Chapter 10. Industrialization and Global Integration: c. 1750 to c. 1900

I. CHAPTER OVERVIEW

Fewer than two centuries are covered in this chapter, but during that time, the world changed dramatically. Europe’s influence in the West waned even as it waxed in the East. Napoleon tried to conquer Europe. Italy and Germany unified into modern nationstates. Japan became an imperial power. India was entirely overrun by the British. The United States rose to become a world power. And the Industrial Revolution—the single biggest event of the time period—seemed to impact everything it touched, from political and economic developments, to the drive for colonial holdings in Africa and Asia, to daily life.

Here’s the chapter outline.

I. Chapter Overview

You’re in it.

II. Stay Focused on the Big Picture

Organize the major social, political, and economic changes that occurred during this time period into some big-picture concepts.

III. Enlightenment Revolutions in the Americas and Europe

A. Two Revolutions: American and French

B. Lots of Independence Movements: Latin America

IV. Industry and Imperialism

This section focuses on the Industrial Revolution and its consequences, especially as it impacted social and economic developments in Europe and European imperialism in Africa and Asia. Here’s how we’ve organized this section.

A. The Industrial Revolution

B. European Imperialism in India

C. European Imperialism in China

D. Japanese Imperialism

E. European Imperialism in Africa

V. Nationalist Movements and Other Developments

While Africa and Asia were increasingly dominated by Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Europeans lost most of their holdings in the Americas due to successful revolutionary movements. In the meantime, Europe underwent continuous political restructuring, and strong centralized nation-states were formed. Here’s how we’ve organized this section.

A. Two Unifications: Italy and Germany

B. Other Political Developments

VI. Technology and Intellectual Developments 1750-1900

Big machines, assembly lines, and new products.

VII. Changes and Continuities in the Role of Women

More education and more work!

VIII. Pulling It All Together

Refocus on the big-picture concepts now that you’ve reviewed the historical details.

IX. Timeline of Major Developments 1750-1900

II. STAY FOCUSED ON THE BIG PICTURE

As you review the details of the developments in this chapter, stay focused on some big- picture concepts and ask yourself some questions, including the following:

1. How are the events of this time period interconnected? The Industrial Revolution and imperialism are not only interconnected, but are connected to other developments in this time period as well. Stay focused on how developments in one region of the world had an impact on developments in another. Also, stay focused on how regional developments were able to have a global impact through improvements in communication and transportation, as well as through colonialism.

2. Why did nationalism grow during this time period? How did the impact of nationalism vary among different countries? Whether in the Americas, Europe, or Asia, nationalism was a huge force. It sparked rebellions, independence movements, and unification movements. It also sparked domination and colonialism.

3. How and why does change occur? Stay focused on the complexity of social, political, and economic developments, as opposed to presuming that the dominant economic or political philosophies were shared universally among people in a certain country or region. Think about change as an evolving process in which certain ideas gain momentum, while other ideas lose steam but don’t entirely die out.

4. How did the environment impact industrial and economic development? In Europe, the earliest phases of the Industrial Revolution were fueled by the resources available in England, so the resulting imperialism on a global scale was driven by the need for additional resources. Keep in mind the political and economic decisions that resulted in environmental change. At the same time, the environment impacted people. The general global cooling that began around 1500 C.E. put pressure on the populations of Europe and contributed to great poverty and peasant revolts, especially in the northern countries.

III. ENLIGHTENMENT REVOLUTIONS IN THE AMERICAS AND EUROPE

A. Two Revolutions: American and French 1. The American Revolution

For the most part, you won’t need to know much about American history for the AP World History Exam. However, you will need to know about events in the United States that impacted developments in the rest of the world. The American Revolution is one of those events.

As you know, Britain began colonizing the east coast of North America during the seventeenth century. By the mid-eighteenth century, British colonists in America felt threatened by France’s colonial settlements on the continent. France and Britain were long-time rivals (archenemies in the Hundred Years’ War and since) and they carried this rivalry with them into fights in America. The French enlisted the Algonquin and Iroquois tribes to fight alongside them against the encroaching English colonists, but in 1763, England prevailed over the French in a war that was known in the colonies as the French and Indian War, but known in Europe as the Seven Years’ War. The British victory changed the boundaries of the two empires’ worldwide possessions, pushing French territory to the north while English territories expanded westward into the Ohio River valley.

While the colonists were thrilled with the results of the war, the British were upset about the costs, and felt that the American colonists did not adequately share in the burden. Of course, the colonists resented this, claiming that it was their efforts that made colonial expansion possible in the first place. At the same time, Britain’s George Grenville and later Charles Townshend passed very unpopular laws on behalf of the British crown. These laws, including the Revenue Act (1764), the Stamp Act (1765), and the Tea Act (1773), were intended to raise additional funds for the British crown. In addition to generating funds, however, these laws generated unrest, not only because American colonists thought they were economically unfair but also because American colonists were not represented in England’s Parliament when these laws were passed. Thus arose the revolutionary cry, “No taxation without representation.”

After the colonists dumped tea in Boston Harbor to protest the Tea Act, relations between crown and colonies deteriorated rapidly. On April 19, 1775, British troops battled with rebellious colonists in Lexington and Concord, and by the end of that bloody day, nearly 400 Britons and Americans were dead. The War of Independence had begun.

Independence Can’t Happen Without a Little Paine

The overwhelming majority of American colonists had either been born in England or were children of those born in England, and therefore many colonists felt ambivalent about—if not completely opposed to—the movement for independence. Even those who sought independence were worried that Britain was too powerful to defeat. But a student of the Enlightenment, Thomas Paine, urged colonists to support the movement. In his widely distributed pamphlet, Common Sense, he assailed the monarchy as an encroachment on Americans’ natural rights and appealed to the colonists to form a better government. A mere six months later, Americans signed the Declaration of Independence. The printing press, the powerful tool of the Protestant Reformation, quickly became a powerful tool for the American Revolution.

France: More than Happy to Oblige

By 1776, as the war moved to the middle colonies and finally to the South, the Americans endured defeat after defeat. But in 1777, the French committed ships, soldiers, weapons, and money to the cause. France and England, of course, had been bickering for centuries, and so the French leapt at the opportunity to punish England. In 1781, French and American troops and ships cornered the core of the British army, which was under the command of General George Cornwallis. Finding himself outnumbered, he surrendered, and the war was over. Within a decade, the Constitution and Bill of Rights were written, ratified, and put into effect. A fledgling democracy was on display.

2. The French Revolution

After the reign of Louis XIV, the Bourbon kings continued to reside in the lavish Versailles palace, a lifestyle that was quite expensive. More costly, however, were France’s war debts. The War of Spanish Succession, the Seven Years’ War, the American Revolution, you name it ... France seemed to be involved in every major war both in Europe and abroad. With droughts damaging the French harvests and the nobility scoffing at spending restrictions, Louis XVI needed to raise taxes, but to do that he needed to get everyone on board. So, in 1789, he called a meeting of the Estates General, a “governing body” that hadn’t met in some 175 years. Bourbon monarchs, you’ll recall, ruled under divine right, so no other input was generally seen as necessary. But the king’s poor financial situation made it necessary to call on this all-but-forgotten group.

Focus On: Causes and Consequences of the American Revolution

Don’t worry too much about knowing the details of the American Revolution. You certainly don’t need to know battles or even the personalities. Instead, understand that the Enlightenment had a huge impact because it not only helped to inspire the revolution itself, but also the type of government that was created after it succeeded. Also remember that mercantilist policies drove the American colonists nuts, as was the case in European colonies everywhere. These same forces—the Enlightenment and frustration over economic exploitation—are common themes in the world’s revolutionary cries against colonialism throughout the 1800s.

The Estates General: Generally a Mess

French society was divided into three estates (something like social classes). The First Estate comprised the clergy. Some were high ranking and wealthy; others were parish priests and quite poor. The Second Estate was made up of the noble families. Finally, the Third Estate comprised everyone else—peasant farmers and the small but influential middle class, or bourgeoisie, including merchants. The overwhelming majority (more than 95 percent) of the population were members of the Third Estate, but they had very little political power.

When Louis XVI summoned the Estates General, he was in essence summoning representatives from each of these three estates. The representative nobles of the Second Estate came to the meeting of the Estates General hoping to gain favors from the king in the form of political power and greater freedoms in the form of a new constitution. The representatives of the Third Estate (representing by far the greatest proportion of France’s population), always suspicious of the nobility, wanted even greater freedoms similar to what they saw the former British colonies had in America. They went as far as suggesting to the king that the Estates General meet as a unified body—all Estates under one roof. However, the top court in Paris, the parlement, ruled in favor of the nobility and ordered that the estates meet separately.

Frustrated at the strong possibility of being shut out of the new constitution by the other two estates, the Third Estate did something drastic on June 17, 1789—they declared themselves the National Assembly. The king got nervous, and forced the other two estates to join them in an effort to write a new constitution. But it was too little, too late. By then, peasants throughout the land were growing restless and were concerned that the king wasn’t going to follow through on the major reforms they wanted. They stormed the Bastille, a huge prison, on July 14, 1789. From there, anarchy swept through the countryside and soon peasants attacked nobility and feudal institutions.

By August, the National Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Man, a document recognizing natural rights and based on the ideas of the Enlightenment, the American Declaration of Independence, and particularly the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. This declaration was widely copied and distributed across Europe, furthering the ideas of freedom, equality, and rule of law. The Assembly also abolished the feudal system and altered the monopoly of the Catholic Church by declaring freedom of worship. Meanwhile, the king and his family were taken to Paris, where the Third Estate revolutionaries could ensure that they wouldn’t interfere with the work of the National Assembly. But perhaps most importantly, the French Revolution established the nationstate, not the king or the people (as in the United States), as the source of all sovereignty or political authority. In this sense, France became the first “modern” nation-state in 1789.

