19th century imperialism in (Africa, India, China, or Japan) HST 103...help if you can...?

Question

I have a test in history and one of the essay questions will be this

What do we mean by imperialism? What were the major reasons that account for this westren expension during the second half of the 19th century? Select two of the following aeras (Aferica, India, China, Japan) and explain in some detial of the consequences of imperialism upon those aeras.

if you know anything about this topic please throw in your 2 cents

just to throw it out there i have 2 questions with 0 answers if anyone wants a free ten points

Answer 1

Imperialism is the policy of extending a nation's authority by territorial acquisition or by the establishment of economic and political hegemony over other nations, countries, or colonies. This is either through direct territorial conquest or settlement, or through indirect methods of influencing or controlling the politics and/or economy. The rule of authority of a country is based on territory, economic establishment and political influence. The term is used to describe the policy of a nation's dominance over distant lands, regardless of whether the subjugated nation considers itself part of the empire. It is also considered the action by which one country controls another country or territory accomplished by military means to gain certain advantages. Imperialism helps one country gain power and domain over other areas. Imperialism can also be referred to as expansionism. An imperialist country, state, colony, or nation can be grouped as political, economic, religious, ideological, or exploratory.

Imperialism was developed in the early 19th century after the Industrial Revolution when the western nations began to take control of other non-industrialized nations and colonies. The "Age of Imperialism" usually refers to the Old Imperialism period starting from 1860, when major European states started colonising the other continents. The term 'Imperialism' was initially coined in the mid to late 1500s[2] to reflect the policies of countries such as Britain and France's expansion into Africa, and the Americas.

An imperialist government is an government that tries to gain new markets for exports, sources of inexpensive labor and raw materials. The interrupting of affairs between developing countries to protect international corporations owned by the United States caused the United States to be accused of imperialism in the early 20th century.

It has been debated between economists and political theorists on whether or not imperialism benefits the states that practice it or whether it even ever benefits those states. Some theorists have even argued that imperialism is the result of the natural struggle of peoples survival. After World War two, the idea of liberating people and bringing them to a blessing in a superior way of life was another justification of imperialism. Lenin argued that capitalism necessarily induced imperialism in order to find new markets and resources, representing the last and highest stage of capitalism.[3] This theory of necessary expansion of capitalism outside the boundaries of nation-states was also shared by Rosa Luxemburg[4] and then by liberal philosopher Hannah Arendt.[5] Since then, however, Lenin's theory has been extended by Marxist scholars to be a synonym of capitalistic international trade and banking.[6]

Insofar as "imperialism" in the non-Marxist sense might be used to refer to an intellectual position, it would imply the belief that the acquisition and maintenance of empires is a positive good, probably combined with an assumption of cultural or other such superiority inherent to imperial power (see The White Man's Burden).

Imperialist policies have been criticized because they have often been used for economic exploitation of poorer countries as sources of raw materials and cheap labor. When imperialism is accompanied by overt military conquest of non-human rights abusing nations, it is also seen as a violation of freedom and human rights. Many instances of this have been recorded throughout Asia, Africa, and Europe, notably among the poorer, resource-rich countries.

In recent years, there has also been a trend to view imperialism not at an economic or political level, but as a cultural issue, particularly in regard to the widespread global influence of American culture (see "cultural imperialism"). Some dispute this extension of the concept, however, on the grounds that it is highly subjective to differentiate between mutual interaction and undue influence, and also that this extension is applied selectively.

In nineteenth century Britain the word "imperialism" came to be used in a polemical fashion to deride the foreign and domestic policies of the French emperor Napoleon III. Britons, in a longstanding tradition to distinguish themselves from the European mainland, did not consider their own policies to be "imperialist". They did speak of "colonisation", the migration of people from British descent to other continents, giving rise to a “greater Britain” of English speaking peoples. Colonisation was not yet associated with the rule of non-western peoples. India, which Britain acquired from the East India Trading Company, was widely regarded as an exception.

It was a very important exception, which nonetheless gave Britain cause for embarrassment. Benjamin Disraeli's move to make Queen Victoria "Empress of India" was even criticised as a dangerous act of (continental) “imperialism”. Critics feared this would have negative repercussions on British freedom and the rule of Parliament. When the subordination of non-Western peoples by European powers resumed with greater vigor in the late 19th century, the term became commonplace among liberal and Marxist critics alike.

