Page 138 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol III

imperialism 957

lic who followed the accounts of Stanley and Livingstone military superiority made these wars largely futile ges-
avidly consumed serial stories and novels with imperial tures. Millennial movements (apocalyptic antimodernist
themes. The English writers Rudyard Kipling, H. Rider religious movements) were in part a reaction to this supe-
Haggard, and their counterparts outside Britain gave riority, with visions of religious faith triumphing over
readers an exciting version of the imperial mission: that technology, guiding movements among the Sioux in the
even if most people could not take part, readers could United States, the Boxers in China, and the Mahdi’s jihad
feel part of a greater project. Kipling’s poem “The White (holy war) in the Sudan.Although these movements were
Man’s Burden” was aimed at a U.S. audience, calling on failures in the short term, they did lead to moral ques-
people to “send forth the best ye breed” to govern Fili- tions about the imperial mission, and the vast number of
pinos “half-devil and half-child” (Kipling 1899). Adven- natives massacred by European firepower was soon mir-
ture appealed to men who were increasingly desk bound rored in the mud of Flanders in northern Europe as a
and out of touch with nature after the emergence of the generation of young European men died in the trenches
white-collar middle class after the Industrial Revolution. of World War I.
Imperialism was a chance to reorder the world in a way Large numbers of colonial native troops were used by
that made sense, creating a world in which men were the Allies in World War I, with many serving in France.
active and women were subordinated. However, women The horror of war and the squalid conditions that the
also found opportunities to fight for equality, using the troops served in led many people to question the sup-
treatment of women by colonized peoples as a way of posed superiority of Western society. Movements such as
equating women’s rights with greater civilization. the Indian National Congress had emerged before the
The English naturalist Charles Darwin’s ideas lent cre- war but now took on new urgency. Indian nationalist
dence to philosophies of competitive social hierarchies Mohandas Gandhi’s campaign for Indian self-rule, Hind
that weed out the weak and reward the strong. Social Suaraj, was based on the perception that although Brit-
Darwinism justified imperialism by twisting Darwin’s ain may claim noble goals, in essence racism defeats
theories of adaptation and natural selection to human these goals. Gandhi’s genius lay in passive resistance and
societies. By this logic European nation-states competed the realization that the West’s own values could be turned
with one another for colonies, and subject peoples were against imperialism. In India and elsewhere claims to
the victims of natural selection, not fit to govern them- self-rule, freedom of expression, and racial equality be-
selves. Some of the more horrific brutalities inflicted in came stronger as the ideals that Europeans professed
Africa were justified by this logic, leading to massacres took hold.
and forced labor on a massive scale. Nationalism and If World War I rattled the structure of imperialism,
race were increasingly blended, and the idea of races as World War II was a finishing blow.A war fought against
Darwinian species competing with one another took the ultimate form of racial nationalism in the name of
hold, driving Europe to more aggressive militarism freedom led to the overwhelming desire for independ-
before World War I. ence. India was the first to achieve independence,
although with traumatic consequences for those people
caught on the wrong side in the division between Hindu
Anticolonial Movements India and Muslim Pakistan. Similar results and conse-
Although resistance to imperialism had existed from the quences came with decolonization in other parts of the
beginning, a more articulate version emerged during the world as tribal, ethnic, and religious tensions reemerged
twentieth century. People had fought wars against impe- amid frequently bloody struggles for independence
rialism during the late nineteenth century, but European against colonial powers.These struggles merged with the