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Course: World History Project AP® > Unit 6
Lesson 1: 6.0—Unit 6 OverviewREAD: Unit 6 Introduction – Empire and Industrialization
The features of the revolutionary era—more democracy, factories, and reforms—seem like the opposite of empire. Still, empire spread like a bug during this time ... or was it another feature?
The article below uses “Three Close Reads”. If you want to learn more about this strategy, click here.
First read: preview and skimming for gist
Before you read the article, you should skim it first. The skim should be very quick and give you the gist (general idea) of what the article is about. You should be looking at the title, author, headings, pictures, and opening sentences of paragraphs for the gist.
Second read: key ideas and understanding content
Now that you’ve skimmed the article, you should preview the questions you will be answering. These questions will help you get a better understanding of the concepts and arguments that are presented in the article. Keep in mind that when you read the article, it is a good idea to write down any vocab you see in the article that is unfamiliar to you.
By the end of the second close read, you should be able to answer the following questions:
- How are imperialism and colonialism different?
- What were some ways that ideas from the previous unit (the age of revolutions) helped drive imperial expansion?
- How did industrialization help empires expand?
- What were some strategies of resistance used by colonized people?
Third read: evaluating and corroborating
Finally, here are some questions that will help you focus on why this article matters and how it connects to other content you’ve studied.
At the end of the third read, you should be able to respond to these questions:
- Make two lists, one for colonized peoples and one for the citizens of countries like the United Kingdom and France, who controlled overseas empires. For each list, provide one impact of the new industrial imperialism on cultural interactions, governance, and economic systems.
- The author mentions that several of the revolutionary ideas you encountered in the last unit were used to support imperialism. How do you think liberal political ideas—like democracy or nationalism—could have been used as justification for controlling people in colonies?
Now that you know what to look for, it’s time to read! Remember to return to these questions once you’ve finished reading.
Unit 6 Introduction – Empire and Other Consequences of Industrialization
By Trevor Getz
The features of the revolutionary era—more democracy, factories, and reforms—seem like the opposite of empire. Still, empire spread like a bug during this time ... or was it another feature?
Industrial empires—something old, something new
Democracy and nationalism. Industrialization. Reforms that led to women’s suffrage, labor laws, and schooling for children. Every major topic that we explored in Unit 5 is something that still exists today.
Empires were also a significant consequence of the changes described in the last unit. Oh sure, there had been empires before, but the new, oceanic empires of this era were industrialized, and they were capitalist. Plus, they were governed by a mix of the liberal political ideals of the long nineteenth century and the racist and discriminatory ideas that had emerged alongside them. But unlike these other changes, empire seems to have been a dead end in a world that ultimately chose the nation-state as its preferred political model. Right?
Was empire really just a dead end, or does a version of it persist today? Can we use the study of empire to understand the present? To find answers, we will need to study three things: the idea and practice of imperialism as it emerged from industrialized states, the experience of colonialism and how people responded to it in the formal colonies of these states, and finally the ways in which these ideas affected the whole world—even places that weren’t formal colonies.
The system of imperialism
So, we begin this unit by exploring the how and why of imperialism—the idea and practices through which empires were built by industrialized countries like Britain, France, and the United States. We ask: what motivated their governments and their people to build empires? Also: what made it possible for them, at that particular point in history, to expand their authority so far around the globe?
Of course, you can probably answer a lot of those questions right now, thanks to previous units. You’ll remember how nationalism drove some countries to compete with each other, and one way to compete was by seizing overseas territory. Ironically, reformers—who in theory are the ones trying to make things better—sometimes actually drove imperialism. They argued that taking territories was okay, or even desirable, saying their goal was to “civilize and improve” their populations. Unfortunately, their idea of improvement was usually less “how can we help?” and more “how can we change you to fit our needs?” Imperialist claims of racial superiority were also becoming powerful in this era, so colonial subjects were often treated as racially inferior.
Possibly the most important factor in the construction of new and larger empires in this period was industrialization. In the first place, industrialized countries were now able to conquer and rule other societies, especially those that were not industrialized. Machine guns and artillery obviously played a role, but it wasn’t just about weapons. When only one side has steamships, railroads, telegraphs, and new medicines, they have a great advantage in occupying and ruling whoever doesn’t have those tools.
Industrialization also provided one of the motives for empire-building. Industry needed raw material to turn into goods, and it needed markets in which to sell them. Colonies promised to provide both. The minerals of a colony’s land could be mined, its forests cut, its fish caught—all to feed the factories producing goods for the empire. Then, those goods could be sold to people in the colonies, who would have little choice except to buy them.
All of these motives came together in what we call imperialism. Imperialism was the set of ideas and actions that people in some societies supported in the conquest and rule of people in other societies, who were treated unevenly. It was a set of ideas and actions that were especially relevant in a few industrialized societies that built empires, but that also came to be shared quite widely during this era.
Colonialism and response
The second topic in this unit takes another perspective: how did people in the colonies experience imperial rule? As we will see in the second half of this unit, the inhabitants of the colonies were not citizens. They were subjects, and as such had few or no political rights. Their experiences varied from place to place and from person to person. We will see that colonial lives in Ghana, in India, and in China, for example, were slightly different. But colonial subjects everywhere had enough in common that their shared set of experiences can be called colonialism.
Colonialism was based, first, on a sense of difference. This difference was often expressed in the language of racism, but it didn’t end there. Imperialism told the people who ruled colonies that they were better than the people they ruled, so they must not treat colonial subjects as equals. They could withhold rights from others that they had themselves. This sense of ruling over “inferior” people also meant that colonialism was often quite violent.
Colonial subjects did not just accept this treatment, of course. For most people, however, constant resistance was too difficult. Some people found ways to negotiate for slightly better treatment. Others believed they could adapt by imitating some parts of European society. Most people just tried to survive in a powerfully oppressive system, as people do.
Many colonial subjects did actively resist colonial rule, with strategies including military organization and campaigns. But active resistance is pretty difficult when you’re fighting an industrialized, highly armed occupation that prevents its subjects from coming together in solidarity. Thus, many people in the colonies tried other, more hidden forms of resistance, such as working slowly, spreading misinformation, or stealing from the colonial government. Other people developed philosophies of resistance that would help them to organize in the future.
A colonial and imperial world?
Of course, large parts of the world in this period were neither imperial capitals nor formal colonies. But a lot of historians and other scholars argue that the ideas of empire affected the whole world. In this unit, we’ll explore this theory through three examples in particular. First, we will look at China, which was not in this period formally colonized by an outside power (although bits of it were occupied). Nevertheless, we will see that the ideas and practices of imperialism and colonialism deeply impacted Chinese society. We will also see how these experiences impacted regions that were formally colonized like India and Ghana. Finally, we will investigate the environmental and economic factors that pushed and pulled people to migrate and how migration, industrialization, and empire became intertwined in this era. These lessons will also help us to question whether empire was a dead end—or if it was merely rerouted and its legacies continue to impact us today.
Author bio
Trevor Getz is a professor of African and world history at San Francisco State University. He has been the author or editor of 11 books, including the award-winning graphic history Abina and the Important Men, and has coproduced several prize-winning documentaries. Trevor is also the author of A Primer for Teaching African History, which explores questions about how we should teach the history of Africa in high school and university classes.
Want to join the conversation?
I'm not sure I'm getting the difference between imperialism and colonialism. The way I read it is that imperialism is the set of ideas about how to rule other people and colonialism is the colonists shared experiences? Is that right?(1 vote)