Source Collection: Economic Imperialism and State Expansion
Source Collection: Economic Imperialism and State Expansion
Compiled and annotated by Eman M. Elshaikh, additional edits by Terry Haley
This collection explores the territorial and economic expansion of empires from 1750 to 1900 CE. Imperial expansion at this time looked very different from the empires of earlier eras in history; it came in the form of industrial/economic imperialism.
Introduction to this collection
This collection explores the territorial and economic expansion of empires from 1750 to 1900 CE. Imperial expansion at this time looked very different from the empires of earlier eras in history; it came in the form of industrial/ economic imperialism.
Guiding question to think about as you read the documents: How did industrialization help empires expand both territorially and economically?
WHP Primary Source Punctuation Key
When you read through these primary source collections, you might notice some unusual punctuation like this: . . . and [ ] and ( ). Use the table below to help you understand what this punctuation means.
| Punctuation | What it means |
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ELLIPSES words … words |
Something has been removed from the quoted sentences by an editor. |
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BRACKETS [word] or word[s] |
Something has been added or changed by an editor. These edits are to clarify or help readers. |
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PARENTHESES (words) |
The original author of the primary source wanted to clarify, add more detail, or make an additional comment in parentheses. |
Contents
Source 1 – Muhammad Ali’s manufacturing system, 1834 (0:45)
Source 2 – Darwin’s Observation of Copper Mining in Chile from the Beagle Diary, 1835 (5:00)
Source 3 – Images of Guano mines in Peru, 1865 (9:30)
Source 4 – The diamond fields of South Africa, 1877–1878 (11:35)
Source 5 – Letter from King Leopold II to Prime Minister of Belgium, 1890 (16:45)
Source 6 – Mary Kingsley on trade in West Africa, 1897 (22:25)
Source 7 – In support of American empire, 1900 (27:55)
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Timestamps are in the source title. To locate a specific source in the audio file:
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Source 1 – Muhammad Ali’s manufacturing system, 1834 (0:45)
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Title Egypt and Mohammed Ali: Or, Travels in the Valley of the Nile |
Date and location 1834, Egypt |
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Source type Primary source – travel memoir |
Author James Augustus St. John (1795–1875), a British journalist, writer and traveler |
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Description British journalist James Augustine St. John, traveled extensively through Egypt, often by foot, and recorded his observations. This excerpt is from his report about the efforts of Muhammad Ali, Egypt’s ruler at the time, to industrialize the Egyptian economy. |
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Key vocabulary deluded fallacious erected trifling |
scanty odious lucrative moldering |
Guiding question
How did industrialization help empires expand both territorially and economically?
Excerpt
Not content with imparting to his people a knowledge of the sciences, and the arts of war, Mohammad Ali, in 1819, was led by the advice of Europeans to attempt the introduction of the manufacturing system. In this undertaking he was deluded by fallacious calculations. Being persuaded that, with the aid of certain French and Swiss adventurers, it was possible to render Cairo a second Manchester, he commenced operations with his usual rapidity. French, Italian, Maltese, and Savoyard manufacturers and artisans were employed … a district of miserable houses and narrow streets, in the center of the metropolis … was cleared of its inhabitants … [and] converted, with very trifling alterations, into factories. No expense was spared in procuring every description of machinery from Europe. …
The cultivation of the cotton-plant already promised to become a fertile source of revenue. He now, therefore, determined to manufacture from the raw material, and [converted the factory into] a cotton-mill … [and] caused cotton-mills to be erected at … Mansoura, and in the southern parts of the metropolis. … At first, no persons were employed in the factories but black slaves from Darfur and Kordofan, who displayed great intelligence, and quickly acquired a competent knowledge of the business; but so great a change of life, co-operating with the peculiar unhealthiness of the occupation, gradually thinned their ranks, so that the Pasha was shortly compelled to have recourse to the Fellahs.1 …
[N]o cotton-spinning apparatus has been imported into the country. The store-houses were furnished with tools … all purchased in England and France at an enormous cost …
The fellahs employed in the various manipulations have an extreme dislike to the business; being pressed into the mills, they labor only because they are compelled. Though they generally arrive at the factories in good health, the insalubrious [unhealthy] nature of the employment, imprisonment, their scanty wages, the insufficiency of their food, and the odious vices which, by the example of their superiors, they quickly learn to commit, in a short time render them diseased and despicable … Of the twenty-three or twenty-four cotton-mills existing in Egypt, there is not one which has not, at various periods, been accidentally or designedly set on fire. …
At present most of the mils are in ruins, and immense heaps of machinery, no longer employed, are covered with rust, and moldering to decay. …
Citation
John, James Augustus St. Egypt and Mohammed Ali: Or, Travels in the Valley of the Nile. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green & Longman, 1834.