A New Constitution Causes Consternation

In 1791, the National Assembly ratified a new constitution, which was somewhat similar to the U.S. Constitution ratified just two years before, except that instead of a president, the king held on to the executive power. In other words, it was a constitutional monarchy, rather than a constitutional democracy. Those who wanted to abolish the monarchy felt cheated; those who wanted to retain the feudal structure felt betrayed.

Remember how most of the royalty in Europe intermarried? Well, it just so happened that Marie Antoinette, who was the wife of the increasingly nervous Louis XVI, was also the sister of the Emperor of Austria. The Austrians and the Prussians invaded France to restore the monarchy, but the French revolutionaries were able to hold them back. Continuing unrest led French leaders to call for a meeting to draw up a new constitution. Under the new constitution, the Convention became the new ruling body, and it quickly abolished the monarchy and proclaimed France a republic. Led by radicals known as the Jacobins, the Convention imprisoned the royal family and, in 1793, beheaded the king for treason.

Contrast Them: American and French Revolutions

The American Revolution involved a colonial uprising against an imperial power.

In other words, it was an independence movement. The French Revolution involved citizens rising up against their own country’s leadership and against their own political and economic system, and in that sense was more of a revolution. In other words, at the end of the American Revolution, the imperial power of England was still intact, and indeed the new United States was in many ways designed in the image of England itself. In contrast, at the end of the French Revolution, France itself was a very different place. It didn’t simply lose some of its holdings. Instead, the king was beheaded and the socio-political structure changed.

That said, the word revolution aptly describes the American independence movement because the United States was the first major colony to break away from a European colonial power since the dawn of the Age of Exploration. What’s more, the ideas adopted in the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and in the French Revolution inspired colonists, citizens, and slaves across the globe. Quite revolutionary indeed!

The Reign of Terror: The Hard-Fought Constitution Gets Tossed Aside

While Prussia and Austria regrouped and enlisted the support of Great Britain and Spain, the Convention started to worry that foreign threats and internal chaos would quickly lead to its demise, so it threw out the constitution and created the Committee of Public Safety, an all-powerful enforcer of the revolution and murderer of anyone suspected of anti-revolutionary tendencies. Led by Maximilien Robespierre and the Jacobins, the Committee of Public Safety certainly wasn’t a committee of personal safety, since it was responsible for the beheading of tens of thousands of French citizens. Even though the Committee was successful at controlling the anarchy and at building a strong national military to defend France against an increasing number of invading countries, after two years the French had enough of Robespierre’s witch hunt and put his head on the guillotine. France quickly reorganized itself again, wrote a new constitution in 1795, and established a new five-man government called the Directory.

Napoleon: Big Things Come in Small Packages

The Height of Napoleon’s Empire

While the Directory was not so great at implementing a strong domestic policy, the five- man combo was good at building up the military. One of its star military leaders was a teenager named Napoleon Bonaparte, who was a general by age 24. After military successes on behalf of the Directory, Napoleon returned to France and used his reputation and immense popularity to overthrow the Directory in 1799. He legitimized his actions by putting them before a popular vote, and once affirmed, he declared himself the First Consul under the new constitution (if you’re counting, that makes four constitutions since the Revolution began).

Domestically, Napoleon initiated many reforms in agriculture, infrastructure, and public education. He also normalized relations with the church and restored a degree of tolerance and stability. Most importantly, his Napoleonic Codes (1804) recognized the equality of French citizens (meaning men) and institutionalized some of the Enlightenment ideas that had served as the original inspiration for many of the revolutionaries. At the same time, the code was also extremely paternalistic, based in part on ancient Roman law. The rights of women and children were severely limited under the code. Still, the code was a huge step forward in the recognition of some basic rights and in the establishment of rules of law. The code has since been significantly modified to reflect more modern sensibilities, but it is still in effect today, and has served as the model for many other national codes, especially in Europe.

But Napoleon’s biggest impact was external, not internal. In a stunning effort to spread France’s glory throughout Europe and the Americas, Napoleon not only fended off foreign aggressors, but also made France an aggressor itself. Napoleon’s troops conquered Austria, Prussia, Spain, Portugal, and the kingdoms within Italy. He dissolved the Holy Roman Empire, which was on its last legs anyway, and reorganized it into a confederacy of German states. In 1804, he crowned himself emperor of this huge new empire, fancying himself the new Charlemagne. By 1810, the empire was at its peak, but it didn’t stay there for long. France lacked the resources to control a far-flung empire, and conflicts including an attempted blockade of powerful Britain cost it dearly. Nationalistic uprisings, such as unrest in Italy and fierce guerilla warfare in Spain and Portugal, undermined Napoleon’s power.

In 1812, Napoleon’s greed got the better of him. He attacked the vast lands of Russia, but was baited into going all the way to Moscow, which the Russians then set aflame, preventing Napoleon from adequately housing his troops there. As winter set in and with no place to go, the troops had to trudge back to France, and were attacked all along the way. Short on supplies, the retreat turned into a disaster. The army was decimated and the once great emperor was forced into exile.

The leaders of the countries that had overthrown Napoleon met in Vienna to decide how to restore order (and their own power) in Europe. The principal members of the coalition against Napoleon were Prince von Metternich of Austria, Alexander I of Russia, and the Duke of Wellington of Britain. At first, disagreements among them prevented much progress. Hearing this, Napoleon returned from exile and attempted to regain power. His enemies, of course, rallied. At Waterloo in 1813, the allies united against their common threat. Defeating Napoleon decisively, they sent him to permanent exile on the island of St. Helena, where he later died. The allies eventually came to an agreement, in a meeting known as the Congress of Vienna, over what to do with France and its inflated territories.

The Congress of Vienna: Pencils and Erasers at Work

In 1815, the Congress decreed that a balance of power should be maintained among the existing powers of Europe in order to avoid the rise of another Napoleon. France was dealt with fairly: Its borders were cut back to their pre-Napoleonic dimensions, but it was not punished militarily or economically. And although it rearranged some of the European boundaries and created new kingdoms in Poland and the Netherlands, the Congress also reaffirmed absolute rule, reseating the monarchs of France, Spain, Holland, and the many Italian states. While remarkably fair-minded, the Congress of Vienna ignored many of the ideals put forth by French revolutionaries and the rights established under France’s short-lived republic. In other words, it essentially tried to erase the whole French Revolution and Napoleon from the European consciousness and restore the royal order.

B. Lots of Independence Movements: Latin America

The European colonies in Latin America were inspired by the success of the American Revolution and the ideas of the French Revolution. To be sure, there had been unsuccessful revolts and uprisings in the Latin American colonies for two or three centuries prior to those revolutions. In the early nineteenth century, however, the world order was different. Europe was in chaos because of the rise and fall of Napoleon, and this distracted the European powers from their American holdings, a development that gave rebellious leaders an opportunity to assert themselves more than they previously could have.

Haiti: Slave Revolt Sends France a Jolt

The first successful Latin American revolt took place in Haiti, a French island colony in the Caribbean. The French, true to their mercantilist policies, exported coffee, sugar, cocoa, and indigo from Haiti to Europe. French colonists owned large plantations and hundreds of thousands of slaves, who grew and harvested these crops under horrible conditions. By 1800, 90 percent of the population was slaves, some of whom had been freed, but the vast majority of whom worked on the plantations.

In 1801, as Napoleon was gaining momentum in Europe, Pierre Toussaint L’Ouverture, a former slave, led a violent, lengthy, but ultimately successful slave revolt. Enraged, Napoleon sent 20,000 troops to put down the revolt, but the Haitians were capable fighters. They also had another weapon on their side—yellow fever—that claimed many French lives. The French did succeed, however, in capturing L’Ouverture and imprisoning him in France, but by then they couldn’t turn back the revolutionary tide. L’Ouverture’s lieutenant Jacques Dessalines, also a former slave, proclaimed Haiti a free republic in 1804 and named himself governor-general for life. Thus, Haiti became the first independent nation in Latin America.

South America: Visions of Grandeur

In 1808, when Napoleon invaded Spain, he appointed his brother, Joseph Bonaparte, to the Spanish throne. This sent the Spanish authorities in the colonies into a tizzy. Who should they be loyal to? The colonists decided to remain loyal to their Spanish king and not recognize the French regime under Bonaparte. In Venezuela, they ejected Bonaparte’s governor and, instead, appointed their own leader, Simon Bolivar. Tutored on the republican ideals of Rousseau during his travels to Europe and the United States, Bolivar found himself in the midst of a great opportunity to use what he learned. In 1811, Bolivar helped establish a national congress, which declared independence from Spain. Royalists, supporters of the Spanish crown, declared civil war. But Bolivar proved to be a wily and effective military leader, and during the next decade, he won freedom for the area called Gran Colombia (which included modern-day Colombia, Ecuador, and Venezuela). Bolivar envisioned a huge South American country spanning across the continent, similar to the growing United States in North America, but it wasn’t meant to be. In the following decades, the individual nation-states of northwestern South America formed their own governments.

Meanwhile, farther south in Argentina, the conflict between the French governor and those who still wanted to support the Spanish crown created another opportunity for liberation. Jose de San Martin was an American-born Spaniard (or Creole) who served as an officer in the Spanish army. In 1814 he began to put his extensive military experience to use—but for the rebels—taking command of the Argentinian armies. San Martin joined up with Bernardo O’Higgins of Chile and took the revolutionary movement not only through Argentina and Chile, but also to Peru, where he joined forces with Bolivar. The Spanish forces withered away. By the 1820s, a huge chunk of South America had successfully declared its independence from Spain.

