century, the company had annexed huge areas of India and had established control over present-day Pakistan, Bangladesh, Burma, and Sri Lanka.
9. How did Egyptian rulers' financial mismanagement lead to British occupation of Egypt?
As Leopold colonized central Africa, Britain established an imperial presence in Egypt. As Muhammad Ali and other Egyptian rulers sought to build up their army, strengthen the economy, and distance themselves from Ottoman authority, they borrowed heavily from European lenders. In the 1870s crushing debt forced Egyptian officials to impose high taxes, which provoked popular unrest and a military rebellion. In 1882 a British army occupied Egypt to protect British financial interests and ensure the safety of the Suez Canal, which was crucial to British communications with India.
6. List two ways in which British rule transformed India's cultural structure
As they extended their authority to all parts of India and Ceylon, British officials cleared forests, restructured landholdings, and encouraged the cultivation of crops, such as tea, coffee, and opium. They built an extensive railroad and telegraph networks that tightened links between India and the larger global economy. They also constructed new canals, harbors, and irrigation systems to support commerce and agriculture. British colonial authorities made little effort to promote christianity, but they established english style schools for the children of Indian elites.
14. What effect did Britain's introduction of tea bushes have on Ceylon?
In the early nineteenth century, British colonial officials introduced tea bushes from China to Ceylon and India. The effect of Ceylon was profound. British planters felled trees in much of the island and recruited Ceylonese women by the thousands to carry out the labor-intensive work of harvesting mature tea leaves.
15. Describe the two patterns of labor migration that took place during the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Efforts to exploit the natural resources and agricultural products to subject lands led imperial and colonial powers to encourage mass migrations of workers. European migrants went mostly to temperate lands, where they worked as free cultivators or industrial laborers. The migrants from Asia, Africa, and the Pacific Islands moved largely to tropical and subtropical lands, where they worked as indentured servants on plantations or manual laborers for mining enterprises or large scale construction projects.
10. Describe the structure of direct rule in the colonies.
Europeans struggled to identify the ideal system of rule, only to learn that colonial rule in Africa could be maintained only through exceedingly high expenditures. The earliest approach to colonial rule involves "concessionary companies." Under direct rule, colonies featured administrative districts headed by European personnel who assumed responsibility for tax collection, labor and military recruitment, and the maintenance of law and order. Direct rule aimed at removing strong kings and other leaders and replacing the with more malleable persons. Underlying the principle of direct rule was the desire to keep African populations in check and to permit European administrators to engage in a "civilizing mission"
2. What were the three economic motives behind imperialism?
Imperialism refers to the domination of European powers—and later the United States and Japan as well- over subject lands in the larger world. The economic motives behind imperialism included that the pointing out of overseas colonies could serve as reliable sources of raw materials not available in Europe that came into demand because of industrialization: rubber, tin, and copper were vital products. It was also because of the abundant supplies of tin available in colonies of Southeast Asia and copper in Central Africa. The United States and Russia supplied most of the world's petroleum in the nineteenth century, but the oil fields of southwest Asia attracted the attention of European industrialists and imperialists alike.
13. How did England's dependence on cotton transform the cotton industry in India?
In the nineteenth century, colonial administrators reoriented the cultivation of cotton to serve the needs of the emerging British textile industry. They encouraged cultivators to produce cotton for export rather than for local consumption, and they built railroads deep into the subcontinent to transport raw cotton to the coast quickly. They allowed the import of inexpensive British textiles, which undermined Indian cotton cloth production. Thus colonial policies transformed India from the world's principal center of cotton manufacture to a supplier of raw cotton and a consumer of textiles produced in British Christianity.
12. Why was the consolidation of US authority in the Philippines a difficult affair?
The Spanish-Cuban-American war coincided with a Filipino revolt against Spanish rule, and the U.S. forces promised to support Christianityindependence of the Philippines in exchange for an alliance against Spain. After the victory over Spain, however, President William Mckinley decided to bring the Philippines under the American control. In the end, there was a bitter insurrection between them. (1)
8. What ultimately brought an end to the Great Game?
The beginning of the global war (World War 1) in 1914 brought an end to the great game. Additionally, the collapse of the Russian tsarist state significantly weakened Russian forces, which ensured Great Britain would gain full control of India. Nevertheless, imperial expansion brought much of Central Asia into the Russian empire and subjected the region to a Russian hegemony that persisted until the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991.
3. What impact did the Panama and Suez Canals have on the building and maintaining of empires?
The construction of new canals enhanced the effectiveness of steamships. Both the Suez Canal (constructed 1859-1869) and the Panama Canal (constructed 1904-1914) facilitated the building and maintenance of empires by enabling naval vessels to travel rapidly between the world's seas and oceans. They also lowered the costs of trade between imperial powers and subject lands.
7. What was the Great Game and how did Russia and Great Britain play it?
The great game was the pursuit of influence and intelligence over Central Asia, with both Russia and Britain competing for the large mass of land. They mapped terrain, scouted mountain passes, and sought alliances with local rulers from Afghanistan to the Aral Sea- all in an effort to prepare for the anticipated war for India. In fact, the outbreak of global war in 1914 and the collapse of the tsarist state in 1917 ensured the contest for India never took place.
4. Describe the evolution of firearms used by the Europeans.
The most advanced firearms of the early nineteenth century were smoothbore, muzzle-loading muskets. When large numbers of infantry fired their muskets at once, it took a skilled musketeer to reload the weapon(only took about 1 minute), and because of its smoothbore, the musket was not a very accurate firearm. By mid-century European armies were using breech-loading firearms with rifled bores that were far more accurate and reliable than muskets. By the 1870s Europeans were experimenting with rifled machine guns, and in the 1880s they adopted the Maxim gun, a light and powerful weapon that fired eleven bullets per second.
16. What were Asian, African, and pacific island migrants promised in return for their labor?
The planters relied primarily on indentured laborers recruited from relatively poor and densely populated lands. Labor recruiters generally offered workers free passage to their destinations and provided them with food, shelter, clothing, and modest compensation for their services in exchange for a commitment to work for five to seven years. Sometimes recruiters offered free return passage to workers who completed a second term of service.
18. How did Howard Spencer use Darwin's "survival of the fittest" to explain European domination?
The slogan "survival of the fittest" soon became a byword for Darwin's theory of evolution. The english philosopher Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) relied on theories of evolution to explain differences between the strong and the weak: successful individuals and races had competed better in the natural world and consequently evolved to higher states than did other, less fit peoples. Christianity that reasoning, Spencer, and others justified the domination of European imperialists over subject peoples as the inevitable result of natural scientific principles.
11. What territorial regions did the US gain after the defeat of Spain?
U.S. leaders claimed sabotage and declared war on Spain. The United States easily defeated Spain and took control and possession of Cuba and Puerto Rico. After the U.S. Navy destroyed the Spanish fleet at Manila in a single day, the United States also took possession of Guam and the Philippines, Spain's last colonies in the Pacific, to prevent them from falling under German or Japanese control.