WHY EMPIRE?
FIGHTING BACK
ECONOMIC GRIP
ON THE MOVE
CONNECTIONS
100
Misapplied survival-of-the-fittest theory used to justify conquering other peoples.
What is Social Darwinism? — MC TIP: Pseudoscience dressed as biology. It made conquest look inevitable.
100
1857 uprising of Indian soldiers that ended East India Company rule.
What is the Sepoy Mutiny (Indian Rebellion)? — MC TIP: Britain takes direct control afterward. That is the Raj.
100
Growing a single export crop for the world market.
What is a cash crop or monoculture economy? — MC TIP: One crop means total exposure to one price. Fragile by design.
100
Laborers bound by contract to work a set number of years, often replacing enslaved workers.
What are indentured servants? — MC TIP: Slavery ends, coerced labor does not. The system just changes shape.
100
Communities where migrants preserved their language and culture abroad.
What are ethnic enclaves? — MC TIP: Chinatowns and Little Italies. Cultural continuity inside a new society.
200
Poem and idea framing empire as a duty to civilize others.
What is the White Man's Burden? — MC TIP: The civilizing mission. Moral cover for economic motives.
200
1899 to 1901 anti-foreign uprising in China.
What is the Boxer Rebellion? — MC TIP: Crushed by an eight-nation force. It showed how weak the Qing had become.
200
Wars that forced China to accept the British drug trade.
What are the Opium Wars? — MC TIP: Britain had a trade deficit with China and used opium and force to reverse it.
200
1840s famine that pushed millions out of Ireland.
What is the Irish Potato Famine? — MC TIP: A push factor. Know push versus pull cold.
200
Canal opened in 1869 that dramatically shortened the Europe-to-Asia route.
What is the Suez Canal? — MC TIP: Britain's later seizure of it is a textbook case of strategic imperialism.
300
Rapid European seizure of African territory after 1880.
What is the Scramble for Africa? — MC TIP: Ninety percent of Africa taken in about thirty years. The speed is the story.
300
1896 battle where Ethiopia defeated an invading European army.
What is the Battle of Adwa? — MC TIP: Ethiopia and Liberia stay independent. Adwa is why.
300
Rubber-producing colony run with extreme brutality as Leopold II's personal possession.
What is the Congo Free State? — MC TIP: Owned by a king personally, not by Belgium. That detail gets tested.
300
1882 American law barring one specific national group from immigrating.
What is the Chinese Exclusion Act? — MC TIP: Nativist backlash. Migration produces resistance in the receiving country.
300
Crop Britain pushed India to grow for export, often at the expense of food production.
What is cotton (or opium)? — MC TIP: Export crops displacing food crops is a direct cause of colonial famine.
400
1884 to 1885 meeting where European powers divided Africa with no Africans present.
What is the Berlin Conference? — MC TIP: Borders drawn for European convenience. The cause of lasting conflict.
400
Southern African kingdom that destroyed a British column at Isandlwana in 1879.
What is the Zulu Kingdom? — MC TIP: Resistance could win battles. Industrial supply lines usually won the wars.
400
Right allowing foreigners in China to be tried under their own laws, not Chinese law.
What is extraterritoriality? — MC TIP: A core term of the unequal treaties. Sovereignty surrendered without conquest.
400
1901 policy restricting non-European migration to a Pacific nation.
What is the White Australia Policy? — MC TIP: Same nativist pattern as the U.S. Recognize it across countries.
400
1898 confrontation between Britain and France in Sudan that nearly caused war.
What is the Fashoda Incident? — MC TIP: Imperial competition raising European tensions. It points straight at World War I.
500
Drug that made European survival in tropical Africa possible and opened the interior.
What is quinine? — MC TIP: Medicine as an imperial technology. Along with machine guns and steamships.
500
Chinese civil war led by a man claiming to be Jesus' brother, killing over twenty million.
What is the Taiping Rebellion? — MC TIP: Internal collapse plus external pressure. That combination breaks the Qing.
500
Controlling a region's economy and resources without formally governing it.
What is economic imperialism? — MC TIP: Latin America and China. Local governments stay, foreign powers run the economy.
500
Money migrant workers sent home, which supported families and whole local economies.
What are remittances? — MC TIP: Migration reshaped sending societies too, not just receiving ones.
500
Japan joined the imperial powers by defeating this empire in 1905, the first Asian victory over a European power in modern times.
What is Russia (the Russo-Japanese War)? — MC TIP: Industrialize and you become an imperial power rather than a target. Japan proves it.
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