Brazil: Power to the Pedros

Brazil, of course, was a Portuguese colony, and so when Portugal was invaded by Napoleon’s armies in 1807, John VI, the Portuguese king, fled to Brazil and set up his royal court in exile. By 1821, Napoleon had been defeated and it was safe for John VI to return to Portugal, but he left behind his son, Pedro, who was 23 years old at the time, and charged him with running the huge colony. Pedro, who had spent most of his childhood and teenage years in Brazil and considered it home, declared Brazilian independence and crowned himself emperor the next year. Within a few more years, Brazil had a constitution.

In 1831, Pedro abdicated power to his son, Pedro II, who ruled the country through much of the nineteenth century. While he reformed Brazilian society in many ways and turned it into a major exporter of coffee, his greatest single accomplishment was the abolition of slavery in 1888 (which actually occurred under the direction of his daughter, Isabel, who was running the country while Pedro II was away). This action so incensed the land-owning class that they revolted against the monarchy and established a republic in 1889.

Mexico: A Tale of Two Priests

As in other parts of Latin America, a revolutionary fervor rose in Mexico after the French Revolution, especially after Napoleon invaded Spain and Portugal. In 1810, Miguel Hidalgo, a Creole priest who sympathized with those who had been abused under Spanish colonialism, led a revolt against Spanish rule. Unlike in South America, however, the Spanish armies resisted effectively, and they put down the revolt at Calderon Bridge, where Hidalgo was executed.

Hidalgo’s efforts were not in vain, however, because they put the revolution in motion. Jose Morelos picked up where Hidalgo left off and led the revolutionaries to further successes against the loyalists. But similar to what later happened in Brazil, the landowning class turned against him when he made clear his intentions to redistribute land to the poor. In 1815, he was executed.

It wasn’t until 1821, after the landowning class bought into the idea of separation from Spain, that independence was finally achieved. In the Treaty of Cordoba, Spain was forced to recognize that its 300-year-old domination of Latin America was coming to an end. Mexico was granted its independence and Central America soon followed.

The Effects of the Independence Movements: More Independence than Freedom

While Europe was effectively booted out of many parts of the American continents during a 50-year time span beginning in about 1780, in some Latin American countries the independence from colonial power wasn’t accompanied by widespread freedom among the vast majority of citizens. As in the United States, slavery still existed for decades. Peasants still worked on huge plantations owned by a few landowners. But unlike in the United States, a significant middle class of merchants and small farmers didn’t emerge, and many of the Enlightenment ideas didn’t spread to populations other than the land-owning male class.

There were several reasons for this. The Catholic Church remained very powerful in Latin America, and while many of the priests advocated on behalf of the peasants and of the slaves (some martyred themselves for that cause), the church hierarchy as a whole protected the status quo. The church, after all, was one of the largest landowners in Latin America.

What’s more, the economies of Latin America, while free of Europe, were still largely dependent on Europe. Latin American countries still participated in European mercantilism, often to their own detriment. They specialized in a few cash crops, exported almost exclusively to Europe, and then bought back finished products. In other words, most Latin American economies didn’t diversify, nor did they broaden opportunities to a larger class of people, so innovation and creativity rarely took root.

There are notable exceptions. Chile diversified its economy fairly successfully, and Brazil and Argentina instituted social reform and broadened their economies to include a growing middle class. But ultimately, the hugely successful independence movements in Latin America didn’t result in noticeable changes for a majority of the population for more than a century.

	American 1764-1787	French 1789-1799	Haitian 1799-1804	Latin America 1810-1820s
Causes	Unfair Taxation/War Debt Lack of Representation.	Unfair Taxation/Wir Debt Social Inequalities Lack of Representation	French Enlightenment Social and Racial Inequalities Slave Revolt	Social Inequalities Removal of Peninsulares Napoleon’s Invasion of Spain
Key Events	Boston Ten Party (inntinencal Congress Declaration of Independence Constitution and Bill of Rights	Tennis Court Oath National Assembly Declaration of Rights of Man Storming Bastille Reign of Terror 5 Man Directory	Civil War Slave Revolt Invasion of Napoleon	Peasant revolts Creole revolts Gran Colombia
Major Players	George III Thomas Paine Thomas Jefferson George Washington	Louis XVI Three Estates Jacobin Party Robespierre	Boukman Gens de Couleur Toussaint L'Overture Napoleon Bonaparte	Miguel Hidalgo Simon Bolivar Jose de San Martin Emperor Pedro I
Impacts	Independence Federal Democracy Spreads-France, Haiti, Mexico	Rise of Napolean Congress of Vienna Constitutional Monarchy	Independence Destruction of Economy Anti-Slavery Movements	Independence Continued Inequalities Federal Democracy (Mexico) Creole Republics Constitutional Monarchy (Brazil)

Comparison Chart of Independence Movements

IV. INDUSTRY AND IMPERIALISM

The Industrial Revolution, which began in the mid-eighteenth century in Britain and spread rapidly through the nineteenth century, is inseparable from the Age of Imperialism, which reached its peak in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Industrial technology had two enormous consequences: (1) Countries with industrial technology by definition had advanced military weapons and capacity, and were therefore easily able to conquer people who did not have this technology; (2) To succeed, factories needed access to raw materials to make finished products, and then markets to sell those finished products. Colonies fit both of these roles quite well.

Because the bulk of the western hemisphere freed itself from European control by the early nineteenth century (a lot more on this later), the industrial imperialists turned their eyes toward Africa and Asia, where exploitation was easy and markets were huge.

A. The Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution began in Britain, helping to propel the country to its undisputed ranking as the most powerful in the nineteenth century. But Britain wasn’t the only country that industrialized. The revolution spread through much of Europe, especially Belgium, France, and Germany, as well as to Japan and ultimately to the country that would eclipse Britain as the most industrialized—the United States. Still, since most of the developments occurred in Britain first, and since the social consequences that occurred in Britain are representative of those that occurred elsewhere, this section will focus heavily on the revolution in Britain. References to other countries will be made where warranted.

Agricultural Revolution Part II

Hopefully you remember that early civilizations came about, in part, because of an Agricultural Revolution that resulted in food surpluses. This freed some of the population from farming, and those people then went about the business of building the civilization. In the eighteenth century, agricultural output increased dramatically once again. This time, it allowed not just some people, but as much as half of the population to leave the farms and head toward the cities, where jobs in the new industrial economy were becoming available.

Keep in mind that agricultural techniques had been slowly improving throughout history. Since so many developments happened so quickly in the eighteenth century this period was considered a revolution. Agricultural output increased for a whole host of reasons. Potatoes, corn, and other high-yield crops were introduced to Europe from the colonies in the New World. Farmers started rotating their crops, rather than leaving one-third of their land fallow (as they had done in the Middle Ages under the three-field system), which allowed them to farm all of their land each season without stripping the land of its nutrients. Through a process known simply as enclosure, public lands that were shared during the Middle Ages were enclosed by fences, which allowed for private farming and private gain.

But what really cranked up the efficiency and productivity of the farms was the introduction of new technologies. New machines for plowing, seeding, and reaping, along with the development of chemical fertilizers, allowed farmers to greatly increase the amount of land they could farm, while decreasing the number of people needed to do it. Urbanization was a natural outgrowth of the increased efficiencies in farming and agriculture. In short, cities grew. In 1800, there were only 20 cities in Europe with a population of more than 100,000. By 1900, 150 cities had similar populations, and the largest, London, had a population of more than 6 million.

Cities developed in areas where resources such as coal, iron, water, and railroads were available for manufacturing. The more factories that developed in favorable locations, the larger cities would grow. In 1800, along with London, the Chinese cities of Beijing (Peking) and Canton ranked in the top three, but just 100 years later, nine of the ten largest cities in the world were in Europe or the United States.

Technological Innovations: The Little Engine That Could

Prior to the Industrial Revolution, most Europeans worked on farms, at home, or in small shops. Even after Britain started importing huge amounts of cotton from its American colonies, most of the cotton was woven into cloth in homes or small shops as part of an inefficient, highly labor-intensive arrangement known as the domestic system. Middlemen would drop off wool or cotton at homes where women would make cloth, which would then be picked up again by the middlemen, who would sell the cloth to buyers. All of this was done one person at a time.

However, a series of technological advancements in the eighteenth century changed all this. In 1733, John Kay invented the flying shuttle, which sped up the weaving process. In 1764, John Hargreaves invented the spinning jenny, which was capable of spinning vast amounts of thread. When waterpower was added to these processes, notably by Richard Arkwright and Edward Cartright in the late eighteenth century, fabric-weaving was taken out of the homes and was centralized at sites where waterpower was abundant. In 1793, when Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, thereby allowing massive amounts of cotton to be quickly processed in the Americas and exported to Europe, the textile industry was taken out of the homes and into the mills entirely.

Although industrialization hit the textile industry first, it spread well beyond into other industries. One of the most significant developments was the invention of the steam engine, which actually took the work of several people to perfect. In the early 1700s, Thomas Newcomer developed an inefficient engine, but in 1769, James Watt dramatically improved it. The steam engine was revolutionary because steam could not only be used to generate power for industry but also for transportation. In 1807, Robert Fulton built the first steamship, and in the 1820s, George Stephenson built the first steam-powered locomotive. In the hands of a huge, imperial power like Britain, steamships and locomotives would go a long way toward empire building and global trade. Because Britain had vast amounts of coal, and because the steam engine was powered by coal, Britain industrialized very quickly.

But Wait, There’s More

During the next 100 years, enormous developments changed how people communicated, traveled, and went about their daily lives. These changes are far too numerous to list entirely, but we’ve picked a few major inventions and listed them below. It’s unlikely you’ll need to know all of these for the exam, but an understanding of the impact of the Industrial Revolution is perhaps best grasped by looking at the details. There isn’t one item on the list below that you can deny has changed the world.

