AP World History: Imperialism DBQ Page 1

Instructions:

Use the documents provided to answer the prompt. Follow these steps to complete the task.

1. Read the prompt and make sure your understand it.

a. Highlight key words.

b. Translate any difficult words into ones you understand better.

2. Brainstorm what you already know about the topic.

3. Read and analyze all of the documents.

a. Highlight and underline key words/phrases.

b. Write notes in the margins of the documents explaining how they help answer

the question.

4. Organize your ideas into an answer to the question.

Prompt: What were the causes and consequences of Imperialism?

Requirements:

• Take notes on all of the documents:

o Create a T-chart of the CAUSES and CONSEQUENCES of Imperialism.

o Take notes in the margins of the documents.

o Use ALL of the documents.

o Write the document numbers each time you cite info from a document.

• Thesis statement:

o Write a clear and specific thesis that groups the documents into three categories

and addresses the prompt.

• Twenty-word summary:

o Write a summary of each document in 20 words or less.

o You may not exceed 20 words but should summarize ALL of the information.

• Turn in a packet at the end of class:

o Thesis

o T-chart

o Document summaries

o Documents with your notes

Partners:

• You may work with one neighbor that is next to you.

• You are NOT to travel across the room to work with someone else.

• Only if a student is left without a partner you may work in a group of 3.

• Each person must submit her/his own work.

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Document One

Parmenia Githendu Mockerie, newspaper article (1934)

This article was written by an African journalist in British-occupied Kenya while visiting England to give testimony to

a British parliamentary commission investigating conditions in east Africa.

The Africans of Kenya have been handicapped in organizing their own societies, owning to the restrictions imposed

upon them by the government. They are not allowed freedom to speak in public or freedom to hold meetings.

Naturally, Africans are discontented because they find that European and Indian associations are free to hold

meetings and collect funds for furthering the interests of their own organizations without interference by the

government. This discrimination between races arises out of the idea that Africans are insensible to what is right

and what is wrong, and must have special laws made for them. Under the Native Authority Ordinance almost any

kind of restrictive rule can be made by the administration.

The Kenya Somali community, having realized the weight of restrictions laid on Africans, have request the

government to classify them with the foreign communities such as the Arab and Indian so as to exempt them from

any sort of law that affects Africans. If the Somali had seen Africans enjoying the same rights of liberty as the white

man and the Indian, there would be no necessity for them to request the government to classify them with the

India community, as they are natives of Africa. The denial of freedom of association to Africans when they have no

representation on the legislature of the county cannot be quietly accepted by them. The British government have

pledged themselves to guard the interests of Africans in British colonies: this should mean efforts to improve their

status and education. But when we come to application of the pledge, we find it based on abstract theory…

Apart from the restrictions on freedom of association, the African people suffer badly from the Native Authority

Ordinance, whereby a District Administrator can issue orders in his district which he executes because he acts both

as administrator and as judge. It is hard for an African to find judge.

Document Two

Jawaharlal Nehru, The Discovery of India (1946)

Nehru was a leader in the Indian struggle for independence and became India’s first prime minister. His book was

written from prison.

The British parliament, influenced by this new class [of industrial capitalists], began to take a greater interest in

India and the working of the East India Company. To begin with, Indian goods were excluded from Britain by

legislation, and as the company held a monopoly in the Indian export business, this exclusion influenced other

foreign markets also. This was followed by vigorous attempts to restrict and crush Indian manufacturers by various

measures and internal duties which prevented the flow of Indian goods within the country itself. British goods

meanwhile had free entry. The Indian textile industry collapsed, affecting vast numbers of weavers and artisans…It

continued through the nineteenth century, breaking up other old industries also, shipbuilding, metalwork, glass,

paper, and many crafts…

The liquidation of the artisan class led to unemployment on a prodigious scale. What were all these scores of

millions, who had so far been engaged in industry and manufacture, to do now? Where were they to go? The old

profession was no longer open to them; the way to a new one was barred. They could die of course; that way of

escape from an intolerable situation was always open…

The modern type of finance imperialism added new kinds of economic exploitation which were unknown in earlier

ages. The record of British rule in India during the nineteenth century must necessarily depress and anger an

Indian, yet it illustrates the superiority of the British in many fields, not least in their capacity to profit by our

disunity and weaknesses. A people who are weak and who are left behind in the march of time invite trouble and

ultimately have only themselves to blame. If British imperialism with all its consequences was, in the

circumstances, to be expected in the natural order of events, so also was the growth of opposition to it inevitable,

and the final crisis between the two.

