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HISTORY OF EUROPEAN COLONIZATION 17

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HISTORY OF EUROPEAN COLONIZATION 17:

COMMUNICATION:

  • post; PENNY POST in the UK (1840) - system to send letter with just a single penny
  • 1854: Penny Post brought to India
  • TELEGRAPH: 1837/44 - more telegraph in the US
  • 1851: first telegraph in Bengal (useful for calming the Great Mutiny, officers used it to communicate)
  • 1870: first submarine cable in India
  • 1912: radio

SCIENCE AND MUSEUMS:

  • science on colonization:
    they stimulated eachother. Science helps colonizers use nat. resources. (Colonial Congo)
  • epistemic violence: controlling colonized, new disciplines. Ethinology, anthropology (also Leuven professors)
  • colonization provided new data.
  • Alexander von Humboldt’s voyages in the Americas, named by Darwin as important, father of the Humboldt that Berlin uni is named after.
  • question of the origins of the human species: link between man and monkey.
  • social Darwinism
  • institutionalization of science.
  • new botanical gardens. London, Java
  • scientific societies (involved in Congo Colonization)
  • connection between business and academia

2 disciplines that boomed during colonization:

  • GEOGRAPHY: both needed for, and acquired through colonization
  • mapping of British India
  • Everest & Beaufort - important scientists
  • epistemic violence: center, projecting, coloring
  • many places are given new names: New York, New Zealand…
  • geography creates metaphors of powers and tools of control (borders)
  • for native people: nomadic movement through spaces, fluid borders, no concept of clear borders, spheres of influence, etc.
  • for Europeans: clear borders
  • ANTHROPOLOGY: knowledge about people
  • ethnicities, strengths, classes, categorizations
  • generation of absolute boundaries
  • fueled racism, creation of relations between these non-existent categories
  • scales, rankings…
  • this nonsense was then spread to schools
  • indigenious people on display: zoos, circuses, often next to animals, villages on world fairs
  • Carl Hagenbeck: organizer of many of these fairs/zoos; father of the modern zoo
  • Hottentot Venus: large ass, elongated labia, so she was put on display in freak shows; parts of her body were preserved and exhibited after her death

ENVIORMENT AND CITIIES:

  • modification of vegetation
  • clearing of forests (space for plantations or resources for European projects)
  • hunting: killing of elephants; tigers; gorillas
  • before EU: hunting for food or protections; post EU: for sport, for profit…
  • 1920s: Europeans realize they’re making species go extinct → National Parks
    CITIES:
    Delhi had 7 cities
  • segregation
  • new districts only for the white
  • laboratories for experiments on urban modernity
  • New Delhi: experimenting with urban developments
  • French: more into race mixing
  • Brits: segregations
  • Belgians: insane segregation
  • variety in architecture: wood in Georgetwon, Guyana
  • more local style in Kuala Lumpur (arab/Asian architecture)
  • Cape Town: ironwork, colors
  • New Delhi: grandure. Additionaly adding oriental elements: Egyptian, Asyrrian, etc. in India (0 relation)
  • mixed style: in Java mixtures of local style, European style, Indian style, etc…

CHAPTER 7: THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

WW1 AND THE COLONIES:

  • colonies provided a LOT to the metropoles → especially for France and Britian
    oil (British Persia), ores, troops (Brits had Indian, African, etc. soldiers.)
    → 1,3mil. Indian soldiers on Brit side
    → 600k Northern Africans in French army
  • Skih soldiers in Flanders (first time Belgians meet Indians)

FIGHTS IN THE COLONIES:

Conquest of past German colonies:

  • Asia and Oceania: Britian takes New zeland, Australia and Japan
  • Togo
  • Kamerun, German Southwest Africa (conquest by Force Publique)
  • Rwanda & Burundi - Belgian protectorates
  • East Africa: 1918

Ottoman Empire:
1760s-1910s: wars with Russia, Britian supports Ottoman empire (Great Game)

  • Triple Entente: Russia and Britian (1907)
  • 1914: Ottoman Empire joins Triple Alliance with Germany and Austro-Hungary
  • now Ottoman Empire is enemies with Britian
  • Ottoman Empire is weakest link in Triple Alliance
  • Oil in Arabia / Persian Gulf; railway stations built by Germans (transport of oil from Arabian gulf to Europe through Ottoman Empire)
  • BRITS TRY TO DEFEAT OTTOMAN EMPIRE ON MANY FRONTS:
    -Gallipoli and Dardanelles
  • attempt 1: 1915: Dardenelles invasion by Brits; after almost a year the Brits fail
  • attempt 2: Mesopotamian campaign (from Iraq: Baghdad conquered), done by Indian troops
  • attempt 3: Arab Revolt, done through Lawrence of Arabia (T.E. Lawrence); He convinces the Shariff Hussein to start an uprising against the Ottoman Empire. This region includes Mecca. Conquest of Jerusalem and Damascus
  • 3 campaings: Dardenells near Bosphorus, Mesopotamian campaign from Iraq side, Arab revolt in the middle east → this is enough to weaken Ottoman Empire
    diplomacy: many promises made by Brit diplomats:
    Henry McMahon - Hussein correspondence (convincing the rebellion against Ottoman Empire):

  1. GB is ready to recognize the independence of the Arabs in all the territories

  2. Sykes Pikot-Agreement: Jerusalem/Gaza to be under Brit/French control (at odds with promise 1, by now uprising was in motion)

  3. Balfour declaration: Promising jews a homeland in Palestine (done to gain support by US jews entering WW1, at odds with 1)

these 3 promises lead to Palestine-Israel conflict

PEACE:
Woodrow Wilson’s anti-imperial beliefs: equal treatment of colonizer and colonizee; supra-national institution (league of nation, later UN)

  • what actually happens is this: defeated nations give up their territories abroad MANDATE SYSTEM (1919): (i.e. Germany, Ottoman Empire) → these are ‘mandates’ for the victor nations, which rule the territories as if theyre colonies on behalf of the previous colonizers, this is done THROUGH THE LEAUGE OF NATIONS
  • in reality colonization simply continues (with some modifications, such as early reports sent to the Leauge of Nations, etc.)
  • this is against Wilson’s desire for no more colonization
  • the Ottoman Empire was carved into pieces. Mandates of the League of Nations
    Brits: Iraq, Transjordan (against promise to Shariff Hussein → but they promise him a dynasty), Palestine
    French: Syria,
    Treaty of Sevres (1920): Turks see crumbling of their entire empire. This is why they rise into a REBELLION (Mustafa Kemal Ataturk); 1923: turks get modern territory
  • Kuwait is brit protectorate.
  • Kingdom of Hijaz → turns into Saudi Arabia
  • Armenia: suffered genocide by Ottoman Empire, lost most of its territory to Turkey
  • Kurds get NO NATION STATE (fight for statehood over 20th and 21st Century)

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