European Imperialism: Basic Traits PDF

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Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore - Brescia

Gianluca Pastori

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European imperialism history political science global history

Summary

This academic script details the historical development and characteristics of European imperialism. Key aspects include the involvement of European powers, especially Britain and France, in various parts of the world, and the significant use of military power and diplomacy in their expansion into areas like India and Africa. The document also comments on forms of European Imperialism.

Full Transcript

International History (Prof. Gianluca Pastori) Script 07 – European imperialism: some basic traits International History (Prof. Gianluca Pastori) Script 07 – European imperialism: some basic traits 1. European imperialism far predates the 19th century. In the 16th century, European powers already h...

International History (Prof. Gianluca Pastori) Script 07 – European imperialism: some basic traits International History (Prof. Gianluca Pastori) Script 07 – European imperialism: some basic traits 1. European imperialism far predates the 19th century. In the 16th century, European powers already had their footholds in many parts of the world. During the 18th century, European wars had far-reaching implications, especially in Asia and America. Britain and France fought part of the Seven Year War (1756-63) in their colonial possessions, and the end of the conflict left Britain with almost uncontested supremacy in many extraEuropean theatres. It was also to redress this balance that France and Spain, at the end of the century, chose to support the British North American colonies’ independence claims. It was in the framework of the Seven Year War that the British victory in Plassey (1757) made the East India Company (EIC) the paramount power of the Indian subcontinent, a role that the EIC maintained for one century before the British government assumed direct control over the Company’s Indian possessions. This so-called ‘first imperialism’ had different forms. However, the chartered companies (private ventures operating under a royal charter that granted them several privileges) were the main protagonists of this early phase. Typically, charted companies were trading companies, although some of them (such as some British companies in North America) had other aims, such as encouraging settlement or exploiting local resources. Their dealings with the local powers varied case by case. The common trait was that, in the beginning, they were just one element (and, often, not the most powerful one) in a complex network of forces. This is why they had to compete to assert their role and why, over time, they built their own armies, which would have been a critical element in their rise to power. 2. The European companies used their military power in different ways. In India and its hinterland, where competition between Britain, Francia, Portugal and the Netherlands was more intense, one of the main businesses was renting mercenaries to local rulers. Small numbers of western trained and armed soldiers could easily make a difference, even against larger numbers of traditionally trained and armed enemies. This strategy allowed European powers to enter local power struggles and exact greater rewards for their involvement; at the same time, it made local and European rivalries increasingly intermingled. In the second half of the 18th century, European companies had grown strong enough to act as independent players. Their armies were made of native troops, dressed, trained and armed in the European fashion, led by European officers and supported by European soldiers in some key functions, e.g., in managing artillery. Superior training – together with the treason by Mir Jafar Ali Khan and Yar Lutuf Khan – was essential to the British victory in Plassey. After that success, Mir Jafar, now governor of Bengal and Bihar, transferred to the EIC the control over the region, starting the EIC’s territorial expansion in northern India. In the following decades, the Company consolidate this role. In 1764, after the battle of Buxar, Mughal emperor Shah Alam II appointed it the revenue collector (diwan) of Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa in the lower Gangetic plain. In parallel, the AngloMysore Wars (1766-99) and the Anglo-Maratha Wars (1772-1818) left the EIC in control of large areas of India south of the Sutlej River. With the defeat of the Marathas, no native power represented a threat to the Company any longer. 