- Imperialism promised to solve the class conflicts of an industrializing society while avoiding revolution or a redistribution of wealth
- Imperialism brought a large growth of nationalism
- Imperialism appealed to the economic and social status of the wealthy
- Europeans used false scientific evidence to judge other races
- Size of Europeans skull supposedly larger, making them more intelligent
- Europeans misapplied Social Darwinism to express their dominance "survival of the fittest"
Second Wave of European Conquest:
- Europeans preferred informal control
- There was large-scale European settlement in Australian and New Zealand which resulted in disease and reduced native numbers by 75% or more by 1900
Cooperation and Rebellion:
- Individuals cooperated with colonial authorities in order to receive employment, status and security in European-led armed forces
- Asian and African governments wanted to promote a measure of European education
- British government took direct control over India, ending the era of British East India Company rule in the subcontinent
Economies of Coercion: Forced Labor and the Power of the State:
- New ways of working derived from the colonial state: required & unpaid labor on public projects like building railroads, constructing government buildings and transporting goods
- Colonial violence in Congo, mutilation for everyone in a village that could not produce the amount of wild rubber that was wanted in a particular time period
- Forced labor in the Congo and Cameroon produced large amounts of rubber and ivory
- In southeastern Cameroon the virus causing AIDS jumped from Chimpanzees to Humans
- Peasants had to cultivate 20% of their land in cash crops sugar or coffee to meet tax obligations
- Crops sold to gov contractors & resold on world market
- Highly profitable for Dutch traders, shippers, the state and the citizens
Economies of Wage Labor: Migration for Work:
- Need of money and loss of land meant people from Asian & Africa sought employment in European-owned plantations, mines, construction projects and homes
- Africans worked largely as unskilled laborers at a fraction of the wages paid to whites
- Mines were a source of wage labor for many Asians
Women and the Colonial Economy: Examples from Africa:
- In precolonial Africa, women were almost everywhere active farmers
- Though clearly subordinate to men, African women still had a measure of economic autonomy
- Woman working hours increased from precolonial times 46 hrs to 70+ hrs by 1934
- In West Africa women were dominating by selling food, cloth & inexpensive imported goods
- Women in impoverished rural families became the independent heads of their household because of the absence of their husbands
Education:
- Western education obtained through missionary or government schools
- Many immigrants embraced European cultures, dressing and speaking like them
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