1 Peasants or farmers in Egypt
Source 2 – Darwin’s Observation of Copper Mining in Chile from the Beagle Diary, 1835 (5:00)
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Title Charles Darwin’s Beagle Diary |
Date and location Chile, 1835 |
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Source type Primary source – diary |
Author Charles Darwin (1809–1882) |
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Description The El Indio Gold Belt is a mineral-rich area across Chile and Argentina that has great quantities of gold, silver and copper. In the 1830s, Charles Darwin traveled this region as part of his famed voyage on the Beagle. In this excerpt from his diary, we read Darwin’s observations of the copper and gold mines, many of which were owned by American and European businessmen. |
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Key vocabulary enquired feudal |
tilled |
Guiding question
How did industrialization help empires expand both territorially and economically?
Excerpt
CHILI SEPTEMBER 1834
We slept at the gold mines of Yaquil near Rancagua, in the possession of Mr. Nixon, an American gentleman. …
When we arrived at the mine, I was struck by the pale appearance of many of the men, & enquired from Mr. Nixon respecting their state. The mine is altogether 450 feet deep, each man brings up on his back … 104 lbs weight of stone. With this load they have to climb up the alternate notches cut in a [sic] trunks of trees2 placed obliquely in the shaft. Even beardless young men of 18 & 20 years with little muscular development of their bodies (they are quite naked excepting drawers) carry this great load from nearly the same depth. … With this very severe labor they are allowed only beans & bread. … Their pay is 25 or 30 shillings per month. — They only leave the mine once in three weeks, when they remain with their families two days. — This treatment, bad as it sounds, is gladly accepted; the state of the laboring agriculturist is much worse, many of them eat nothing but beans & have still less money. — This must be chiefly owing to the miserable feudal-like system by which the land is tilled … poverty is very common with all the laboring classes. …
VALPARAISO — COQUIMBO MAY 1835
11th Next day crossing the river, passed over plains to some hills where the copper mines of Panuncillo are seated. They belong to Mr. Caldcleugh3 of St Jago.
12th … Capt. Head has described the wonderful load which the “Apires”,4 truly beasts of burden, carry up from deep mines. — I confess I thought the account exaggerated; so that I was glad to take the opportunity of weighing one of the loads, which I picked out by chance. When standing straight over it, I could just lift it from the ground, the weight was 197 pounds … — The Apire had carried this up 80 perpendicular yards, by a very steep road, & by climbing up a zigzag nearly vertical notched pole.— He is not allowed to halt to breathe, excepting the mine is more than 600 ft deep. — The average weight is rather more than 200 pounds. …
Citation
Keynes, R.D., ed. Charles Darwin’s Beagle Diary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. http://darwin-online.org.uk/
2 Primary sources—especially journals and diaries—sometimes have odd phrasings or even errors. Here, Darwin seems to be saying that the notches were cut into the trunks of trees. The editor has inserted [sic] to indicate that what you have read is not a typo in this publication, and that it did in fact say “cut into a trunks of trees” in the original.
