Imperialism Week2/3

2. New Imperialism

3. Contrasting the old and new:
• Older forms of Imperialism, with the
exception of Spain, Britain, and France in the
New World, focused on cooperation and trade
with local rulers in places like India, Africa,
China, etc.
• Usually based on coastal trade centers.

4. The New Imperialism:
• New Imperialism used various strategies to
reconfigure the political, social, economic and
cultural structures of subject lands to provide natural
resources and markets for the newly industrialized
powers. (expansion of global capitalism)
• Unlike old imperialism, new imperialism brought
entire territories, not just their coastal regions, under
control.
• Emphasis on domination rather than cooperation.

5. New Imperialism: 1870-1914
• Britain
• Belgium
• France
• Germany
• The United States
• Japan
• Russia
• Italy

6. Factors in the rise of New Imperialism:
1. Industrialization and acceleration of capitalist
modes of production in the global north.
2. Consolidation of nation states in Europe =
national competition.

7. Industrialization:
• Rapid industrialization in the global north
required:
• 1. natural resources that could not be found at
home such as: rubber, tin, tea, copper, cocoa,
coffee, and petroleum (to name only a few).
• 2. The escalation in the capitalist mode of
production also sought out new markets for the
sale of commodities, (textiles for example).

8. Industrial capitalism included a mastery over technology
Weapons

9. Transportation
Locomotive Steamship

10. Communications
Undersea Cables

11. Emerging Nation States:
• Bt the mid-19th
century, new nation states
emerged in Europe, including Germany and
Italy.
• Nation state formation was often fraught with
conflict, especially defining who the “people”
were.

12. A Definition of Nationalism:
• A belief among a group of people that they
share a common heritage and future, and that
they have a right to organize a political system
with definite geographic boundaries to pursue
their own self interest, both politically and
economically.

13. Emerging Nation States (cont.):
• As nation building progressed in the north,
standardization of laws, weights and measures, and
compulsory education created a boom in literacy.
• Rising standards of living created a population boom in
the global north.
• People increasingly came to see themselves as
Germans or Frenchman, (for example) rather than as
residents of Marseilles or subjects of the King of
Bavaria.

17. Imperialism as a salve for domestic unrest:
• Class antagonism between the proletariat and
bourgeoisie constantly threatened to
undermine the social order in the global
north.
• Industrialized workers realized that they had
the ability to shut down the economy through
general strikes and used this power to gain
new rights.

18. Imperialism as a salve for domestic
unrest (cont.):
• Much of this domestic social tension was
diffused by focusing on the patriotism of
foreign imperialist ventures.
• In this regard, one might argue that domestic
unrest was shipped off to foreign holdings
where democratization was kept in check
through ruthless discipline and
institutionalized racism.

20. Various forms of New Imperialism
• Settler Colonies
• Direct Rule
• Informal Rule (also known as spheres of
influence)
• Open Door Policy

21. Settler Colonies:
• The United States (originally a British Colony)
• Australia
• New Zealand
• Canada
• South Africa
• (later iterations might include Algeria and
Israel)

22. Settler Colonies usually focused on the
acquisition of land and included systematic
eradication or displacement of indigenous
peoples (both through policy and disease).
Aborigines in Queensland, Australia

23. Direct Rule or Formal Imperialism:
The British Raj in India

24. India before 1857, and after

25. Informal Imperialism (Spheres of Influence)

26. The Scramble for Africa (artificial demarcations)

27. The Berlin Conference (1884-85)

28. Ideological Justifications for
New Imperialism
• New ideas about society went hand-in-hand with the
development of the New Imperialism.
• One example: Count Joseph Arthur de Gobineau
(also known more simply as Arthur Gobineau, 1816-
1882), wrote An Essay on the Inequality of the
Human Races, in four volumes, from 1853-1855.
• Gobineau compared the “white, yellow, and black
races” and found the white to be far superior to the
other two.

29. An excerpt from Gobineau’s essay
• “The dark races are the lowest on the scale.
The shape of the pelvis has a character of
animalism, which is imprinted on the
individuals of that race ere their birth, and
seems to portend their destiny. The circle of
intellectual development of that group is
more contracted than that of either of the
other two [yellow and white].”

30. Social Darwinism/Scientific Racism
• By the early 19th
century, theorists began to think of the
human species as a series of racially distinct groups.
•
• The publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origins of Species
(1859) was used by theorists to uphold the notion of the
“survival of the fittest,” which seemed to support European
domination over subject peoples.
• It is important to note that Social Darwinism was a perversion
of Darwin’s ideas, which focused on adaptation.
• Again, Social Darwinism was not invented
by Darwin!

32. Social Darwinism was invented by
Herbert Spencer (1820-1903)
Used the theory of evolution to explain
differences between the weak and the
strong.
Argued that successful races had competed
better in the natural world and therefore
had attained a higher state in natural
hierarchy.
Became a justification for imperial dominion
which, under the reasoning of Social
Darwinism seemed both natural and
inevitable.

33. Social Darwinists held that:
• Some people were naturally superior to others (for example, whites
to blacks, Nordics to Latins, Germans to Slavs, non-Jews to Jews)
• The bourgeoisie deserved to be comfortable because they had
proven their superiority
• Big business should triumph over small concerns
• Powerful states deserved to rule the world
• War was morally justified because it proved the vitality of those who
won
• In the end, Social Darwinism was a powerful ideological justification
for the New Imperialism.

34. Social Darwinism as the White Man’s Burden

35. Social Darwinism anticipated the Eugenics movement
of the early 20th
Century

36. Which became an inspiration for these
guys:

37. Interconnections--New Imperialism fueled by:
• Industrialization and expansion of capitalism=
the increasing need for resources and
markets.
• Consolidation of the nation state and national
competition.
• Social Darwinism/scientific racism
• As a concluding note--these factors would
precipitate many of the major conflicts of the
20th
century including but not limited to WWI
and WWII.

38. Rudyard Kipling “The White Man’s Burden” (1899) excerpts:
• Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.
• Take up the White Man's burden--
The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.