• The Telegraph—Invented in 1837 by Samuel Morse. Allowed people to communicate across great distances within seconds.

• The Telephone—Invented in 1876 by Alexander Graham Bell. Don’t answer it while you’re studying.

• The Lightbulb—Invented in 1879 by Thomas Edison. Kind of a big deal: now factories can run all night.

• The Internal Combustion Engine—Invented in 1885 by Gottlieb Daimler. If you’ve ever been in a car, you’ve personally benefited from the internal combustion engine.

• The Radio—Invented in the 1890s by Guglielmo Marconi, based on designs by Thomas Edison.

At the same time, there were huge advances in medicine and science. Pasteurization and vaccinations were developed. X-rays came onto the scene. Charles Darwin developed the concept of evolution by means of natural selection. The developments of this time period go on and on and on.

Compare Them: The Scientific Revolution and the Industrial Revolution

Both changed the world, of course. One was about the process of discovering, learning, evaluating, and understanding the natural world. The other was about applying that understanding to practical ends. In both cases, knowledge spread and improvements were made across cultures and across time. Even though patents protected individual inventions, one scientist or inventor could build on the ideas of colleagues who were tackling the same issues, thereby leading to constant improvement and reliability. This same collaborative effort is used today. Universities and research organizations share information among colleagues across the globe. The Internet, of course, allows data to be analyzed almost instantaneously by thousands of like-minded individuals.

The Factory System: Efficiency (Cough), New Products (Choke), Big Money (Gag)

The Industrial Revolution permitted the creation of thousands of new products from clothing to toys to weapons. These products were produced efficiently and inexpensively in factories. Under Eli Whitney’s system of interchangeable parts, machines and their parts were produced uniformly so that they could be easily replaced when something broke down. Later, Henry Ford’s use of the assembly line meant that each factory worker added only one part to a finished product, one after another after another. These were incredibly important developments in manufacturing, and they made the factory system wildly profitable, but they came with social costs. Man wasn’t merely working with machines; he was becoming one. Individuality had no place in a system where consistency of function was held in such high esteem.

The factories were manned by thousands of workers, and the system was efficient and inexpensive primarily because those workers were way overworked, extremely underpaid, and regularly put in harm’s way without any accompanying insurance or protection. In the early years of the Industrial Revolution, 16-hour workdays were not uncommon. Children as young as six worked next to machines. Women worked long hours at factories, while still having to fulfill their traditional roles as caretakers for their husbands, children, and homes.

This was a huge change from rural life. Whereas the farms exposed people to fresh air and sunshine, the factories exposed workers to air pollution and hazardous machinery. The farms provided seasonal adjustments to the work pattern, while the factories spit out the same products day after day, all year long. The despair and hopelessness of the daily lives of the factory workers were captured by many novelists and social commentators of the time (for example, Charles Dickens).

Focus On: The Family

The biggest social changes associated with industrialization were to the family. Both women and children became part of the work force, albeit at lower wages, and in more dangerous conditions than their male counterparts. Factory-run boardinghouses housed workers dependent on the company for housing, food, and personal items. These new living arrangements removed workers from families and traditional structures. In many ways, this lessened the restrictions on young women and men. They were able to live away from home, manage their own incomes, and pursue independent leisure activities—theatres, dance halls, recitals, dining out in restaurants—all of which developed to support the new urban working class.

The emergence of a middle class also brought changes to the family. Home and work were no longer centered in the same space. Middle- and upper-class women were expected to master the domestic sphere and to remain private and separate from the realities of the working world. This was a time of great consumption as desirable products were mass produced and women were expected to arrange parlors and dining rooms with fancy tea cups and serving trays.

New Economic and Social Philosophies: No Shortage of Opinions

Industrialization created new social classes. The new aristocrats were those who became rich from industrial success. A middle class formed, made up of managers, accountants, ministers, lawyers, doctors, and other skilled professionals. Finally, at the bottom of the pyramid was the working class—and it was huge—made up of factory workers in the cities and peasant farmers in the countryside.

Contrast Them: Social Class Structures Before and After Industrialism

Keep in mind that throughout history, the wealthy class was small and the poorest class was huge, but industrialism gave it a new twist. Because of urbanization, people were living side by side. They could see the huge differences among the classes right before their eyes. What’s more, the members of the working class saw factory owners gain wealth quickly—at their expense. The owners didn’t inherit their position, but instead achieved success by exploiting their workers, and the workers knew it. In the past, under feudalism, people more readily accepted their position because, as far as they knew, the social structure was the way it had always been, and that’s the way it was meant to be. If your dad was a farmer, you were a farmer. If your dad was the king, you were a prince. After industrialism, people literally saw for the first time the connection between their sacrifices and the aristocracy’s luxuries.

The rise of the industrial class had its origins in the concept of private ownership. Adam Smith wrote in The Wealth of Nations (1776) that economic prosperity and fairness is best achieved through private ownership. Individuals should own the means of production and sell their products and services in a free and open market, where the demand for their goods and services would determine their prices and availability. A free market system (also known as capitalism), Smith argued, would best meet the needs and desires of individuals and nations as a whole. When governments remove themselves entirely from regulation, the process is called laissez-faire capitalism.

Smith wrote his book in response to the western European mercantilist practices that had dominated during the Age of Exploration. In the New World, monarchies—which were not only corrupt, but also highly inefficient—closely managed their economies. In the nineteenth century, European countries continued to develop their mercantilist philosophies (especially using colonies as a way of obtaining raw materials without having to import them from other countries and as a way of increasing exports). European countries also permitted and encouraged the development of private investment and capitalism. Hence the rise of factory workers and the rise of major investment firms like the British East India Company.

While Adam Smith believed that free market capitalism would lead to better opportunities for everyone, Karl Marx, a German economist and philosopher who spent a good part of his adult life living in poverty, pointed out that the factory workers had genuine opportunities but were being exploited as a consequence of capitalism. In other words, the abuses weren’t merely the result of the way in which capitalism was practiced, but an inherent flaw in the system. In The Communist Manifesto (1848), Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote that the working class would eventually revolt and take control of the means of production. All the instruments of power—the government, the courts, the police, the church—were on the side of the rich against the workers. Once the class struggle was resolved by the massive uprising of the exploited, Marx predicted that the instruments of power wouldn’t even be needed. The impact of Marxism was enormous, and served as the foundation of socialism and communism.

Marx and Engels were not just theorizing, they were also observing, and there was much discontent to support their view. In England in the early 1800s, groups of workers known as Luddites destroyed equipment in factories in the middle of the night to protest working conditions and pitiful wages. The government unequivocally sided with the business owners, executing some of the workers, while also enacting harsh laws against any further action.

At the same time, however, a greater number of people with influence (the middle class and the aristocracy) began to realize how inhumane the factory system had become and started to do something about it. These reformers believed that capitalism was a positive development, but that laws were needed to keep its abuses in check. In other words, they believed that the government needed to act on behalf of the workers as well as the factory owners. By the mid-nineteenth century, there was a major split in thought among intellectuals and policymakers.

In Britain and the United States, where the impact of the Enlightenment was strong, democracy was developing, and the middle class was growing, reforms to the free market system that lessened the negative impact of capitalism on workers took root. In other countries like Russia where absolute rule was strong and the peasant class extremely oppressed, reform was almost nonexistent. There, Marxist ideas grew popular among a small group of urban intellectuals, eventually including Vladimir Lenin, who believed they could lead a worker revolution and end the tyranny of the czars. Elsewhere, Marxism impacted social thought and intermixed with capitalist thought to create economic systems that were partly socialist (in which the government owned some of the means of production) and partly capitalist (in which individuals owned some of the means of production). Most of Europe, including Britain after World War II, mixed socialist and capitalist ideas.

Capitalism and Enlightenment Combine: Reform Catches On

In the second half of the nineteenth century, after the abuses and social consequences of the Industrial Revolution became clear, a series of reforms occurred. The British Parliament passed laws, such as the Factory Act of 1883, which limited the hours of each workday, restricted children from working in factories, and required factory owners to make working conditions safer and cleaner. Meanwhile, labor unions were formed. The unions were vehicles through which thousands of employees bargained for better working conditions, or threatened to strike, thereby shutting down the factory. In addition, an increasing number of factory owners realized that a healthy, happy, and reasonably well-paid workforce meant a productive and loyal one.

All of these developments combined, though slowly and sporadically, to improve not only the conditions in the factories and cities, but also the standard of living on an individual family level. The middle class became substantially larger. Public education became more widely accessible. Social mobility—the ability of a person to work his way up from one social class to the next—became more commonplace. In 1807, the slave trade was abolished, which meant that no new slaves were transported from Africa, though the ownership of existing slaves continued. In 1833, the British outlawed slavery, and three decades later, it was outlawed in the United States.

As men earned more money, women left the factories and returned to their traditional roles in the home, which limited their influence socially, politically, professionally, and intellectually, even as democratic reforms greatly increased the power of most men, especially through the right to vote. In response, women began organizing to increase their collective influence.

Despite improvements in the overall standards of living in industrialized nations, by 1900 extreme hardships persisted. In many cases, Europeans dreamed of starting over somewhere else, or escaping cruelties at home. From 1800 to 1900, nearly 50 million Europeans migrated to North and South America. Millions fled from famine in Ireland, or anti-Semitism in Russia, or poverty and joblessness in general.

In Search of Natural Resources: Stealing Is Cheaper than Dealing

The factories of the Industrial Revolution created useful products, but to do so they required natural resources. Europe had its share of coal and iron ore used to provide power and make equipment for the factories, but raw materials such as cotton and rubber had to be imported because they didn’t grow in the climates of western Europe.

