This is Western Civilization.
My name is Dr. Long.
This video is about 19th century imperialism in Asia.
In 1500, Asian nations were the wealthiest and most powerful in the world.
China, the middle kingdom as it called itself, was the most wealthiest and powerful nation
in the world.
Chinese finished products, such as silk and porcelain, were in high demand in places such
as Europe.
The fleets that the Chinese sent out, under Admiral Ching Ho in the 15th century, far
outstripped Spanish and Portuguese expeditions at the same time.
Likewise, India’s spices made it important to Eurasian trade.
And Japan was both highly advanced and urbanized.
Europeans did come to control a few places in Asia in the 16th and 17th centuries; for
instance – Portugal had a few trading posts in India, such as Goa, and the Spanish came
to control the Philippines, while the Dutch – for their part – controlled the East
Indies, which is present-day Indonesia.
Also, from the 1770s until the 1850s the British settled Australia and New Zealand displacing
the natives there.
But many Asian nations in the 16th through the 18th centuries, such as China; India;
and Japan could hold their own against Europeans.
Yet after 1800, and especially with the Industrial Revolution, European nations such as Britain
and France came to economically far surpass Asian nations.
This in turn, made it possible for European nations as well as the United States to become
imperial powers in Asia and to come to control many Asian nations during the 19th century.
Now when and how this occurred has led to a big debate among historians and in recent
years this is being called the Great Divergence Debate.
Historians such as Andre Frank and especially Kenneth Pomeranz, the author of a great book
called The Great Divergence, argue that the West only overtook China after 1800.
Pomeranz argues that the West and China were similar in development until the Industrial
Revolution.
For Pomeranz, the West’s access to energy resources – such as coal – allowed it
to overtake China and develop it.
So the West, when it overtakes China, it’s more of an accident of geography and coal
resources than anything else.
Now other historians in this Great Divergence debate, such as David Landis, Joel Mokyr,
Peter Deveres – and Peter Deveres is very critical of Pomeranz – contend that the
West outpaced China earlier, perhaps even before 1750.
These historians also stress that the West’s own internal achievements, particularly technological
advances, were what led to the Industrial Revolution and ultimately to the West in surpassing
Asian nations.
Now that debate is ongoing and it has a lot of implications on how much credit one gives
the West versus more accidental factors of geography, such as the availability of coal.
Now one of the first Asian countries to fall under British rule was India.
India was ruled by the Mughal Empire and it was strong until the 17th century.
But in 1739, a rebellion occurred in the South of India and then invaders from Central Asia
invaded India, captured the Mughal Empire’s capitol of Delhi, and brought the empire down,
and this led to the formation of several weakened states in India; the country was divided up
and that attracted the attention of a rising European power, such as Britain and France.
Britain and France fought a large war called the 7-Years War between 1756 and 1763 – a
war in which Britain ultimately won, and as a result of that Britain came to take over
India.
At first, Britain ruled India through a company, a private company called The British East
Indies Company, and The British East Indies Company ran India for a profit.
However, in 1857, there was a revolt by Indian troops against The British East Indies Company
called the Sepoy Revolt, and the British government then would take over direct rule of India
under the crown, what has been called the British raj.
Now for the British government, India was far too important to lose.
India became the crown jewel in the British Empire, the most important, most valuable
possession for the British – this is because India had such a large population.
I mean, it was a large market for British goods, such as textiles, and a source of raw
material, such as spices and cotton – and all of this helped the British economy.
Now for their part, the British did not impose their culture on India.
They were largely interested in making money.
The number of British officials in India was very small.
For example, for every 1 British official in India there were about 3 million Indians
– so very few British actually lived in India compared to the Indian population.
The number of British troops in India was also very small.
To help them rule such a large country, the British hired Indians for its army; police;
and government administration.
Britain gave upper class Indians a British education, which meant that India’s elites
became westernized and came to speak English.
Britain brought rule to India, a multi-national, multi-ethnic, multi-religious nation.