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Document Three: The Benefits of British Rule for India:

Dadabhai Naoroji, Essays, Speeches, Addresses and Writings, (Bombay, India: 1887) The "grand old man of India",

was born in Bombay on September 4, 1825. He studied in Elphinstone College and became a professor of

Mathematics and Natural Philosophy there at the age of 27. He was the first Indian to become a professor of the

college. At age thirty, he left for England, where he was to spend most of his life writing about the condition of

people in India and trying to influence public opinion for Indian self-rule. He lost an election to the British

Parliament as a member of the Liberal party in 1886, but was elected from Central Finsbury, London, in 1892 as a

Liberal member. In 1895 he was appointed to the royal commission on Indian expenditure. He was instrumental in

propagating the view that India was too heavily taxed, and its wealth was flowing to England. He was present at

the first meeting of the Indian National Congress in 1885 and was thrice elected to the post of the president, in

1886, 1893 and again in 1906. The Congress' demand for swaraj (independence) was first expressed publicly by

him in his presidential address in 1906. He died in Bombay on June 30, 1917.

In the Cause of Humanity: Abolition of suttee and infanticide. Destruction of Dacoits, Thugs, Pindarees,

and other such pests of Indian society. Allowing remarriage of Hindu widows, and charitable aid in time of

famine. Glorious work all this, of which any nation may well be proud, and such as has not fallen to the lot

of any people in the history of mankind.

In the Cause of Civilization: Education, both male and female. Though yet only partial, an inestimable

blessing as far as it has gone, and leading gradually to the destruction of superstition, and many moral and

social evils. Resuscitation of India's own noble literature, modified and refined by the enlightenment of

the West.

Politically: Peace and order. Freedom of speech and liberty of the press. Higher political knowledge and

aspirations. Improvement of government in the native states. Security of life and property. Freedom from

oppression caused by the caprice or greed of despotic rulers, and from devastation by war. Equal justice

between man and man (sometimes vitiated by partiality to Europeans). Services of highly educated

administrators, who have achieved the above-mentioned results.

Materially: Loans for railways and irrigation. Development of a few valuable products, such as indigo, tea,

coffee, silk, etc. Increase of exports. Telegraphs.

Generally: A slowly growing desire of late to treat India equitably, and as a country held in trust. Good

intentions. No nation on the face of the earth has ever had the opportunity of achieving such a glorious

work as this. I hope in the credit side of the account I have done no injustice, and if I have omitted any

item which anyone may think of importance, I shall have the greatest pleasure in inserting it. I appreciate,

and so do my countrymen, what England has done for India, and I know that it is only in British hands that

her regeneration can be accomplished. Now for the debit side.

The Detriments of British Rule:

In the Cause of Humanity: Nothing. Everything, therefore, is in your favor under this heading.

In the Cause of Civilization: As I have said already, there has been a failure to do as much as might have

been done, but I put nothing to the debit. Much has been done, though.

Politically: Repeated breach of pledges to give the natives a fair and reasonable share in the higher

administration of their own country, which has much shaken confidence in the good faith of the British

word. Political aspirations and the legitimate claim to have a reasonable voice in the legislation and the

imposition and disbursement of taxes, met to a very slight degree, thus treating the natives of India not as

British subjects, in whom representation is a birthright. Consequent on the above, an utter disregard of

the feelings and views of the natives. The great moral evil of the drain of wisdom and practical

administration, leaving none to guide the rising generation.

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Financially: All attention is engrossed in devising new modes of taxation, without any adequate effort to

increase the means of the people to pay; and the consequent vexation and oppressiveness of the taxes

imposed, imperial and local. Inequitable financial relations between England and India, i.e., the political

debt of ,100,000,000 clapped on India's shoulders, and all home charges also, though the British

Exchequer contributes nearly ,3,000,000 to the expense of the colonies.

