Imperialism, 1850 to 1914

This is Unit Thirteen of Western Civilization Two, part two of two: the empires hollowed rather than conquered, the two states that escaped, three procedures, and what the taking of the world cost. Part one ended with a balance sheet: prestige paid, the colonies mostly did not. This part is the exceptions that teach the rule, and it pays off the unit's governing idea, the anchor's accident of monopoly, medicine and ideology with rivalry beneath. The Ottomans and the Qajars were never conquered and were hollowed instead, by capitulations, debts and the Great Game, and the Ottoman reckoning came in nineteen fifteen. Ethiopia defended itself with the rifles Europe sold; Japan joined, building the fleet Perry's gunboats had suggested. China was carved. Then the methods: the age on one line, the map of Africa in nineteen fourteen, and Kipling's burden set against Hobson's taproot. By the end you will be able to describe the Ottomans and Persia. To describe the escapes and the carving. To sequence and map the age. To read Kipling against Hobson. And to state the cost.

Five entries on the hollowed: the Eastern Question, the Janissaries destroyed and the Tanzimat, the sultan who undid it and the Young Turks, the Armenian Genocide, and Qajar Persia.

Sovereignty hollowed, not conquered.

WC2 1217 The Sick Man of Europe: Russia, the Crimea, and the Eastern Question

The Ottoman core was never conquered, but European power hollowed its sovereignty. Russia was the greatest threat. Küçük Kaynarca in seventeen seventy-four gave Russia Black Sea coast and a claim to protect Orthodox subjects; the Crimea was annexed in eighty-three, Catherine's war. The anchor says seventeen forty-four; the witness gives seventy-four and eighty-three.

Reform from the center, merchants above the law.

WC2 1218 Janissaries Destroyed, the Capitulations, the Tanzimat, and the Constitution of 1876

The Janissaries had decayed; Mahmud the Second destroyed them in eighteen twenty-six. Capitulations put European merchants above the law and beyond tax. Muhammad Ali took Egypt from eighteen-oh-five. The Tanzimat reforms from thirty-nine strengthened the central state and reached a constitution and parliament in seventy-six; a secular press dates only from seventeen twenty-seven. Tanzimat is on the witness; capitulations are anchor-only.

The reforms rolled back, the Balkans gone.

WC2 1219 Abdülhamid II, the Balkans Lost, and the Young Turks

Abdülhamid the Second, from eighteen seventy-six, rolled the reforms back. The Balkans went: Serbia and Bulgaria recognized at Berlin in seventy-eight, Bosnia to Austria in nineteen-oh-eight. The Committee of Union and Progress formed in eighty-nine, and the Young Turk Revolution of nineteen-oh-eight restored the constitution; he was deposed in oh-nine. The anchor's Serbia sixty-seven and coup of oh-nine are corrected.

The word genocide, coined with this in view.

WC2 1220 The Armenian Genocide, 1915

During the war the Committee of Union and Progress deported and murdered the empire's Armenians, in nineteen fifteen and sixteen, beginning with the arrest of Constantinople's Armenian leaders. Over a million died, the anchor says; the witness says one and a half. The word genocide was coined with these events in view. The anchor places it under Kemal; the witnesses say wartime.

Squeezed between two powers.

WC2 1221 Qajar Persia: The Great Game and the Constitution of 1905

Qajar Persia was squeezed between Britain and Russia in the Great Game; Russia took the Caucasus and neither power let the other invade. Concessions to Europeans, a tobacco monopoly among them, provoked protest. Nineteen-oh-five brought a constitution and parliament, dismissed in nineteen eleven; the gain was the idea of Iran as a nation. The Great Game is witnessed; the constitution is anchor-only.

Three entries on the escapes and the carving: Ethiopia at Adwa, Japan from Perry to Port Arthur, and the Boxers in a China cut into spheres.

Two texts, one treaty, and rifles.

WC2 1222 Ethiopia: Adwa, 1896

Italy's treaty of eighteen eighty-nine with Menelik the Second had two texts: the Italian made Ethiopia a protectorate, the Amharic did not. Menelik repudiated it, bought rifles, and at Adwa in ninety-six destroyed the Italian army. Six thousand Italians died, the witness's figure, there were riots in Rome at the news, and Ethiopia's independence was recognized.

Beating Europe at its own game.

WC2 1223 Japan: Perry, Meiji, and Victory Over Russia, 1905

Commodore Perry's gunboats entered Edo Bay in eighteen fifty-three and forced Japan open. The shogunate collapsed, and the Meiji Restoration of sixty-eight westernized fast: samurai privileges abolished, factories, a modern army and navy. Japan took Korea and Manchuria and beat Russia in nineteen-oh-five, beating Europe at its own game, the anchor's phrase, as an authoritarian state with a symbolic emperor.

Rails torn from the ground.

WC2 1224 The Boxers and China Carved

After the Opium Wars the powers carved China into spheres of influence. In eighteen ninety-nine the Boxers rose to drive foreigners out, tearing railway rails from the ground, and the dowager empress backed them. An eight-nation force lifted a fifty-five-day siege of the legations; the Boxer Protocol imposed troops and indemnity. Witness-built; the anchor has only the Opium Wars.

Three procedures: the age on one line from the Opium War to the Congo's transfer, the map of Africa in nineteen fourteen with its two independent states, and two Englishmen read against each other.