Industrial nations amassed incredible wealth by colonizing regions with natural resources, and then taking those resources without compensating the natives. The resources were sent back to Europe, where they were made into finished products. Then, the industrial nations sent the finished products back to the colonies, where the colonists had to purchase them because the colonial powers wouldn’t let the colonies trade with anyone else. In short, the colonial powers became rich at the expense of the colonies. The more colonies a nation had, the richer it became.

Soon, Europe colonized nations on every other continent in the world. Europe became a clearinghouse for raw materials from around the globe while the rest of the world increasingly became exposed to Europe and European ideas. What’s more, the need for raw materials transformed the landscape of the conquered regions. Limited raw materials depleted faster than at any time in human history. The Industrial Revolution, in addition to creating pollution, began to have an impact on the environment by gobbling natural resources.

The European Justification: Superiority Is a Heavy Burden

Even as progressives argued for an end to the slave trade and better working conditions in the factories, a huge number of Europeans—not just the industrialists—either supported or acquiesced in the colonization of foreign lands. Most Europeans were very ethnocentric and viewed other cultures as barbarian and uncivilized. Ironically, this ethnocentrism may have driven some of the social advancements within European society itself—after all, if you think of yourself as civilized, then you can’t exactly brutalize your own people.

Two ideas contributed to this mindset. First, social Darwinists applied Charles Darwin’s biological theory of natural selection to sociology. In other words, they claimed that dominant races or classes of people rose to the top through a process of “survival of the fittest.” This meant that because Britain was the most powerful, it was the most fit, and therefore the British were superior to other races.

Second, many Europeans believed that they were not only superior, but that they had a moral obligation to (crassly said) dominate other people or (politely said) teach other people how to be more civilized—in other words, how to be more like Europeans. Rudyard Kipling summed it up in his poem “White Man’s Burden.” As European nations swallowed up the rest of the world in an effort to advance their economies, military strategic positioning, and egos, Kipling characterized these endeavors as a “burden” in which it was the duty of Europeans to conquer each “half-devil and halfchild” so that they could be converted to Christianity and civilized in the European fashion. Never mind if the non-Europeans didn’t want to be “civilized.” The Europeans supposedly knew what was best for everyone.

Contrast Them: Ethnocentrism in Europe and Elsewhere

To be sure, many cultures were ethnocentric. The Chinese, for example, believed their kingdom to be the Middle Kingdom, literally the “center of the world,” and themselves ethnically superior to other races. Similar attitudes existed in Japan and in most major civilizations. So the Europeans were hardly unique in their selfimportant attitudes. However, in their ability to act on those attitudes, they were dangerously unique. Armed with the most technologically advanced militaries and strong economic motives, the Europeans were quite capable of subjugating people whom they considered to be inferior, barbaric, or dispensable. Their success at doing so often reinforced the ethnocentric attitudes, leading to further colonialism and subjugation.

B. European Imperialism in India

As you know from the previous chapter, the Indian subcontinent had long been a destination of European traders eager to get their hands on India’s many luxuries, such as tea, sugar, silk, salt, and jute (an extremely strong fiber used for ropes). By the early eighteenth century, the Mughal Empire (remember that?) was in decline following decades of fighting wars and by renewed religious conflict between Muslims and Hindus. Lacking a strong leader and a unified people created an opening (as it so often does) for external powers to move in. And that is precisely what Britain and France decided to do.

In the 1750s, the rivalry between France and England reached fever pitch. During the Seven Years’ War (more on it later), the two countries battled each other in three theaters: North America, Europe, and India. England won across the board. The British East India Company, a joint-stock company that operated like a multinational corporation with exclusive rights over British trade with India, then led in India by Robert Clive, raised an effective army that ridded the subcontinent of the French. During the next two decades, Clive successfully conquered the Bengal region (present- day Bangladesh), quite a feat given that the East India Company was a corporation. It wasn’t British troops who conquered the region, but corporate troops!

Over the next hundred years, the company took advantage of the weakening Mughals and set up administrative regions throughout the empire. In 1798, the large island of Ceylon (present-day Sri Lanka) fell to the British. In the early 1800s, the Punjab region in northern India came under British control, and from there the Brits launched excursions into Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The Sepoy Mutiny: Too Little, Too Late

To help it administer the regions under its control, the East India Company relied on Sepoys, Indians who worked for the Brits, mostly as soldiers. By the mid-1800s, the Sepoys were becoming increasingly alarmed with the company’s insatiable appetite for eating up larger and larger chunks of the subcontinent. What’s more, the company wasn’t very good about respecting the local customs of the Sepoys, and respected neither Muslim nor Hindu religious customs. When, in 1857, the Sepoys learned that their bullet cartridges (which had to be bitten off in order to load into the rifle) were greased with pork and beef fat, thus violating both Muslim and Hindu dietary laws, the Sepoys rebelled. The fighting continued for nearly two years, but the rebellion failed miserably.

The consequences were huge. In 1858, the British parliament stepped in, took control of India away from the East India Company, and made all of India a crown colony. The last of the Mughal rulers, Bahadur Shah II, was sent into exile, thereby ending the Mughal Empire for good. Nearly 300 million Indians were suddenly British subjects (that’s as many people as currently living in the United States). By 1877, Queen Victoria was recognized as Empress of India.

Full-Blown British Colonialism: England on the Indus

In the second half of the nineteenth century, India became the model of British imperialism. Raw materials flowed to Britain; finished products flowed back to India. The upper castes were taught English and were expected to adopt English attitudes. Christianity spread. Railroads and canals were built. Urbanization, as in Europe, increased dramatically. But all of this came at the expense of the Indian culture and Indian institutions. Still, as the upper castes were Anglicized, they gained the education and worldly sophistication to begin to influence events. Increasingly, they dreamed of freeing India from British rule.

In 1885, a group of well-educated Indians formed the Indian National Congress to begin the path toward independence. It would take the impact of two world wars before they would get it. In the meantime, Indians, especially those that lived in the cities, continued to adapt to British customs while trying to hold on to their traditions.

C. European Imperialism in China

As you know, for much of its history, China was relatively isolationist. It traded frequently, but it didn’t make exploration a high priority. It also expanded by conquering its neighbors, but never took this expansion beyond its own region of the globe. Up until the 1830s, China allowed the European powers to trade only in the port city of Canton, and it established strict limitations on what could be bought and sold. But as the European powers, particularly the British, gained industrial muscle, they came barging in, this time with weapons and warships.

The Opium Wars: European Drug Pushers Force Their Right to Deal

In 1773, British traders introduced opium to the Chinese. By 1838, the drug habit among the Chinese had grown so widespread and destructive that the Manchu Emperor released an imperial edict forbidding the further sale or use of opium. Consistent with this edict, the Chinese seized British opium in Canton in 1839.

The British would have none of it. From 1839 to 1842, the two countries fought a war over the opium trade. This was known as the first Opium War. Overwhelmed by British military might, China was forced to sign the Treaty of Nanjing, the first of what came to be known as the “unequal treaties,” by which Britain was given considerable rights to expand trade with China. And, of course, the right to create more opium addicts.

In 1843, Britain declared Hong Kong its own crown possession, a significant development because that went beyond trading rights and actually established a British colony in the region. In 1844, the Manchu Dynasty was forced to permit Christian missionaries back into the country.

When China resisted British attempts to expand the opium trade even further, the two countries fought a second Opium War for four years beginning in 1856. The Chinese defeat was humiliating. It resulted in the opening of all of China to European trade. Still, other than in Hong Kong, European imperialism in China was quite different from what it was in India and what it would be in Africa. In China, Britain fought more for trading concessions than for the establishment of colonies.

The Word Is Out: China Is Crumbling

The Opium Wars had a huge impact on the global perception of China. For centuries, the world knew that China was one of the more advanced civilizations. With the clear- cut British defeat of China with relatively few troops, the world realized that China was an easy target. What’s more, the Chinese themselves knew that their government was weak, and so they, too, started to rebel against it. Internal rebellion started at the beginning of the nineteenth century with the White Lotus Rebellions led by Buddhists who were frustrated over taxes and government corruption. It continued through the middle of the century with the Taiping Rebellion. The Taipings, led by a religious zealot claiming to be the brother of Jesus, recruited an army nearly a million strong and nearly succeeded in bringing down the Manchu government. The rebels failed, but the message was clear. China was crumbling from within, and unable to stop foreign aggression from outside.

In the 1860s, the Manchu Dynasty tried to get its act together in what became known as the Self-Strengthening Movement, but it did no good. In 1876, Korea realized China was weak and declared its independence. Later, in the Sino-French War (1883), the Chinese lost control of Vietnam to the French, who established a colony there called French Indochina. If that wasn’t enough, a decade later the Chinese were defeated in the Sino-Japanese War, when the rising imperial power of Japan wanted in on the action. In the Treaty of Shimonoseki (1895), China was forced to hand over control of Taiwan and grant the Japanese trading rights similar to those it had granted the Europeans. Japan also defeated the Koreans and took control of the entire peninsula.

Meanwhile, the European powers were rushing to establish a greater presence in China. By establishing spheres of influence, France, Germany, Russia, and of course Britain carved up huge slices of China for themselves. These spheres were not quite colonies. Instead, they were areas in which the European powers invested heavily, built military bases, and set up business, transportation, and communication operations. The Manchu Dynasty was still the governmental authority within the spheres.

By 1900, the United States, which had its own trading designs on Asia, was worried that China would become another India or Africa, and that the United States would be shut out of trade if the Manchu government fell and the Europeans took over the government. (Let’s try to forget the irony that the U.S. had barred the immigration of all Chinese laborers in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.) Through its Open Door Policy, the United States pledged its support of the sovereignty of the Chinese government and announced equal trading privileges among all imperial powers (basically Europe and the United States).

