Blog #12 3/11/09

For this blog, I chose to blog about new imperialism in the 19th and 20th centuries because that was the time where imperialism was more of a nation-wide phenomena, prompted by racism and nationalism all due to the 2nd industrial revolution and the modernization of the world. Also, this will focus on the imperialism brought by European country's. Imperialism is defined in the textbook as, "the policy of extending a nation's authority by territorial acquisition or by establishing economic and political hegemony over other nations." Of course, New Imperialism, can be defined as European expansion that moved forward with great speed, and participation in it came to be regarded as necessary for a great power, which, most country's in Europe desired to have. Of course, before you understand the new imperialism, you have to understand the causes of its coming about. The innovative and explosive developments in the late 19th centuries (2nd industrial revolution) science, technology, industry, agriculture, communication, transportation, and weapons provided the main sources of power. Due to the fact that European nations had the support of their country and media, this gave them the motivation and ability to do it. Another main cause of this newfound imperialism, was the founding of social-darwinism and jingoism. Social Darwinism is "survival of the fittest" applied to humans and was the idea that helping out the weak is bad, so dominate the inferior which gave justification to new imperialism. Jingoism is closely related with that idea, but it is more a kind of nationalism that says your country is the best, which also gave justification to new imperialism. As a result of these new ideas, some argued that the "advanced" European country's had a duty to bring higher civilization to the people in need of saving for both religion and personal desires. An example of a ruler who defines this is Leopold II of Belgium. He supported imperialism for economic wealth and exploitation in the Congo of Africa. Although african's were treated as inferior people, nation's across the world were disgusted by the cruelty in which Leopold ruled and exploited just for personal gains. He was in the Congo for rubber products. Getting rubber is a strenous activity which requires mass laborers to sap thin vines and carefully pour it onto bodies until it hardens. Then, someone rips off the dried by-product off the person, which is very painful. Leopold had no idea how long it took, so he executed people for not making enough in time. I personally think that this is some of the worst treatment of humans, even worse than the holocaust. How can someone be so selfish and greedy as to not care about the harm they do to others? Of course, Britain was equally bad. They were the leaders in New Imperialism gains as the controlled all of India, South Africa, and holdings in China. They had sorts of enclosure camps, similar to concentration camps, were they kept Afrikaners in they compound until they finished labor. This was very horrific to the people in South Africa because many of them were descendents of Dutch nationality! I am outraged with what nations at the time could get away with, especially with the mass amounts of media at their disposal! Eventually, nations were returned to former rule, but only at the realization that Human Rights were being violated. I wish that people would have realized how much corruption had been going on so that the people being mistreated could not have had to endure so much in such a long amount of time. This just goes to show that human nature is greedy, selfish, and unconcerning to some, but fortunately not all. Hopefully, in our future the governments will seek to stop all corruption and disregard to human rights. 

MLA: 

Kagan, Donald. AP Edition, The Western Heritage. 7th. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education Inc, 2007. 

AP European History class notes. (Edina High School).