Asia by gunboat, Africa by conference, resistance by rifle.

WC2 1225 Sequencing Imperialism, 1840 to 1908

Put the unit on one line. The Opium War opens it in eighteen forty and Hong Kong follows in forty-two. Perry enters Edo Bay in fifty-three. The Sepoy Rebellion comes in fifty-seven and the Raj replaces the Company. The Meiji Restoration begins in sixty-eight; the Suez Canal opens in sixty-nine. Britain buys the canal shares in seventy-five and occupies Egypt in eighty-two. The Berlin Conference sits in eighty-four and eighty-five. Adwa is ninety-six, Fashoda ninety-eight, the Boer War ninety-nine to nineteen-oh-two, the Boxers nineteen hundred. The Herero rise in oh-four, Japan beats Russia in oh-five, and Belgium takes the Congo in oh-eight. The pattern: Asia first, by gunboat, in the forties and fifties; Africa in a rush after seventy-five; the resistance and the reckonings after ninety-five. Place each event in its decade before checking. Fashoda, Suez and the Boxers are witness-only.

Who held what, and who held nothing.

WC2 1226 Reading a Map of Africa in 1914

A map of Africa in nineteen fourteen asks two questions: who held what, and who held nothing. Britain's holdings run north to south with a gap: Egypt and the Sudan, then British East Africa, then the Rhodesias and South Africa, the Cape-to-Cairo line Rhodes wanted, broken by German East Africa. France holds the northwest in one block, Algeria to the Sahara to Senegal, plus Madagascar. Germany has four pieces: Togo, Cameroon, Southwest Africa and East Africa. Belgium's Congo sits in the center, larger than Western Europe. Portugal keeps Angola and Mozambique on opposite coasts, Italy Libya and Eritrea. Two states are shaded differently. Ethiopia is independent because of Adwa; Liberia is independent as the American settlers' republic. If a map shows Ethiopia colored Italian, it is nineteen thirty-six. If Germany's four pieces are missing, it is after nineteen nineteen. Name the power for each coast before reading the key. The map is the witness's standard; the anchor gives percentages, not shapes.

Duty against the taproot.

WC2 1227 Reading Kipling and Hobson Against Each Other

Read the two texts at Fordham. Kipling's poem of eighteen ninety-nine, written for the American conquest of the Philippines, says take up the White Man's burden, and describes the conquered as half-devil and half-child. The burden is the conqueror's: thankless toil for people who will hate him. Hobson's book of nineteen-oh-two answers with economics. Production outruns consumption at home, so more capital exists than can find remunerative investment, and it is this economic condition of affairs that forms the taproot of Imperialism. Set them against each other on three points. Motive: Kipling says duty, Hobson says surplus capital seeking outlets. Beneficiary: Kipling says the conquered, Hobson says the investors who use their governments to annex. Remedy: Kipling has none, since the burden is permanent; Hobson says raise home consumption and the surplus disappears. The anchor sides with neither wholly: its motive is rivalry and prestige, which Hobson's economics underrates and Kipling's duty conceals. Quoted within two sentences each; Kipling's racial language is the document's.

One capstone entry: a third of the globe to four-fifths in a generation, the accident with three parts, the rivalry beneath, and the costs abroad and at home.

The violence exported came home.

WC2 1228 Why Europe Took the World in a Generation, and What It Cost

The question this unit answers is how a continent that held a third of the globe in eighteen hundred held four-fifths by nineteen fourteen, and the anchor's answer is an accident with three parts. Industry gave Europe a monopoly on steel, steam and the Maxim gun. Medicine, quinine and then germ theory, opened the interior that had killed every European who entered it. And an ideology, Social Darwinism dressed as a civilizing mission, made conquest look like duty. The motive underneath was the one unit eleven left: rivalry among powers with no Concert to restrain them, so that Berlin in eighteen eighty-four was a land grab to keep the peace among the grabbers. The costs fell first on the conquered. The Congo's population halved and its people's hands were cut off for rubber; the Herero and Nama were driven into the desert; India's Company became a Raj with a glass ceiling; China lost its ports and its silver; the Boers' families died in camps. The costs came home too: the anchor says the toll of imperialism exceeded the Thirty Years' War's, and that in nineteen fourteen the violence exported for a generation came home to roost. Two states escaped, and their escapes teach the rule. Ethiopia defended itself with the rifles Europe sold; Japan joined, building the fleet Perry's gunboats had suggested and beating Russia with it. The Ottomans and Qajars, never conquered, were hollowed instead: capitulations, debts, the Great Game. Monopoly, medicine and ideology; rivalry beneath; the violence came home. The Thirty Years' War comparison is the anchor's. Unit fourteen begins where the export ended.

Look at what you can now do. You can describe the Ottomans hollowed from Küçük Kaynarca through the Tanzimat, Abdülhamid and the Young Turks to the Armenian Genocide, and Persia squeezed in the Great Game. You can describe Adwa's two texts and rifles, Japan from Perry to Port Arthur, and the Boxers in a carved China. You can sequence the age as Asia by gunboat, Africa by conference and resistance by rifle, and date a map of Africa by Germany's four pieces and two independent states. You can read Kipling against Hobson on motive, beneficiary and remedy, with the anchor's rivalry added. And you can state the cost: monopoly, medicine and ideology took the world, and the violence came home, which is this unit's one idea. Unit fourteen begins where the export ended.