The Boxer Rebellion: Knocked Out in the First Round

By the twentieth century, nationalism among the Chinese peasants and local leadership was festering. Anti-Manchu, anti-European, and anti-Christian, the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists, or Boxers as they came to be known, organized in response to the Manchu government’s defeats and concessions to the Western powers and Japan. Infuriated, the Boxers’ goal was to drive the Europeans and Japanese out of China. Adopting guerilla warfare tactics, the Boxers slaughtered Christian missionaries and seized control of foreign embassies. Ultimately, however, they were not successful in achieving their aims. Instead, their uprising resulted in the dispatch of foreign reinforcements who quickly and decisively put down the rebellion. The Manchu government, already having made great concessions to the Europeans and Japanese, was then even further humiliated. As a result of the rebellion, China was forced to sign the Boxer Protocol, which demanded that China not only pay the Europeans and the Japanese the costs associated with the rebellion but also to formally apologize for it as well.

Contrast Them: European Imperialism in China and in India Multiple European countries originally traded with India, but the British won out and established exclusive control. In China, the British dominated trade early on, and as they succeeded, more and more countries piled on.

In India, the British established a true colony, running the government and directing huge internal projects. In China, Europeans and the Japanese established spheres of influence, focusing on the economic benefits of trade with no overall governmental responsibilities. Therefore, when independence movements began in India, the efforts were directed against Britain, the foreign occupier. In contrast, when the people wanted to change the government in China, they targeted the Manchu Dynasty.

On its last legs, the Manchu Dynasty couldn’t prevent the forces of reform from overtaking it from both within and without, and as a consequence, Chinese culture itself started to crumble. In 1901, foot binding was abolished. In 1905, the 2,000-year-old Chinese Examination System was eliminated. By 1911, the government was toppled and imperial rule came to an end. For the first time, under the leadership of Sun Yat-sen, a republic was established in China. But more on this in the next chapter.

D. Japanese Imperialism

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Japan succeeded in keeping European influences away from its shores. It consequently built a highly ethnocentric, selfinvolved society that didn’t even allow its own citizens to travel abroad. But by the nineteenth century and the Industrial Revolution, the Europeans and the United States became so powerful and so crazed for markets that Japan found it hard to keep the westerners at bay. In 1853, Commodore Matthew Perry from the United States arrived in Japan on a steamboat, something the Japanese had never seen before, and essentially shocked the Japanese, who quickly realized that their isolation had resulted in their inability to compete economically and militarily with the industrialized world.

For a time, the West won concessions from Japan through various treaties such as the Treaty of Kanagawa (1854). These treaties grossly favored the United States and other countries. As in China, the nationalists grew resentful, but unlike the Chinese, the Japanese were organized. Through the leadership of the samurai, they revolted against the shogun who had ratified these treaties, and restored Emperor Meiji to power.

The Meiji Restoration: Shogun Out, Emperor In, Westerners Out

The Meiji Restoration ushered in an era of Japanese westernization, after which Japan emerged as a world power. By the 1870s, Japan was building railways and steamships. By 1876, the samurai warrior class as an institution had been abolished, and universal military service among all males was established.

The relative isolation of Japan during the Tokugawa and the deliberate attempt to westernize while strengthening Japanese imperial traditions during the Meiji led to a period of increased cultural creativity with rituals aimed at developing national identity. Much of this new identity was centered on military pageantry that celebrated Japanese victories over China and Russia in the early twentieth century.

In the 1890s, Japanese industrial and military power really started to roll. It was now powerful enough to substantially reduce European and U.S. influence. It maintained trade, but on equal footing with western powers. Japan went through an incredibly quick Industrial Revolution. In 1895, Japan defeated China in a war for control of Korea and Taiwan. Japan was now an imperial power itself.

Compare Them: The Industrial Revolution in Europe and in Japan

The industrialization of Europe and Japan followed very similar paths, but Japan’s was on fast forward. It managed to accomplish in a few decades what had taken Europe more than a century, in large part because it didn’t have to invent everything itself—it just needed to implement the advances of Western industrialization. Still, the pattern was remarkably similar. Private corporations rose up, industrialists like the Mitsubishi family became wealthy, factories were built, urbanization increased dramatically, and reform was instituted. Japan learned from the Europeans quite well. If you can’t beat an industrialized power, become one yourself.

E. European Imperialism in Africa

Unlike India and China, and to a certain degree Japan, Africa held little interest for most Europeans prior to the Industrial Revolution. To be sure, north of the Sahara, in Egypt and along the Mediterranean, Europeans had historical interest and impact. But the vast interior of the continent remained unknown to the outside world. During the Age of Exploration, coastal regions of Africa became important to Europeans for limited trade, and also for strategic positioning, as stopping-off points for merchant ships en route to India or China. Most significantly, of course, Africa became the center of the slave trade.

The Slave Trade Finally Ends

As Enlightenment principles took root in Europe, larger and larger numbers of people grew outraged at the idea of slavery. Between 1807 and 1820, most European nations abolished the slave trade, although slavery itself was not abolished until a few decades later. In other words, no new slaves were legally imported from Africa, but those already in Europe or the New World continued to be enslaved until emancipation in the mid-nineteenth century. In some cases, former slaves returned to Africa. Groups of former American slaves, for example, emigrated to Liberia, where they established an independent nation.

It’s a terrible irony that as the slave trade ended in the nineteenth century, Europeans turned their greedy eyes to the continent of Africa itself. Within 50 years, the Africans were subjugated again, but this time in their own homeland.

South Africa: Gold Rings, a Diamond Necklace, and a British Crown

Prior to the discovery of gold and diamonds in South Africa in the 1860s and 1880s, South Africa was valuable to the Europeans only for shipping and military reasons. The Dutch arrived first and settled Cape Town as a stopping point for ships on the way from Europe to India. In 1795, the British seized Cape Town, and the South African Dutch (now known as Boers or Afrikaners) trekked northeast into the interior of South Africa, settling in a region known as the Transvaal. When the Boers later discovered diamonds and gold in the Transvaal, the British quickly followed, fighting a series of wars for the rights to the resources. After years of bloody battles, known as the Boer War (1899-1902), the British reigned supreme, and all of South Africa was annexed as part of the ever-expanding British Empire. Of course, throughout this entire process, Africans were not allowed claims to the gold and diamonds, and were made to work in the mines as their natural resources were sent abroad.

Egypt: A New Waterway Makes a Splash

In theory, the Ottomans ruled Egypt from 1517 until 1882, although throughout the nineteenth century, Ottoman rule was extremely weak. Local rulers, called beys, had far more influence over developments in Egypt than the rulers in Istanbul. When Napoleon tried to conquer Egypt during his tireless attempt to expand France into a mega-empire at the turn of the nineteenth century, Muhammad Ali defeated the French and the Ottomans, and gained control of Egypt in 1805. Egypt technically remained part of the Ottoman Empire, but as viceroy, Ali wielded almost exclusive control. During the next 30 years, he began the industrialization of Egypt and directed the expansion of agriculture toward cotton production, which was then exported to the textile factories of Britain for substantial profit.

Ali’s westernization attempts were temporarily halted by his grandson, Abbas I, but were reinvigorated under subsequent rulers, who worked with the French to begin construction of the Suez Canal. The canal, when completed in 1869, connected the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean, eliminating the need to go around the Cape of Good Hope. Because Britain had a huge colony in India, the canal became more important to the British than to anyone else. As Egypt’s finances went into a tailspin because of excessive government spending, Egypt started selling stock in its canal to raise money, stock that the British government eagerly gobbled up. By 1882, Britain not only controlled the Suez Canal, but had maneuvered its way into Egypt to such a degree that it declared it a British protectorate, which was essentially a colony except that Egyptians remained in political power.

Pushed out of Egypt, France focused on other parts of North Africa, particularly Nigeria. The Italians, once they had unified as a country, also became interested in North Africa. The race for control of Africa was on.

The Berlin Conference: Carving Up the Continent

In 1884, Otto von Bismarck hosted the major European powers at a conference in Berlin intended to resolve some differences over various European claims to lands in the African Congo. By the end of the conference, the delegates had set up rules for how future colonization rights and boundaries would be determined on that continent. With rules in hand, the Europeans left the conference in haste. Each country wanted to be the first to establish possession in the various parts of Africa. Within three decades, almost the entire continent of Africa was colonized by Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Belgium. Only Ethiopia and Liberia remained independent of European rule by 1914.

While the Europeans added substantial infrastructure to the continent by building railroads, dams, and roads, they stripped Africa of its resources for profit and treated the natives harshly. Every colonial power except Britain exercised direct rule over its colonies, meaning Europeans were put in positions of authority and the colonies were remade according to European customs. The British, having their hands full with the huge colony in India and massive spheres of influence in China and elsewhere, permitted the native populations to rule themselves more directly and to more freely practice their traditional customs (similar to how the Roman Empire handled its far- flung territories).

Because the Berlin Conference of 1884 encouraged colonialism solely based on bargaining for political and economic advantage, the boundary lines that eventually separated colonial territories were based on European concerns, not on African history or culture. Therefore, in some situations, tribal lands were cut in half between two colonies controlled by two different European nations, while in other situations two rival tribes were unwillingly brought together under the same colonial rule. For a time, the disruption of traditional tribal boundary lines worked to the Europeans’ advantage

because it was difficult for the native Africans to organize an opposition within each colony. But it did much more than thwart opposition; it disrupted the culture. Add in European schools, Christian missionaries, and western business practices, and traditional African culture, as elsewhere in the global colonial swirl, started breaking apart.