In the twentieth century the term "imperialism" also grew to apply to any historical or contemporary instance of a greater power acting, or being perceived to be acting, at the expense of a lesser power. Imperialism is therefore not only used to describe frank empire-building policies, such as those of the Romans, the Spanish or the British, but is also used controversially and/or disparagingly, for example by both sides in communist and anti-communist propaganda, or to describe actions of the United States since the American Presidency's acquisition of overseas territory during the Spanish-American War, or in relation to the United States' present-day position as the world's only superpower.


[edit] Leninist theory of imperialism
While Karl Marx never published a theory of imperialism, he referred to colonialism in Das Kapital as an aspect of the prehistory of the capitalist mode of production. In various articles he also analyzed British colonial rule in Ireland and India. Lenin defined imperialism as "the last and highest stage of capitalism", the era in which monopoly finance capital becomes dominant, forcing nations and corporations to compete themselves increasingly for control over resources and markets all over the world.

Marxist theories of imperialism, or related theories such as dependency theory, focus on the economic relation between countries, rather than the formal political relationship. Imperialism thus consists not necessarily in the direct control of one country by another, but in the economic exploitation of one region by another, or of a group by another. This Marxist usage contrasts with a popular conception of 'imperialism', as directly controlled vast colonial empires.

Lenin held that imperialism was a stage of capitalist development signalled by the dominance of monopolies and of finance, or banking, capital. Following Marx's value theory, Lenin saw monopoly capital as plagued by the law of the tendency of profit to fall, as the ratio of constant capital to variable capital increases. In Marx's theory only living labor or variable capital creates profit in the form of surplus-value. As the ratio of surplus value to the sum of constant and variable capital falls, so does the rate of profit on invested capital.

Lenin stated that imperialism allows the capitalists from developed (rich) countries to extract a superprofit from the working class of undeveloped (poor) countries. In this way capitalists could circumvent the tendency of profit rates to fall by using more labor-intensive production in colonial, or zones controlled by imperialism. These were "super-profits" in that these profit rates exceeded the average rates possible in the imperialist centers. The majority of this superprofit is kept by the capitalists themselves, but some of it is shared with the working class of the developed countries (in the form of higher standards of living, cheaper consumer goods, etc.), in order to placate that working class and avoid revolution at home.

The Soviet Union, which claimed to follow Leninism, proclaimed itself the foremost enemy of imperialism and supported many independence movements throughout the Third World. However, at the same time, it asserted its dominance over the countries of Eastern Europe. Some Marxists, including Maoists and those to the left of the Trotskyist tradition, such as Tony Cliff, claim that the Soviet Union was imperialist. The Maoists claim that this happened after Khrushchev's seizure of power in 1956, while Cliff claims it happened in the 1940s with Stalin's policies. Harry Magdoff's Age of Imperialism is a 1954 discussion of Marxism and imperialism. Globalization is generally viewed as the latest incarnation of imperialism.



Before the Industrial Revolution in the mid-to-late 19th century, demand for oriental goods remained the driving force behind European imperialism, and (with the important exception of British East India Company rule in India) the European stake in Asia remained confined largely to trading stations and strategic outposts necessary to protect trade. Industrialization, however, dramatically increased European demand for Asian raw materials; and the severe Long Depression of the 1870s provoked a scramble for new markets for European industrial products and financial services in Africa, the Americas, Eastern Europe, and especially in Asia. This scramble coincided with a new era in global colonial expansion known as "the New Imperialism," which saw a shift in focus from trade and indirect rule to formal colonial control of vast overseas territories ruled as political extensions of their mother countries. Between the 1870s and the beginning of the First World War in 1914, the United Kingdom, France, and the Netherlands—the established colonial powers in Asia—added to their empires vast expanses of territory in the Middle East, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. In the same period, Japan, following the Meiji Restoration; Germany, following the end of the Franco-Prussian War in 1871; Tsarist Russia; and the United States, following the Spanish-American War in 1898 quickly emerged as new imperialist powers in East Asia and in the Pacific.

