Europe's Imperialist Powers

I really should be doing my ancient assignment due this friday, but I was once again sidetracked when my research started to mention the spanish influence in Peru (I am researching the Inca civilisation as part of my Ancient history task, in the midst of looking for historians and sources i've come across the whole Spanish influence, since they were the first country who took interest in the place, anyway). I think i'll just have do deal with the fact that the influence of imperialism is almost everywhere, which is why I thought it would be such a great topic to research.

Since becoming sidetracked from history with other not-being-assessed-on-yet history, I researched three other imperialist powers apart from Spain. This included Britain, Germany and France.

The Imperialist Power of Britian

Yes, we're talking about the British Empire. One of the only countries to conquer a big good chunk of every continent. Even Antarctica. Britain would be a fun imperialist power to research, but they've really been known for being everywhere so it would be of significant difficulty to then narrow down my results to a singular, or even a few singular countries. 

This map shows the extent of their empire. 

Looking at this map actually reminded me of a little joke I found a while back. 

I mean look at the little guy, isn't he cute? 

It's obviously a biased perspective, but looking at the map above, one cannot say it is entirely false. 

It truly was an "Empire on which the sun never sets". And I suppose a really good question to ask then, would be, is that a good thing? 

And if it is good, to what extent is it good? 

I think if I do stick with imperialism, that will be the kind of focus question I will move towards, especially since looking at the British Empire now, well... its a lot smaller. So you'd have to question, is that because people realised the so called 'exploitation' of other countries was a terrible thing, or that times had changed to the point where imperialism was no longer needed as the individual countries had reached a point of independence? Oh the things one must ponder. 

The Imperialist Power of France

I must admit that looking at France as an imperialist power would be quite interesting since unlike Britain, it wasn't a big growth and then decline, but rather a fluctuation of different territories (France got around, but it liked to focus on a particular area for a while.) I also found this map of France's empire. You can see with the different shades of blue, the fluctuation in territories. 

Now, the good thing with doing France as an imperialist power means that I could focus on the territories it held over a specific time period. For example, I could do the Napoleonic Empire (WOO!), which would actually give me the ability to focus on a concept but also speak about Napoleon Bonaparte. The thing with France is that they always had an interesting looking empire. So yes, i'm definitely thinking about looking at their imperialist influence. 

The Imperialist Power of Germany

I think this Empire says enough for itself. 

Though, in the defence of Germany, they were a bunch of states which weren't completely united until after the Franco-Prussian war which ended in 1870. That also meant that they didn't begin building imperialist power until that time, so they were a little late in their quest for territories (clearly). 

But yet again, whilst researching this topic, Bismark has come up once again. 

If I was to do Germany as an imperialist power, I would definitely focus on Bismark and his policies, however, since they were so late to build up this imperialism, I don't think I would focus on 'the German Empire', rather an entire continent, like Africa, in which they would be included. 

The Imperialist Power of Spain

Spain has always fascinated me. They had a huge influence in South and Latin America, and an even bigger influence on the native peoples of those places. Whilst basically all those countries have now declared independence, doing readings on the actual initial conquering of Latin and South America, the Inca's, Aztecs etc were actually quite welcoming to the Spanish (this story goes a while back, but they essentially believed that the Spanish were gods, and treated them accordingly). But any who, their empire looked a bit like this:

As you can see, a very significant influence on the Americas. Doing research on the Spanish influence in the Americas could be an ideal topic as there is an automatic scope placed on it and I am rather interested to learn more about the ways in which the spanish interacted with the native people in the Americas.

Overall, whilst I do understand that I still haven't actually started to focus on a specific area, I feel that putting these ideas down and then contemplating them will help me in finally choosing what I wish to do. At this point, none of the ideas i've suggested to myself really make it for me as a topic of interest, I really hope whilst wallowing in this research, I find a good focus area that I feel passionate about.

Unfortunately, I'm still looking. Fortunately, it's only been three days, and I still have a good long while. 

Imperialism in Africa

I've been busy looking at the 'colonisation of Africa' by the european powers, obviously leading to their domination over the countries and continent. After reading an article by Ehiedu E. G. Weriebor it has become clear that there were three main reasons to employ what Weriebor describes as 'imperialist aggression'. These were social, political and economic factors.

