Western imperialism in Asia
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The influence and imperialism of Western Europe and associated states (such as Russia, Japan, and the United States) peaked in Asian territories from the colonial period beginning in the 16th century and substantially reducing with 20th century decolonization. It originated in the 15th-century search for trade routes to the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia that led directly to the Age of Discovery, and additionally the introduction of early modern warfare into what Europeans first called the East Indies and later the Far East. By the early 16th century, the Age of Sail greatly expanded Western European influence and development of the spice trade under colonialism. European-style colonial empires and imperialism operated in Asia throughout six centuries of colonialism, formally ending with the independence of the Portuguese Empire's last colony Macau in 1999. The empires introduced Western concepts of nation and the multinational state. This article attempts to outline the consequent development of the Western concept of the nation state.
European political power, commerce, and culture in Asia gave rise to growing trade in
Before the
In
Early European exploration of Asia
European exploration of Asia started in ancient Roman times along the Silk Road. The Romans had knowledge of lands as distant as China. Trade with India through the Roman Egyptian Red Sea ports was significant in the first centuries of the Common Era.
Medieval European exploration of Asia
In the 13th and 14th centuries, a number of Europeans, many of them Christian missionaries,[citation needed] had sought to penetrate into China. The most famous of these travelers was Marco Polo.[3] But these journeys had little permanent effect on east–west trade because of a series of political developments in Asia in the last decades of the 14th century, which put an end to further European exploration of Asia. The Yuan dynasty in China, which had been receptive to European missionaries and merchants, was overthrown, and the new Ming rulers were found to be unreceptive of religious proselytism. Meanwhile, the Turks consolidated control over the eastern Mediterranean, closing off key overland trade routes. Thus, until the 15th century, only minor trade and cultural exchanges between Europe and Asia continued at certain terminals controlled by Muslim traders.
Oceanic voyages to Asia
Western European rulers determined to find new trade routes of their own. The Portuguese spearheaded the drive to find oceanic routes that would provide cheaper and easier access to South and East Asian goods. This chartering of oceanic routes between East and West began with the unprecedented voyages of Portuguese and Spanish sea captains. Their voyages were influenced by medieval European adventurers, who had journeyed overland to the Far East and contributed to geographical knowledge of parts of Asia upon their return.
In 1488, Bartolomeu Dias rounded the southern tip of Africa under the sponsorship of Portugal's John II, from which point he noticed that the coast swung northeast (Cape of Good Hope). While Dias' crew forced him to turn back, by 1497, Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama made the first open voyage from Europe to India. In 1520, Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese navigator in the service of the Crown of Castile ('Spain'), found a sea route into the Pacific Ocean.
Portuguese and Spanish trade and colonization in Asia
Portuguese monopoly over trade in the Indian Ocean and Asia
In 1509, the Portuguese under
Early in the 16th century, Afonso de Albuquerque emerged as the Portuguese colonial viceroy most instrumental in consolidating Portugal's holdings in Africa and in Asia. He understood that Portugal could wrest commercial supremacy from the Arabs only by force, and therefore devised a plan to establish forts at strategic sites which would dominate the trade routes and also protect Portuguese interests on land. In 1510, he conquered Goa in India, which enabled him to gradually consolidate control of most of the commercial traffic between Europe and Asia, largely through trade; Europeans started to carry on trade from forts, acting as foreign merchants rather than as settlers. In contrast, early European expansion in the "West Indies", (later known to Europeans as a separate continent from Asia that they would call the "Americas") following the 1492 voyage of Christopher Columbus, involved heavy settlement in colonies that were treated as political extensions of the mother countries.
Lured by the potential of high profits from another expedition, the Portuguese established a permanent base in Cochin, south of the Indian trade port of Calicut in the early 16th century. In 1510, the Portuguese, led by Afonso de Albuquerque, seized Goa on the coast of India, which Portugal held until 1961, along with Diu and Daman (the remaining territory and enclaves in India from a former network of coastal towns and smaller fortified trading ports added and abandoned or lost centuries before). The Portuguese soon acquired a monopoly over trade in the Indian Ocean.
Portuguese viceroy Albuquerque (1509–1515) resolved to consolidate Portuguese holdings in Africa and Asia, and secure control of trade with the
In 1513, after the failed attempt to conquer
The Portuguese conquest of Malacca triggered the
In 1557, China decided to lease Macau to the Portuguese as a place where they could dry goods they transported on their ships, which they held until 1999. The Portuguese paid an annual rent of hundreds of silver taels for leasing Macau. The Portuguese, based at Goa and Malacca, had now established a lucrative maritime empire in the Indian Ocean meant to monopolize the spice trade. The Portuguese also began a channel of trade with the Japanese, becoming the first recorded Westerners to have visited Japan. This contact introduced Christianity and firearms into Japan.
The Portuguese defeated the Japanese at the Battle of Fukuda Bay in 1565 and inflicted severe casualties on the Japanese at the Nossa Senhora da Graça incident in 1610. Portugal ruled Nagasaki in Japan from 1580–1587.