In Asia, World War I and World War II were played out as struggles among several key imperialist powers—conflicts involving the European powers along with Russia and the rising American and Japanese powers. None of the colonial powers, however, possessed the resources to withstand the strains of both world wars and maintain their direct rule in Asia. Although nationalist movements throughout the colonial world led to the political independence of nearly all of the Asia's remaining colonies, decolonization was intercepted by the Cold War; and Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, and East Asia remained embedded in a world economic, financial, and military system in which the great powers compete to extend their influence. However, the rapid postwar economic development of the East Asian Tigers and the People's Republic of China, along with the collapse of the Soviet Union, have loosensed European and North American influence in Asia, generating speculation today about the possible reemergence of China and Japan as regional powers.
Decline of the Dutch in Asia and the rise of the UK
The company was in almost constant conflict with the English; relations were particularly tense following the Amboyna Massacre in 1623. During the 18th century, Dutch East India Company possessions were increasingly focused on the East Indies. After the fourth war between the United Provinces and England (1780–1784), the company suffered increasing financial difficulties. In 1799, the company was dissolved.

The East Indies were awarded to The Kingdom of the Netherlands by the Congress of Vienna in 1815. After the Napoleonic Wars, the Dutch concentrated their colonial enterprise in the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) throughout the 19th century. The Dutch lost control over the East Indies to the Japanese during the much of the Second World War. Following the war, the Dutch fought Indonesian independence forces after Tōkyō surrendered to the Allies in 1945.


[edit] The British in India

[edit] Portuguese, French, and British competition in India (1600-1763)

Robert Clive, 1st Baron Clive.The English sought to stake out claims in India at the expense of the Portuguese dating back to the era of Queen Elizabeth I. In 1600 Elizabeth incorporated the English East India Company (later the British East India Company), granting it a monopoly of trade from the Cape of Good Hope eastward to the Strait of Magellan. In 1639 it acquired Madras on the east coast of India, where it quickly surpassed Portuguese Goa as the principal European trading center on the subcontinent.

Through bribes, diplomacy, and manipulation of weak native rulers, the company prospered in India, where it became the most powerful political force on the subcontinent, and outrivaled its Portuguese, and French competitors. For more than one hundred years English and French trading companies had fought one another for supremacy, and by the middle of the 18th century competition between the British and the French had heated up. French defeat by the British under the command of Robert Clive during the Seven Years' War (1756-1763) marked the end of the French stake in the subcontinent.


[edit] The collapse of Mughal India
Main article: Company rule in India
The British East India Company, although still in direct competition with French and Dutch interests until 1763, was able to extend its control over almost the whole of the subcontinent in the century following the subjugation of Bengal at the 1757 Battle of Plassey. The British East India Company made great advances at the expense of a Mughal dynasty, seething with corruption, oppression, and revolt, that was crumbling under the despotic rule of Aurangzeb (1658-1707).

The reign of Shah Jahan (1628-1658) had marked the height of Mughal power. However, the reign of Aurangzeb, a ruthless and fanatical man who intended to rid India of all views alien to the Muslim faith, was disastrous. By 1690, when Mughal territorial expansion reached its greatest extent, Aurangzeb's India encompassed the entire Indian subcontinent. But this period of power was followed by one of decline. Fifty years after the death of Aurangzeb, the great Mughal empire had crumbled. Meanwhile, marauding warlords, nobles, and others bent on gaining power left the subcontinent increasingly anarchic. Although the Mughals kept the imperial title until 1858, the central government had collapsed, creating a power vacuum.
Aside from defeating the French, during the Seven Years' War, Robert Clive, the leader of the Company in India, defeated a key Indian ruler of Bengal at the decisive Battle of Plassey (1757), a victory that ushered in the beginning of a new period in Indian history, that of informal British rule. While still nominally the sovereign, the Mughal Indian emperor became more and more of a puppet ruler, and anarchy spread until the company stepped into the role of policeman of India.

The transition to formal imperialism, characterized by Queen Victoria being crowned "Empress of India" in the 1870s was a gradual process. The first step toward cementing formal British control extended back to the late 18th century. The British Parliament, disturbed by the idea that a great business concern, interested primarily in profit, was controlling the destinies of millions of people, passed acts in 1773 and 1784 that gave itself the power to control company policies and to appoint the highest company official in India, the governor-general. (This system of dual control lasted until 1858.) By 1818 the East India Company was master of India. Some local rulers were forced to accept its overlordship; others were deprived of their territories. Some portions of the subcontinent were administered by the British directly; in others native dynasties were retained under British supervision.

