Chapter Nine

Title: Not so Old Stuff:Sometime Around 1750 to About 1914

Chapter Summary: Industry and Imperialism: A. The Industrial Revolution. B. European Imperialism in India. C. European Imperialism in China. D. Japanese Imperialism. E. European Imperialism in Africa.

Notes: A. The Industrial Revolution


1. The Industrial Revolution began in Britain, but it wasn't the only one that did industrialize.

2. In the eighteenth century, there was an Agricultural surplus, allowing others to leave their farms, and go to the city, where there were more jobs.

3. The Agricultural surplus came for many reasons, one being the usage of potatoes, corn and other foods from America. Farmers also began crop rotation, allowing them to farm their land each season without stripping the land of its nutrients.

4. New machines and tools allowed farmers to greatly increase the amount that they could farm.

5. The domestic system was that men would drop off wool or cotton at homes where women would make cloth, which would be picked by the men and then sold.

6. In 1733, John Kay invented the flying shuttle, speeding up the weaving process.

7. In 1764, John Hargreaves invented the spinning jenny, which could spinning vast amounts of thread.

8. In 1793, Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, allowing lots of cotton to be processed in the Americas and sent to Europe.

9. In the early 1700s, Thomas Newcomer built an inefficient steam engine, but in 1769, James Watt greatly improved it. The steam engine was revolutionary, because steam could now be used for transportation.

10. In 1807, Robert Fulton built the first steamship.

11. In the 1820's George Stephenson built the first steam-powered locomotive.

12. The Telegraph was invented in 1837 by Samuel Morse.

13. In 1876, the Telephone was invented by Alexander Graham Bell.

14. Thomas Edison invented the Light bulb in 1879.

15. The Internal Combustion Engine was invented by Gottlieb Daimler in 1885.

16. In the 1890's, the radio was invented by Marconi Guglielmo.

17. The Airplane was invented by Orville and Wilbur Wright in 1903.

18. With Eli Whitney's system of interchangeable parts, machines and their parts were made uniformly so that they could be replaced whenever something broke.

19. Henry Ford's use of the assembly line meant that each factory worker added only one part to a product.

20. Factories had thousands of workers, the process was efficient and cheap, the workers were underpaid, overworked, and 16 hour work days were normal.

21. Industrialization created new social classes. A middle class was formed, made of skilled professionals.

22. In 1776, Adam Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations, which is about how fairness and economic prosperity are best gotten through private ownership.

23. Adam Smith argued that a free market system would better suit the needs of the nation.

24. In 1848, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote, in The Communist Manifesto, that the working class would revolt and take control of the means of production.
The government, the church, the courts, and the police were against the workers. Once the fighting was over, Marx predicted that the government, the church and the rest, would not be needed. The impact of Marxism served as the foundation for socialism and communism.

25. In the Factory Act of 1883, the British Parliament limited work hours per day, restricted children from being in factories, and made the factory owners make their factories a better work environment.

26. In 1807 the slave trade was abolished, however, slave owners kept the slaves they already had. In 1833, the British outlawed slavery, and thirty years later it was outlawed in the United States.

27. Soon, Europe colonized on every other continent in the world in order to gain resources for their factories.

28. Social Darwinists applied Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection to sociology. They claimed the right that dominant races or classes rose to the top through the process of "survival of the fittest."

Notes: B. European Imperialism in India

1. In the 1750s, the rivalry between the French and English reached fever pitch. During the Seven Years' War, the two countries fought each other in North America, Europe and India. Eventually the British East India Company, under Robert Clive, threw the French out. The troops that helped defeat the French were corporate.

2. Sepoys were Indians that worked for the British as soldiers.

3. In 1857 the Sepoys attempted a revolt after they found out that their guns had been greased with pork and beef fat, thus violating both Hindu and Muslim dietary law. They failed miserably against the English.

4.In 1858, the British Parliament took control of India away from the East India
company, and made all of India a crown colony. The last Mughal ruler, Bahadur Shah II, was sent into exile, ending the Mughal Empire, and by 1877, Queen Victoria was recognized as Empress of India.

5. In 1885, a group of well learned Indians formed the Indian National Congress to begin a move towards independence.

Notes: C. European Imperialism in China

1. In 1773, the British introduced opium to the Chines. By 1838, the drug habit among the Chinese had grown so widespread and destructive that the Manchu emperor released an imperial edict, forbidding the use of opium. Consistent with this edict, the Chinese seized the British opium in Canton in 1839.