In 1505, (also possibly before, in 1501), the Portuguese, through
The energies of Castile (later, the unified Spain), the other major colonial power of the 16th century, were largely concentrated on the Americas, not South and East Asia, but the Spanish did establish a footing in the Far East in the Philippines. After fighting with the Portuguese by the Spice Islands since 1522 and the agreement between the two powers in 1529 (in the treaty of Zaragoza), the Spanish, led by
Decline of Portugal's Asian empire since the 17th century
The lucrative trade was vastly expanded when the Portuguese began to export slaves from Africa in 1541; however, over time, the rise of the slave trade left Portugal over-extended, and vulnerable to competition from other Western European powers. Envious of Portugal's control of trade routes, other Western European nations—mainly the Netherlands, France, and England—began to send in rival expeditions to Asia. In 1642, the Dutch drove the Portuguese out of the Gold Coast in Africa, the source of the bulk of Portuguese slave laborers, leaving this rich slaving area to other Europeans, especially the Dutch and the English.
Rival European powers began to make inroads in Asia as the Portuguese and Spanish trade in the Indian Ocean declined primarily because they had become hugely over-stretched financially due to the limitations on their investment capacity and contemporary naval technology. Both of these factors worked in tandem, making control over Indian Ocean trade extremely expensive.
The existing Portuguese interests in Asia proved sufficient to finance further colonial expansion and entrenchment in areas regarded as of greater strategic importance in Africa and Brazil. Portuguese maritime supremacy was lost to the Dutch in the 17th century, and with this came serious challenges for the Portuguese. However, they still clung to Macau and settled a new colony on the island of Timor. It was as recent as the 1960s and 1970s that the Portuguese began to relinquish their colonies in Asia. Goa was invaded by India in 1961 and became an Indian state in 1987; Portuguese Timor was abandoned in 1975 and was then invaded by Indonesia. It became an independent country in 2002, and Macau was handed back to the Chinese as per a treaty in 1999.
Holy wars
The arrival of the Portuguese and Spanish and their holy wars against Muslim states in the
The word "savages" in Spanish, cafres, was from the word "infidel" in Arabic - Kafir, and was used by the Spanish to refer to their own "Christian savages" who were arrested in Brunei.[9][10] It was said Castilians are kafir, men who have no souls, who are condemned by fire when they die, and that too because they eat pork by the Brunei Sultan after the term accursed doctrine was used to attack Islam by the Spaniards which fed into hatred between Muslims and Christians sparked by their 1571 war against Brunei.[11] The Sultan's words were in response to insults coming from the Spanish at Manila in 1578, other Muslims from Champa, Java, Borneo, Luzon, Pahang, Demak, Aceh, and the Malays echoed the rhetoric of holy war against the Spanish and Iberian Portuguese, calling them kafir enemies which was a contrast to their earlier nuanced views of the Portuguese in the Hikayat Tanah Hitu and Sejarah Melayu.[12][13] The war by Spain against Brunei was defended in an apologia written by Doctor De Sande.[14] The British eventually partitioned and took over Brunei while Sulu was attacked by the British, Americans, and Spanish which caused its breakdown and downfall after both of them thrived from 1500 to 1900 for four centuries.[15] Dar al-Islam was seen as under invasion by "kafirs" by the Atjehnese led by Zayn al-din and by Muslims in the Philippines as they saw the Spanish invasion, since the Spanish brought the idea of a crusader holy war against Muslim Moros just as the Portuguese did in Indonesia and India against what they called "Moors" in their political and commercial conquests which they saw through the lens of religion in the 16th century.[16]
In 1578, an attack was launched by the Spanish against Jolo, and in 1875 it was destroyed at their hands, and once again in 1974 it was destroyed by the Philippines.[17] The Spanish first set foot on Borneo in Brunei.[18]
The Spanish war against Brunei failed to conquer Brunei but it totally cut off the Philippines from Brunei's influence, the Spanish then started colonizing Mindanao and building fortresses. In response, the Bisayas, where Spanish forces were stationed, were subjected to retaliatory attacks by the Magindanao in 1599-1600 due to the Spanish attacks on Mindanao.[19]
The Brunei royal family was related to the Muslim Rajahs who in ruled the principality in 1570 of Manila (
The Spanish were expelled from Brunei in 1579 after they attacked in 1578.[22][23] There were fifty thousand inhabitants before the 1597 attack by the Spanish in Brunei.[24][25]
During first contact with China, numerous aggressions and provocations were undertaken by the Portuguese
Dutch trade and colonization in Asia
Rise of Dutch control over Asian trade in the 17th century
The Portuguese decline in Asia was accelerated by attacks on their commercial empire by the Dutch and the English, which began a global struggle over the empire in Asia that lasted until the end of the
By the 1590s, a number of Dutch companies were formed to finance trading expeditions in Asia. Because competition lowered their profits, and because of the doctrines of mercantilism, in 1602 the companies united into a cartel and formed the Dutch East India Company, and received from the government the right to trade and colonize territory in the area stretching from the Cape of Good Hope eastward to the Strait of Magellan.
In 1605, armed Dutch merchants captured the Portuguese fort at
Dutch East India Company colonies or outposts were later established in Atjeh (
(1624–1662), and southern India (1616–1795).Ming dynasty China defeated the Dutch East India Company in the
The Vietnamese Nguyễn lords defeated the Dutch in a naval battle in 1643.
The Cambodians defeated the Dutch in the Cambodian–Dutch War in 1644.