Until 1858, however, much of the subcontinent was still officially the dominion of the Mughal emperor. Anger among some social groups, however, was seething under the governor-generalship of James Dalhousie (1847-1856), who annexed the Punjab (1849) after victory in the Second Sikh War, annexed seven princely states on the basis of lapse, annexed the key state of Oudh on the basis of misgovernment, and upset cultural sensibilities by banning Hindu practices such as Sati. The 1857 Sepoy Rebellion, or Indian Mutiny, an uprising initiated by Indian troops, called sepoys, who formed the bulk of the Company's armed forces, was the key turning point. Fortunately for the British, many areas remained loyal and quiescent, allowing the revolt to be crushed after fierce fighting. One important consequence of the revolt was the final collapse of the Mughal dynasty. The mutiny also ended the system of dual control under which the British government and the British East India Company shared authority. The government relieved the company of its political responsibilities, and in 1858, after 258 years of existence, the company relinquished its role. Trained civil servants were recruited from graduates of British universities, and these men set out to rule India. Lord Canning (created earl in 1859), appointed governor-general of India in 1856, became known as "Clemency Canning" as a term of derision for his efforts to restrain revenge against the Indians during the Indian Mutiny. When the government of India was transferred from the Company to the Crown, Canning became the first viceroy of India.


[edit] The rise of Indian nationalism
Main article: Indian independence movement
British rule modernized India in many respects. The spread of railroads from 1853 contributed to the expansion of business, while cotton, tea and indigo plantations drew new areas into the commercial economy. But the removal of import duties in 1883 exposed India's emerging industries to unfettered British competition, provoking another quite modern development: the rise of a nationalist movement. British rule in India allowed for many old-fashioned practices such as suttee and slavery to be outlawed.

The denial of equal status to Indians was the immediate stimulus for the formation in 1885 of the Indian National Congress, initially loyal to the Empire but committed from 1905 to increased self-government and by 1930 to outright independence. The "Home charges," payments transferred from India for administrative costs, were a lasting source of nationalist grievance, though the flow declined in relative importance over the decades to independence in 1947.

Although majority Hindu and minority Muslim political leaders were able to collaborate closely in their criticism of British policy into the 1920s, British support for a distinct Muslim political organization from 1906 and insistence from the 1920s on separate electorates for religious minorities, is seen by many in India as having contributed to Hindu-Muslim discord and the country's eventual partition.





[edit] Russia and "The Great Game"
Main article: The Great Game
Tsarist Russia is often not regarded as a colonial power such as the United Kingdom or France because of the manner of Russian expansions: unlike the United Kingdom, which expanded overseas, the Russian empire grew from the center outward by a process of accretion, like the United States. In the 19th century Russian expansion took the form of a struggle of an effectively landlocked country for access to a warm water port.

While the British were consolidating their hold on India, Russian expansion had moved steadily eastward to the Pacific, then toward the Middle East, and finally to the frontiers of Persia and Afghanistan (both territories adjacent to British holdings in India). In response, the defense of India's land frontiers and the control of all sea approaches to the subcontinent via the Suez Canal, the Red Sea, and the Persian Gulf became preoccupations of British foreign policy in the 19th century.

Anglo-Russian rivalry in the Middle East and Central Asia led to a brief confrontation over Afghanistan in the 1880s. In Persia (now Iran), both nations set up banks to extend their economic influence. The United Kingdom went so far as to invade Tibet, a land under nominal Chinese suzerainty, in 1904, but withdrew when it became clear that Russian influence was insignificant and when Chinese resistance proved tougher than expected.

In 1907, the United Kingdom and Russia signed an agreement which—on the surface—ended their rivalry in Central Asia. (see Anglo-Russian Entente) As part of the entente, Russia agreed to deal with the sovereign of Afghanistan only through British intermediaries. In turn, the United Kingdom would not annex or occupy Afghanistan. Chinese suzerainty over Tibet also was recognized by both Russia and the UK, since nominal control by a weak China was preferable to control by either power. Persia was divided into Russian and British spheres of influence and an intervening "neutral" zone. The United Kingdom and Russia chose to reach these uneasy compromises because of growing concern on the part of both powers over German expansion in strategic areas of China and Africa.

Following the entente, Russia increasingly intervened in Persian domestic politics and suppressed nationalist movements that threatened both St. Petersburg and London. After the Russian Revolution, Russia gave up its claim to a sphere of influence, though Soviet involvement persisted alongside the United Kingdom's until the 1940s.

In the Middle East, a German company built a railroad from Constantinople to Baghdad and the Persian Gulf. Germany wanted to gain economic influence in the region and then, perhaps, move on to Iran and India. This was met with bitter resistance by the United Kingdom, Russia, and France who divided the region among themselves.


