6.8: Chapter Summary and Key Terms

Chapter Summary

Imperialism, global capitalism, and racial hierarchies had developed in tandem over the nineteenth century. These interlocking systems produced "winners" and "losers" as some people were able to derive privileges from the new and emerging world order and others were not. Whether they were European, American, or Japanese, colonial regimes expropriated land and exploited labor. They saw themselves as racially superior with the rise of Social Darwinism and the beginning of the eugenics movement, and used this ideology as a justification for their inhumane treatment of colonial peoples, especially the working class. These chapter sections have shown the imbalance of power and extreme inequality of wealth that is characteristic of imperialistic undertakings. The colonized people, however, were not merely passive victims. They resisted, fought, and challenged colonial officers and private companies. We are living with the legacies of the nineteenth century today. Remembering and studying this time period should offer us not only context and perspective for understanding the present, but also inspiration to respond constructively to current challenges.

Key Terms

• Anarchism: A political theory that advocates the abolition of hierarchical authority and espouses voluntary cooperation among society's members.
• Belgian Congo: Between 1885-1908, Belgian King Leopold II claimed he was “civilizing” the Congolese, though his system of forced labor included whipping, torture, debt peonage, dismemberment, and outright murder. It was standard practice in the so-called “Congo Free State” to cut off the hands or arms of African workers who did not meet their rubber collection quotas.
• Captive Market: Natural resources were extracted from a colony and then brought back to the metropole. Once manufactured products were created using those natural resources, those products were then sold to the colonized populations. This profitable economic system influenced the eventual partition of almost the entire continent of Africa into colonies, where the same process was repeated.
• Maxim Gun: ​​During the 1890s, the British switched to the maxim gun, the first machine gun capable of firing 600 rounds per minute. They used this to conquer the Ndebele kingdom in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Cecil Rhodes, Prime Minister of the Cape Colony in South Africa from 1890-1895, armed about 750 British troops with maxim guns battle in their attack against 80,000 tribal spearmen and 20,000 riflemen. In 1898 the British killed 20,000 Sudanese warriors with four maxim Guns in a few hours without taking many casualties. The maxim gun is one of the means by which European colonialism proceeded in Africa and elsewhere.
• Metropole: The parent state of a colony.
• Opium Wars: In order to reverse its large trade imbalance with China, British merchants of the East India Company began to smuggle opium into China. Eventually, Qing Dynasty officials in China sought redress with Britain, and failing any resolution, used its limited military power to dump tons of opium into the ocean. The British response was a series of naval conflicts in which the Chinese were forced to capitulate to British demands and terms of peace. This led to the Treaty of Nanking in 1842. The U.S., which had also been smuggling opium into China, signed its own Treaty of Wangxia in 1844. In both treaties, the Chinese were forced to accept further trade relations with both countries. In the British case, their merchants were allowed to continue the lucrative opium trade. These unequal treaties caused great tension in Chinese society, becoming factors in later decades to events like the Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864) and the Boxer Rebellion (1899-1901).
• Queen Lili'uokalani: Queen Lili'uokalani ruled as the last monarch of Hawaii from 1891 to 1893. In January 1893, U.S. businessman Sanford Dole, staged a coup d'etat, and overthrew the Queen. The U.S. Minister to Hawaii, John Stevens, recognized Dole as the head of state and named Hawaii as a U.S. Protectorate. The U.S. annexed Hawaii as a U.S. territory in 1898. Native Hawaiian people were forced to accept this change against their will. Until her death in 1917, Queen Lili'uokalani fought for Hawaiian independence and her people to no avail. Hawaii became the 50th state on August 21, 1959.
• Russo-Japanese War: Taking place between 1904-1905, the victorious Japanese halted Russian expansion into East Asia. Both countries had imperial ambitions in Manchuria and Korea. This was the first time an Asian country defeated a European country in a military battle. In 1905, President Teddy Roosevelt helped to negotiate peace between the two countries.
• United Fruit: Before WWII, the U.S. media praised United Fruit for its growing banana business. However, United Fruit brutally suppressed worker strikes, leading later to the 1928 "Banana Massacre," in which over one thousand were killed.  This 1928 event was in response to workers asking for 6-day work weeks, compensation for work related accidents and other reasonable demands. Since the U.S. government needed the company's reach into Central America, whether it was their shipping fleet, large amount of railways, or transport of U.S. mail, its officials overlooked United Fruit's business practices and abuses.