2. From 1839 to 1842, the British fought the Chinese for control of the opium trade, this was known as the first Opium War. The British won.

3. After the Opium War, the Chinese were forced to sign the Treaty of Nanjing, allowing the British to expand into China as well as control over the opium trade.

4. In 1843, the British claimed Hong Kong as its crown possession, and in 1844, the Chinese had to let Christian missionaries back into the country.

5. The Chinese knew that they had a weak government, and White Lotus Rebellions were lead by Buddhists who were frustrated over taxes and government. It continued through the middle of the 1800s with the Taiping Rebellion.

6. The Taipings recruited an army of nearly one million, and nearly succeeded in bringing down the Manchu government, they failed, but sent a strong message. China was falling, from within and foreign aggression.

7. In the 1860s, the Manchu Dynasty tried to build itself back up in what was known as the Self-Strengthening Movement. It didn't get very far, and in 1876, Korea realized that China was weak and broke away, declaring its independence.

8. In 1883, China lost Vietnam to the French in the Sino-French War.

9. In 1895, the Chinese were defeated by the Japanese in the Sino-Japanese War. China was forced to sign the Treaty of Shimonoseki, which granted the same trading rights as the Europeans, and gave them control of Taiwan.

10. An anti-Manchu, anti-European and anti-Christian organization in China known as the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fist, came to be known as Boxers. Their goal was to drive the Europeans and Japanese out of China.

11. Eventually the Boxers failed, and because of the uprising China was forced to sign the Boxer Protocol, which made it so that the Chinese not only had to pay the Europeans and the Japanese, but apologize for it as well.

12. In 1901, foot binding was abolished, in 1905, the 2,000 year old Chinese Examination System was eliminated. In 1911, the government was toppled and imperial rule ended. Under the leadership of Sun Yat-sen a republic was established in China.

Notes: D. Japanese Imperialism

1. In 1853, Commodore Mathew Perry arrived in Japan on a steamboat, something that the Japanese had never seen. This shocked them, and made them realize that because of their isolation had left them behind, economically and militarily.

2. The Japanese went through an extremely fast Industrial Revolution by themselves, and soon caught up with everyone else.

Notes: E. European Imperialism in Africa

1. Between 1807 and 1820, most European nations had abolished the slave trade, although slavery itself wasn't abolished until a few decades later.

2. Before gold and diamonds were found in South Africa, it was valuable to the Europeans only for shipping.

3. The Dutch arrived in South Africa first and settled Cape Town as a stopping point for ships on the way from Europe to India.

4. In 1795, the British took over Cape Town, and South African Dutch, known as Boers,
trekked northeast into the interior of South America, where they settled in a region known as Transvaal, where they found diamonds, which the British wanted.

5. After the Boer War, which lasted from 1899 to 1902, the British defeated the Boers, and the British expanded further into South Africa.

6. In 1912, educated South Africans organized the African National Congress in an effort to oppose European colonialism and specific South African polices.


7. The Ottomans rules Egypt from 1517 to 1882, but during the nineteenth century, their rule was extremely weak.

8. When the French, lead by Napoleon Bonaparte, attacked Egypt, Muhammed Ali defeated the French and the Ottomans, and took control of Egypt in 1805. Over the next 30 years he industrialized Egypt.

9. The Suez Canal, completed in 1869, connected the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean.


10. In 1884, Otto von Bismarck hosted the major European powers at a conference in Berlin intended to resolve some of the differences over various European claims to lands in the African Congo.

11. Only Ethiopia and Liberia remained independent from Europe.

Political Developments in the Americas and Europe
Notes: A. Two Revolutions: American and French


1. The English and French felt threatened by each other in America, as they had in Europe, and so the French enlisted the Algonquin and the Iroquois to help them fight the English, but in 1763, the English won in the war known as the French and Indian
War. The French and Indian War was known as the Seven Years' War in Europe.

2. The English colonists were thrilled with the results of the Seven Years' War, but England was upset with the cost, and felt that the colonists hadn't pulled their weight. The colonists resented this, arguing that without their efforts, there wouldn't be any colonies anyway.

3. Britain's George Grenville set up laws in the Americas on behalf of the Brits. These laws included the Revenue Act of 1764, the Stamp Act of 1765, and the Tea Act of 1773. These laws were intended to raise more funds for the British Crown.

4. After the colonists dumped tea in Boston Harbor in protestation of the Tea Act, relation between the crown and the colonists deteriorated quickly.

5. In 1775, British troops battled with rebellious colonists in Lexington and Concord, beginning the War of Independence.