The British brought Western science, technology, farming methods, they improved India’s infrastructure
by building thousands of miles of railroads and ports.
But nonetheless, it is worth remembering that British rule of India was without the consent
of the Indian people and they exploited India’s economy.
Eventually this would lead to a nationalist movement in India to obtain their independence.
In 1885, the Indian National Congress was formed to modernize India and with the goal
of ultimately winning its independence.
Now it would take quite a while for this to occur, but Indian nationalism would begin
at this time period with the Indian National Congress in 1885 and growing nationalism among
India’s elites.
These elites, who were educated, thought – well, we can run the country.
What about China?
Well for its part the Manchu or the Xing Dynasty took power in 1644 after overthrowing the
Ming.
China experienced tremendous population growth and expansion in Central Asia under the Xing.
However, it did not industrialize, and as European powers began to industrialize then
fell behind.
China also remained closed off to much of the rest of the world for trade, although
it had a huge population and a huge market.
Britain and other Western nations, such as France and the United States, were very interested
in trading with China.
In 1836, the Chinese government banned opium and began executing opium dealers who were
shipping opium from British India to China.
In 1839, it cracked down further on foreigners importing opium and seized opium belonging
to foreign and especially brutish merchants in China.
For their part the British were fine selling opium in China and they very much desired
to enter the Chinese market.
For the Chinese however, they did not appreciate the mass epidemic of opium that British products
from India had caused.
So this led to a series of wars between Britain and China.
The first opium war between 1839 and 1842, and then the second opium war between 1856
and 1880.
British and French troops would actually fight together against the Chinese in the second
opium war and they managed to capture; loot; and burn the imperial palace in Beijing, even
causing the emperor to flee.
Now the British justified these wars as a defense of free trade, kind of ignoring what
they were trading – opium, which is a highly addictive narcotic.
The Chinese, for their part, saw their conflict as a way to defend their country against foreign
drug dealers.
But the British easily won the opium wars.
This demonstrated the superiority of the British navy versus the backward Chinese navy.
At the end of the opium wars, Britain was given control of Hong Kong and allowed to
trade in 5 Chinese ports.
China was forced to sign a series of humiliating treaties, all which favored the Europeans.
The Xing Dynasty’s corruption and weakness led to a major revolt in China during the
middle of the 19th century, called the Taiping Revolt.
Now this revolt was started by a charismatic figure named Hong Xiuquan.
He had been influenced by Southern Baptist missionaries and had come to have his own
eccentric brand of religion in which he claimed to be the younger brother of Jesus, and he
said he was sent to restore China.
He attracted a lot of followers and they eventually revolted against the government, and this
led to tremendous fighting between his followers and the imperial army.
The Taiping Revolt lasted from 1850 until it fell apart upon Hong Xiuquan’s death
in 1864; it led to a lot of fighting and chaos in China, and a staggering number of deaths
– something like 20 to 30 million people died in the Taiping Revolt.
This was the largest civil war in human history.
It laid waste to much of China.
And China – as a result of this and corruption in their government, failed to industrialize,
and even were ignorant of conditions in much of the rest of the world.
Now this had great consequences for China.
China was not only pushed around by Western powers, it was also defeated by Japan in war
in 1895.
It lost Taiwan to Japan as a result and had to pay Japan a huge indemnity.
Now this was a huge shock to China – being defeated by Japan.
Anti-foreign sentiments would also lead to what was called the Boxer Rebellion in 1900
in China.
The boxers are the righteous and harmonious fists, as they were called, wanted to rid
China of foreign influence.
Now this was a bloody rebellion, but ultimately it was put down by foreign troops, and there’s
another indication of China’s weaknesses and its failure to modernize.
In 1911, reformer Sun Yat-sen led a rebellion in China, and the following year in 1912 the
last emperor of China abdicated leading to a rebellion.
So China did have – ultimately – a revolution that brought down its empire and created a
republic, but by 1912 China was far behind Western powers and Japan.
Now to the south of China, France took over Indochina – Indochina is Laos; Cambodia;
and Vietnam – beginning in the 1860s.