[edit] Imperialism in China

[edit] Imperialist penetration of China

A shocked mandarin in Manchu robe in the back, with Queen Victoria (UK), Wilhelm II (Germany), Nicholas II (Russia), Marianne (France), and a samurai (Japan) stabbing into a plate with Chine ("China" in French) written on it.Main article: European Enclaves in China
During the 18th century merchants from Western Europe came to China in increasing numbers. However, merchants were confined to Guangzhou and the Portuguese colony of Macau, as they had been since the 16th century. European trades were increasingly irritated by what they saw as the relatively high customs duties they had to pay and by the attempts to curb the growing import trade in opium. By 1800 its importation was forbidden by the imperial government. However, the opium trade continued to boom.

Early in the 19th century, serious internal weaknesses developed in the Manchu empire that left China vulnerable to Western, Japanese, and Russian imperialism. In 1839, China found itself fighting the First Opium War with the United Kingdom. China was defeated, and in 1842, agreed to the provisions of the Treaty of Nanjing. Hong Kong was ceded to the United Kingdom, and certain ports, including Shanghai and Guangzhou, were opened to British trade and residence. In 1856, the Second Opium War broke out. The Chinese were again defeated, and now forced to the terms of the 1858 Treaty of Tientsin. The treaty opened new ports to trade and allowed foreigners to travel in the interior. Christians gained the right to propagate their religion—another means of Western penetration. The United States and Russia later obtained the same prerogatives in separate treaties.

Toward the end of the 19th century, China appeared on the way to territorial dismemberment and economic vassalage—the fate of India’s rulers that played out much earlier. Several provisions of these treaties caused long-standing bitterness and humiliation among the Chinese: extraterritoriality (meaning that in a dispute with a Chinese person, a Westerner had the right to be tried in a court under the laws of his own country), customs regulation, and the right to station foreign warships in Chinese waters.

The rise of Japan since the Meiji Restoration as an imperialist power led to further subjugation of China. In a dispute over China's longstanding claim of suzerainty in Korea, war broke out between China and Japan, resulting in humiliating defeat for China. By the Treaty of Shimonoseki (1895), China was forced to recognize effective Japanese rule of Korea and Taiwan.

China's defeat at the hands of Japan was another trigger for future aggressive actions by Western powers. In 1897, Germany demanded and was given a set of exclusive mining and railroad rights in Shandong province. Russia obtained access to Dairen and Port Arthur and the right to build a railroad across Manchuria, thereby achieving complete domination over a large portion of northwestern China. The United Kingdom and France also received a number of concessions at this time. At this time much of China was divided up into "spheres of influence": Germany dominated Jiaozhou (Kiaochow) Bay, Shandong, and the Huang He (Hwang-Ho) valley; Russia dominated the Liaodong Peninsula and Manchuria; the United Kingdom dominated Weihaiwei and the Yangtze Valley; and France dominated the Guangzhou Bay and several other southern provinces.

China continued to be divided up into spheres of influence until the United States, which had no sphere of influence, grew alarmed at the possibility of its businessmen being excluded from Chinese markets. In 1899, Secretary of State John Hay asked the major powers to agree to a policy of equal trading privileges. In 1900, several powers agreed to the U.S.-backed scheme, giving rise to the "Open Door" policy, denoting freedom of commercial access and non-annexation of Chinese territory. In any event, it was in the European powers' interest to have a weak but independent Manchu government. The privileges of the Europeans in China were guaranteed in the form of treaties with the Qing government. In the event that the Qing government totally collapsed, each power risked losing the privileges that it already had negotiated. As such, nor was it in the interest of the Europeans to have an overly strong government in China, with the ability to control Westerners and renegotiate treaties.

The erosion of Chinese sovereignty contributed to a spectacular anti-foreign outbreak in June, 1900, when the "Boxers" (properly the society of the "righteous and harmonious fists") attacked European legations in Beijing, provoking a rare display of unity among the powers, whose troops landed at Tianjin and marched on the capital. German forces were particularly severe in exacting revenge for the killing of their ambassador, while Russia tightened its hold on Manchuria in the northeast until its crushing defeat by Japan in the war of 1904-1905.

Although extraterritorial jurisdiction was abandoned by the United Kingdom and America in 1943, foreign political control of parts of China only finally ended with the incorporation of Hong Kong and the small Portuguese territory of Macau into the People's Republic of China in 1997 and 1999 respectively.