3 Caldcleugh, Alexander (1795–1858) was a British merchant, miner, botanist and mineralogist.
4 Apires: workers
Source 3 – Images of Guano mines in Peru, 1865 (9:30)
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Title Rays of Sunlight from South America |
Date and location 1865, Peru |
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Source type Primary source – photography book |
Author Alexander Gardner (1821–1882) |
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Description Guano (Spanish from Quechua: wanu) is the excrement of seabirds and bats. It is very useful as a fertilizer and in the production of explosive materials due to its high content of nitrogen, phosphate, and potassium. The guano trade began on three Pacific Peruvian islands in the early nineteenth century, when hundreds of British, German, and American ships flocked to the Chincha Islands, often waiting for several months for guano. Over time, the guano trade expanded to other islands in the region, with countries claiming land in order to profit off of the trade. Mining guano required a great deal of labor, much of which was carried out by indigenous and migrant populations, notably Chinese migrants. Alexander Gardner, a Scottish-American famous for his photographs of the American Civil War and US President Abraham Lincoln, traveled to South America, recording his travels through photography. |
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Key vocabulary panorama |
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Guiding question
How did industrialization help empires expand both territorially and economically?
Excerpt
Citation
Gardner, Alexander, and Henry De Witt Moulton. Rays of Sunlight from South America. Washington, DC: Philp & Solomons, 1865. https://www.loc.gov/item/44013000/
Notes or additional materials
Students can see high-quality, zoomable images from this book here: https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/collections/rays-of-sunlight-from-south-america#/?tab=about
Source 4 – The diamond fields of South Africa, 1877–1878 (11:35)
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Title Trollope’s South Africa |
Date and location 1878, Cape Town, South Africa |
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Source type Primary source – travelogue |
Author Anthony Trollope (1815–1882) |
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Description This excerpt from Trollope’s travel writings describes his time in South Africa, which he toured in the 1870s. Trollope focuses on the diamond mines near Kimberly, describing mining exploration by European geologists and businessmen, mining operations, and African labor in the mines. As a British observer, Trollope had particular views of his country’s role in South Africa and how the Indigenous Africans should respond to this, many of which led him to see them as inferior. We do not condone these views, but we feature them here because they offer important evidence about imperialist narratives. |
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Key vocabulary prospecting melancholy provisions prevailing |
grotesquely clad superintending superexcellence |
Guiding question
How did industrialization help empires expand both territorially and economically?
Excerpt
The commencement of diamond-digging as a settled industry was in 1872. It was then that dry-digging was commenced, which consists of the regulated removal of ground found to be diamondiferous5 and of the washing and examination of every fraction of the soil … within twelve miles of the river, and within a circle, of which the diameter is about two and a half miles, are contained all the mines,—or dry diggings,—from which have come the real wealth of the country. … The river diggings were only the prospecting work which led up to the real mining operations. … Of these dry diggings there are now four, Du Toit’s Pan, Bultfontein, Old De Beers,—and Colesberg Kopje, or the great Kimberley mine, which though last in the Field has thrown all the other diamond mines into the shade. …
The English came,—at the end of 1871. … At each place there is a little village, very melancholy to look at, consisting of hotels or drinking-bars, and the small shops of the diamond dealers. Everything is made of corrugated iron and the whole is very mean to the eye. …
At Du Toit’s Pan there are 1441 mining claims which are possessed by 214 claimholders. The area within the reef— that is, within the wall of rocky and earthy matter containing the diamondiferous soil—is thirty-one acres. This gives a revenue to the Griqualand Government of something over £2000 [British pounds] for every three months. About 1700 Kafirs6 are employed in the mine and on the stuff taken out of it at wages of 10s. [shillings] a week and their diet—which, at the exceptionally high price of provisions prevailing when I was in the country, costs about 10s. a week more. The wages paid to white men can hardly be estimated, as they are only employed in what I may call superintending work. They may perhaps be given as ranging from three to six pounds a week. The interesting feature in the labor question is the Kafir. This black man, whose body is only partially and most grotesquely clad, and who is what we mean when we speak of a Savage, earns more than the average rural laborer in England. Over and beyond his board and lodging he carries away with him every Saturday night 10s. a week in hard money, with which he had nothing to do but to amuse himself if it so pleases him. …
It need hardly be said that in such an operation as I have described the greatest care is necessary to prevent stealing, and that no care will prevent it. The Kafirs are the great thieves,—to such an extent of superexcellence that white superintendence is spoken of as being the only safeguard. … The Kafirs are not only most willing but most astute thieves, feeling a glory in their theft, and thinking that every stone stolen from a white man is a duty done to their chief and their tribe. ...