In 1652, Jan van Riebeeck established an outpost at the Cape of Good Hope (the southwestern tip of Africa, currently in South Africa) to restock company ships on their journey to East Asia. This post later became a fully-fledged colony, the Cape Colony (1652–1806). As Cape Colony attracted increasing Dutch and European settlement, the Dutch founded the city of Kaapstad (Cape Town).
By 1669, the Dutch East India Company was the richest private company in history, with a huge fleet of merchant ships and warships, tens of thousands of employees, a private army consisting of thousands of soldiers, and a reputation on the part of its stockholders for high dividend payments.
Dutch New Imperialism in Asia
The company was in almost constant conflict with the English; relations were particularly tense following the
Six years into formal colonisation of the East Indies, in Europe the Dutch Republic was occupied by the French forces of Napoleon. The Dutch government went into exile in England and formally ceded its colonial possessions to Great Britain. The pro-French Governor General of Java Jan Willem Janssens, resisted a British invasion force in 1811 until forced to surrender. British Governor Raffles, who the later founded the city of Singapore, ruled the colony the following 10 years of the British interregnum (1806–1816).
After the defeat of
The Dutch concentrated their colonial enterprise in the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) throughout the 19th century. The Dutch lost control over the East Indies to the Japanese during much of World War II.[31] Following the war, the Dutch fought Indonesian independence forces after Japan surrendered to the Allies in 1945. In 1949, most of what was known as the Dutch East Indies was ceded to the independent Republic of Indonesia. In 1962, also Dutch New Guinea was annexed by Indonesia de facto ending Dutch imperialism in Asia.
British in India
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Portuguese, French, and British competition in India (1600–1763)
The English sought to stake out claims in India at the expense of the Portuguese dating back to the
Through bribes, diplomacy, and manipulation of weak native rulers, the company prospered in India, where it became the most powerful political force, and outrivaled its Portuguese and French competitors. For more than one hundred years, English and French trading companies had fought one another for supremacy, and, by the middle of the 18th century, competition between the British and the French had heated up. French defeat by the British under the command of Robert Clive during the Seven Years' War (1756–1763) marked the end of the French stake in India.
Collapse of Mughal India
The British East India Company, although still in direct competition with French and Dutch interests until 1763, following the subjugation of Bengal at the 1757 Battle of Plassey. The British East India Company made great advances at the expense of the Mughal Empire.
The reign of Aurangzeb had marked the height of Mughal power. By 1690 Mughal territorial expansion reached its greatest extent encompassing the entire Indian Subcontinent. But this period of power was followed by one of decline. Fifty years after the death of Aurangzeb, the great Mughal empire had crumbled. Meanwhile, marauding warlords, nobles, and others bent on gaining power left the
From Company to Crown
Aside from defeating the French during the Seven Years' War,
The East India then fought a series of Anglo-Mysore wars in Southern India with the Sultanate of Mysore under Hyder Ali and then Tipu Sultan. Defeats in the First Anglo-Mysore war and stalemate in the Second were followed by victories in the Third and the Fourth.[32] Following Tipu Sultan's death in the fourth war in the Siege of Seringapatam (1799), the kingdom would become a protectorate of the company.[32]
The East India Company fought three Anglo-Maratha Wars with the Maratha Confederacy. The First Anglo-Maratha War ended in 1782 with a restoration of the pre-war status quo.[33] The Second and Third Anglo-Maratha wars resulted in British victories.[34][35] After the Surrender of Peshwa Bajirao II on 1818, the East India company acquired control of a large majority of the Indian Subcontinent.[36][37]
Until 1858, however, much of India was still officially the dominion of the Mughal emperor. Anger among some social groups, however, was seething under the governor-generalship of
The 1857
The Company initiated the first of the Anglo-Burmese Wars in 1824, which led to total annexation of Burma by the Crown in 1885. The British ruled Burma as a province of British India until 1937, then administered her separately under the Burma Office except during the Japanese occupation of Burma, 1942–1945, until granted independence on 4 January 1948. (Unlike India, Burma opted not to join the Commonwealth of Nations.)
Rise of Indian nationalism
The denial of equal status to Indians was the immediate stimulus for the formation in 1885 of the Indian National Congress, initially loyal to the Empire but committed from 1905 to increased self-government and by 1930 to outright independence. The "Home charges", payments transferred from India for administrative costs, were a lasting source of nationalist grievance, though the flow declined in relative importance over the decades to independence in 1947.
Although majority Hindu and minority Muslim political leaders were able to collaborate closely in their criticism of British policy into the 1920s, British support for a distinct Muslim political organisation, the Muslim League from 1906 and insistence from the 1920s on separate electorates for religious minorities, is seen by many in India as having contributed to Hindu-Muslim discord and the country's eventual Partition.
France in Indochina
France, which had lost its empire to the
French religious and commercial interests were established in Indochina as early as the 17th century, but no concerted effort at stabilizing the French position was possible in the face of British strength in the Indian Ocean and French defeat in Europe at the beginning of the 19th century. A mid-19th century religious revival under the Second Empire provided the atmosphere within which interest in Indochina grew. Anti-Christian persecutions in the Far East provided the pretext for the bombardment of Tourane (Danang) in 1847, and invasion and occupation of Danang in 1857 and Saigon in 1858. Under Napoleon III, France decided that French trade with China would be surpassed by the British, and accordingly the French joined the British against China in the Second Opium War from 1857 to 1860, and occupied parts of Vietnam as its gateway to China.
