Final Flashcards
King Leopold II
was the second King of the Belgians, known for the founding and exploitation of the Congo Free State as a private venture. Leopold was the founder and sole owner of the Congo Free State, a private project undertaken on his own behalf. He used explorer Henry Morton Stanley to help him lay claim to the Congo, an area now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo. At the Berlin Conference of 1884–1885, the colonial nations of Europe authorized his claim by committing the Congo Free State to improving the lives of the native inhabitants. From the beginning, however, Leopold essentially ignored these conditions. He ran the Congo using the mercenary Force Publique for his personal enrichment. He used great sums of the money from this exploitation for public and private construction projects in Belgium during this period. He donated the private buildings to the state before his death, to preserve them for Belgium.
Leopold extracted a fortune from the Congo, initially by the collection of ivory, and after a rise in the price of rubber in the 1890s, by forced labour from the natives to harvest and process rubber. Under his regime millions of the Congolese people died; modern estimates range from 1 to 15 million, with a consensus growing around 10 million. Human rights abuses under his regime contributed significantly to these deaths. Reports of deaths and abuse led to a major international scandal in the early 20th century, and Leopold was ultimately forced by the Belgian government to relinquish control of the colony to the civil administration in 1908.
First South African War
(20 December 1880 – 23 March 1881) British expansion into southern Africa was fueled by three prime factors: first, the desire to control the trade routes to India that passed around the Cape; second, the discovery in 1868 of huge mineral deposits of diamonds around Kimberley on the joint borders of the South African Republic (called the Transvaal by the British), the Orange Free State and the Cape Colony, and thereafter in 1886 in the Transvaal of a gold rush; and thirdly the race against other European colonial powers, as part of a general colonial expansion in Africa. The trigger for the war came when a Boer refused to pay an illegally inflated tax. Government officials seized his wagon and attempted to auction it off to pay the tax on 11 November 1880, but a hundred armed Boers disrupted the auction, assaulted the presiding sheriff, and reclaimed the wagon. The first shots of the war were fired when this group fought back against government troops who were sent after them. The Transvaal then declared independence and war erupted. The First Boer War was the first conflict since the American War of Independence in which the British had been decisively defeated and forced to sign a peace treaty under unfavorable terms. The British government, under Prime Minister William Gladstone, was conciliatory as it realized that any further action would require substantial troop reinforcements, and it was likely that the war would be costly, messy and protracted. Unwilling to get bogged down in a distant war, the British government ordered a truce.
Second South African War
(11 October 1899 – 31 May 1902): Lord Salisbury (conservative PM) in power at this time. Great Britain defeated two Boer states in South Africa: the South African Republic (Republic of Transvaal) and the Orange Free State. Britain was aided by its Cape Colony, Colony of Natal and some native African allies. The British war effort was further supported by volunteers from the British Empire, including Southern Africa, the Australian colonies, Canada, India, and New Zealand. All other nations were neutral, but public opinion in them was largely hostile to Britain. Inside Britain and its Empire there also was significant opposition to the Second Boer War. The British were overconfident and under-prepared. The Boers were very well armed and struck first. The British quickly seized control of all of the Orange Free State and Transvaal, as the civilian leadership went into hiding or exile. In conventional terms, the war was over. Britain officially annexed the two countries in 1900, and called a “khaki election” to give the government another six years of power in London. However, the Boers refused to surrender. With the 1886 discovery of gold in the Transvaal, the resulting gold rush brought thousands of British and other prospectors and settlers from across the globe and over the border from the Cape Colony (under British control since 1806). At the end of the war the British depopulated the countryside by created concentration camps. Roughly 40,000 die due to weakness to disease. British won the war but at a cost. Effect: Many Irish nationalists sympathized with the Boers, viewing them to be a people oppressed by British imperialism. The 1900 UK general election, also known as the “Khaki election”, was called by the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, on the back of recent British victories. There was much enthusiasm for the war at this point (early war), resulting in a victory for the Conservative government. Having taken the country into a prolonged war, the Conservative government was rejected by the electorate at the first general election after the war was over. Balfour, succeeding his uncle Lord Salisbury in 1903 immediately after the war, took over a Conservative party that had won two successive landslide majorities but led it to a landslide defeat in 1906 due to Brits being upset by the deaths of the Boer in concentration camps (mostly women and children deaths).