Materially: The political drain, up to this time, from India to England, of above 500,000,000 at the lowest

computation, in principal alone, which with interest would be some thousands of millions. The further

continuation of this drain at the rate, at present, of above 12,000,000 per annum, with a tendency to

increase. The consequent continuous impoverishment and exhaustion of the country, except so far as it

has been very partially relieved and replenished by the railway and irrigation loans, and the windfall of the

consequences of the American war, since 1850. Even with this relief, the material condition of India is

such that the great mass of the poor have hardly tuppence a day and a few rags, or a scanty subsistence.

The famines that were in their power to prevent, if they had done their duty, as a good and intelligent

government. The policy adopted during the last fifteen years of building railways, irrigation works, etc., is

hopeful, has already resulted in much good to your credit, and if persevered in, gratitude and

contentment will follow. An increase of exports without adequate compensation; loss of manufacturing

industry and skill. Here I end the debit side.

Summary: To sum up the whole, the British rule has been: morally, a great blessing; politically, peace and

order on one hand, blunders on the other; materially, impoverishment, relieved as far as the railway and

other loans go. The natives call the British system "Sakar ki Churi," the knife of sugar. That is to say, there

is no oppression, it is all smooth and sweet, but it is the knife, notwithstanding. I mention this that you

should know these feelings. Our great misfortune is that you do not know our wants. When you will know

our real wishes, I have not the least doubt that you would do justice. The genius and spirit of the British

people is fair play and justice.

Document Four

Jules François Camille Ferry, "Speech Before the French Chamber of Deputies, March 28, 1884." Born in Saint-Dié,

in the Vosges département, France, he studied law, and was called to the bar at Paris, but soon went into politics,

contributing to various newspapers, particularly to Le Temps. He served in various positions in government and

from July 29, 1882 to February 21, 1883), he served as minister of education and then as minister of foreign affairs.

A leader of the Opportunist Republicans faction, he was twice premier (1880-1881 and 1883-1885).

I say that French colonial policy, the policy of colonial expansion, the policy that has taken us under the Empire

[the Second Empire, of Napoleon 1111, to Saigon, to Indochina [Vietnam], that has led us to Tunisia, to

Madagascar-I say that this policy of colonial expansion was inspired by... the fact that a navy such as ours cannot

do without safe harbors, defenses, supply centers on the high seas .... Are you unaware of this? Look at a map of

the world.

Gentlemen, these are considerations that merit the full attention of patriots. The conditions of naval warfare have

greatly changed .... At present, as you know, a warship, however perfect its design, cannot carry more than two

weeks' supply of coal; and a vessel without coal is a wreck on the high seas, abandoned to the first occupier. Hence

the need to have places of supply, shelters, ports for defense and provisioning.... And that is why we needed

Tunisia; that is why we needed Saigon and Indochina; that is why we need Madagascar... and why we shall never

leave them! ... Gentlemen, in Europe such as it is today, in this competition of the many rivals we see rising up

around us, some by military or naval improvements, others by the prodigious development of a constantly growing

population; in a Europe, or rather in a universe thus constituted, a policy of withdrawal or abstention is simply the

high road to decadence! In our time nations are great only through the activity they deploy; it is not by spreading

the peaceable light of their institutions ... that they are great, in the present day.

Spreading light without acting, without taking part in the affairs of the world, keeping out of all European alliances

and seeing as a trap, an adventure, all expansion into Africa or the Orient-for a great nation to live this way, believe

me, is to abdicate and, in less time than you may think, to sink from the first rank to the third and fourth.

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Document Five

—front page editorial, French popular newspaper (1883)

The future and wealth of France depend above all on the extension and prosperity of our colonies…When factories

produce more than consumers need, work must stop for a time, and workers, condemned to inactivity for a more

or less long period, must live off their savings and suffer without there being any possibility to institute a remedy

for the evil…The reasons for the abnormal situation can be boiled down to a lack of markets for our

products…Once the French genius is put to colonization…we will find a draining of our overflow of our factories,

and at the same time we will be able to secure, at the source of production, the primary materials needed in our

factories.

Document Six

John G. Paton, New Hebrides Mission (1883)

For the following reasons we think the British government ought now to take possession of the New

Hebrides group of the South Sea islands, of the Solomon group, and of all the intervening chain of islands

from Fiji to New Guinea:

1. Because she has already taken possession of Fiji in the east, and we hope it will soon be known

authoritatively that she has taken possession of New Guinea at the northwest, adjoining her Australian

possessions, and the islands between complete this chain of islands lying along the Australian coast.