European Colonies in Africa, 1914

Compare Them: European Colonialism in Africa and in Latin America

Colonialism in Africa was similar to that in the Americas in that boundary lines were determined by European agreements from abroad. In other words, there was total disregard for the societies that existed beforehand. Colonialism in Africa was similar to colonialism in America because multiple countries held claims to the land. Except for the colonies controlled by the British, the African colonies were governed by direct rule, similar to European rule of colonies in the Americas. This meant they sent European officials to occupy all positions of authority. Native traditions were overcome, not tolerated, and certainly not developed. This, of course, was in contrast to spheres of influence in China, for example, in which Europeans were generally more interested in making money rather than changing the entire culture.

V. NATIONALIST MOVEMENTS AND OTHER DEVELOPMENTS

A. Two Unifications: Italy and Germany

One of the consequences of the Napoleonic era was that it intensified nationalism, or feelings of connection to one’s own home, region, language, and culture. France, Spain, Portugal, Britain, and Russia, of course, had already unified and, in some cases, built enormous empires. But the Italian and German city-states were still very feudal, and were constantly at the center of warfare among the European powers. In the second half of the nineteenth century, however, all of that changed. With the wave of industrialization and all the changes that it inspired, as well as the nationalist sentiments that were still lingering decades after Napoleon’s defeat, a drive to unify Italy and Germany resurfaced. Italy and Germany unified, and with unification, they eventually altered the balance of European power.

The Unification of Italy: Italians Give Foreign Occupiers the Boot

The Unification of Italy

In the mid-nineteenth century, Italy was a tangle of foreign-controlled small kingdoms. Austria controlled Venetia, Lombardy, and Tuscany in the north. France controlled Rome and the Papal States in the mid-section. Only the divided kingdom of Sardinia (part of which was an island in the Mediterranean) was controlled by Italians.

In 1849, the king of Sardinia, Victor Emmanuel II, named Count Camillo Cavour his prime minister, and nationalism in Italy took off. Both Emmanuel and Cavour believed strongly in Italian unification. Through a series of wars in which Cavour sided with European powers that could help him boot out Austria from Italy, he managed to remove Austrian influence from all parts of Italy (except Venetia) by 1859. Meanwhile, Giuseppe Garibaldi, another Italian nationalist, raised a volunteer army and in 1860 his army overthrew the kingdom whose citizens pledged allegiance to Sardinia. So, by 1861, a large chunk of present-day Italy was unified, and it declared itself a unified kingdom under Victor Emmanuel.

In the following decade, the Italians managed to gain control of Venetia after siding with Prussia in its war against Austria (which previously controlled Venetia) and finally won control of Rome in 1870 when the French withdrew. Still, even though Italy was essentially unified, the boundaries of Europe were still very shaky. Some Italians thought that southern provinces of Austria and France were far more Italian than not and that those provinces were rightly part of Italy. What’s more, Italy had a hard time unifying culturally because for centuries it had developed more regionally. Still, now unified, Italy was more able to assert itself on the world stage, a development that would impact Europe in the next century.

The Unification of Germany: All About Otto

The provinces that comprised Germany and the Austrian Empire (the Hapsburgs) hadn’t been truly united since the decline of Charlemagne’s Holy Roman Empire in the Middle Ages. Since the Peace of Westphalia (1648), which asserted the authority of regional governments, two areas in the region of the former Holy Roman Empire had politically dominated it: Prussia and Austria. Prussia, under the enlightened monarch Frederick the Great and his successors, achieved economic preeminence by embracing the Industrial Revolution. They also strongly supported education, which created a talented work force.

Many in Prussia wanted to consolidate the German territories into a powerful empire to rival the great powers of Europe, particularly Britain, France, and increasingly Russia. So, in 1861, the new king of Prussia, William I, appointed Otto von Bismarck prime minister with the aim of building the military and consolidating the region under its authority.

In order to achieve this consolidation, Bismarck had to defeat Austria, which he did in only seven weeks, after he won assurances from the other European powers that they would not step in on Austria’s behalf. Through further war and annexation, Bismarck secured most of the other German principalities, except for heavily Catholic regions in the south. So, the crafty Bismarck formed an alliance with the Catholic German states against aggression from France, and then, in 1870, provoked France to declare war on Prussia, starting the Franco-Prussian War—a war which, once won, consolidated the German Catholic regions under Prussian control. In 1871, the victorious Bismarck crowned King William I as emperor of the new German Empire, which was also known as the Second Reich (“second empire,” after the Holy Roman Empire, which was known as the First Reich).

After unification, Germany quickly industrialized and became a strong economic and political power. But Otto was not popular with everyone, especially socialists. In 1888, Germany crowned a new emperor, William II, who wanted to run the country himself. In 1890, he forced Bismarck to resign as prime minister and re-established authority as the emperor. With the Industrial Revolution in Germany now running full throttle, he built a huge navy, pursued colonial ambitions in Africa and Asia, and oversaw the rise of Germany into one of the most powerful nations in the world.

D. Other Political Developments Russia: Life with Czars

In the nineteenth century, Russia consolidated power over its vast territory by giving absolute power to its Romanov czars. The vast majority of the citizens were serfs with no rights, living an almost slavelike existence. Alexander I and Nicholas I frequently used the secret police to quash rebellions or hints of reform, despite the fact that an increasing number of Russians demanded change.

By the 1860s, long after the Enlightenment had had an effect on most developments in the West, Alexander II began some reforms. He issued the Emancipation Edict, which essentially abolished serfdom. It did little good. The serfs were given very small plots of land for which they had to give huge payments to the government to keep, so it was difficult for them to improve their lot. Some peasants headed to the cities to work in Russia’s burgeoning industries, but there, too, the reforms that softened some of the harsher working conditions in the West hadn’t made their way eastward. Whether in the fields or in the factories, the Russian peasants continued to live a meager existence, especially when compared to many of their western European counterparts.

Still, during the second half of the nineteenth century, a small but visible middle class started to grow, and the arts began to flourish. In a span of just a few decades, Russian artists produced some of the greatest works of all time: Tolstoy wrote Anna Karenina and War and Peace, Dostoyevsky authored The Brothers Karamazov, and Tchaikovsky composed Swan Lake and The Nutcracker. Meanwhile, an intellectual class well- acquainted with political and economic thought in the rest of Europe began to assert itself against the monarchy. In 1881, Alexander II was assassinated by a political group known as The People’s Will.

Alexander III reacted fiercely by attempting to suppress anything that he perceived as anti-Russian. Through a policy known as Russification, all Russians, including people in the far-flung reaches of the Empire that did not share a cultural history with most of Russia, were expected to learn the Russian language and convert to Russian Orthodoxy. Anyone who didn’t comply was persecuted, especially Jews. Meanwhile, terrible conditions in the factories continued, even as production capacity was increased and greater demands were put upon the workers.

The Ottoman Empire: Are They Still Calling It an Empire?

The Ottoman Empire began its decline in the sixteenth century and never was able to gain a second wind. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Ottomans continually fought the Russians for control of the Balkans, the Black Sea, and surrounding areas. Most of the time, the Russians were victorious. So by the nineteenth century, not only was the Ottoman Empire considerably smaller and less powerful, but it was in danger of collapse. Greece, Egypt, and Arabia launched successful independence movements. This worried Britain and France, who feared that if the Ottoman Empire fell entirely, the Russian Empire would seize the chance to take over the eastern Mediterranean. So, for the next century, Britain and France tried to keep the Ottoman Empire going if only to prevent Russian expansion, as they did in the Crimean War in 1853. At the same time, of course, Britain and France increased their influence in the region. In 1882, for example, Britain gained control of Egypt.

U.S. Foreign Policy: This Hemisphere Is Our Hemisphere

After the wave of independence movements swept Latin America in the early nineteenth century, Europe found itself nearly shut out of developments in the entire western hemisphere—even as European countries were swiftly colonizing Africa and Asia.

To ensure that Europe wouldn’t recolonize the Americas, U.S. President Monroe declared in his 1823 State of the Union Address that the western hemisphere was off-limits to European aggression. The United States, of course, wasn’t the superpower then that it is today, so it was hardly in a position to enforce its declaration, which became known as the Monroe Doctrine. But Britain, whose navy was enormous and positioned all over the globe, was fearful that Spain wanted to rekindle its American empire, so it agreed to back up the United States. As a result, the European powers continued to invest huge sums of money in Latin American business enterprises but didn’t make territorial claims. In 1904, after European powers sent warships to Venezuela to demand repayment of loans, President Theodore Roosevelt added what came to be known as the Roosevelt Corollary, which provided that the United States would intervene in financial disputes between European powers and countries in the Americas, if doing so would help to maintain the peace. While Latin American nations have at times benefited from the protection and oversight of their North American neighbor, the Monroe Doctrine also gave rise to anger and resentment in many Latin Americans, who sometimes saw the United States as exercising its own brand of imperialism in the region. This became clear when the United States incited Panamanians to declare their independence from Colombia, so that the United States could negotiate the right to build the Panama Canal in the Central American nation.

In 1898, a European power was dealt another blow in its efforts to maintain its footing in the Western Hemisphere. Spain, which at that time still controlled both Cuba and Puerto Rico, was embroiled in conflict with Cuban revolutionaries when the United States, which sympathized with the Cubans, intervened and launched the Spanish- American War of 1898. In a matter of a few months, it was all over. The United States quickly and decisively destroyed the Spanish fleets in Cuba and in the Philippines, and thereby gained control of Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. Cuba was given its independence, in exchange for concessions to the United States, including allowing the creation of two U.S. naval bases on the island. The United States, henceforth, was considered to be among the world powers.