Citation
Trollope, Anthony. South Africa, Volume 1. Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1878.
5 diamondiferous: containing or yielding diamonds for mining.
6 Kaffir: an offensive, racist slur used by colonialists to describe Black Africans in South Africa.
Source 5 – Letter from King Leopold II to Prime Minister of Belgium, 1890 (16:45)
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Title Letter from King Leopold II to Prime Minister of Belgium |
Date and location 1890, Belgium |
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Source type Primary source – letter |
Author Leopold II (1835–1909) |
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Description The Congo Free State was a large state in Central Africa from 1885 to 1908 that was privately owned by Belgian King Leopold II. Through forced labor of Indigenous Africans working under the threat of violence, it became the site of a lucrative ivory, rubber, and mineral market, in which multiple international companies participated. When King Leopold failed to make a profit, he took a large loan from the Belgian government to support his colony. Upon his death, the area became known as the Belgian Congo until it gained independence in 1960. |
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Key vocabulary material (adjective) subordinated endeavors sovereign (noun) |
compatriots opulent cataract |
Guiding question
How did industrialization help empires expand both territorially and economically?
Excerpt
Dear Minister,
I have never ceased to draw the attention of my compatriots on the need to turn our view towards overseas territories. History teaches us that countries with small territories have a moral and material interest in extending their influence beyond their narrow borders. Greece founded opulent cities, home to arts and civilization, on the shores of the Mediterranean. Later, Venice built its grandeur on its maritime and commercial relations no less than on its political success. The Netherlands have thirty million subjects in the Indies who trade tropical products for the products of the mother country. It is in this service to the cause of humanity and progress that subordinated peoples appear as useful members to the great family of nations.7
More than any other, a trading and manufacturing nation like ours must do its best to secure opportunities for its workers, whether intellectual, capitalist, or manual. These patriotic concerns have dominated my life. They are what caused the creation of the African effort. My plans were not sterile: a young and vast State, led from Brussels, has peacefully taken its place in the sun, thanks to the kind support of the powers which have applauded its beginning. Belgians administer it, while other compatriots, more and more every day, are already making a profit on their capital. The vast river system of the Congo opens the way for rapid and economical channels of communication that will allow us to penetrate directly into the center of Africa. The construction of the railroad around the cataract, now assured thanks to the recent vote of the legislature, will significantly increase the ease of access. Under these conditions, a great fortune is reserved for the Congo, whose immense value will soon shine for all to see.
The day after this memorable act, I thought it my duty, when death will come to strike me, to make it easy for Belgium to profit from my work, as well as that of those who helped me to found and direct it and to whom I give thanks here once again. Thus did I make, as sovereign of the Congo Free State, the will that I am sending to you; I will request that you share it with the Legislative Chambers at the time you deem most appropriate. The beginning of endeavors such as those that have so preoccupied me is difficult and expensive. I insisted upon bearing the costs. A king, in order to give service to his country, must not fear to design and promote the realization of a project so reckless in appearance. The wealth of a sovereign consists of public prosperity. That alone can appear to his eyes as an enviable treasure, which he should try to constantly build up.