Eugenics
The idea of it during the late 19th century counteracted Charles Booth’s work. Belief of designing a perfect human race through genetics. In Britain during this time, it revolved around class. Many feared that the middle class were giving birth less and that the lower class was giving birth more.
Charles Lyell
A Scottish geologist. The common belief by many at this time was that the world was still 6000 years old. Lyell visited many sights (like Mt. Etna) to look at rocks which helped him form his theory: the natural elements (wind etc) are shaping the Earth, and based on how it looks the Earth must be much older than originally thought.
Principles of Geology
1830–1833: Three volumes explaining Charles Lyell’s theory on geology: He used geological proof to determine that the Earth was older than 6,000 years, as had been previously contested. The book shows that the processes that are occurring in the present are the same processes that occurred in the past. The book was influential to many, particularly Charles Darwin.
Charles Darwin
Because the world may be millions of years old as recently discovered by Charles Lyell, he developed evolutionary theory. Evolution comes from natural selection. His book on evolutionary evidence: On the Origin of Species (1859). His writing wasn’t originally released because he feared his reputation would lower. That’s because if it’s believed that the world is 6000 years old, it was created for man. If it’s millions of years old then we are just a more evolved version of a previous animal. This moves away from Christian thought and towards more scientific belief.
Sir Francis Galton
Galton invented the term eugenics in 1883. He is Darwin’s cousin. He established a research program which embraced multiple aspects of human variation, from mental characteristics to height; from facial images to fingerprint patterns. This required inventing novel measures of traits, devising large-scale collection of data using those measures, and in the end, the discovery of new statistical techniques for describing and understanding the data. In 1869, he argued about mental and physical features are equally inherited.
English Men of Science
1874: Introduced ‘nature/nurture’ terminology and the questionnaire method into psychology. Gathering questionnaire data on racial, religious, social, physical, and psychological characteristics from nearly 200 Fellows of the Royal Society, Galton demonstrated the potential value of statistical analysis in evaluating the relative contributions of heredity and environment to individual differences.
Craniometry
Science of measuring skulls, started by Samuel Morton in the 1840s. Theories attempting to scientifically justify the segregation of society based on race became popular at this time. Some arguments were made that cranial capacity determined intellectual ability, and skull measurements would put Caucasians on the top rung and Africans on the bottom.
Anthropometry
attempts to correlate physical with racial and psychological traits. Anthropometry involves the systematic measurement of the physical properties of the human body, primarily dimensional descriptors of body size and shape.
Cesere Lombroso
Italian criminalogist; he published his work in the 1880’s. Used anthropometry, and he suggested that criminals are distinguished from noncriminals by multiple physical anomalies. He believed criminals showed characteristics reminiscent of apes, lower primates, and early humans and to some extent preserved, he said, in modern “savages”. He believed that there were heirarchies based on race, and that criminals were predisposed to violence. Facial characteristics could allow prediction of criminal acts in a person.
Franz Boas
He was a professor of anthropology starting in 1899 and was a publisher until his death in 1942. Boas was one of the most prominent opponents of the then popular ideologies of scientific racism, the idea that race is a biological concept and that human behavior is best understood through the typology of biological characteristics. In a series of groundbreaking studies of skeletal anatomy he showed that cranial shape and size was highly malleable depending on environmental factors such as health and nutrition, in contrast to the claims by racial anthropologists of the day that held head shape to be a stable racial trait. Boas also worked to demonstrate that differences in human behavior are not primarily determined by innate biological dispositions, but are largely the result of cultural differences acquired through social learning. In this way, Boas introduced culture as the primary concept for describing differences in behavior between human groups, and as the central analytical concept of anthropology.Boas also introduced the ideology of cultural relativism, which holds that cultures cannot be objectively ranked as higher or lower, or better or more correct, but that all humans see the world through the lens of their own culture, and judge it according to their own culturally acquired norms.