Economic Factors

This occurred with things such as the collapse of the profitability of the slave trade. Mostly since it was abolished and suppressed; the Europeans aimed to find another way to gain profits (or exploit and abuse the people of another continent, as the europeans tended to do). 

The colonisation of africa was also influenced by the growing capitalist industrialisation within Europe, which led to the demands of raw materials, and other profitable investment outlets. 

Weriebor concludes that economic factors were probably the strongest which led to imperialism in Africa. 

Political Factors 

Weriebor also comments on the fact that the European countries were struggling constantly for power and preeminence (as the Europeans often did). Essentially, they strived for power within 'European power politics'. And what better way to assert this dominance than to conquer as many countries as you can? 

It was very much like those little competitions kids would have in the school ground. "Look how many scoobies (what a weird name that is) I have..." which would often be responded to by "Well I actually have more", and then that kid would go home and beg their parents for more. It's a very terrible example, but put simply; the more you own, the more power you have. 

Social Factors

As a result of industrialisation, as mentioned above, there were also a few social factors which included; unemployment, poverty, homelessness, social displacement from rural areas etc. Weriebor states that this basically occurred as not everyone could be absorbed by this new capitalist industry, and as a way of solving this issue, countries would often establish colonies, in places like Africa and then export this 'surplus population'. 

This all led to what was known as 'the scramble for Africa'. Because of this 'scramble', there were often also fears that wars and conflict would break out with all of these strong and influential imperialist powers. Otto Von Bismark (who appears to be this insanely awesome guy) held the Berlin conference between November 1884 to February 1885, which led to the implementation of the 'Berlin act' to guide the conduct of imperialist powers. A few of its points included:

- The Principle of Notification (notifying) other powers of a territorial annexation

- The Principle of Effective Occupation to validate annexations

- Freedom of Trade in the Congo Basin

- Freedom of Navigation on the Niger and Congo Rivers

- Freedom of Trade to all nations

- Suppression of the Slave Trade by land and sea

I feel that perhaps doing further research into this 'Berlin Act', could be an area of investigation for my research task, were I to focus on imperialism in Africa. However, I do still wish to do further research into some other areas before deciding where to allocate my focus. 

In the beginning...

So. Today we received our third modern assessment task. We still haven't at this point actually completed our second one, but this one is worth almost a third of my final mark. That is a lot.

I have been contemplating what I will do for this task for quite a while now (since year 9 actually, or when I first decided that I would do modern history), yet now that i'm here I haven't been less sure of what I will do. I feel like I want to do a concept or something at a level of high complexity, simply for the fact that I also love philosophy; they unfortunately do not have a class for that.

I have a few ideas, such as;
- totalitarianism
- terrorism
- militarism
- decolonisation
- anarchism
- and imperialism

Now obviously, there are many examples in which many of those concepts cross over. Recently, i've had my sights set on imperialism, and the social, political and economic impacts of imperialism. I thought that by assessing those three areas of impact it would be possible to determine whether imperialism is good, bad or both.

Clearly, to do such a large concept as imperialism, or any of the above ideas, I would have to narrow my research down to a certain area that has been affected by it, or through the comparison of case studies.

With imperialism I could do something like focus on a certain country's quest for imperialism; like spain or france. Or I could look at a specific continent, like africa. I mean Europe was all over Africa in the 1800's, just look at this map!

I do think that map was from 1914, but I don't think it was much different in the 1800's. Whilst africa would be interesting, I think Mr Bradbury said that we can only do the bottom half ish... because the top like Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Abyssinia are touched on in the hsc course. I will have to question Africa as a potential research topic for imperialism. 

As I mentioned above, focusing on spain would also be interesting. If I did Spain, I would focus on the nature of imperialism in the Americas, or namely latin and south America. They did do a lot of conquering there (and stealing gold). It would be interesting too, as we've learnt about the native societies there and then their quest for independence which we touched on in our previous topic of the cuban revolution, but never middle bit; the actual impact of the spanish settlers. 

Either way, it will be an interesting task to engage in, and I hope to soon narrow it down to at least a continent.