3. The expansion of the Company’s power chiefly took two forms. The first was the outright annexation of Indian states and the direct governance of these territories, which collectively were labelled British India. The annexed regions included the North-Western 1 International History (Prof. Gianluca Pastori) Script 07 – European imperialism: some basic traits Provinces of Rohilkhand, Gorakhpur, and Doab (1801), Delhi (1803), Assam (1828), and Sindh (1843). Punjab, the North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir were annexed after the Anglo-Sikh Wars in 1849-56; however, Kashmir was immediately sold to the Dogra dynasty of Jammu. In 1854, Berar was annexed, and in 1856 the State of Oudh met the same fate. The second form of asserting power involved treaties in which Indian rulers acknowledged the Company’s hegemony in return for limited internal autonomy. When an Indian ruler, who was able to secure his territory, wanted to enter such an alliance, the Company welcomed it as an economical method of indirect rule, which did not involve the economic costs of direct administration or the political costs of gaining the support of alien subjects. In return, the Company undertook the “defence of these subordinate allies and treated them with traditional respect and marks of honour”. In the early 19th century, these princely states accounted for some two-thirds of Indian territory. Prominent among them were Cochin, in today’s Kerala (1791), Jaipur (Kingdom of Amber, 1794), Travancore, on the south-western tip of the subcontinent (1795), Hyderabad (1798), Mysore (1799), the Cis-Sutlej Hill States in north-west India (1815), the Central India Agency (1819), the Cutch State and the Gujarat Gaikwad territories (State of Baroda, 1819), Rajputana (1818), and Bahawalpur, in today’s Pakistan (1833). 4. While extending its territorial control, the EIC gradually made the Mughal emperor a mere figurehead. After the end of the second Anglo-Maratha War (1803-1805), the British formally became the protectors of the Mughal dynasty. As a consequence, the EIC assumed increasing political powers. In turn, the British government extended its control over the Company, although it formally remained a private subject. With the loss of the American colonies, India gained further political and economic importance. Moreover, with the spreading of territorial control, the Company’s troops grew in size, enlisting a growing number of native soldiers, both high-caste Hindus and Muslims. In 1857-59, a mutiny occurred in the army, merging with social and economic discontent among the population. The rebellion – which mainly affected northern and north-eastern India -- was harshly suppressed, the Mughal empire was formally abolished, and the last emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, who had sided with the mutineers, was exiled to Burma. However, the ‘Great Mutiny’ also marked the end of the EIC. In 1859, the Company was dissolved, and its political powers were transferred to the British government. The Indian military establishment was revised, drastically reducing the weight of the native component and increasing the number of European troops. The administrative system was also revised, as well as the country’s legal system. However, British India maintained its nature of a loose aggregation of territories, placed under the control of three different administrations (‘presidencies’) located in Calcutta (Bengal Presidency), Bombay and Madras, with the first acting as a sort of primus inter pares. 5. After the ‘Great Muntiny’, India emphasised its role as the main British colony (the ‘Jewel of the Crown’). However, since the 1820s, Britain’s overseas role had been increasingly challenged, especially by France and Russia. Russia’s expansion in the Central Asia steppe pushed its southern borders southwards, reducing the buffer separating them from British India’s northern borders. Tensions between London and St. Petersburg were constant all over the century and coupled with those connected to the ‘Eastern question’. One of the consequences was British involvement in the two ill-fated AngloAfghan Wars (1839-42 and 1878-80). Only in 1907, the two countries settled their disputes, signing the Treaty of St. Petersburg, which recognised Afghanistan’s neutrality and defined the two countries’ respective spheres of influence in Persia. Since the 1830s and 2 International History (Prof. Gianluca Pastori) Script 07 – European imperialism: some basic traits more actively after the defeat in the Franco-Prussian war, also France started its overseas expansion. Its interests focused mostly on North Africa, West Africa, South-East Asia and the Levant. In the last two decades of the century, France’s penetration in Africa along a West/East axis from the Atlantic Ocean towards the Red Sea became a source of concern for British authorities, which were engaged in a similar project on the North/South axis. In 1898, French and British troops clashed in Fashoda, in South Sudan, pulling the two countries on the verged of an armed confrontation. The crisis had a diplomatic composition, paving the way to the 1904 Anglo-French Entente. However, the Fashoda incident was proof of how dangerous imperialistic rivalries could be when coupled with growing tensions in the European theatre. 