Chapter 18

The second wave of European Colonialism conquests was focused in Asia, Africa, and Oceania rather than in the Western Hemisphere. Europeans were fighting hard to create their new empires, as countess wars of conquest attest. The passage to colonial status occurred in various ways. through trading, absense of cultural or political unity of other empires, and through different alliances from local authorities and European traders. Old ways of working were eroded almost everywhere in the colonial world. The strength of European empires erased the need for peasant families farming, hand made artisan goods, and Asian and African merchants for trade. The new ways of working that emerged during the colonial era derived directly from the demands of the colonial state. The most obvious was the required and unpaid labor on public projects such as constructing railroads, government buildings, and transporting goods. In some places, colonial rule created conditions that facilitated and increased cash-crop production to the advantage of local farmers. Another way of working in colonial societies involved wage labor in some European enterprise. millions of colonial subjects across Asia, Africa, and Oceania sought employment in European-owned plantations, mines, construction projects, and homes. As the slave trade diminished and colonial rule took shape in Africa, internal migration mounted within or among particular colonies.
The Scramble for Africa was a time in which a dozen or so European countries divided up almost the entire continent into colonial territories. It took place between 1875-1900 and even surprised the European leaders who initiated it with how quick it happened. African societies  were suddenly confronted by highly aggressive and well-armed foreign forces. The rival powers of Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Portugal, Spain, and Italy sought to get a piece of the African continent that was believed to hold the promise of great wealth. Europeans faced widespread African resistance, making the scramble an extremely bloody process of military conquest.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Chapter 20

World war I effectively launched the twentieth century, considered a new phase of world history. Europe's modern transformation and its global ascendancy were not accompanied by a growing  unity or stability among it own peoples, quite the opposite in fact. The biggest division was among competing states. By the early twentieth century, the balance of power was expressed in two rival alliances. The Triple Alliance of Germany, Italy, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Triple Entente of Russia, France, and Britain. Slavic nationalism and Austro-Hungarian opposition to it certainly lay at the heart of the war's beginning. The Great Powers of Europe competed intensely for colonies, spheres of influence, and superiority in armamnets and the public pressure of competing nationalism ensured widespread popular support for the decision to go to war, at least initially. Each country had a incentive to strike first and rapid industrialization  of warfare which led to some 10 million...
Read more

Intro to Part 4

in this reading, Strayer keys in on the beginnings of genuine globalization, elements of distinctly modern societies, and a growing European presence in world affairs. The most obvious expression of globalization at the time was in the oceanic journeys of European explorers and the European conquest and colonial settlements of the Americas. The trade and  transfer of slaves, silver, plants, animals, and people created new networks of interaction across the Atlantic and Pacific between the Americas and European Countries. Japan, India, and Europe experienced the beginnings of modern population growth as Eurasia recovered from the Black Death and crops in America were able to support these large population numbers. World Population more than doubled between 1400 and 1800 (from about 374 million to 968 million)
Read more

Chapter 16 (1st two sections)

This chapter dives into the Revolutions by different countries and how that shaped where we are today. The Atlantic Revolutions in North America, France, Haiti, and Latin America took place within a larger global framework.  These occurred in the context of expensive wars, weakening states, and destabilizing process of commercialization. Furthermore, the Atlantic revolutions were distinctive in that they were very closely connected to each other. The american revolutionary leader Thomas Jefferson was the U.S ambassador to France on the eve of the French Revolution. While there, he provided advice and encouragement to French reformers and revolutionaries. Simon Bolivar, a leading figure in Spanish American struggles for independence, twice visited Haiti, where he received military aid from the first black government in the Americas. The ideas that animated the Atlantic revolutions derived from the European Enlightenment and were shared across the ocean in newspapers, books, and pamp...
Read more