Colonial & Imperial encounters

AFRICA
French in Algeria (19th century)
Mobile columns of French soldiers seized Arab flocks and herds, destroyed crops and orchards, looted granaries and burned down villages. The Algerians sought shelter in caves. The troops set fires at the mouths of the caves and asphyxiated hundreds of men, women and children. Said Bugeaud in justification: “We have never got anything from these people except through force...” By 1847, French troop levels had risen to 108,000 - a third of the entire French army.

Scramble 1- Congo under Leopold II

In 1885, King Leopold II declared the Congo Free State (as large as the whole of Europe) to be his personal fiefdom and set about enriching himself and Belgium in earnest. Leopold issued a decree in 1891 giving himself the monopoly on the trade in rubber and ivory. The same decree obliged natives to supply these products without payment. Those who refused or failed to supply enough had their villages burned down, their children murdered and their hands cut off
[Picture shows natives forced to hold up severed hands of their fellows]

2. Scramble 2- West Africa
The British launched a full-scale expedition against the Asante under Sir Francis Scott. It entered Kumasi in January 1896 without firing a shot. Robert Baden-Powell, another commander, received an envoy from King Prempeh offering unconditional surrender.  The British, however, decided to humiliate him publicly: they arrested him and his whole family. Prempeh and his mother were forced to crawl on all fours up to the British officers sitting on crates of biscuit tins in a posture of submission. This crawling order was widely illustrated in the British press. [Pic shows Prempeh & mother humiliated]

3. Scramble 3- Southern Africa

[Pic shows Cecil Rhodes plaque over a pile of skulls]
Cecil Rhodes, with the connivance of British colonial officials and missionaries, secured a monopolistic concession from Lobengula. The British promised him £100 sterling each month in perpetuity. They also agreed to provide him 1000 breech-loading rifles and to deliver a steamboat with guns on the Zambesi river. In return, it was stipulated (verbally, not in writing) that the whites would be subjects of Lobengula, not dig near towns and would defend the Ndebele in war.
Lobengula soon found that the British had no intention of abiding by any agreement.

4. Herero massacre 1904
German forces encircled the 80,000 Hereros and shot them indiscriminately. Many died clinging to the poisoned or closed wells. Those who tried to give themselves up were shot or bayoneted. The General wrote in his account of the war:
“The death rattles of the dying and their insane screams of fury resound in the sublime silence of infinity.”

CHINA
China- History & the Opium Wars
[Pic shows the British drugging the Chinese with opium, 19th century]
In 1841, a British force of 2400 men attacked Canton and secured a ‘ransom’ of $6 million. In 1842, the British occupied Shanghai, took Chinkiang and advanced to the outskirts of Nanking. The Ch’ing court surrendered and under the Treaty of Nanking (August 1842) had to cede Hong Kong to Britain, to open 5 ports to British residence and trade and pay an indemnity of $21 million as war reparations and for the confiscated opium.
“Suppose people from another country carried opium for sale to England and seduced your people into buying and smoking it. You would certainly hate it and be deeply upset...”
            ______ Lin Tse-Hsu 1838 (appointed to eradicate the opium trade writing to Queen Victoria)
 

US history 1800-30
In 1828, President Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal bill forced 70,000 Indians east of the Mississippi river westward. Illinois Chief Black Hawk surrendered with the words:
“We told them to leave us alone; they followed us like the snake. They poisoned us by their touch... The white men do not scalp the head but they do worse - they poison the heart... Farewell, my nation!...”

US history 1830-50
The 17,000 Cherokees were rounded up and marched westwards in batches - many dying of sickness, drought and heat. They arrived by the icy waters of the Mississippi in mid-winter. Hundreds of the sick and dying were left lying on the freezing grounds.

US Slavery
The Founding Fathers, all of British stock, were rich landowners and merchants. All were slaveholders. Eight of the first nine US Presidents kept slaves. In 1790, 500,000 slaves provided labour and the South was able to produce 1000 tons of cotton each year. By 1860 the slave population was 4 million and the cotton output had risen to a million tons.

LATIN AMERICA
The Beginnings 19th century

IMPERIALISM TODAY (1950+)

Imperial mindset
- overview
- driving forces

To add: Suez (1956), Malaya Guyana, Kenya (Mau Mau) - all in the 1950s
Ref: Newsinger's Blood never dried

Vietnam War 1 - History & Commentary
[The iconic picture (left) shows US troops fleeing Saigon, April 1975. It was taken not from the American embassy, but from the roof of a nearby apartment complex.]
Most studies of the war in S E Asia acknowledge that 4 times the tonnage of bombs was dropped on Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos than that used by the US in all operations during W War II.  The U.S. deployed some 500,000 ground troops and dropped more than 6m tons of bombs. The U.S. aggression lasted more than 12 years. 58,000 Americans and 2-3 million Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians lost their lives.

Vietnam War 2 - more atrocities
Vietnam War 3 - Fall of Saigon

Iraq
- Iraq war 1990
- 12 year sanctions
New Labour - Blair's views
Sept 11 (2001) - the turning point
- Afghanistan 2001
-Iraq war 2003 +
- 'War on Terror'
- Torture (Guantanamo, abu G, Bagram, ex rendition)