[edit] Chinese territorial expansion
While China was under attack in the 19th century by the Europeans, during the 18th century the Qing government had expanded its western borders to include areas such as Xinjiang and Tibet that had historically rarely been under direct Chinese control. Indeed the name Xinjiang itself is Chinese for new territory.

The ability of Qing China to project power into Central Asia came about because of two changes, one social and one technological. The social change was that under the Qing dynasty, from 1616, China came under the control of the Manchus who organized their military forces around cavalry which was more suited for power projection than traditional Chinese infantry. The technological change was advances in cannon and artillery which negated the military advantage that the people of the steppe had with their cavalry.

Qing actions in Central Asia were aided by the preference of most local rulers (particularly in Tibet) for the relative light touch of Manchu control over the heavy-handedness of Russia or the British. The Manchus were from Central Asia themselves and ruled China with the support of many people from Mongolia, Tibet and Xinjiang. The Manchu ruling family, like most Mongols, was a supporter of Tibetan Buddhism and so many of the ruling groups were linked by religion. China most of the time had little ambitions to conquer or establish colonies, not even during its golden years during the Tang Dynasty or when it had the world's strongest and biggest fleet during the Ming Dynasty. Rather, Chinese immigrated overseas to areas outside the control of their government. For instance, numerous southern Chinese emigrants settled in areas of Southeast Asia outside Chinese political control; to this day their descendants remain an economic elite, especially in Malaysia and Singapore. the United States emerged as a new imperialist power in the Pacific, one of the two oldest Western imperialist powers in the region — Spain — was finding it increasingly difficult to maintain control of territories it had held in the region since the 16th century. In 1896 a widespread revolt against Spanish rule broke out in the Philippines. Meanwhile, the recent string of U.S. territorial gains in the Pacific posed an even greater threat to Spain's remaining colonial holdings.

In 1867 the Midway Islands were occupied by the U.S. and Alaska was purchased from Russia. The next advance was in the Hawaiian Islands, where Europeans had earlier set up a lucrative plantation economy exporting sugar. In the 19th century U.S. capital poured into the islands' sugar industry; and Hawaii came increasingly under the effective control of U.S. corporations. The U.S. consolidated its influence in Hawaii in 1893, when U.S. Marines engineered a revolt that deposed the Hawaiian queen and set up a new U.S.-backed regime. Five years later, the U.S. scrapped the republic and annexed the islands.

As the U.S. continued to expand its economic and military power in the Pacific, it declared war against Spain in 1898. During the Spanish-American War, U.S. Admiral Dewey destroyed the Spanish fleet at Manila, and U.S. troops landed in the Philippines. Spain later agreed by treaty to cede the Philippines and Guam in the Pacific. In the Caribbean, Spain ceded Puerto Rico to the U.S. The war also marked the end of Spanish rule in Cuba, which was to be granted nominal independence but in practice be treated as a de-facto U.S. colony. One year following its treaty with Spain, the U.S. occupied the small Pacific outpost of Wake Island.

The Filipinos who assisted U.S. troops in fighting the Spanish did not wish to be handed from one colonial master to another. In 1899 fighting broke out; and it took the U.S. almost fifteen years to fully subdue the conflict. The U.S. sent seventy thousand troops and suffered thousands of casualties. The Filipinos, however, suffered considerably higher casualties, through fighting, extra-judicial executions and disease.

U.S. attacks into the countryside often included scorched earth campaigns where entire villages were burned and destroyed, tortured, and concentrated into camps known as "protected zones." Many of these civilian casualties resulted from disease and famine. Reports of the execution of U.S. soldiers taken prisoner by the Filipinos led to disproportionate reprisals by American forces. Many U.S. officers and soldiers called the war a "****** killing business."[citation needed]

In 1914, Dean C. Worcester, U.S. Secretary of the Interior for the Philippines (1901-1913) described "the regime of civilization and improvement which started with American occupation and resulted in developing naked savages into cultivated and educated men." Nevertheless, some Americans deeply opposed American involvement in the Philippines, leading to the abandonment of attempts to construct a permanent naval base and using it as an entry point to the Chinese market. In 1916 Congress guaranteed the independence of the Philippines by 1945.

The consequences of U.S. Imperialism in the Pacific were to become a major and costly facet of U.S. life in the 20th century, with massive conflicts with Japan, Korea, and Vietnam lying in the future. Whether such involvement was essential to U.S. national interests became a poignant and at times painful dialogue in the late 1960s.