Gallipoli Campaign
A peninsula on modern-day Turkey, this was a desirable area because it provided a sea route to the Russian Empire. Britain and France launched a navel attack in attempts to secure it. What was supposed to be an easy triumph, it turned out to be a disaster for the Brits. This was one of the greatest victories of the Ottoman Empire during the war. Britain admitted defeat after 8 months and after 43,000 ally troops died. This could lower prestige of Europeans.
Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF)
was a unionist militia founded in 1912 to block domestic self-government (or Home Rule) for Ireland, which was then part of the United Kingdom. The Ulster Volunteers were based in the northern province of Ulster. Many Ulster Protestants feared being governed by a Catholic-majority parliament in Dublin and losing their local supremacy and strong links with Britain. In 1913, the militias were organised into the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and vowed to resist any attempts by the British Government to ‘impose’ Home Rule on Ulster. . In April 1914, the UVF smuggled 25,000 rifles into Ulster. The Home Rule Crisis was halted by the outbreak of World War I in August 1914. Many UVF members enlisted with the British Army’s 36th (Ulster) Division and went to fight on the Western Front.
The Easter Rising
Fenians, some in Irish forces and others negotiated with Germany to send arms to Ireland to rebel against Britain, and Britain discovered the plan and intercepted the arms a few days before the planned rebellion. Ireland still declared itself independent on that day all across Ireland (mostly major cities) and had protests and strikes. Britain’s reaction was harsh, and resulted in Irish citizens wanted full out freedom as opposed to home rule.
Sinn Fein
A nationalist party that wanted to reject English culture and revert back to traditional Irish culture. Unpopular English actions such as forced conscription of Irish men in WWI and harsh responses to the Easter Rising made Sinn Fein a popular party among the Irish, and in the 1918 election they won 73 of 100 Irish seats.
David Lloyd George
Liberal: Exchequer and War Secretary (during WWI) to PM Asquith. His most important role came as the highly energetic PM of the Wartime Coalition Government (1916–22), during and immediately after the First World War. He was a major player at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 that reordered Europe after the defeat of the Central Powers.
Anzac Day
Observed on 25 April each year, Anzac Day (national holiday) was originally to honour the members of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) who fought at Gallipoli against the Ottoman Empire during World War I (Apr. 25th, 1915). This holiday also commemorates the first time that Aus/NZ fought alongside Britain.
Vimy Ridge
1917: Canada’s greatest battle in WWI. Fought in France between primarily Canadian VS German troops. This battle is significant because of the extreme coordination of Canadian troops without any British assistance. The success of Vimy Ridge can be attributed to Canada’s well executed plans. It is celebrated annually in Canada on April 9th.
James Hertzog
During WWI, not all colonies wanted to help Britain. Britain assigns S. Africa to attack German S.W. Africa. Though nothing really came of that, it sparked an anti-British movement. Hertzog formed the Afrikaans National Party in 1914 which defeated the South African Party (which often had pro-Brit stances) in 1924. This shows that Britain caused too much change too quickly.
Hertzog became Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa from 1924 to 1939. Throughout his life he encouraged the development of Afrikaner culture, determined to protect the Afrikaners from the UK’s influences.