Until the day I die, I will continue with the same thoughts of national interest that have guided me until now, to direct and sustain our African efforts, but if, without waiting for that day, it makes sense for the country to contract closer ties with my Congo possessions, I would not hesitate to do it, I would be happy, while I am alive, to see it in full benefit towards the Chambers as towards the Government for the aid that they gave to me on several occasions in this creation. I think that I am right in saying that Belgium will gain genuine advantages and will see opening before her, on a new continent, happy and wide perspectives.
Your very devoted,
Leopold
Citation
Rutz, Michael A. King Leopold’s Congo and the “Scramble for Africa”: A Short History with Documents. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2018. http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/11454195.
7 Note that the original letter was written as one long paragraph, but the editor has used line breaks to make four chunks, for ease of reading.
Source 6 – Mary Kingsley on trade in West Africa, 1897 (22:25)
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Title Travels in West Africa |
Date and location London, 1897 |
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Source type Primary source – travelogue |
Author Mary Henrietta Kingsley (1862–1900) |
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Description Mary Kingsley was an English ethnographer, scientific writer, and explorer who wrote about her travels throughout West Africa. Her published travelogues influenced Western perceptions of the region. She mentions the rubber and palm oil trade, which were important resources for industrial production. Palm oil was used as a lubricant in early European factories, and rubber was also needed for industrial machinery, among other things. The global demand for palm oil created a local monocrop economy in West Africa, in regions such as the “Oil Rivers” Kingsley describes. |
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Key vocabulary philanthropists suppresses mortality blight |
incursions Asiatics internecine |
Guiding question
How did industrialization help empires expand both territorially and economically?
Excerpt
There is a certain school of philanthropists in Europe who say that it is not advisable to spread white trade in Africa, that the native is provided by the Bountiful Earth with all that he really requires, and that therefore he should be allowed to live his simple life, and not be compelled or urged to work for the white man’s gain. I have a sneaking sympathy with these good people, because I like the African in his bush state best; and one can understand any truly human being being horrified at the extinction of native races in the Polynesian, Melanesian, and American regions. But still their view is full of error as regards Africa, for one thing I am glad to say the African does not die off as do those weaker races under white control, but increases. … The condition of the African native will be a very dreadful one if this trade is not maintained; indeed, I may say if it is not increased proportionately to the increase of white government control—for this government control does many things that are good in themselves, and glorious on paper. It prevents the export slave trade; it suppresses human sacrifice; it stops internecine [deadly] war among the natives—in short, it does everything save suppress the terrible infant mortality (why it does not do this I need not discuss) to increase the native population, without in itself doing anything to increase the means of supporting this population; nay, it even wants to decrease these by importing Asiatics to do its work, in making roads, etc.
It may be said there is no fear of the trade, which keeps the native, disappearing from the West Coast, but it is well to remember that the stuff that this trade is dependent on, the stuff brought into the traders’ factory by the native, is mainly—indeed, save for the South-West Coast coffee and cacao, we may say, entirely—bush stuff, uncultivated, merely collected and roughly prepared, and it is so wastefully collected by the native that it cannot last indefinitely. Take rubber, for example, one of the main exports. … The trade in it starts on a bit of coast; for some years so rich is the supply, that it can be collected almost at the native’s back door, but owing to his cutting down the vine, he clears it off, and every year he has to go farther afield for a load … paying him to go on these long journeys, for the price at home takes little notice of his difficulties, because of the more carefully collected supply of rubber sent into the home markets by South America and India. … The Oil Rivers, which send out the greatest quantity of trade on the West Coast possessions, subsist entirely on palm oil for it. Were anything to happen to the oil palms in the way of blight, or were a cheap substitute to be found for palm oil at home, the population of the Oil Rivers, even at its present density, would starve. The development of trade is a necessary condition for the existence of the natives.
… [Trade] will give him a safer future than can any amount of abolitions of domestic slavery, or institutions of trial by jury, etc. If white control advances and plantations are not made and trade with the interior is not expanded, the condition of the West African will be a very wretched one, far worse than it was before the export slave-trade was suppressed. … [I]f deserted by the trader … the Coast native will sink, via vice and degradation, to extinction, and most likely have this process made all the more rapid and unpleasant for him by incursions of the wild tribes from the congested interior.