France gradually took this territory over between the 1860s and 1907, and the French
sent administrators and military men to rule Indochina, and just like the British in India
– they did not have a large settler presence there.
French missionaries were active in Indochina, and in time Indochina came to have large rubber
plantations that became an important source of rubber for French companies – for example,
the Michelin Tire Company.
By the end of the 19th century, the United States, which was traditionally isolationist,
came to acquire its own territories.
The United States would fight Spain in the Spanish/American War in 1898, and the United
States would win this war, and as a result would acquire Puerto Rico and the Philippines.
At the conclusion of the Spanish/American War, Philippinos revolted seeking their own
independence from the United States.
The United States sent in its army and fought a bloody guerilla war there that led to over
5,000 American soldiers dying due to combat and disease – but they did maintain, the
United States did maintain control of the Philippines.
Again, the war there though is very brutal on both sides.
So by 1900, with the United States entering the Spanish/American War and acquiring the
Philippines, imperialism had become something common to the entire Western world.
Now what about Japan in all this?
The most successful nation in Asia to resist American and European imperialism in the 19th
century was Japan.
Japan began changing in 1853, when American Captain-Commodore Matthew Perry arrived with
an expedition in Japan in an effort to open it up to American trade.
Now Commodore Perry’s arrival in Japan was a big wake-up call for the Japanese.
They realized that they were far behind the West in terms of technology, and consequently
in the 1860s Japan experienced a political revolution in which its ruling Tokugawa shogunate
was overthrown.
This was known as the Meiji Restoration occurring in 1868.
The Meiji Restoration transformed Japan into a modern Westernized nation state.
Japan was already heavily urbanized, which kind of gave it a head start.
Japan would get a new constitution in 1889 with an elected parliament and a strong role
for the emperor.
Japan’s constitution, by the way, was modeled after Germany’s constitution.
The Japanese adopted modern Western dress and styles.
The government pushed modernization – including improving schools and modernizing their army.
And most importantly, the Japanese government intentionally sought to rapidly industrialize
the nation, and to facilitate industrialization they provided capital for industrial investments.
To do this, in 1882 the Bank of Japan was created, and the government also worked very
closely with big corporations, known as zaibatsu, to build everything from railroads to textile
mills and to expand Japan’s industry.
While the majority of people in Japan still lived in rural areas, by 1900 clearly Japan
was industrializing, and this paid off for Japan.
As mentioned earlier, Japan beat China in war in 1894 and took over Taiwan.
Then, to the shock of the world, in 1905 Japan beat Russia in war quickly destroying much
of the Russian fleet that had been dispatched to take on the Japanese military.
After beating Russia, Japan took control of Korea, and Japan sent many colonists to Korea,
and its rule of Korea from 1905 until 1945 was very harsh; although Japan did bring modernization
to Korea.
So by acquiring Korea and Taiwan, Japan was the only non-Western nation to become a modern
industrial and imperial nation in its own right.
So let’s draw a few conclusions.
Western powers, such as Britain; France; and the United States industrialized and became
imperial powers in the 19th century.
Because Asian nations were so populist and had products that Europeans desired, Europeans
sought to trade with Asia, and you know, this had been the case since the middle Ages.
Better trade routes to Asia were exactly why Christopher Columbus sailed west in the first
place.
By the 19th century, however, the Europeans increasingly set the terms of their relationships
with Asians and Asians fell farther and farther behind economically and militarily – India;
Indochina; the Philippines, were all ruled by Westerners while China was pushed around
both by the West and Japan.
For its part, Japan was the only strong Asian nation by 1900.
Nevertheless, it had only done so by copying the West.
The weaknesses of Asian nations and their dominance at the hands of Westerners led to
closer global connections on the one hand, but it upset the global system, making the
West the core and much of Asia the periphery.
Western dominance and the search for greater independence; economic growth; and a reassertion
of power against the West would in turn become a major theme that would greatly influence
Asia in the 20th and 21st centuries – including today.
With that I’ll end this video.
Thanks for watching.