Essay 3 In the late 19th century much of the world was captured in an expansionist wave. The focus was mostly on Africa, but was seen also in much of Asia. The French had control over Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, and the British controlled much of Malaysia. Most of the major powers in the world wanted some influence over China and India, which led the British to take over Burma. Britain and Russia fought over territories in Afghanistan and Asia, while the United States expansion was mostly capturing new territories and making them into new states (Tignor, et al, 648). During this time Britain had a lot of control over Indian colonies. Many wanted to follow in Britain’s footsteps and have control in a country, but many also saw the unhappiness brought forth by British rule. After the Indian Rebellion authorities changed and modernized India and all of their public works. The Indians however, did not want to be taken under British rule or into British life, but they had to be governed in some way. After changing the government, the economy needed to be changed for more stability. The British wanted to make India a more stable territory (Tignor, et al, 648-50). The British set forth to modernize India in many ways including the government, transportation and communication. These changes would eventually help to unify India like it hadn’t been before. The modernization began under the rule of Governor-general Lord Dalhousie of the East India Company. He left office in 1856 claiming that he was responsible for unifying India with railroads and telegrams. Only a year after him leaving office the Indian’s erupted into rebellion. Fortunately for Britain their new ways of communication and travel helped to squash the rebellion by alerting and the ability to send British troops (Tignor, et al, 650). After the rebellion was over the British returned to modernization with a new drive. At the beginning they focused mainly on railroads, and spent approximately 150 million euros on these railways. By 1853 the first railway opened and in 1910 India had 30,627 miles of railroad track, which was the fourth largest in the world (Tignor, et al, 650). Next, many dams were built in rivers to irrigate the land and telegraph lines were opened to connect far parts of India with each other. Britain wanted India to supply them with cotton, tea, wheat, and vegetable oil seeds. The dams that were built in rivers helped to make massive cotton fields with plenty of water. The British used North East India to grow tea, which was marketed as much healthier than Green tea from China. India became a larger consumer of British textiles, which were often made from Indian cotton (Tignor, et al, 650). Because of the new resources and raw materials that India was now producing, they were in a surplus with foreign trade. The surplus was then given to the British as payment for many different things including interest payments on the railroads. Despite the money many positive things came of this for India. India now became a unified territory, and people even began to call themselves Indians. The one downside still was there was no central language, so people still had a very difficult time communicating (Tignor, et al, 650). Just as the British did in India, the Dutch tried to modernize and integrate with Indonesia. In the 1830’s the Dutch began by taking over many of Indonesia’s affairs. The Dutch tried to make Indonesia more stable economically than the British had made India, by making deals with the people of Indonesia. Even though they attempted to make peace with the natives, the changes that the Dutch made still had great consequences. The Dutch wanted to focus mostly on food products for exportation, such as coffee beans, sugar, and tobacco. With the great amounts of exports they had there was much less food left over for the people of Indonesia, which caused a famine to spread and kill over 300,000 Indonesians. The people that survived were greatly angered, which scared the Dutch causing them to become much stricter with the people. This was viewed widely as an embarrassment, and forced the Dutch to make an ethical policy for governing the Indonesians, such as more private settlement instead of government settlement. Even with private Dutch settlers, in the beginning, Indonesians tried to fight them off. Eventually they accepted, and Indonesian exports helped Dutch become richer still (Tignor, et al, 650-51). Africa was affected the most by the spread of colonialism. In the beginning only France and Britain had colonies in Africa, but within thirty years there were seven new European countries with colonies. Much of the obsession with colonializing Africa began when the British took over Egypt, which was seen by the French as their territory. This intensified Britain and France’s want for territories and also encouraged other countries to come and get their share of Africa. In 1884-1885 there was a meeting held in Berlin between Germany, Portugal, Britain, France, Belgium, Spain, Italy, USA and the Ottoman Empire. They discussed how they were going to divide up the remaining colonies in Europe (Tignor, et al, 651). Because the Europeans drew up new boundaries according to European trade centers, they caused a catastrophic mixing of peoples in Africa. The Europeans paid no attention to the split of culture or language divide between each African country. So many European countries decided they wanted a piece of this land for trade and for personal fortune. An example of that would be Cecil Rhodes changing boarders to fit his diamond mines. King Leopold II of Belgium also decided he wanted a large chunk of Africa, and got one eighty times the size of Belgium. He was the sole rule of the Congo until 1908 when it came out that he had enslaved and killed many innocent citizens of the Congo, and Belgian government took the territory away from Leopold (Tignor, et al, 651). One of the other major reasons that European countries wanted a piece of Africa was because they may have been able to spread Christianity to many new peoples. The missionaries tried to stop the armies, and try and get them to come in peace instead of fighting their way into Africa (Tignor, et al, 651). Even though the Europeans thought that the Africans would have no issue with them invading their country, they had to decide between two ways of stopping the Europeans; one being negotiations about how much land the Europeans take and the other would be fighting for their land. Most decided that fighting would be the better option, such as Lat Dior, a warlord in Senegal who said that he would fight this even after he was dead. Lat Dior was killed in battle in 1886 (Tignor, et al, 653). Menelik II was able to fight off the Europeans by pitting each country against each other, getting weapons from all of them and taking out whoever was left. In the battle of Adwa the Ethiopians were able to fight off the Italians, and inspire many African’s later. Unlike Menelik II most of the Africans did not understand how advanced the weaponry of the Europeans was, and tried to use the same fighting techniques that they would use against each other instead of adapting to the new challenge. Some did upgrade proving to be difficult to fight off, such as Samori Toure (Tignor, et al, 653-55). Once most of the major battles were over Europeans created permanent armies with their African supporters to force the communities into doing what they wanted. After a while of this bullying angry Africans rose up, and fought the new colonists. None were successful, and the Europeans were able to set up economically sound territories. Most countries on the outside thought that these colonies were very durable, but In reality they were actually very fragile (Tignor, et al, 655-56). The Americans were also interested in expansion, but in a very different way. Instead of sending people to live over in these other territories, they just wanted harbor spaces, supplies of raw materials, and someone to buy up Americans excess farm production. America declared war on Spain in the late 1890’s and invaded the Philippines and Cuba. When America defeated Spain in Cuba they disarmed the Cubans and returned land to its owners. America said they were just trying to free them from Spain’s rule, but changed stories rapidly. Unlike the other colonization of this time the United States did not want to make the Philippines and Puerto Rico part of the United States or formal colonies, just make them dependent states (Tignor, et al, 656-57).