Citation
Kingsley, Mary Henrietta. Travels in West Africa: Congo Francais, Corisco and Cameroons. Macmillian and Company, Ltd., 1897.
Source 7 – In support of American empire, 1900 (27:55)
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Title In Support of an American Empire |
Date and location 1900, United States |
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Source type Primary source – political document |
Author Albert J. Beveridge (1862–1927) |
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Description This excerpt is from a speech by Indiana senator Albert Beveridge, who was also a respected historian, intellectual leader, and political biographer known as a leading Progressive. This speech is from the Congressional Record of the 56th Congress, 1st session, January 9, 1900. In the aftermath of the Spanish-American war, fierce debates about America’s imperial future had some critics calling for imperial expansion to slow down. Whether America had become an empire by that time was not a matter of debate, but whether it should continue to expand was a hot issue. |
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Key vocabulary candor repudiate archipelago renounce |
trustee illimitable estate8 |
Guiding question
How did industrialization help empires expand both territorially and economically?
Excerpt
MR. PRESIDENT, the times call for candor. The Philippines are ours forever, “territory belonging to the United States,” as the Constitution calls them. And just beyond the Philippines are China’s illimitable markets. We will not retreat from either. We will not repudiate our duty in the archipelago. We will not abandon our opportunity in the Orient. We will not renounce our part in the mission of our race, trustee, under God, of the civilization of the world. And we will move forward to our work, not howling out regrets like slaves whipped to their burdens but with gratitude for a task worthy of our strength and thanksgiving to Almighty God that He has marked us as His chosen people, henceforth to lead in the regeneration of the world. …
Our largest trade henceforth must be with Asia. The Pacific is our ocean. … Where shall we turn for consumers of our surplus? Geography answers the question. China is our natural customer. She is nearer to us than to England, Germany, or Russia, the commercial powers of the present and the future. They have moved nearer to China by securing permanent bases on her borders. The Philippines give us a base at the door of all the East. …
Most future wars will be conflicts for commerce. The power that rules the Pacific, therefore, is the power that rules the world. And, with the Philippines, that power is and will forever be the American Republic. …
Mr. President, this question is deeper than any question of party politics; deeper than any question of the isolated policy of our country even; deeper even than any question of constitutional power. It is elemental. It is racial. God has not been preparing the English-speaking and Teutonic9 peoples for a thousand years for nothing but vain and idle self-contemplation and self-admiration. No! He has made us the master organizers of the world to establish system where chaos reigns. …
What shall history say of us? Shall it say that we renounced that holy trust, left the savage to his base condition, the wilderness to the reign of waste, deserted duty, abandoned glory, forgot our sordid profit even, because we feared our strength and read the charter of our powers with the doubter’s eye and the quibbler’s mind?
Citation
Beveridge, Albert. “In Support of an American Empire.” In The Proceedings and Debates of the Fifty-Sixth Congress, First Session, Volume XXXIII, 704-12. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1900.
8 When a vocabulary word seems familiar, but appears on the list anyway, it’s worth looking up! There is often a secondary meaning, or in the case of estate an archaic (no longer used) meaning that makes sense in context.
9 Teutonic refers to a Northern European tribe as well as to the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family.
Eman M. Elshaikh
Eman M. Elshaikh is a writer, researcher, and teacher who has taught K-12 and undergraduates in the United States and in the Middle East and written for many different audiences. She teaches writing at the University of Chicago, where she also completed her master’s in social sciences and is currently pursuing her PhD. She was previously a World History Fellow at Khan Academy, where she worked closely with the College Board to develop curriculum for AP World History.
Image credits
This work is licensed under CC BY 4.0 except for the following:
Cover: Belgian colonial period Congo. Africa became a centre for ivory hunting from elephants killed for sport, or ivory 1900. © Photo12/Universal Images Group via Getty Images.