Imperialism & the Scramble for Africa
This term describes the rapid competition among European powers to gain control of African territory from approximately 1870 to 1914.
What is the Scramble for Africa?
France and Britain nearly came into conflict when their competing African expansion plans met at this Sudanese location.
What is Fashoda?
This medicine made travel into the African interior safer for Europeans by helping treat malaria.
What is quinine?
This American naval officer arrived with warships and pressured Japan to open its ports to the United States.
Who was Commodore Matthew Perry?
This nineteenth-century policy warned European countries against expanding their influence in the Western Hemisphere.
What is the Monroe Doctrine?
By 1900, these were the only two African nations not colonised by European countries.
What are Liberia and Abyssinia?
Besides raw materials, industrial European countries sought these places where they could sell manufactured goods.
What are new markets?
This invention allowed European governments to communicate much more rapidly with distant colonies.
What is the telegraph?
This political transformation helped Japan modernize and Westernize so it could compete with the established world powers.
What is the Meiji Restoration?
An explosion aboard this American battleship helped fuel demands for war with Spain.
What is the USS Maine?
Explain why the Berlin Conference of 1884–85 was important to European imperial expansion.
It established principles governing how European powers could acquire new territories and attempted to regulate imperial competition in Africa
This 1904 diplomatic understanding settled important disputes between Britain and France, including their competing interests in Egypt and Morocco.
What is the Entente Cordiale?
Name two technologies that gave European armies an advantage during imperial expansion.
Breech-loading rifles and the Maxim gun, or other accurate examples supported by the chapter.
Japan fought this empire in 1904–05 and emerged from the conflict with greater international prestige.
What is Russia/the Russian Empire?
This conflict broke out after Filipino nationalists realized that replacing Spanish rule with American control would not give them the independence they expected.
What is the Philippine-American War?
Explain why nationalism encouraged European imperialism in the late nineteenth century.
Imperial possessions became symbols of national strength and prestige. Governments could use overseas expansion to demonstrate their country's power and compete with rival European states.
Compare two arguments used by Jules Ferry and Friedrich Fabri to justify imperialism.
Both connected imperialism to economic needs and national power. Ferry argued that France needed markets, naval bases, and overseas expansion to maintain great-power status, while Fabri argued that Germany needed resources, markets, investment opportunities, military strength, and imperial prestige.
Explain why steam power contributed to the colonization of Africa.
Steam-powered vessels allowed Europeans to travel more reliably along African rivers and transport people, military forces, raw materials, and manufactured goods more efficiently.
Japan joined World War I on the Allied side partly to seize overseas possessions belonging to this European power.
What is Germany?
Name TWO ways control of the Philippines strengthened America's position as a world power.
What are a greater American presence in Asia/the Pacific and increased political, military, economic, or strategic influence overseas?
Explain TWO reasons why industrialization encouraged European imperial expansion.
What are the search for new markets and the search for raw materials/investment opportunities? Industrial production created surplus goods while expanding industries increased demand for resources and profitable investments overseas
Explain why the Boer War helped push Britain away from its policy of “splendid isolation.”
Britain experienced military difficulties and international criticism during the Boer War, leaving the country feeling increasingly isolated while German naval expansion and other strategic threats were growing. These pressures encouraged Britain to seek stronger diplomatic relationships with other powers.
Technological superiority was essential to European imperial expansion." Assess this claim
Technology was extremely important because steamships, quinine, telegraphs, modern rifles, and machine guns made exploration, conquest, communication, and administration easier. However, technology explains how Europeans expanded more effectively rather than fully explaining why they wanted colonies. Economic, strategic, political, and cultural motives therefore remain necessary to explain imperial expansion.
Explain how Western pressure contributed indirectly to Japan's emergence as a world power.
Western pressure exposed Japan's military and technological weakness. Perry's warships helped force Japan to open to American trade, while the unequal treaties demonstrated Japan's vulnerability. Japan responded through modernization, Westernization, industrial development, and stronger armed forces, eventually allowing it to compete with the Western powers.
The United States attempted to remain neutral when World War I began. What major change occurred by April 1917?
The United States declared war on Germany and entered World War I. Wilson subsequently framed American involvement in terms of defending rights and creating a safer international system.