6. England was such a strong force that even those who desperately wanted their independence felt that the British were to hard to beat. Thomas Paine urged colonists to support the movement.

7. In 1777, the French helped support the colonists by sending ships, soldiers, weapons, and money to assist in defeating the English.

8. In 1781, French and American ships cornered the center of the British army, which was under the command of General Cornwallis, who surrendered, ending the war.

The French Revolution

1. The French society was divided into three estates, the first being the clergy, the second being the nobles, and the third was everyone else.

2. In 1789, the third estate did something drastic, they declared themselves the National Assembly. The King got nervous and forced the other two estates to join them in an effort to write a new constitution.

3. The National Assembly adopted The Declaration of the Rights of Man, a document recognizing natural rights and based on the ideas of the Enlightenment, the American Declaration of Independence, and the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

4. In 1789, France became the first modern nation-state.

5. In 1791, the National Assembly applied a new constitution, which was similar to the U.S. constitution, except that instead of a president, the king held on to the executive power.

6. In 1793, the King was beheaded for treason.

7. The constitution in France created the Committee of Public Safety, an all powerful enforcer, that would murder anyone suspected of anti-revolutionary tendencies.

8. In 1795, the French wrote a new constitution, and established a new 5-man government called the Directory.

9. Napoleon Bonaparte was a general by age 24. In 1799, he overthrew the Directory.

10. Napoleon Bonaparte's Napoleonic Codes in 1804 recognized the equality of each citizen and institutionalized some of the Enlightenment ideas.

11. In 1810, Napoleon Bonaparte's empire was at its peak, but in 1812, he attacked Russia and was baited into Moscow, where they set the city aflame. Bonaparte was forced to run back to France, but the Russians picked his men off on the way, and he was forced into exile.

12. The leaders of countries that had overthrown Napoleon met in Vienna to decide how to restore order and their power in Europe. They disagreed a lot, preventing much progress, and so Napoleon returned from his exile and tried to restore himself.

13. At Waterloo 1813, Napoleon Bonaparte was defeated and sent into permanent exile on the island of St. Helena, where he later died.

Notes: B. Lots of Independence Movements: Latin America

1. In 1801, as Napoleon Bonaparte was gaining momentum, a former slave, Pierre Toussaint L'Ouverture, lead a violent and lengthy, successful slave revolt on the island of Haiti.

2. Jacques Dessalines proclaimed Haiti a free republic in 1804, and named himself governor-general for life.

3. In 1807, John VI, the Portuguese king, fled to Brazil and set up his royal court in exile. By 1821, Bonaparte had been defeated and it was safe for John to return home, but he left his son, Pedro, behind, who was 23 years old at the time. In 1831, Pedroa abdicated his power to his son, Pedro II, who abolished slavery.

4. In 1810, Mexico, a priest named Miguel Hidalgo led a revolt against the Spanish rule. However the revolt failed, and Hidalgo was executed at Calderon Bridge.

5. Jose Morelos led revolutionaries to further success against the loyalists. However after he made clear his intentions to re-distribute the land to the poor, the land-owning class executed him in 1815.

Notes: C. Two Unifications: Italy and Germany

1. In 1849, the king of Sardinia, Victor Emmanuel II, named Count Camillo Cavour his prime minister, and nationalism in Italy took off.

2. Giuseppe Garibaldi, an Italian nationalist, raised a volunteer army and drove the Spanish from the Two Sicilies.

3. In 1861, the new king of Prussia, William I, appointed Otto von Bismarck prime minister with the aim of build the military and consolidating the region under its authority.

4. Otto von Bismarck had to defeat Austria, which he did in seven weeks, in order to gain consolidation.

5. In 1871, William I was crowned emperor.

6. After unification, Germany quickly industrialized and became a strong economical and political power.

7. In 1888, Germany crowned a new emperor, William II, who wanted to run the country by himself. In 1890, William forced Otto von Bismarck to resign as prime minister, and re-established authority as emperor.

Notes: D. Other Political Developments

1. In the 1860's, Alexander II of Russia issued the Emancipation Edict, which essentially abolished serfdom.

2. In 1881, Alexander II was assassinated by a political group known as The Peoples Will.

3. The Ottoman Empire began its decline in the 16th century and never gained a second wind. They continually fought the Russians for control over the Balkans, The Black Sea and the surrounding areas, but the Russians were mostly victorious.

4. U.S. President Monroe declared in his 1823 State of Union Address that the western hemisphere was off-limits to European aggression.