4. All the men and all the money used in civilizing and Christianizing the New Hebrides have been British.

Now fourteen missionaries and the Dayspring mission ship, and about 150 native evangelists and teachers

are employed in the above work on this group, in which over 6000 yearly of British and British-colonial

money is expended; and certainly it would be unwise to let any other power now take possession and

reap the fruits of all this British outlay.

6. The islands on this group are generally very rich in soil and in tropical products so that if a possession of

Great Britain, and if the labor traffic stopped so as to retain what remains of the native populations on

them, they would soon, and for ages to come, become rich sources of tropical wealth to these colonies, as

sugar cane is extensively cultivated on them by every native of the group, even in his heathen state. . .The

islands also grow corn, cotton, coffee, arrowroot, and spices, etc., and all tropical products could be

largely produced on them.

7. Because if any other nation takes possession of them, their excellent and spacious harbors, as on Efate,

so well-supplied with the best fresh water, and their near-proximity to Great Britain's Australasian

colonies, would in time of war make them dangerous to British interests and commerce in the South Seas

and her colonies.

8. The thirteen islands of this group on which life and property are now comparatively safe, the 8000

professed Christians on the group, and all the churches formed from among them are, by God's blessing,

the fruits of the labors of British missionaries, who, at great toil, expense, and loss of life have translated,

got printed, and taught the natives to read the Bible in part or in whole in nine different languages of this

group, while 70,000 at least are longing and ready for the gospel. On this group twenty-one members of

the mission families died or were murdered by the savages in beginning God's work among them, not

including good Bishop Peterson, of the Melanesian mission, and we fear all this good work would be lost if

the New Hebrides fall into other than British hands.

For the above reasons, and others that might be given, we sincerely hope and pray that you will do all

possible to get Victoria and the other colonial governments to help and unite in urging Great Britain at

once to take possession of the New Hebrides group. Whether looked at in the interests of humanity, or of

Christianity, or commercially, or politically, sure it is most desirable that they should at once be British

possessions.

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Document Seven

Report of the British Consul, Roger Casement, on the Administration of the Congo

The colonial regime of the Belgian King Leopold II--the Congo Free State-- became one of the more infamous

international scandals of the turn of the century. By the mid-1890s the Congo Basin and its products became a

source of great wealth to Leopold who used his riches to beautify his Belgian capital Brussels while using his agents

in Africa to establish a brutal exploitative regime for the extraction of rubber in the interior forest regions of the

Free State. Leopold kept knowledge of what was taking place there to a minimum. Inevitably the truth leaked out

as it became known through missionary reports. The Report (below) of the British consul sent to investigate the

accumulating reports of torture, murder and virtual enslavement was published to the world in 1904 and from that

point on the pressure for reform mounted until, finally, Leopold was forced to yield up his private African preserve

to the Belgian government which formally took over the 'Belgian Congo' by an act of annexation in August 1908.

I have the honor to submit my Report on my recent journey on the Upper Congo.

. . . a fleet of steamers . . navigate the main river and its principal affluents at fixed intervals. Regular means of

communication are thus afforded to some of the most inaccessible parts of Central Africa. A railway, excellently

constructed in view of the difficulties to be encountered, now connects the ocean ports with Stanley Pool, over a

tract of difficult country, which formerly offered to the weary traveler on foot many obstacles to be overcome and

many days of great bodily fatigue. . .

A hospital for Europeans and an establishment designed as a native hospital are in charge of a European doctor. . .

When I visited the three mud huts which serve (as the native hospital), all of them dilapidated . . I found seventeen

sleeping sickness patients, male and female, lying about in the utmost dirt. The structures I had visited . . had

endured for many years as the only form of hospital accommodation for the numerous native staff of the district.

. . . The people have not easily accommodated themselves to the altered condition of life brought about by

European government in their midst. Where formerly they were accustomed to take long voyages down to Stanley

Pool to sell slaves, ivory, dried fish, or other local products . . they find themselves today debarred from all such

activity . . . The open selling of slaves and the canoe convoys, which navigated the Upper Congo (River), have

everywhere disappeared. . . . (but) much that was not reprehensible in native life has disappeared along with it.

The trade in ivory has today entirely passed from the hands of the natives of the Upper Congo . .

