European
Colonialism Models: Sea Empire
Optional: read an article that compares the two East India companies.
The map of the British empire -- notice the differential influence that the British had on the peoples of the areas that today are independent countries -- British influence in language, law, religion, government, and customs.
Read about the role of geography of empire.
Characteristics of the Sea Empires
Trading stations were established for profitable commerce, not for control
of land and labor per se as in the continental empires, and to control critical
ocean passageways for military (naval) dominance.
Spatial Patterns: colonies were scattered along coastlines. Small
islands in the vast oceans were critical for fresh supplies (water and food)
and defense against storms and attack by rival European naval empires.
Countries: The British had the most extensive and specialized
sea empire, but most European powers at one time or another also had sea
empires: Dutch, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Danes, Germans, Swedes. An critical
turning point in sea dominance came in 1588 when the British defeated the
Spanish Armada!
Economically: Europeans traders interacted with
local people for many kinds of goods, e.g., spices, dyes, ivory, tobacco,
metal goods, textiles, feathers, slaves. The East
India Company produced opium in India in the 1830s. The Chinese required silver
for tea, but when Britain ran a trade deficit, it tried to use opium from its
Indian colony to pay for tea. The Chinese resisted this British trade, which
resulted in the Opium War (1839-1842). After winning the war, Britain
established five ports, including Hong Kong (for 150 years, returned to China in
1997) and Shanghai.
Locations: sea empires
were established in many places, such as, the East and West Indies, Brazil,
India, West Africa.
Local population had little initial contact with Europeans; later, missionaries
arrived.
The result: a scattered, multi-nation, ocean-based commercial
empires
The transformation of a sea empire in Africa.
The sea empires of Africa, and elsewhere, were gradually organized into territorial colonies. Here is what the Belgium monarchy did along the Congo River. Between 1880-1920, King Leopold of Belgium carved out an empire in central Africa. Half of the Congolese population perished during Leopold's rule. King Leopold never set foot in Africa, but from his palace in Brussels, he accumulated a fortune that in today's value would be worth $1.1 billion. Wild rubber, ivory, livestock, and free military service represented the wealth. To maintain control over the Congolese, Belgium troops burned villages for not supplying their quota of rubber or for fighting back against their exploitation. The right hand was cut off each person they killed in order to show that they had not "wasted" a bullet. If soldiers used their weapons for some other purpose, they would cut off the hands of living villagers to account for the spend ammunition.
King Leopold and the Belgium colonial officials went to extraordinary lengths to erase the potentially incriminating evidence. Before handing over the colony (for a hefty price!) in 1908, the monarch ordered the destruction of administrative records stored in Brussels. The 1904-1905 Commission of Inquiry into torture was sealed in the archives until the 1980s. School textbooks in Belgium indicate that King Leopold was a benign ruler whose stewardship of the Congo was guided by humanitarian concerns.
Source: Adam Hochschild. King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998.
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Created by Ingolf Vogeler on 1 February 1996; last revised on 11/05/08.