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Colonialism

Driving Question: What motivated colonialism, and what were the goals of colonial powers?

What really drives one country to control another? During the nineteenth century, colonial powers expanded with promises of trade and progress, but their goals often mixed ambition, economic manipulation, and political control.

Learning Objectives:

  1. Analyze the causes and consequences of colonialism in different societies around the world.
  2. Use the historical thinking practice of claim testing to identify, assess, and use authority when evaluating and making claims.
  3. Use the historical thinking practice of contextualization to analyze the conditions that led to the Opium Wars.
STEP 1

Opener: Colonialism

STEP 2

Debating Imperialism

Add depth to your understanding of imperialism by seeing how it was viewed differently across time and place. In the process, you’ll explore how historical sources reflect bias, perspective, and lived experience.

STEP 3

Conquest and Control

Imperial powers ruled their colonies through violence and coercion. Discover how that played out across the globe and use evidence to test claims about the realities of colonial rule.

STEP 4

The Opium Wars

STEP 5

Closer: Colonialism

Extension Materials
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Use this article to deepen your understanding of how empires leveraged their industrial power to ensure the supply of raw materials like cotton from their colonies.
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The British Raj

The British imperialists who established colonial control of India worked hard to ensure that the colony remained dependent on Britain and provided a steady supply of raw materials to feed British factories.