By the
By the beginning of the 20th century, France had created an empire in
Russia and the "Great Game"
Tsarist Russia is not often regarded as a colonial power such as the United Kingdom or France because of the manner of Russian expansions: unlike the United Kingdom, which expanded overseas, the Russian Empire grew from the centre outward by a process of accretion, like the United States. In the 19th century, Russian expansion took the form of a struggle of an effectively landlocked country for access to a warm-water port.
Historian Michael Khodarkovsky describes Tsarist Russia as a "hybrid empire" that combined elements of continental and colonial empires.[38]
While the British were consolidating their hold on India, Russian expansion had moved steadily eastward to the Pacific, then toward the Caucasus and Central Asia. In the early 19th century, it succeeded in conquering the South Caucasus and Dagestan from Qajar Iran following the Russo-Persian War (1804–1813), the Russo-Persian War (1826–1828) and the out coming treaties of Gulistan and Turkmenchay,[39] giving Russia direct borders with both Persia's as well as Ottoman Turkey's heartlands. Later, they eventually reached the frontiers of Afghanistan as well (which had the largest foreign border adjacent to British holdings in India). In response to Russian expansion, the defense of India's land frontiers and the control of all sea approaches to the subcontinent via the Suez Canal, the Red Sea, and the Persian Gulf became preoccupations of British foreign policy in the 19th century. This was called the Great Game.
According to Kazakh scholar Kereihan Amanzholov, Russian colonialism had "no essential difference with the colonialist policies of Britain, France, and other European powers".[40]
Anglo-Russian rivalry in the Middle East and Central Asia led to a brief confrontation over Afghanistan in the 1870s. In Persian, both nations set up banks to extend their economic influence. The United Kingdom went so far as to invade
Qing China defeated Russia in the early Sino-Russian border conflicts, although the Russian Empire later acquired Outer Manchuria in the Amur Annexation during the Second Opium War.[41] During the Boxer Rebellion, the Russian Empire invaded Manchuria in 1900, and the Blagoveshchensk massacre occurred against Chinese residents on the Russian side of the border.[41]
In 1907, the United Kingdom and Russia signed an agreement that, on the surface, ended their rivalry in Central Asia. (see Anglo-Russian Convention) As part of the entente, Russia agreed to deal with the sovereign of Afghanistan only through British intermediaries. In turn, the United Kingdom would not annex or occupy Afghanistan. Chinese suzerainty over Tibet also was recognised by both Russia and the United Kingdom, since nominal control by a weak China was preferable to control by either power. Persia was divided into Russian and British spheres of influence and an intervening "neutral" zone. The United Kingdom and Russia chose to reach these uneasy compromises because of growing concern on the part of both powers over German expansion in strategic areas of China and Africa.
Following the entente, Russia increasingly intervened in Persian domestic politics and suppressed nationalist movements that threatened both Saint Petersburg and London. After the Russian Revolution, Russia gave up its claim to a sphere of influence, though Soviet involvement persisted alongside the United Kingdom's until the 1940s.
In the Middle East, in Persia and the Ottoman Empire, a German company built a railroad from Constantinople to Baghdad and the Persian Gulf in the latter, while it built a railroad from the north of the country to the south, connecting the Caucasus with the Persian Gulf in the former.[42] Germany wanted to gain economic influence in the region and then, perhaps, move on to India. This was met with bitter resistance by the United Kingdom, Russia, and France who divided the region among themselves.
Western European and Russian intrusions into China
The 16th century brought many
Early in the 19th century, serious internal weaknesses developed in the
Toward the end of the 19th century, China appeared on the way to territorial dismemberment and economic vassalage—the fate of India's rulers that played out much earlier. Several provisions of these treaties caused long-standing bitterness and humiliation among the Chinese: extraterritoriality (meaning that in a dispute with a Chinese person, a Westerner had the right to be tried in a court under the laws of his own country), customs regulation, and the right to station foreign warships in Chinese waters, including its navigable rivers.
Jane E. Elliott criticized the allegation that China refused to modernize or was unable to defeat Western armies as simplistic, noting that China embarked on a massive military modernization in the late 1800s after several defeats, buying weapons from Western countries and manufacturing their own at arsenals, such as the Hanyang Arsenal during the Boxer Rebellion. In addition, Elliott questioned the claim that Chinese society was traumatized by the Western victories, as many Chinese peasants (90% of the population at that time) living outside the concessions continued about their daily lives, uninterrupted and without any feeling of "humiliation".[43]
Historians have judged the Qing dynasty's vulnerability and weakness to foreign imperialism in the 19th century to be based mainly on its maritime naval weakness while it achieved military success against westerners on land, the historian Edward L. Dreyer said that "China’s nineteenth-century humiliations were strongly related to her weakness and failure at sea. At the start of the Opium War, China had no unified navy and no sense of how vulnerable she was to attack from the sea; British forces sailed and steamed wherever they wanted to go......In the Arrow War (1856-1860), the Chinese had no way to prevent the Anglo-French expedition of 1860 from sailing into the Gulf of Zhili and landing as near as possible to Beijing. Meanwhile, new but not exactly modern Chinese armies suppressed the midcentury rebellions, bluffed Russia into a peaceful settlement of disputed frontiers in Central Asia, and defeated the French forces on land in the Sino-French War (1884-1885). But the defeat of the fleet, and the resulting threat to steamship traffic to Taiwan, forced China to conclude peace on unfavorable terms."[44]
During the
The Qing dynasty forced Russia to hand over disputed territory in Ili in the Treaty of Saint Petersburg (1881), in what was widely seen by the west as a diplomatic victory for the Qing.[45] Russia acknowledged that Qing China potentially posed a serious military threat.[46] Mass media in the west during this era portrayed China as a rising military power due to its modernization programs and as a major threat to the western world, invoking fears that China would successfully conquer western colonies like Australia.[47]
The British observer Demetrius Charles de Kavanagh Boulger suggested a British-Chinese alliance to check Russian expansion in Central Asia.
