...The economic, political and social motives for the new imperialism Starting from late 19th century and early 20th century, European great powers were not content with the land and the power they possessed within Europe. They took a broad view on the international level and paid attention to places that were less developed or had not been exploited, like Asia and Africa. They invaded, colonized and exploited both natural and human resources. This was the so-called new imperialism. By examining the behaviors of those European powers, we can conclude several motives for the new imperialism. The needs for raw materials, a dangerous nationalism and a manifestation of the superiority of races each corresponds to the economic, political and social forces. Firstly, European powers required various resources and raw materials to develop the economies and facilitate trades. The quantity they could obtain within their own territory was far more insufficient for production. It was also the time when the industrial revolution just started. The needs for materials like iron, coal rose up quickly. So, in order to obtain more resources, European countries directly established factories in colonized regions, unbridledly exploited all kinds of resources and traded them with high profit. It was very ‘wise’ for them because the cost of production was really low. They could use free resources and cheap labors from local areas. On the other hand, some valuable products were also grabbed directly...
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...discriminatory and unjust policies led to the angry and upset Indian population. The sepoy rebellion was significant because it was the first unified protest against the powerful English rule. It contributed towards the Indian’s movement for independence and increased nationalism among Indians. Unfortunately, the lack of organization and leadership led to the Indians loss. Furthermore, it led the Indians to remain subject under British authority and led to the...
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...Deceitful Expansion Throughout history we have seen various examples where a dominant race has extended its powers into new territories through the use of force and justification. There are always motives beneath the surface that the majority are unaware of. As young students we are taught that powerful countries step onto inferior lands to improve their uncivilized society and better their future. It may take decades before anyone steps up and admits to the hidden motives and violence used in many of these wars. As growing students we are impressionable and take whatever our educators tell us as undisputed facts. My understanding of the many wars we have been taught has evidently not been the entire truth. I have been shielded from the violence and racism that was used to carry out such wars. It is apparent that the motives behind many historical actions have been misguided with half-truths and whole lies. My teachings have revolved around bettering inferior lands with generosity and a duty to teach a better way of life. An event that exemplifies dominance through violence and belief of superiority was that of the 19th century overtaking of Algeria by France, better known as the Pacification of Algeria. The event began in the late 1830s and continued well into the 1840s when Algeria was finally annexed to France in 1848. The French military was ordered to pacify the country of Algeria using any means necessary to push out the native Algerians. This in turn...
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...Portland State University English 547: Arthurian Literature Tobias Wilms 913944913 Alfred Lord Tennyson's Idylls of the King in the Discourse of Postcolonial Criticism Introduction: Ever since his name was first mentioned by the Welsh monk Nennius in the 9th century, writers modified and applied the great King Arthur's popular legend to convey their various political, religious and social beliefs. The Victorian author Alfred Lord Tennyson followed this tradition exemplarily and enwraped his imperialistic views in the famous Arthurian poem Idylls of the King. The aim of this paper is to accentuate his political and social ideologies from the context and introduce to some of the reactions of postcolonial critics. Idylls of the King, a Piece of Victorian Literature: Especially if Tennyson's Idylls are the first and only piece of Arthurian literature one has read, one can irritatedly ignore its dedication and letter to the royals Albert and Victoria, and simply summarize it as the story of a medieval King, the adventures of his accompanying knights, the fortune of the ladies at his court, and the creation and downfall of his kingdom in twelve books. Those readers, however, who are familiar with the previous versions of Arthurian stories written by Chrétien de Troyes and Thomas Malory, for instance, cannot be satisfied with that. They wonder about Tennyson's framing poems “Dedication” and “To the Queen”, stumble over the changes the author made in his adoption of the Arthurian...
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...Although there were a few disputes during Britain’s colonization of Hong Kong, it is considered to be one of the most calm and civilized occupations in Chinese history. The colonization of Hong Kong first began when “China ceded Hong Kong island to Britain after the First Opium War”. (News) in 1939. As decades continued, the people of Hong Kong along with the independent nation (China) were both affected by this imperialization. Some of these changes had positive effects to Hong Kong’s culture and ways of living, but others had negative effects on the performance of Hong Kong as a nation. Britain had several rationales as to why they imperialized Hong Kong but “the primary motive of British imperialism in China in the nineteenth century was...
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...Position of English as a Global Language: Political and Cultural Factors English has achieved a global significance that no other language has ever been able to do so, in such a scale. A language earns its global status when it culturally and politically dominant across the continents. Also, it is notable that the most salient feature of a global language is not how many people use it, rather how strongly the people who speak this language is socially and politically established. In fact, perhaps the most significant force that makes a language global is political power of its speakers. The spread of English beyond Europe and the British Isles is accredited to four centuries of colonialism and British imperialism, which led to English being spoken by over three hundred million people. (Crystal 14) The first significant stride in the advancement of English towards its pre-eminence as a world language occurred during the early trade in the Atlantic. Crystal also articulates that by the year 1600, England had gained trading contacts across three continents, which retrospectively provided a powerful platform on which the English language was to flourish and become the globally dominant medium of communication that it is at present (39). Trading companies such as the Newfoundland fur trade, the ivory and gold trade on the western coast of Africa and the East India Company brought speakers of English into economic contact throughout the world. English and the English-based pidgins...
