During the nineteenth century, which of the following most directly motivated the major expansion

Introduce students to the history of Western imperialism in East Asia with this historical overview and map.  

Last Updated: December 10, 2018

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In his later years, the British imperialist Cecil Rhodes wrote that “the world is nearly all parceled out, and what there is left of it is being divided up, conquered and colonized. To think of these stars that you see overhead at night, these vast worlds which we can never reach, I would annex the planets if I could; I often think of that. It makes me sad to see them so clear and yet so far.” 1

Rhodes was an imperialist, and to an imperialist, “expansion was everything.” Imperialism is the policy of expanding the rule of a nation or empire over foreign countries by force. In the 1800s, European nations acquired great wealth and power from both the natural resources of the lands they conquered and the forced labor of the people from whom they took the land. Imperialists used ideas from eugenics and Social Darwinism to justify their conquests. To imperialists like Rhodes, the idea that there would soon be no opportunity for further expansion was unsettling.

The French held similar views. In a speech to the French Chamber of Deputies in 1884, Jules Ferry, who twice served as prime minister of France, said:

Gentlemen, we must speak more loudly and more honestly! We must say openly that indeed the higher races have a right over the lower races. . . . I repeat, that the superior races have a right because they have a duty. They have the duty to civilize the inferior races. . . . In the history of earlier centuries these duties, gentlemen, have often been misunderstood, and certainly when the Spanish soldiers and explorers introduced slavery into Central America, they did not fulfill their duty as men of a higher race. . . . But in our time, I maintain that European nations acquit themselves with generosity, with grandeur, and with the sincerity of this superior civilizing duty. 2

Armed with these ideas of racial and cultural superiority, Western nations expanded into Asia from the mid 1850s to the beginning of World War I. The "Age of Imperialism" was fueled by the Industrial Revolution in Europe and the United States, and it profoundly influenced nation-building efforts in Japan and China. As the desire to exert regional strength grew, Japan also began to expand its colonial influence across East Asia.

Most teachers are willing to tackle the difficult topics, but we need the tools.

— Gabriela Calderon-Espinal, Bay Shore, NY

journal article

The Tools of Imperialism: Technology and the Expansion of European Colonial Empires in the Nineteenth Century

The Journal of Modern History

Vol. 51, No. 2, Technology and War [Jun., 1979]

, pp. 231-263 [33 pages]

Published By: The University of Chicago Press

//www.jstor.org/stable/1879216

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Current issues are now on the Chicago Journals website. Read the latest issue.The Journal of Modern History is recognized as the leading American journal for the study of European intellectual, political, and cultural history. The Journal"s geographical and temporal scope-the history of Europe since the Renaissance-makes it unique: the JMH explores not only events and movements in specific countries, but also broader questions that span particular times and places.

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