During the Ili crisis when Qing China threatened to go to war against Russia over the Russian occupation of Ili, the British officer Charles George Gordon was sent to China by Britain to advise China on military options against Russia should a potential war break out between China and Russia.[48]
The Russians observed the Chinese building up their arsenal of modern weapons during the Ili crisis, the Chinese bought thousands of rifles from Germany.[49] In 1880, massive amounts of military equipment and rifles were shipped via boats to China from Antwerp as China purchased torpedoes, artillery, and 260,260 modern rifles from Europe.[50]
The Russian military observer D. V. Putiatia visited China in 1888 and found that in Northeastern China (Manchuria) along the Chinese-Russian border, the Chinese soldiers were potentially able to become adept at "European tactics" under certain circumstances, and the Chinese soldiers were armed with modern weapons like Krupp artillery, Winchester carbines, and Mauser rifles.[51]
Compared to Russian controlled areas, more benefits were given to the Muslim Kirghiz on the Chinese controlled areas. Russian settlers fought against the Muslim nomadic Kirghiz, which led the Russians to believe that the Kirghiz would be a liability in any conflict against China. The Muslim Kirghiz were sure that in an upcoming war, that China would defeat Russia.[52]
Russian sinologists, the Russian media, threat of internal rebellion, the pariah status inflicted by the Congress of Berlin, the negative state of the Russian economy all led Russia to concede and negotiate with China in St Petersburg, and return most of Ili to China.[53]
The rise of Japan since the Meiji Restoration as an imperial power led to further subjugation of China. In a dispute over China's longstanding claim of suzerainty in Korea, war broke out between China and Japan, resulting in humiliating defeat for the Chinese. By the Treaty of Shimonoseki (1895), China was forced to recognize effective Japanese rule of Korea and Taiwan was ceded to Japan until its recovery in 1945 at the end of the WWII by the Republic of China.
China's defeat at the hands of
China continued to be divided up into these spheres until the United States, which had no sphere of influence, grew alarmed at the possibility of its businessmen being excluded from Chinese markets. In 1899, Secretary of State John Hay asked the major powers to agree to a policy of equal trading privileges. In 1900, several powers agreed to the U.S.-backed scheme, giving rise to the "Open Door" policy, denoting freedom of commercial access and non-annexation of Chinese territory. In any event, it was in the European powers' interest to have a weak but independent Chinese government. The privileges of the Europeans in China were guaranteed in the form of treaties with the Qing government. In the event that the Qing government totally collapsed, each power risked losing the privileges that it already had negotiated.
The erosion of Chinese sovereignty and seizures of land from Chinese by foreigners contributed to a spectacular anti-foreign outbreak in June 1900, when the "
The correspondent Douglas Story observed Chinese troops in 1907 and praised their abilities and military skill.[54]
Extraterritorial jurisdiction was abandoned by the United Kingdom and the United States in 1943. Chiang Kai-shek forced the French to hand over all their concessions back to China control after World War II. Foreign political control over leased parts of China ended with the incorporation of Hong Kong and the small Portuguese territory of Macau into the People's Republic of China in 1997 and 1999 respectively.
U.S. imperialism in Asia
Some Americans in the 19th century advocated for the annexation of Taiwan from China.[55][56] Taiwanese aborigines often attacked and massacred shipwrecked western sailors.[57][58][59][60] In 1867, during the Rover incident, Taiwanese aborigines attacked shipwrecked American sailors, killing the entire crew.[61] They subsequently defeated a retaliatory expedition by the American military and killed another American during the battle.[62]
As the United States emerged as a new imperial power in the Pacific and Asia, one of the two oldest Western imperialist powers in the regions, Spain, was finding it increasingly difficult to maintain control of territories it had held in the regions since the 16th century. In 1896, a widespread revolt against Spanish rule broke out in the Philippines. Meanwhile, the recent string of U.S. territorial gains in the Pacific posed an even greater threat to Spain's remaining colonial holdings.
As the U.S. continued to expand its economic and military power in the Pacific, it declared war against Spain in 1898. During the Spanish–American War, U.S. Admiral Dewey destroyed the Spanish fleet at Manila and U.S. troops landed in the Philippines. Spain later agreed by treaty to cede the Philippines in Asia and Guam in the Pacific. In the Caribbean, Spain ceded Puerto Rico to the U.S. The war also marked the end of Spanish rule in Cuba, which was to be granted nominal independence but remained heavily influenced by the U.S. government and U.S. business interests. One year following its treaty with Spain, the U.S. occupied the small Pacific outpost of Wake Island.