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...thinking began to take place in the Nineteenth Century (Hirschfield, 1998, p.35). The Nineteenth Century saw the search for the historical and biological origins of race (Hannaford, 1996, p.235). It went beyond the simply classification of race and towards a more significant delineation of race into one that embodies characteristics, personalities and even mental abilities. Several key developments were relevant to this progression. These will be examined as follows: first the importance of the development of biological categories and the influence of power will be examined. Secondly, the development of scientific dialogue of Darwinism and Eugenics will be discussed. Thirdly, an examination will be made of the influence of nationalism and imperialism. Finally, the notion to which the discourse became self-serving will be considered in that as the connection...
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...Sarah Engelbrecht Professor Dawn George English 1301 13 September 2015 Theme of Shooting an Elephant The article “Shooting an Elephant,” by George Orwell seeks to address how imperialism is evil. First, it humiliates the imperialized people, reducing them to inferior status in their own county. Second, it provokes the people into making immoral decisions to maintain their superiority over everyone else. When a white man becomes a tyrant, it is his own freedom that he loses. In Moulmein, in lower Burma, the author is a hated, sub-divisional police officer. One day something happened that helped him understand the real motives for which despotic governments act. He received a phone call, from the sub-inspector at the police station, about a normally tame elephant who starting behaving aggressively and unpredictably. White men are not supposed to be afraid in front of the “natives,” therefore, he goes against his own conscience to protect himself and his fellow imperialists. In the article, Orwell demonstrates how he loses his freedom to prove his intelligence and morals. When he stumbles upon the elephant eating, he refers to it as looking no more dangerous than a cow, and is no longer showing signs of hostility. He strongly believes the elephant’s “must” is declining; therefore, he does not feel the desire to kill it, but he has no choice. He is a man with authorities over the people and cannot allow the others to see him as a weak man. Therefore, his tyrant situation makes...
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...Compare and Contrast Japanese and Western Imperialism in Asia and the Pacific 23 October 2013 at 18:10 The Japanese pursuit for an empire in South East Asia helped changed the balance of world power away from Europe, by taking their most lucrative colonies. Soon after the Japanese defeat in World War II, most of the colonies won their independence from their European masters. This essay will be arguing that despite the vast geographical distance and cultural, racial differences, as well as the different time periods involved, Japanese and European intentions were very similar, and that these similarities contributed to the weakening of Imperialism as a doctrine. To do so, this essay will be examining the reasons for the Japanese conducting policies of imperialism, when they expanded, what methods they use to expand and the systems of government. Japanese Imperialism will be compared to those of a well known European power active in the region, Britain. J.A Hobson’s seminal work Imperialism: A Study puts forward the idea of the ‘Economic Taproot of Imperialism’. A taproot is the largest root in some plants and is the plant’s primary source of nourishment. Military aggression is simply capitalist expansion. He described it as “As one nation after another enters the machine economy and adopts advanced industrial methods, it becomes more difficult for its manufacturers, merchants and finaciers to dispose profitably of their economic resources and they are tempted more and more to...
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...time in the past. It is form of writing with a moral - and a warning. The irony is that reality can be stranger than fiction. The finale of The Mission is a case in point. The humanitarian goals of the Jesuit Fathers ironically contained the seeds of destruction for the Missions. The presence not only of rational Indians, but Christianised ones who were highly skilled proved to be too much of a temptation for the bandeirantes, slavers who came across from Brazil and enslaved them all. The Missions, perhaps like Utopia itself, remain enshrined in the history of both the Catholic Church and the history of Latin America as a high point which, sadly, might well have proved to be a model for a stable and economically prosperous society. ENGLISH LIT: The evils of colonization in VICTORIAN LITERATURE: What informed the Victorian literature were the issues...