6. The Fashoda incident was the product of the last great wave of European overseas imperialism. In 1884, the Berlin conference regulated European colonisation and trade in Africa, trying to keep rivalries under control and opening the so-called ‘scramble for Africa’. The consequence was a fast-paced appropriation of the African territories. If in 1870, some ten per cent of Africa was under formal European control, in 1914, the share had increased to almost 90 per cent, with only Liberia and Ethiopia remaining independent. Nearly all European countries (Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, and Spain) were involved in the scramble, although France and Britain, benefitting from their already established imperial status, played the lion’s share. Great powers’ penetration led to conflict not only with native peoples (such as the Zulu War in 1879 or the eighty-year-long Ashanti wars that Britain fought between 1823 and 1900) but also with previous white settlers, such as the Boers, which engaged Britain twice, in 1880-81 and 1899-1902. The ‘scramble’ had different reasons. By the end of the 19th century, the room for further expansion was shrinking, and no power wanted to be excluded. Imperialism was seen as positive from an economic point of view. Colonies provided raw materials and a cheap workforce and were captive markets for national manufactured goods. The need for imperial expansion stimulated the national industry and appeased the Army and Navy lobbies. In an age of mounting chauvinism, imperial expansion was highly palatable to public opinion. Finally, in the same vein, imperial expansion appeased national leaders, who saw imperialism as a way to assert their country’s great power status in an age when social Darwinism’s muscular principles were all-pervasive. 7. Every country adopted its own way of organising its colonial possessions. As seen above, in the case of India, Britain preferred indirect rule, heavily relying on the cooperation of the local rulers. Broadly speaking, British colonialism avoided interfering too much with the existing power structures. Economic considerations were an important element in this decision, but it was not the only one. More than gaining territorial control, British imperialism aimed at establishing bases at some critical juncture, mainly along the world’s sea lines of communication (SLOCs). Until the end of World War I, India and its hinterland remained Britain’s only sizeable territorial possession, apart from the ‘white’ settlement colonies of Australia, Canada and New Zealand. A relatively small population and Army did not allow it to retain permanent control over huge land spans. Finally, cultural stereotypes made its elites believe that the British political and institutional model could not be exported into non-white colonies, i.e., colonies whose population was not made chiefly of ethnic-European settlers. Opposite to Britain, France privileged direct rule, based on the export of its administrative system, the French language culture, and principles, and the creation of ‘Francesised’ elites as a trait d’union between colonial authorities and the native population. Between these two ideal models, there were 3 International History (Prof. Gianluca Pastori) Script 07 – European imperialism: some basic traits a lot of variations, and their application was never as rigid as in theory. In any case, they had long-lasting impacts, and after the fall of the European empires, former colonies’ political, social, and economic systems would have retained for a long time markedly different traits according to their original colonial powers. 8. As already remarked, 19th-century imperialism was not only a European phenomenon. Russia’s expansion in the steppe and Siberia was an imperialistic effort and had the typical traits of domestic colonialism. The same is true about the US westward expansion. Between 1898 and 1910, the US adopted an openly imperialistic posture also in its foreign intercourses, engaging in both direct territorial acquisition (Puerto Rico and the Philippines) and informal spreading of its political and territorial control. For instance, US economic and financial interests had an overwhelming weight in the political life of the Caribbean and the Central American states. In the same vein, the 1901 Cuban constitution – according to the provisions of the Platt amendment – granted the US several special rights over the country, set restrictions on Cuban sovereignty and guaranteed the US the right to lease land to establish naval bases and coaling stations. Japan’s foreign policy was also imperialistic, retaining this trait until World War II. Economic considerations largely explain Japan’s ambition to gain a foothold in mainland Asia. However, like in the case of Europe, this kind of consideration tells just one part of the story. National prestige was equally relevant. Being part of the imperial scramble was perceived as a way to reaffirm the country’s equal status compared to the European powers and the US. The pressure of the industrial and military cliques was another element. Unsurprisingly, Japan’s assertiveness fostered European and US hostility, and only in 1902 the British government signed a defensive treaty with the country to disengage its fleet from Eastern Asia and redeploy it in the home seas to face a possible German threat. 4

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