[edit] World War I: Changes in Imperialism
World War I brought about the fall of several empires in Europe. This had repercussions around the world. The defeated Central Powers included Germany and the Turkish Ottoman Empire]. Germany lost all of its colonies in Asia. German New Guinea, a part of Papua New Guinea, became administered by Australia. German possessions and concessions in China, including Qingdao, became the subject of a controversy during the Paris Peace Conference when the Beiyang government in China agreed to cede these interests to Japan, to the anger of many Chinese people. Although the Chinese diplomats refused to sign the agreement, these interests were ceded to Japan with the support of the United States and the United Kingdom.

Turkey gave up her Arab provinces; Syria, Palestine, and Mesopotamia (now Iraq) came under French and British control as League of Nations Mandates. The discovery of petroleum first in Iran and then in the Arab lands in the interbellum provided a new focus for activity on the part of the United Kingdom, France, and the United States.In 1641, all Westerners were thrown out of Japan. For the next two centuries, Japan was free from Western influence, except for at the port of Nagasaki, which Japan allowed Dutch merchant vessels to enter on a limited basis.

Japan's freedom from Western penetration ended on July 8, 1853, when Commodore Matthew Perry of the U.S. Navy sailed a squadron of black-hulled war ships into Edo (modern Tokyo) harbor. The Japanese told Perry to sail to Nagasaki but he refused. Perry sought to present a letter from U.S. President Millard Fillmore to the emperor which demanded concessions from Japan. Japanese authories responded by stating that they could not present the letter directly to the emperor, but scheduled a meeting on July 14 with a representative of the emperor. On July 14, the squadron sailed towards the shore, giving a demonstration of their cannon's firepower thirteen times. Perry landed with a large detachment of Marines and presented the emperor's representative with Fillmore's letter. Perry said he would return, and did so, this time with even more war ships. The U.S. show of force led to Japan's concession to the Convention of Kanagawa on March 31, 1854. These events made Japanese authorities aware that the country was lacking technologically and needed to industrialize in order to keep their power. This realization eventually led to the Meiji Restoration.

The Meiji Restoration of 1868 led to administrative modernization and subsequent rapid economic development. Japan had little natural resources of her own and needed both overseas markets and sources of raw materials, fuelling a drive for imperial conquest which began with the defeat of China in 1895.

Taiwan, ceded by the Qing Empire, became the first Japanese colony. In 1899 Japan won agreement from the great powers' to abandon extra-territoriality, and an alliance with the United Kingdom established it in 1902 as an international power. Its spectacular defeat of Russia in 1905 gave it the southern portion of the island of Sakhalin, the former Russian lease of the Liaodong Peninsula with Port Arthur (Lüshunkou), and extensive rights in Manchuria (see the Russo-Japanese War).

Japan's encroachment on Korea began with the 1876 Treaty of Kanghwa with the Joseon Dynasty of Korea, increased with the 1895 assassination of Empress Myeongseong and the 1905 Eulsa Treaty, and was completed with the illicit 1910 Japan-Korea Annexation Treaty. In 1910, Korea was formally annexed to the Japanese empire. The Japanese colonization of Korea was particularly brutal even by 20th Century standards. This brutal colonization included the use of Korean "comfort women" who were forced to serve in Japanese Army brothels. For additional information see Korea under Japanese rule.

Japan was now one of the most powerful forces in the Far East, and in 1914 it entered World War I on the side of the United Kingdom, seizing German-occupied Kiaochow and subsequently demanding Chinese acceptance of Japanese political influence and territorial acquisitions (Twenty-One Demands, 1915). Mass protests in Peking in 1919 coupled with Allied (and particularly U.S.) opinion led to Japan's abandonment of most of the demands and Jiaozhou's return (1922) to China.

Japan's rebuff was perceived in Tokyo as only temporary, and in 1931 Japanese army units based in Manchuria seized control of the region; full-scale war with China followed in 1937, drawing Japan toward an overambitious bid for Asian hegemony (Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere), which ultimately led to defeat and the loss of all its overseas territories after World War II (see Japanese expansionism and Japanese nationalism). As in Korea, the Japanese treatment of the Chinese people was particularly brutal as exemplified by the Nanjing Massacre.
information: Rise of the New Imperialism
Sub-Saharan Africa, one of the last regions of the world largely untouched by "informal imperialism" and "civilization", was also attractive to Europe's ruling elites for economic and racial reasons. During a time when Britain's balance of trade showed a growing deficit, with shrinking and increasingly protectionist continental markets due to the Long Depression (1873-1896), Africa offered Britain, Germany, France, and other countries an open market that would garner it a trade surplus: a market that bought more from the metropole than it sold overall. Britain, like most other industrial countries, had long since begun to run an unfavorable balance of trade (which was increasingly offset, however, by the income from overseas investments).

