Chapter 18: Colonial Encounters in Asia and Africa, 1750-1950 – Flashcards
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What is "social Darwinism"?
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The belief that superior Europeans will inevitably destroy or displace "unfit" races
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Which of the following is a good example of a "settler colony" in the nineteenth century?
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Australia
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What made European racism in the nineteenth century distinct from earlier periods?
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It was expressed in terms of modern science.
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With whom did British forces fight the Boer War, a bitter three-year struggle to secure South Africa?
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White descendants of Dutch settlers
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How did European powers govern at the local level?
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They frequently relied on local elites.
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Which colony can be described as suffering from a reign of terror in which millions of natives were killed and mutilated to force them to produce for a European market?
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Congo Free State
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What was an advantage that those colonial subjects who secured a Western education enjoyed?
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They had access to better paying positions in European mission organizations.
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What made imperialism so broadly popular in Europe in the last quarter of the nineteenth century?
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The growth of nationalism in Europe made the acquisition of empires popular. Europe needed the raw materials of its colonies to fuel its factories. European colonizers took pride in their "active masculinity" and defined subject peoples as soft and effeminate. Europe needed markets for its industrial goods. Europeans often found it more profitable to invest their capital abroad than in Europe. Imperialism promised to solve the class conflicts of an industrializing society.
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When European imperialists attacked, what was the fate of decentralized societies that did not have a strong ruler or government, such as the small kingdoms and chiefdoms of West Africa?
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They faced protracted, brutal warfare and mass destruction, village by village.
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Which of the following statements accurately describes the relationship between European colonial policies and core political values at home?
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Europeans did not spread their political values in any meaningful way to their colonies.
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How were the lives of African women altered by colonial economies?
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Colonial economies sometimes offered women a measure of opportunity, particularly in small-scale trade and marketing that could on occasion give them considerable economic autonomy.
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How did the colonial experience in nineteenth century Asia and Africa alter traditional identities?
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New concepts of an "African identity" emerged in reaction to European rule.
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What new developments facilitated overseas expansion in the late nineteenth century?
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Underwater telegraph cables and steam-driven ships significantly improved communication.
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Why did Australia, New Zealand, and Hawaii become settler colonies, in which Europeans became the vast majority of the population?
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The native population in these places had been largely destroyed by European disease.
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What was a distinctive feature of nineteenth-century European colonial empires?
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Europeans displayed an unprecedented interest in classifying their subject peoples. European colonial policies contradicted their own core values and their practices at home to an unusual degree.
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Who presided over the cruel forced labor system in the Congo Free State at the opening of the twentieth century?
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King Leopold II
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What was an important outcome of Western education systems in European colonies during the nineteenth century?
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New cultural divide between those who possessed a Western education and those who did not
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Which of the following regions experienced a takeover that was most similar to Britain's earlier colonization of North America?
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Australia
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Whom did Europeans turn to in order to support European administrators in governing their African and Asian colonies?
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They frequently relied on local elites.
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Which of the following were used to underpin European racism in the nineteenth century?
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"Scientific" methods that appeared to prove that European brains are larger than those of people in other parts of the world
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How were such small numbers of Europeans able to govern such huge and populous territories?
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By reinforcing the power of local rulers and thus earning their loyalty
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What effect did nineteenth-century imperialism have on migration in colonized lands?
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Imperialism led to the migration of millions of indigenous workers to work in mines or on European-financed plantations.
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Which of the following was a reason for the increasing sense of "African identity" that had developed by the end of the nineteenth century?
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Africans from many states increasingly felt a sense of common experience in the face of colonial oppression.
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Which of the following statements is true about European imperialism?
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It led to European secular arrogance, as Europeans grew to despise the peoples they dominated.
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What contributed to changing European views of Africans and Asians in the nineteenth century?
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Europeans developed a new secular arrogance based on their economic accomplishments associated with industrialization.
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Over time, on whom did the Europeans increasingly depend to rule their colonies, often at the expense of traditional elites?
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They depended on Western-educated members of the local society.
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Which of the following best characterizes the response of most Asian and African societies to European conquests in the nineteenth century?
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The responses covered a wide range from active resistance to accommodation.
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Which is true of cash-crop agriculture in European colonial empires during the nineteenth century?
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Cash-crop agriculture sometimes led to environmental problems.
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In what way was the conversion of non-Muslim Africa to Christianity similar to the conversion of the Americas in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries?
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Military defeat shook confidence in the old gods and local practices.
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Which of the following was a reason for Europe's colonial expansion in the long nineteenth century?
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The need for markets to sell European manufactured products
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What about the European colonial empires of the nineteenth century reflected earlier European imperial creations of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries?
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They enlisted the cooperation of subject peoples.
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What was a distinctive feature of cash-crop cocoa production in West Africa under European colonial rule?
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African farmers not their colonial rulers took the initiative to develop cocoa production.
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How did the British rule deepen the divisions between Muslim and Hindu communities in India?
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Some Indians opposed to British rule began to define India in Hindu terms.
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What role did gender play in European imperialism during the nineteenth century?
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Traditional European ideas about the inferiority of women were associated with male people of color.
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In what way was the nineteenth-century European notion of empire distinctive from earlier empires in world history?
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It included much greater penetration into the daily lives of subject peoples.
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Cultural reactions of indigenous peoples to European rule included
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cooperation with the imperial power by many members of the indigenous ruling classes.
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In what way could imperialism solve class conflicts within industrializing Europe?
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Class conflicts could be solved by providing markets for European manufactured goods and thus keeping workers within Europe fully employed.
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Which of the following reflects a European colonial policy in the late nineteenth century that ran counter to their practices at home?
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European reluctance to encourage urban growth, industrialization, individual values, and religious skepticism in their colonies
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Why did ordinary Europeans come to care whether their country gained new territories around the globe?
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Many Europeans became swept up in mass nationalism.
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What was the Boer War (1899-1902)?
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A South African war between Britain and the descendants of Dutch settlers
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What could local elites who did not openly rebel against European overlords hope for?
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They could hope to maintain much of their social status and privileges by serving as an intermediary between their community and the colonial power.
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What separated African society from European society according to Edward Blyden, the West African born in the West Indies and educated in the United States who later became a political official in Liberia?
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That African societies possessed profound religious sensibilities, whereas European societies had lost such sensibilities over previous centuries in their pursuit of material gain.
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Which colonial region experienced the least conversion to Christianity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries?
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Muslim regions of Africa
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What was an important outcome in terms of development for the colonies of European empires during the nineteenth century?
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Elements of the European modernizing process were conveyed to their colonies.
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By the end of the nineteenth century in the African and Asian colonies of European powers
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far more land and labor were devoted to production for the global market than before.
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What role did Hindu leaders such as Swami Vivekananda see for Indian spirituality in the face of Western culture?
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They believed Indian spiritual beliefs could save the West from its own dangerous materialism.