Imperial War Cabinet
The Imperial War Cabinet was created by British Prime Minister David Lloyd George in the spring of 1917 as a means of co-ordinating the British Empire’s military policy during the First World War. Its creation was the result of a recognition by Lloyd George that the increased contribution by the dominions to the war effort necessitated increased consultation with dominion governments on the conduct of the war.In April 1917, the conference passed Resolution IX which resolved a conference was to be held after the war in order to rearrange Imperial constitutional arrangements “based upon a full recognition of the Dominions as autonomous nations of an Imperial Commonwealth”, and should give the Dominions and India “a right… to an adequate voice in foreign policy and in foreign relations.” This was the first instance in which the term Commonwealth was used officially.[1] The Imperial War Conference acknowledged the importance of the whole empire in defence policy by admitting India, not yet self-governing, to future imperial conferences.
In 1917 the Imperial War Conference also passed a resolution regarding a future special Imperial Conference to readjust the relations of the component parts of the Empire. That readjustment should be based upon the full recognition of the dominions as autonomous nations of an Imperial Commonwealth, with an “adequate voice” in foreign policy.
Colonel Ahmed Urabi Pasha
was an Egyptian nationalist, revolutionary and an officer of the Egyptian army. ‘Urabi participated in an 1879 mutiny that developed into a general revolt against the Anglo-French dominated administration of Khedive Tewfik. He was promoted to Tewfik’s cabinet and began reforms of Egypt’s military and civil administrations, but the demonstrations in Alexandria of 1882 prompted a British bombardment and invasion that deposed ‘Urabi and his allies in favor of a British occupation.the ‘Urabi Revolt in 1881, was primarily inspired by his desire for social justice for the Egyptians based on equal standing before the law. With the support of the peasants as well, he launched a broader effort to try to wrest Egypt and Sudan from foreign control, and also to end the absolutist regime of the Khedive, who was himself subject to Anglo-French control. The British were especially concerned that ‘Urabi would default on Egypt’s massive debt and that he might try to regain control of the Suez Canal. Therefore, they and the French dispatched warships to Egypt to intimidate the nationalists. Tewfik fled to their protection, moving his court to Alexandria. They surrendered to Brits.
From notes: Urabi’s uprising is a Turkish nationalist movement, because he thinks Turkey is too close with the west. Inspires uprisings in Egypt, which makes Brits think they won’t get their loans back so Gladstone sends in army to put down uprisings in Egypt. After, Britain establishes more control.
The Veiled Protectorate
(1882–1913) Egypt under Britain. Egypt had spent vast sums of money on infrastructural development of Egypt. Infrastructure had duel military use. Could not make enough money to pay back loans, and faced economic disaster. In turn, European and foreign finances took control of the treasury of Egypt, forgave debt in return for taking control of the Suez Canal, and reoriented economic development toward capital gain.
Port of Basra
Brits have been involved in this port (In Basra City, Iraq), since early 19th century. It serves as a strong foothold for Brits in the middle east. This is a critical location in WWI because it provides an offensive location against ottomans, and allows Brits to get oil quickly.
Sykes Picot Agreement
(May 1916), secret convention made during World War I between Great Britain and France, with the assent of imperial Russia, for the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire. The agreement led to the division of Turkish-held Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine into various French- and British-administered areas. This also determines borders in the Middle East. This secret arrangement conflicted in the first place with pledges already given by the British to the Hāshimite dynast Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī, sharif of Mecca, who was about to bring the Arabs of the Hejaz into revolt against the Turks on the understanding that the Arabs would eventually receive a much more important share of the fruits of victory.
Balfour Declaration
(November 2, 1917), statement of British support for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” It was made in a letter from Arthur James Balfour, the British foreign secretary. Its statements were generally contradictory to both the Sykes-Picot Agreement (a secret convention between Britain and France) and the Ḥusayn-McMahon correspondence (an exchange of letters between the British high commissioner in Egypt, Sir Henry McMahon, and Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī, then sharif of Mecca), which in turn contradicted one another. The British government hoped that the declaration would rally Jewish opinion, especially in the United States, to the side of the Allied powers against the Central Powers during World War I (1914–18). They hoped also that the settlement in Palestine of a pro-British Jewish population might help to protect the approaches to the Suez Canal in neighbouring Egypt and thus ensure a vital communication route to British colonial possessions in India.
