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British Imperialism in India
Europe’s imperialist land-grab in Africa did not leave South and East Asia at peace. Beginning in the 17th century, Great Britain formed an economic relationship with India, and by the end of the 18th century, India, under firm British rule, was the jewel of its empire. India’s important, therefore, guided British foreign policy. For decades, Britain used its military victories and naval superiority to ensure uninterrupted routes to India and beyond, hence its holdings in the Mediterranean, along the west African coast, at the southern tip of Africa, and, most importantly, surrounding the Suez Canal.
The Opium Wars
By the end of the 18th century, Indo-British economic ties were so entrenched in a neo-mercantile system that India provided a steppingstone for British trade with China. In the beginning, Britain traded English wool and Indian cotton for Chinese tea and textiles; however, as Chinese demand slackened, Britain sought other means of attracting trade with China. By the 1830s, Britain realized it could make up the trade deficit with China by selling Indian opium into the Chinese market. Opium soon became Britain's most profitable and important crop in world markets, and eventually, opium poured into China faster than tea poured into British hands. Soon, Chinese merchants, already addicted themselves and buying for an addicted population, paid British opium traders in pure silver.
Concerned with the sharp rise in opium addiction, the associated social costs, and rise in crime, the Chinese government, led by the aging Manchu dynasty, acted against the British. In 1839, the Chinese destroyed British opium in the port city of Guangzhou, sparking the Opium Wars of 1839-1842. Easily dominating the underdeveloped Chinese forces, the British expeditionary force blockaded Chinese ports, occupied Shanghai, and took complete control of Guangzhou. The Opium Wars ended with the 1842 Treaty of Nanjing, which granted Britain extensive trading and commercial rights in China, marking the first in a series of unequal treaties between China and European imperial powers.
Imperialism in China and Beyond
By the end of the century, after five wars between China and various other powers, France, Britain, Germany, Japan, and Russia held territorial and commercial advantages in their respective spheres of influence. These spheres of influence, comprised of territories, ports, shipping lines, rivers, and the like, were areas in which one nation held exclusive rights to profits and investment. In 1899, the United States, freshly anointed as an international force by its crushing victory over Spain in the 1898 Spanish-American War, objected to the prevalence of spheres of influence. The US advocated and pushed through a new Open Door Policy, an effectively imperial policy that demanded that all nations be given equal and complete rights to Chinese markets.
In addition, and most irritating to the Chinese, Europeans maintained extraterritoriality inside thousands of Chinese port cities, which meant that foreigners were exempt from Chinese law enforcement and could only be judged and tried by officials of their own nation. However, these officials generally looked the other way when profit was the goal, and the resulting European lawlessness, combined with the actuality of European economic, political, and military domination of the Chinese, contributed to a virulent anti-imperial sentiment. In 1900, that sentiment exploded into mass social unrest and war with the Boxer Rebellion. With secret encouragement from the Chinese empress, the Boxers, a secret society dedicated to ending foreign exploitation in north China, killed scores of European and seized the foreign diplomatic residence in Beijing. Reacting immediately, an international expeditionary force of Japanese, Russian, British, American, German, French, Austrian, and Italian troops put down the revolt and sacked Beijing to protect the interests of their respective countries. Afterward, the European powers propped up a weak central government for their own economic benefit.
Beyond China, European imperialism in Asia remained strong. Britain moved into Hong Kong in 1842, into Burma in 1886, and into Kowloon in 1898. France took direct control over the provinces of Indochina—Annam, Tonkin, and Cochinchina (which together make up modern day Vietnam), Laos, and Cambodia.
Economic Results of Imperialism in Asia
Economically, imperialism led to both great success and great disaster. Some undeveloped nations received the necessary infrastructure to become developed, as the successful capitalist states in east Asia seem to suggest, while others were destroyed by economic and social exploitation, as in Africa. However, these changes would only become apparent in the long run.
An immediate consequence was the development of an interdependent world economy with Europe at its center. Colonies provided necessary raw materials for the advanced industrial production in European factory centers such as London, Manchester, and Berlin. Capital flowed out of the wealthy nations of Western Europe and into colonial areas to support projects that required heavy investment and promised strong returns, such as railroad construction and industrial development, London became the financial center of the world, serving as a clearinghouse for billions of dollars’ worth of world-wide investment. Capital became fluid throughout the world and loans were extended for the long run, all while domestic stock markets skyrocketed and, depending upon the extent of empire, remained somewhat insulated from the boom-and-bust cycles of late nineteenth century capitalism.
Harm of European Imperialism
Barely a handful of countries in the eastern hemisphere remained independent: Ethiopia, Siam, and Liberia. The rest were subject to Europe’s political, economic, and social domination. Much of the dark side of imperialism resulted from arguments for cultural and racial superiority of the European peoples. Rudyard Kipling, writing about the American imperial venture in the Philippines, spoke of “The White Man's Burden” to “civilize,” “improve,” and “educate” native populations. This philosophy was, in large part, based on the social Darwinism and the idea of “survival of the fittest.”
Imperialism was ecologically disastrous in many aspects as well. It led to the dislocation of thousands of small societies—especially in Africa—when the Europeans drew haphazard and illogical lines on the colonial maps. Industrial development disturbed the pristine environment of previously undamaged territories, and many traditional societies were replaced by European businessmen and investors. Even if slavery had gone out of favor some time ago, the people of Africa and Asia were viewed as cheap labor for European factories, in which slavery conditions persisted.
Marxist Critiques of Imperialism
On an intellectual level, the rapid proliferation of empire in the late 19th century contributed to a growing critique of capitalism from the Marxist left. In 1916, Vladimir Lenin, the revolutionary communist leader of Russia, argued in his pamphlet Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism that capitalist states required vast empires to maintain enough markets with whom to trade. This, in turn, contributed to the exploitation of native populations and, as capitalist investors brought industry to the empire, the awakening of the native workers to their destiny (overthrowing the capitalist upper class) under the Marxist scheme of economic development. With workers of the world—from Europe to the farthest reaches of the empire—then united against capitalism, Lenin argued that socialism would follow from imperialism.