VI. TECHNOLOGY AND INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENTS 1750-1900

Economic, political and social changes occurred so rapidly in this 150 year period that is difficult to keep track of them all. The flow chart in section VII of this chapter provides a good outline of the causes and effects of these changes. Advances in power and transportation drove the Industrial Revolution. Steam provided consistent power for new factories. In transportation news, millions of miles of rail lines were laid through out Europe, India, Africa, and throughout eastern Asia. This facilitated the movement of resources and manufactured goods. The new industrial world required large numbers of laborers. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, this need, along with the abolition of slavery, resulted in large-scale migrations around the world. Europeans and east Asians immigrated to the Americas, and south Indians moved into other Britishcontrolled territories.

This rapidly transforming world also resulted in the creation of new forms of entertainment for the urban working-class, new literature and revolutionary new ideas, exhibitions, fairs and amusement parks, professional sports, as well as the first department stores with widely available consumer goods. Both English and Japanese women published novels, some of which were indictments of working class life. The rapid industrialization also created the need for new forms of job protection including unions and new ideas about the relationships between the social classes.

With industrialization came new imperialism and interactions. The arts and culture of Europe were influenced by contact with Asia and Africa, and new more modern forms developed. Meanwhile, the Japanese started to integrate Western styles into traditional art forms. The seemingly radical Impressionist period in nineteenth-century European painting was based on depictions of real life, while the modernist art movements included cubism, surrealism, and art nouveau.

New industrialization and imperialism also resulted in new reasons and new ways to make war. This period saw the development of automatic weapons, including the Maxim gun of the 1880s. The assembly line allowed for mass production of gasoline- powered automobiles and eventually the first tanks, which led to the massive destruction wrought on the battlefields of World War I.

VII. CHANGES AND CONTINUITIES IN THE ROLE OF WOMEN

With all the dramatic transformations that took place in the nineteenth century, this was actually a low point in terms of women’s rights. Education, real wages, and professional opportunities continued to be mostly inaccessible; however, the new intellectual and economic opportunities available to men did open doors for women, and movements began throughout the world to rally for women’s political and legal rights.

Although women continued to be heavily restricted with few freedoms, political and legal barriers for men based on class or racial categories were mostly eliminated. Yet women were not unaffected by the new Enlightenment ideals of freedom, equality and liberty, and the earliest feminist writers emerged in western Europe during this period. Both middle- and working-class women joined reform movements, labor unions, and socialist parties. Most important to these women was access to education which was still denied to the majority of them due to ideas of mental inferiority based on social Darwinism.

Although most Western countries opened university education to women, literacy rates in China and India—countries with long histories of secluding women—remained shockingly low well into the twentieth century. However, male literacy in these regions was also low, and despite Christian missionary schools, it was not in the interest of the imperial powers to have a well-educated colonial populace.

VIII. PULLING IT ALL TOGETHER

From 1750 to 1900, so much happened in so many different places that it’s easy to get lost unless you focus on major developments and trends. We suggest that you try to link up many of the events and movements in a flowchart. Once you start, you’ll be amazed at how much is interconnected.

We’ve put together a sample flowchart for you. You may choose to connect developments quite differently from the way we have—there’s certainly more than one way to link events together. That said, take a look at the chart and use it to help you begin to make your own.

Of course, the chart above doesn’t begin to address many of the developments covered in this chapter. To include everything would require an enormous chart. In addition, developments were complicated and not entirely sequential. For example, there were two big rounds of independence movements and revolutions because there were two rounds of colonialism. The first round occurred after the Age of Exploration when the United States and Latin America declared their independence. The second round occurred after the Industrial Revolution and led to a race for new colonies in Asia and Africa. Those independence movements didn’t occur until the twentieth century.

Notice also that there are arrows going in both directions between the Agricultural Revolution and the Industrial Revolution—they each led to more of the other. The greater the food surplus, the more a country could industrialize. The more it industrialized, the more it developed efficient machines and tools that could be used to increase agricultural production.

The Growth of Nationalism: Me, Myself, and My Country

Nationalism was an enormous force on all continents during the time period covered in this chapter. Nationalism, broadly defined, is the desire of a people of a common cultural heritage to form an independent nation-state and/or empire that both represents and protects their shared cultural identity. It drove movements in Germany and Italy to unify. It drove movements in the Americas to declare independence. It drove resistance against European colonialism in India, China, and Africa, while it drove Europeans to compete with each other to promote national pride and wealth by establishing colonies in the first place. In China, it even drove peasant movements against the Manchu government, which was targeted for not representing the Han majority. It drove the French to unite behind Napoleon to attempt to take over Europe, and it drove the British to unite to try to take over the world. Nationalism drove the Japanese to quickly industrialize and the Egyptians to limit the power of the Ottomans.

In short, by 1900, the world had become one of strong identification with one’s own nation, or with the dream of the creation of one’s own nation. Even in the European colonies, and perhaps especially there, nationalism was growing. The oppressors used nationalist feelings to justify their superiority. The oppressed used nationalistic feelings to justify their rebellion.

The Complex Dynamics of Change: Enough to Make Your Head Spin

During the time period covered in this chapter, there were many forces of change. Exploration. Industrialization. Education. The continuing impact of the Enlightenment. The end of slavery. Military superiority. Nationalism. Imperialism. Racism. Capitalism. Marxism. It’s mind-boggling.

What’s more, these changes were communicated more quickly than ever before. Trains and ships raced across continents and seas. Telegraph cables were laid and telephones were ringing. Think about how much more quickly Japan industrialized than England. Think about how much more quickly Africa was colonized than Latin America. Increases in transportation and communication had far-reaching consequences.

Urbanization, too, fueled change. As people came in closer contact with each other, ideas spread more quickly. Like-minded people were able to associate with each other. Individuals had contact with a greater variety of people, and therefore were exposed to a greater variety of ideas. Increasingly, developments in the cities raced along at a faster pace than those in villages and on farms. In India, for example, British imperialism greatly impacted life in the cities. Indians learned to speak English and adopted European habits. In the countryside, however, Hindu and Muslim culture continued along largely uninterrupted.

Of course, most change—even “revolutionary” change—didn’t entirely supplant everything that came before it. For example, the Scientific Revolution challenged some assertions made by Roman Catholicism, but both survived, and many people learned to be both scientific and Christian. Slavery was successfully outlawed, but that didn’t mean that former slaves were suddenly welcomed as equals. Racism, both social and institutional, continued.

It’s also important to keep in mind that individuals, even those who were the primary agents of change, acted and reacted based on multiple motives, which were sometimes at odds with each other. The United States declared its independence eloquently and convincingly, and then many of the signers went home to their slaves. Factory workers argued tirelessly for humane working conditions, but once achieved, happily processed raw materials stolen from distant lands where the interests of the natives were often entirely disregarded.

Change is indeed very complex, but it’s also impossible to ignore. Life for virtually everyone on the globe was different in 1914 than in 1750. If you can describe how, you’re well on your way to understanding the basics. If you can describe why, you’re on your way to doing well on the exam.

Important Terms

Abolish

Absolute Monarch

Assembly Line

Balance of Power

Capital

Capitalism

Cartel

Commercial

Communism

Constitution

Corporation

Doctrine

Domestic

Emancipation

Enclosure

Enlightenment

Estates-General

Factory

Free Market

Free Trade

Immigration

Imperialism

Indemnity

Industrial Revolution

Laissez-Faire

Labor Union

Leisure

Marxism

Monopoly

Nationalism

Nation-State

Natural Resources

Revolution

Rural

Social Class

Social Darwinism

Socialism

Suffrage

Trade Union

Universal Suffrage

Urbanization

Utopia/Utopian

Wage Labor

People, Places, and Events

American Revolution

Assembly Line

Berlin Conference 1884

Bloody Sunday

Boer Wars (Africa 1899-1902)

Boxer Rebellions

British East India Company

Capitulations

Charles Darwin

Communist Manifesto

Congress of Vienna

Declaration of Independence

Declaration of the Rights of Man

The Diet of Japan

Emancipation of Serfs

Empress Cixi (China)

Frederich Engels

Execution of Louis XVI (France)

Miguel Hidalgo (Mexico)

Indian National Congress

Intolerable Acts

The Jewel in the Crown

Mahmut II (Ottoman)

Karl Marx

Maxim Guns

Meiji Restoration

Monroe Doctrine

Muhammad Ali (Egypt)

Muslim League

Napoleon Bonaparte

Open Door Policy

Opium Wars

Panama Canal

The Raj

Reign of Terror

Cecil Rhodes

Rudyard Kipling

Russification

Russo-Japanese War

Scramble for Africa

Sepoy Mutiny (1857)

Seven Years War (French and Indian)

Sino-Japanese War

Social Darwinism

Spanish American War

Spheres of Influence

Suez Canal

The State Duma of Russia

Steam Engine (James Watts)

Taiping Rebellion

Unequal Treaties

Otto von Bismarck

Wealth of Nations (Adam Smith)

“White Man’s Burden”

Witte Industrialization Program

Young Turks Party

IX. TIMELINE OF MAJOR DEVELOPMENTS 1750-1900

REFLECT

Respond to the following questions:

• For which content topics discussed in this Chapter do you feel you have achieved sufficient mastery to answer multiple-choice questions correctly?

• For which content topics discussed in this Chapter do you feel you have achieved sufficient mastery to discuss effectively in an essay?

• For which content topics discussed in this Chapter do you feel you need more work before you can answer multiple-choice questions correctly?

• For which content topics discussed in this Chapter do you feel you need more work before you can discuss effectively in an essay?

• What parts of this Chapter are you going to re-review?

• Will you seek further help outside of this book (such as a teacher, tutor, or AP Central), on any of the content in this Chapter—and, if so, on what content?