Complaints as to the manner of exacting service are . . frequent . . . If the local official has to go on a sudden

journey men are summoned on the instant to paddle his canoe, and a refusal entails imprisonment or a beating. If

the Government plantation or the kitchen garden require weeding, a soldier will be sent to call in the women from

some of the neighboring towns. . .; to the women suddenly forced to leave their household tasks and to tramp off,

hoe in hand, baby on back, with possibly a hungry and angry husband at home, the task is not a welcome one.

I visited two large villages in the interior . . wherein I found that fully half the population now consisted of refugees

. . I saw and questioned several groups of these people . . . They went on to declare, when asked why they had fled

(their district), that they had endured such ill-treatment at the hands of the government soldiers in their own

(district) that life had become intolerable; that nothing had remained for them at home but to be killed for failure

to bring in a certain amount of rubber or to die from starvation or exposure in their attempts to satisfy the

demands made upon them. . . . I subsequently found other (members of the tribe) who confirmed the truth of the

statements made to me.

. . . on the 25th of July (1903) we reached Lukolela, where I spent two days. This district had, when I visited it in

1887, numbered fully 5,000 people; today the population is given, after a careful enumeration, at less than 600.

The reasons given me for their decline in numbers were similar to those furnished elsewhere, namely, sleeping-

sickness, general ill-health, insufficiency of food, and the methods employed to obtain labor from them by local

officials and the exactions levied on them.

At other villages which I visited, I found the tax to consist of baskets, which the inhabitants had to make and

deliver weekly as well as, always, a certain amount of foodstuffs. (The natives) were frequently flogged for delay or

inability to complete the tally of these baskets, or the weekly supply of food. Several men, including a Chief of one

AP World History: Imperialism DBQ Page 7

town, showed broad weals across their buttocks, which were evidently recent. One, a lad of 15 o so, removing his

cloth, showed several scars across his thighs, which he and others around him said had formed part of a weekly

payment for a recent shortage in their supply of food.

. . . A careful investigation of the conditions of native life around (Lake Mantumba) confirmed the truth of the

statements made to me--that the great decrease in population, the dirty and ill-kept towns, and the complete

absence of goats, sheep, or fowls--once very plentiful in this country--were to be attributed above all else to the

continued effort made during many years to compel the natives to work india-rubber. Large bodies of native

troops had formerly been quartered in the district, and the punitive measures undertaken to his end had endured

for a considerable period. During the course of these operations there had been much loss of life, accompanied, I

fear, by a somewhat general mutilation of the dead, as proof that the soldiers had done their duty.

. . . Two cases (of mutilation) came to my actual notice while I was in the lake district. One, a young man, both of

whose hands had been beaten off with the butt ends of rifles against a tree; the other a young lad of 11 or 12

years of age, whose right hand was cut off at the wrist. . . . I both these cases the Government soldiers had been

accompanied by white officers whose names were given to me. Of six natives (one a girl, three little boys, one

youth, and one old woman) who had been mutilated in this way during the rubber regime, all except one were

dead at the date of my visit.

[A sentry in the employ of one of the concessionary private companies] said he had caught and was detaining as

prisoners (eleven women) to compel their husbands to bring in the right amount of rubber required of them on

the next market day. . . . When I asked what would become of these women if their husbands failed to bring in the

right quantity of rubber . . , he said at once that then they would be kept there until their husbands had redeemed

them. …

(Signed) R. Casement.

The full Report runs for forty pages of the Parliamentary Papers to which is appended another twenty pages of

individual statements gathered by the Consul, including several detailing the grim tales of killings, mutilation,

kidnapping and cruel beatings of men, women and children by soldiers of Bula Matadi (i.e., the name used by the

natives for the Congo Administration of King Leopold). Copies of the Report and enclosures were transmitted by

the British government to the Belgian government as well as to governments (Germany, France, Russia, et al.) who

were signatories to the Berlin Act in 1885. The Congo administration was thus forced to initiate an investigation

into the atrocities detailed in the Report which led to the arrest and punishment of white officials who had been

responsible for cold-blooded killings during a rubber-collecting expedition in 1903 (including one Belgian national

who was given five years' penal servitude for causing the shooting of at least 122 Congolese natives.

[Ref.: British Parliamentary Papers, 1904, LXII, Cd. 1933]

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Document Eight

Title: "China -- the cake of kings... and emperors". French political cartoon from 1898.