The Filipinos, who assisted U.S. troops in fighting the Spanish, wished to establish an independent state and, on June 12, 1898, declared independence from Spain. In 1899, fighting between the Filipino nationalists and the U.S. broke out; it took the U.S. almost fifteen years to fully subdue the insurgency. The U.S. sent 70,000 troops and suffered thousands of casualties. The Filipinos insurgents, however, suffered considerably higher casualties than the Americans. Most casualties in the war were civilians dying primarily from disease and famine.[63]
U.S. counter-insurgency operations in rural areas often included scorched earth tactics which involved burning down villages and concentrating civilians into camps known as "protected zones". The execution of U.S. soldiers taken prisoner by the Filipinos led to disproportionate reprisals by American forces.
The Moro Muslims fought against the Americans in the Moro Rebellion.
In 1914,
World War I: changes in imperialism
World War I brought about the fall of several empires in Europe. This had repercussions around the world. The defeated
Japan
In 1641, all Westerners were thrown out of Japan. For the next two centuries, Japan was free from Western contact, except for at the port of
Japan's freedom from Western contact ended on 8 July 1853, when
The Meiji Restoration of 1868 led to administrative overhaul, deflation and subsequent rapid economic development. Japan had limited natural resources of her own and sought both overseas markets and sources of raw materials, fuelling a drive for imperial conquest which began with the defeat of China in 1895.
Taiwan, ceded by
The Empire of Japan and the
Japan was now one of the most powerful forces in the Far East, and in 1914, it entered World War I on the side of the Allies, seizing German-occupied Kiaochow and subsequently demanding Chinese acceptance of Japanese political influence and territorial acquisitions (Twenty-One Demands, 1915). Mass protests in Peking in 1919 which sparked widespread Chinese nationalism, coupled with Allied (and particularly U.S.) opinion led to Japan's abandonment of most of the demands and Kiaochow's 1922 return to China. Japan received the German territory from the Treaty of Versailles.
Tensions with China increased over the 1920s, and in 1931 Japanese
After World War II
Decolonisation and the rise of nationalism in Asia
In the aftermath of World War II, European colonies, controlling more than one billion people throughout the world, still ruled most of the Middle East, South East Asia, and the Indian Subcontinent. However, the image of European pre-eminence was shattered by the wartime Japanese occupations of large portions of British, French, and Dutch territories in the Pacific. The destabilisation of European rule led to the rapid growth of nationalist movements in Asia—especially in Indonesia, Malaya, Burma, and French Indochina (Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos).
The war, however, only accelerated forces already in existence undermining Western imperialism in Asia. Throughout the colonial world, the processes of urbanisation and capitalist investment created professional merchant classes that emerged as new Westernised elites. While imbued with Western political and economic ideas, these classes increasingly grew to resent their unequal status under European rule.
British in India and the Middle East
In India, the westward movement of Japanese forces towards Bengal during World War II had led to major concessions on the part of British authorities to Indian nationalist leaders. In 1947, the United Kingdom, devastated by war and embroiled in an economic crisis at home, granted
Following the end of the war, nationalists in Indonesia demanded complete independence from the Netherlands. A brutal conflict ensued, and finally, in 1949, through United Nations mediation, the Dutch East Indies achieved independence, becoming the new nation of Indonesia. Dutch imperialism moulded this new multi-ethnic state comprising roughly 3,000 islands of the Indonesian archipelago with a population at the time of over 100 million.
The end of Dutch rule opened up latent tensions between the roughly 300 distinct ethnic groups of the islands, with the major ethnic fault line being between the Javanese and the non-Javanese.
Dutch New Guinea was under the Dutch administration until 1962 (see also West New Guinea dispute).
United States in Asia
In the Philippines, the U.S. remained committed to its previous pledges to grant the islands their independence, and the Philippines became the first of the Western-controlled Asian colonies to be granted independence post-World War II. However, the Philippines remained under pressure to adopt a political and economic system similar to the U.S.
This aim was greatly complicated by the rise of new political forces. During the war, the Hukbalahap (People's Army), which had strong ties to the Communist Party of the Philippines (PKP), fought against the Japanese occupation of the Philippines and won strong popularity among many sectors of the Filipino working class and peasantry. In 1946, the PKP participated in elections as part of the Democratic Alliance. However, with the onset of the Cold War, its growing political strength drew a reaction from the ruling government and the United States, resulting in the repression of the PKP and its associated organizations. In 1948, the PKP began organizing an armed struggle against the government and continued U.S. military presence. In 1950, the PKP created the People's Liberation Army (Hukbong Mapagpalaya ng Bayan), which mobilized thousands of troops throughout the islands. The insurgency lasted until 1956 when the PKP gave up armed struggle.
