Empire 2.0

Wow. The long nineteenth century is a period that seems to have introduced most of the stuff that defines our society. Democracy and nationalism. Industrialization. Capitalism. Reforms that led to women’s suffrage, labor laws, and schooling for children. So far, every major topic we have explored in this period is something that still exists today.

In this unit, we turn to empire, another big story in the long nineteenth century. Now, empires go back over 4,000 years. In fact, in this course, we have already looked at some examples from the thirteenth century. But the empires of the long nineteenth century had some new features: industrialism, for example, and new ideas like race and nationalism. This topic is a bit different than the others we have explored for this period, because there are, arguably, no actual empires left today. Empire seems to have been a dead end in a world that ended up choosing a different political model: the nation-state.

Normal Person: “Empires out, nation-states in. Got it. On to the next unit.”
Every Historian Ever: “Well, it’s more complex than that?”
Normal Person: (sighs) “Do go on.”

Was empire really just a dead end, or does a version of it persist today? Can we use the study of empire to understand the present? To find an answer, we will need to start by studying what an empire is.

The system of imperialism

To understand the impact of empire during the long nineteenth century, we must deepen our understanding of three topics: imperialism, colonialism, and resistance. Let’s start with the how and why of “imperialism.” We know that industrialized countries like Britain, France, and the United States built and ruled vast overseas empires in this period. But why? What motivated their governments and their people? What made it possible for them, at that particular point in history, to expand their authority so far around the globe?

Of course, you can probably answer a lot of those questions right now, especially if you were paying attention to the last few units through all three frames. You can begin with the communities frame, remembering how nationalism drove some countries to compete with each other. One way to compete was by seizing overseas territory.

Ironically, networks of reformers—who in theory were trying to make things better—sometimes actually drove imperialism. They argued that taking territories was OK, or even desirable, if the goal was to (in their words) “civilize and improve” the people they conquered. Unfortunately, their idea of improvement was less “how can we help?” and more “how can we change you to fit our needs?” Imperialist claims of racial superiority were also becoming powerful in this era, so colonial subjects were often treated as racially inferior.

Possibly the most important factor in the construction of the new and larger empires in this period can be viewed through the production and distribution frame: industrialization. In the first place, industrialized countries now had the technology to conquer and rule other societies, especially those that were not industrialized. Machine guns and artillery obviously played a role, but it wasn’t just about weapons. When only one side has steamships, railroads, telegraphs, and new medicines, they have a great advantage in occupying and ruling whoever doesn’t have those tools.

Industrialization also provided one of the motives for empire-building. Industry needed raw material to turn into goods, and it needed markets in which to sell them. Colonies promised to provide both. The minerals of a colony’s land could be mined, its forests cut, its fish caught—all to feed the factories of the empire. Then, those factories could produce goods that could be sold to people in the colonies, who would have little choice except to buy them.

All of these motives came together in what we call imperialism. Imperialism was the set of ideas and actions that people in some societies used to justify the conquest and rule of people in other societies. It was a set of ideas and actions that were especially relevant in a few industrialized societies that built empires, but that also came to be shared quite widely during this era.

Colonialism — is it something different from imperialism?

The second lesson in this unit looks at empire from another perspective: How did people living in the colonies experience this imperial rule? As we will see in the second half of this unit, the inhabitants of the colonies were not citizens. They were subjects. Big difference. Colonial subjects had no sovereignty and few political rights. Admittedly, their experiences varied from place to place and from person to person. We will see that colonial lives in Ghana, in India, and in China, for example, were slightly different. But colonial subjects everywhere had enough in common that we can say they shared a set of experiences that we can call colonialism.

Colonialism was based, first, on a sense of difference. This difference was often expressed in the language of racism, but it didn’t end there. Imperialism told the people who ruled colonies that they were better than the people they ruled, so they must not treat colonial subjects as equals. They could withhold rights from others that they had themselves. This sense of ruling over people they saw as inferior also meant that colonialism was often quite violent.

But, as we will explore in this lesson, colonialism was rarely “total.” In fact, some historians argue that colonialism was quite weak. We’ll watch a video from the Gold Coast (today’s Ghana) in which two scholars show both the strengths and weaknesses of colonial rule.

Responding to colonialism

Now, since this superior/inferior dynamic only existed in the minds of the colonizers, colonial subjects did not just accept being ruled and subjugated by other people. Many colonial subjects did actively resist colonial rule, with strategies including military organization and campaigns. But active resistance is pretty difficult when you’re fighting an industrialized, highly armed occupation that prevents its subjects from coming together in solidarity. Thus, many people in the colonies tried other, more hidden forms of resistance. Some of these, conducted in secret, included working slowly or telling lies or stealing from the colonial government. Other people thought up philosophies of resistance that would help them organize in the future.

For most people, constant resistance was too difficult. Some people found ways to negotiate for slightly better treatment. Others believed they could “catch up” by imitating some parts of European society. Most people just focused on surviving in an oppressive system.

Conclusion

So let’s return to that question of whether empires were a “dead end” of the long nineteenth century. Spoiler alert: Eventually, the people of the colonies organized to overthrow imperial rule. I mean, look around you. There are a few small colonies still around today, but almost everyone in the world now lives in a nation-state. So somehow, people in the colonies managed to become independent countries. (Understanding how and when they did it can help us to think through strategies that different people around the world might use today when they are seeking political rights and liberties, but that’s a topic for a later unit.)

Does that mean that all legacies of empire are really gone from the world? A look at international economics shows that the parts of the world that were formerly colonized are more likely to still be impoverished today. Ideas that dominated imperial thought, like racism, or the claim of superiority by industrialized societies, are still around and often quite powerful. In many places, though formal empires have ended, the economic structures of colonialism remain to some degree. For these reasons, and many others, we have to keep thinking about those legacies of imperialism and colonialism as we try to understand our own world.