As Britain developed into the world's first post-industrial nation, financial services became an increasingly important sector of its economy. Invisible financial exports, as mentioned, kept Britain out of the red, especially capital investments outside Europe, particularly to the developing and open markets in Africa, predominantly white settler colonies, the Middle East, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Oceania.

In addition, surplus capital was often more profitably invested overseas, where cheap labor, limited competition, and abundant raw materials made a greater premium possible. Another inducement to imperialism, of course, arose from the demand for raw materials unavailable in Europe, especially copper, cotton, rubber, tea, and tin, to which European consumers had grown accustomed and upon which European industry had grown dependent.

However, in Africa — exclusive of what would become the Union of South Africa in 1909 — the amount of capital investment by Europeans was relatively small, compared to other continents, before and after the 1884-85 Berlin Conference. Consequently, the companies involved in tropical African commerce were relatively small, apart from Cecil Rhodes' De Beers Mining Company, who had carved out Rhodesia for himself, as Léopold II would exploit the Congo Free State. These observations might detract from the pro-imperialist arguments of colonial lobbies such as the Alldeutscher Verband, Francesco Crispi or Jules Ferry, who argued that sheltered overseas markets in Africa would solve the problems of low prices and over-production caused by shrinking continental markets. However, according to the classic thesis of John A. Hobson, exposed in Imperialism (1902), which would influence authors such as Lenin's Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916), Trotsky or Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), this shrinking of continental markets was a main factor of the global New Imperialism period. Later historians have noted that such statistics only obscured the fact that formal control of tropical Africa had great strategic value in an era of imperial rivalry, while the Suez Canal has remained a strategic location. The 1886 Witwatersrand Gold Rush, which lead to the foundation of Johannesburg and was a major factor of the Second Boer War in 1899, accounted for the "conjunction of the superfluous money and of the superfluous manpower, which gave themselves their hand to quit together the country", which is in itself, according to Hannah Arendt, the new element of the imperialist era.

African colonies listed by colonizing power

[edit] Belgium
Congo Free State and Belgian Congo (now Democratic Republic of Congo)

[edit] France
Algeria
Tunisia
Morocco
French West Africa
Mauritania
Senegal
French Sudan (now Mali)
Guinea
Côte d'Ivoire
Niger
Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso)
Dahomey (now Benin).
French Equatorial Africa
Gabon
Middle Congo (now the Republic of the Congo)
Oubangi-Chari (now the Central African Republic)
Chad
French Somaliland (now Djibouti)
Madagascar
Comoros

[edit] Germany
German Kamerun (now Cameroon)
German East Africa (now Burundi, Rwanda, and Tanzania)
German South-West Africa (now Namibia)
German Togoland

[edit] Italy
Italian North Africa (now Libya)
Eritrea
Italian Somaliland (now Somalia)

[edit] Portugal
Angola
Portuguese Cabinda
Portuguese East Africa (now Mozambique)
Portuguese Guinea (now Guinea-Bissau)
Cape Verde Islands
São Tomé and Príncipe

[edit] Spain
Spanish Sahara (now Western Sahara, composed of:)
Río de Oro
Saguia el-Hamra
Spanish Morocco
Ceuta
Melilla
Tarfaya Strip
Ifni
Rio Muni (now part of Equatorial Guinea)

[edit] Great Britain
The British were primarily interested in maintaining secure communication lines to India, which led to initial interest in Egypt and South Africa. Once these two areas were secure, it was the intent of British colonialists such as Cecil Rhodes to establish a Cape-Cairo railway.

Egypt
Anglo-Egyptian Sudan (now Sudan)
British East Africa
Kenya
Uganda
British Somaliland
Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe)
Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia)
Bechuanaland (now Botswana)
Orange Free State
British South Africa
The Gambia
Sierra Leone
Nigeria
British Gold Coast (now Ghana)
Nyasaland (now Malawi)

Answer 2

Negative due to exploitation of the people, resources and environment of the continent