In 1968, the PKP underwent a split, and in 1969 the
France in Indochina
Post-war resistance to French rule
France remained determined to retain its control of
received independence in 1953. The US recognized the regime in Saigon, and provided the French military effort with military aid.Meanwhile, in Vietnam, the French war against the Viet Minh continued for nearly eight years. The French were gradually worn down by guerrilla and jungle fighting. The turning point for France occurred at
List of European colonies in Asia
British colonies in East Asia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia:
- British Burma (1824–1948, merged with Indiaby the British from 1886 to 1937)
- British Ceylon (1815–1948, now Sri Lanka)
- British Hong Kong (1842–1997)
- Colonial India (includes the territory of present-day India, Pakistan and Bangladesh)
- Danish India (1696–1869)
- Swedish Parangipettai (1733)
- British India(1613–1947)
- British East India Company (1757–1858)
- British Raj (1858–1947)
French colonies in South and Southeast Asia:
- French India (1769–1954)
- French Indochina (1887–1953), including:
- French Laos(1893–1953)
- French Cambodia (1863–1953)
- Annam (French protectorate), Cochinchina, Tonkin (now Vietnam) (1883–1953)
Dutch, British, Spanish, Portuguese colonies and Russian territories in Asia:
- Dutch India (1605–1825)
- Dutch Bengal
- Dutch Ceylon (1656–1796)
- Portuguese Ceylon (1505–1658)
- Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) – Dutch colony from 1602 to 1949 (included Dutch New Guinea until 1962)
- Portuguese India (1510–1961)
- Portuguese Macau – Portuguese colony, the first European colony in China (1557–1999)
- Portuguese Timor (1702–1975, now East Timor)
- Malaya (now part of Malaysia):
- Portuguese Malacca (1511–1641)
- Dutch Malacca (1641–1824)
- British Malaya, included:
- Straits Settlements (1826–1946)
- Federated Malay States (1895–1946)
- Unfederated Malay States (1885–1946)
- Federation of Malaya (under British rule, 1948–1963)
- British Borneo (now part of Malaysia), including:
- Labuan (1848–1946)
- North Borneo (1882–1941)
- Crown Colony of North Borneo (1946–1963)
- Crown Colony of Sarawak (1946–1963)
- British Brunei (1888–1984) (British protectorate)
- Treaty of Peking(1860)
- Philippines:
- Spanish Philippines(1565–1898, 3rd longest European occupation in Asia, 333 years),
- Insular Government of the Philippine Islands and Commonwealth of the Philippines, United States colony (1898–1946)
- Spanish Formosa (1626–1642)
- Dutch Formosa (1624–1662)
- Mandatory Iraq (1920–1932) (British protectorate)
- Kingdom of Iraq (1932–1958)
- Mandatory Palestine (1920–1948) (British Mandate)
- Emirate of Transjordan (1921–1946) (British protectorate)
- Sheikhdom of Kuwait (1899–1961) (British protectorate)
- French Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon(1923–1946)
- Portuguese Oman (1507–1650)
- Muscat and Oman (1892–1971) (British protectorate)
- Trucial States (1820–1971) (British protectorate)
- Aden Protectorate (1869–1963)
- Colony of Aden(1937–1963)
- Federation of South Arabia (1962–1967)
- Protectorate of South Arabia (1963–1967)
Independent states
- Afghanistan – founded by the Anglo-Afghan Treaty of 1919 of the United Kingdom and declared independence in 1919
- Emirate of Afghanistan (1879 - 1919) (British protected state[65])
- China – independent, but within European cultures of influence which were largely limited to the colonised ports except for Manchuria.
- Foreign concessions in China
- Shanghai International Settlement (1863 - 1941)
- Shanghai French Concession (1849 - 1943)
- Concessions in Tianjin(1860 - 1947)
- Iran – in Russian sphere of influence in the north and British in the south
- Mongolia – in Russian sphere of influence and later Soviet controlled
- Thailand – the only independent state in Southeast Asia, but bordered by a British sphere of influence in the north and south and French influence in the northeast and east
- Turkey – successor to the Ottoman Empire in 1923; the Ottoman Empire itself could be considered a colonial empire as it had a protectorate over the Sultanate of Aceh
Notes
- Macao the emporium for all its foreign trade, and to receive all duties on imports; but, by a strange infatuation, the Portuguese government refused, and the decline in Portuguese influence dates from that period.[2]
- ^ In 1819 the standing army consisted of over 7,000 European and 5,000 indigenous troops.[30]
References
Citations
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- ^ Benedetto, Luigi Foscolo (1965). "Marco Polo, Il Milione". Istituto Geografico DeAgostini (in Italian).
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- ISBN 978-955-1266-77-6.
- ISBN 978-81-206-1363-8.
- ^ Rasin Deviyo Archived 2015-12-22 at the Wayback Machine - Chandra Tilake Edirisuriya (Ceylon Today) Accessed 2015-12-13
- ^ Philippine Studies. Ateneo de Manila University Press. 1986. p. 260.
- ^ Brunei, Muzium (1985). Brunei Museum journal. p. 67.
- ^ The Brunei Museum Journal. The Museum. 1986. p. 67.
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- ISBN 978-0-300-05412-5.
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- ^ Robert Nicholl (1975). European Sources for the History of the Sultanate of Brunei in the 16th Century. Muzium Brunei. p. 43.
- ISBN 9780686094326.
- ISBN 978-0-19-821571-4.
- ISBN 978-1-57607-770-2.
- ^ Frederick Albion Ober (1907). Ferdinand Magellan. Harper and brothers. pp. 295–.
brunei kafir spanish.