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...The Open Window - Analysis "The Open Window" is Saki's most popular short story. It was first collected in Beasts and SuperBeasts in 1914. Saki's wit is at the height of its power in this story of a spontaneous practical joke played upon a visiting stranger. The [pic]practical joke recurs In many of Saki's stories, but "The Open Window" is perhaps his most successful and best known example of the type. Saki dramatizes here the conflict between reality and imagination, demonstrating how difficult it can be to distinguish between them. Not only does the unfortunate Mr. Nuttel fall victim to the story's joke, but so does the reader. The reader is at first inclined to laugh at Nuttel for being so gullible. However, the reader, too, has been taken in by Saki's story and must come to the realization that he or she is also inclined to believe a well-told and interesting tale. Style “The Open Window” is the story of a deception, perpetrated on an unsuspecting, and constitutionally nervous man, by a young lady whose motivations for lying remain unclear. Structure The most remarkable of Saki’s devices in “The Open Window” is his construction of the story’s narrative. The structure of the story is actually that of a story-within-a-story. The larger “frame” narrative is that of Mr. Nuttel’s arrival at Mrs. Sappleton’s house for the purpose of introducing himself to her. Within this narrative frame is the second story, that told by Mrs. Sappleton’s niece. Symbolism The most important...
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...country and solidified the Monroe Doctrine, which said the US would stay removed from European affairs if they stayed out of the New World (Kaufman 38). However, when there was no more land to claim, we turned our attention to Cuba and the Philippines, Spain’s footholds in the Atlantic and North Pacific. Unlike Spain, we were doing a favor for these helpless, indigenous people. We used the justification of saving people from the treachery of colonization as a mask for our own desire to get power overseas and neutralize Spain. The Spanish-American War is the defining example of why America cannot remain true to its founding ideals and still have an empire. American imperialism was not more moral than the actions of other European colonial powers, as our desire to grow militarily and economically was masked by altruistic motives that turned out to be thinly veiled racism. In this paper, I will argue that America cannot have an empire because the main goal is to serve our economic and military interests; we trample on the will of the locals, and threaten them if they don’t...
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...English Novel over the centuries- English novel came into existence in the beginning of 18th century with the emergence of new middle class. During this time, public interest in human characters grew and this led to the popularity of autobiographies, biographies, journals, diaries and memoirs. Novelists showed interest in the newly emerged complex middle-class characters who were struggling with their morality and social issues. Tom Jones, a foundling was written by Henry Fielding during this time and focused on the social structure that prevailed in England during that time. The first half of the 19th century was influenced by romanticism and the focus was on nature and imagination. Gothic (horror) and romantic novels were written during this time. Jane Austen wrote highly polished novels about the life of the landed gentry and social issues like marriage and property from women’s perspective. In the period between 1837 to 1901, the Victorian novelists became popular. They portrayed middle-class, virtuous heroes responding to harsh society. Stories of working class poor people were directed to incite sympathy. The development of the middle-class and the manners and expectations of this class, as opposed to the aristocrat forms were the focus of the novelists of this period. Charles Dickens emerged as a literary figure and wrote about London life and struggles of the poor in Oliver Twist. In the early twentieth century, Rudyard Kipling wrote highly versatile novels...
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...Industrial Revolution centered on textiles, steam, and iron, the second was associated with steel, electricity, chemicals and oil. The discoveries in these fields were the foundation for the development in plastics, machinery, building construction, and auto motive manufacturing. These finding help paved the way for later development in the invention of the radio, electric light bulb, telephone, and electric streetcar- still seen in modern day California. The most significant invent during industrialization was urbanization. Western cities grew dramatically during the later part of the nineteenth century; mainly do to migration from rural regions. The widely available work opportunities in the cities, especially in the factories, were also a major factor in this migration. An increasing emphasis on science was another characteristic of this period. Advances in the industrial technology reinforced the enlightenment’s footing on rationalism. The connection to science and progress advancing seemed obvious to many, both in educated circles and among the general public. People embraced the search for knowledge based on observation and direct experience. Two people who are well known in the science fields at this time are the English naturalist Charles Darwin (1809 - 1882) and his theory of natural selection which help to increase interest in science. The theory of natural selection proposed a model for the...
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...reality for the group and provide insights into group motives, cohesion, values and style. In the present context I would like to underline the strain of ecofeminist thought and action in the Poetry of W.B. Yeats. In this paper I have attempted to focus on W.B.Yeats’ use of Irish landscape, legends and myths in order to support the Irish revolt for independence and a separate cultural identity from the British. The identity issue becoming crucial, Yeats furthers his ecofeminist philosophy by using images and symbols that are purely Irish. They are dynamic and open ended and have historically enabled the Irish people to establish differential Identity, resist dominance and affirm group solidarity. III Since the conquest of Ireland by King Henry VIII, the Irish people were seething under foreign yoke of the British rulers. Majorie Howes in her book Yeats’s Nations: Gender, Class and Irishness, has elaborated the problems faced by the Irish people in the hands of the British. The geographical proximity and racial and cultural similarity to England rendered the Irish less radically “other” that the inhabitants of other British territories. In the British thinking, Ireland represented “home” rather than “empire”. In the nineteenth century, the British wanted to integrate Ireland with England socially, economically and geographically using coercion. The Celtic ‘otherness’ of the Irish was supposed to be complimentary to the English like that of the Scotts. Femininity marked the Celts...
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