WAFD Party
Was a nationalist liberal political party in Egypt. It was said to be Egypt’s most popular and influential political party for a period from the end of World War I through the 1930s. During this time, it was instrumental in the development of the 1923 constitution, and supported moving Egypt from dynastic rule to a constitutional monarchy, where power would be wielded by a nationally-elected parliament.[2] The party was dissolved in 1952, after the 1952 Egyptian Revolution.
Their first election in Egypt they get 90% of the votes in 1924. Despite being a nationalist party in power, they still keep Brits present because they see the benefit of their help to modernize. They want to be under British control a little while longer. The British also help Egypt offensively (against Sudan) and defensively (surrounding Italian states). Brits have established themselves in the military, political and economic structures in Egypt.
White Papers
Britain previously allowed Jewish migration into Palestine, but a revolt happened in 1936 and WWII was on horizon, so Britain reconsidered their position. In 1939, White Papers released: Britain states that they never wanted Jewish to control state. Puts limitations on Jewish migration and land that Jewish could buy in Palestine. That was done to prevent German alliance with Arab states.
Imperial Conference of 1926
Brought together the prime ministers of the dominions of the British Empire. It was held in London from 19 October to 22 November 1926.[1] The conference was notable for producing the Balfour Declaration, which established the principle that the dominions are all equal in status, and “autonomous communities within the British Empire” not subordinate to the United Kingdom.[1] The term “Commonwealth” was officially adopted to describe the community. Notes: Britain has to agree that dominions are equal to each other and independent from Britain but show an allegiance.
Lord Ripon
When Gladstone returned to power in 1880 he appointed Ripon Viceroy of India,[11] an office he held until 1884. During his time in India, Ripon introduced legislation (the “Ilbert Bill,” named for his secretary, Courtenay Ilbert), that would have granted native Indians more legal rights, including the right of Indian judges to judge Europeans in court. Though progressive in its intent, the legislation was scuppered by Europeans living in India who did not want to be tried by a native judge
He was also instrumental in supporting Dietrich Brandis to reorganize the Madras Forest Department and expand systematic forest conservancy in India. He is still revered in Chennai (formerly Madras), India as “Lord Ripon engal appan” meaning: Lord Ripon, our father. The Corporation of Chennai’s Ripon Building was named for him, as well as the town of Riponpet in the Shivamogga district in the state of Karnataka.
Indian National Congress
1885, Calcutta: it was the first modern nationalist movement to emerge in the British Empire in Asia and Africa. From the late 19th-century, and especially after 1920, under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi, Congress became the principal leader of the Indian independence movement, with over 15 million members and over 70 million participants. The Congress led India to independence from Great Britain, and powerfully influenced other anti-colonial nationalist movements in the British Empire. At first, the congress was loyal to the empire and didn’t discuss independence. But even initially, some Brits saw it as a threat.
Viceroy Curzon
1899 he was appointed Viceroy. Old school Tory, went to Eaton and Oxford. Came from a baron family. Was a just ruler in India, because he punished Brits that acted illegally. Also lowered taxes and generally looked out for Indian population. Used India’s military in an active and intelligent way. He believed that his activeness in working with Indians would put an end to congress push towards more liberations.
Partition of Bengal
1905), division of Bengal carried out by the British viceroy in India, Lord Curzon, despite strong Indian nationalist opposition. It began a transformation of the Indian National Congress from a middle-class pressure group into a nationwide mass movement. The Hindus of west Bengal, who controlled most of Bengal’s commerce and professional and rural life, complained that the Bengali nation would be split in two, making them a minority. They regarded the partition as an attempt to strangle nationalism in Bengal, where it was more developed than elsewhere. From notes: Bengal was growing and Brits felt they were losing hold, so created a separate state of Bengal meant to separate Hindu and Muslim powers. Result: Members in congress pushed for India to have full dominion status in 1908.