- ^ Filipino Heritage: The Spanish colonial period (16th century). Manila: Lahing Pilipino Pub. 1977. p. 1083.
- ^ The Criterion. K.Siddique. 1971. p. 51.
- ISBN 978-1-85974-106-1.
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- ^ Tianze Zhang (1934). Sino-Portuguese Trade from 1514 to 1644: A Synthesis of Portuguese and Chinese Sources. Brill Archive. pp. 48–. GGKEY:0671BSWDRPY.
- ^ Tianze Zhang (1934). Sino-Portuguese Trade from 1514 to 1644: A Synthesis of Portuguese and Chinese Sources. Late E. J. Brill Limited. p. 48.
- ^ Tianze Zhang (1934). Sino-Portuguese Trade from 1514 to 1644: A Synthesis of Portuguese and Chinese Sources. Brill Archive. pp. 67–. GGKEY:0671BSWDRPY.
- ^ Tianze Zhang (1934). Sino-Portuguese Trade from 1514 to 1644: A Synthesis of Portuguese and Chinese Sources. Late E. J. Brill Limited. p. 67.
- ISBN 90-71042-44-8
- ^ Klemen, L. "Forgotten Campaign: The Dutch East Indies Campaign 1941-1942".
- ^ ISBN 978-81-313-0034-3.
- ^ "Battle of Wadgaon, Encyclopædia Britannica". Archived from the original on 23 June 2022. Retrieved 23 June 2022.
- ^ Hunter 1907, p. 203.
- ^ Capper (1997), p. 28.
- ^ Trivedi & Allen (2000), p. 30.
- ^ Nayar (2008), p. 64.
- ^ "Empire of the steppe: Russia's colonial experience on the Eurasian frontier". www.international.ucla.edu. Retrieved 2021-08-09.
- ^ Allen F. Chew. An Atlas of Russian History: Eleven Centuries of Changing Borders. Yale University Press, 1967. pp 74.
- ^ "The Great Game, 1856-1907: Russo-British Relations in Central and East Asia | Reviews in History". reviews.history.ac.uk. Retrieved 2021-08-09.
- ^ ISSN 1468-2281.
- ISBN 0761859403
- ISBN 962-996-066-4. Retrieved 2010-06-28.
- ^ PO, Chung-yam (28 June 2013). Conceptualizing the Blue Frontier: The Great Qing and the Maritime World in the Long Eighteenth Century (PDF) (Thesis). Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg. p. 11.
- ISBN 978-0-521-22029-3.
- ISBN 978-0-7914-7742-7.
- ISBN 978-0-7914-7742-7.
- ISBN 978-0-521-22029-3.
- ISBN 978-1-134-25379-1.
- ISBN 978-1-134-25379-1.
- ISBN 978-1-134-25379-1.
- ISBN 978-1-134-25379-1.
- ISBN 978-0-521-22029-3.
- ^ Douglas Story (1907). To-morrow in the East. Chapman & Hall, Limited. pp. 224–.
- ISBN 978-0-7391-1869-6.
- ISBN 978-3-662-48462-3.
- ^ Harris Inwood Martin (1949). The Japanese Demand for Formosa in the Treaty of Shimonoseki, 1895. Stanford Univ. p. 23.
- ^ Ronald Stone Anderson (1946). Formosa Under the Japanese: A Record of Fifty Years' Occupation ... Stanford University. p. 63.
- ISBN 978-0-404-59526-5.
- ISBN 978-1-4094-0120-9.
- ^ Japan Weekly Mail. Jappan Meru Shinbunsha. 1874. pp. 263–.
- ^ The Nation. J.H. Richards. 1889. pp. 256–.
- ^ John M. Gates. "The Pacification of the Philippines". The U.S. Army and Irregular Warfare. wooster.edu. Archived from the original on 2014-06-29. Retrieved 2012-06-05.
- ^ Fall, Street Without Joy, p. 17.
- ^ Onley, The Raj Reconsidered (2009), p. 50.
Sources
- Capper, John (1997). Delhi, the Capital of India. Asian Educational Services. ISBN 978-81-206-1282-2.
- Hunter, Sir William Wilson (1907), A Brief History of the Indian Peoples, Oxford: Clarendon Press, OCLC 464656679
- Nayar, Pramod K. (2008). English Writing and India, 1600–1920: Colonizing Aesthetics. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-134-13150-1.
- Onley, James (March 2009), "The Raj Reconsidered: British India's Informal Empire and Spheres of Influence in Asia and Africa" (PDF), Asian Affairs, 11 (1), archived from the original (PDF) on 9 October 2022, retrieved 16 November 2019
- Trivedi, Harish; Allen, Richard (2000). Literature and Nation. Psychology Press. ISBN 978-0-415-21207-6.
Further reading
- "Asia Reborn: A Continent Rises from the Ravages of Colonialism and War to a New Dynamism" by Prasenjit K. Basu, Publisher: Aleph Book Company
- Panikkar, K. M. (1953). Asia and Western dominance, 1498–1945, by K.M. Panikkar. London: G. Allen and Unwin.
- Ringmar, Erik (2013). Liberal Barbarism: The European Destruction of the Palace of the Emperor of China. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
- Senaka Weeraratna, Repression of Buddhism in Sri Lanka by the Portuguese (1505–1658)