Drivers & Technology
These three factors—natural resources, new markets, and low-wage labor—were the main drivers of this type of imperialism.
What is economic imperialism?
Most people in Asia and Africa originally practiced this type of farming, raising just enough food to live on.
What is subsistence farming?
Colonies that provided raw materials to industrial nations, often in exchange for manufactured goods, were known as these.
What are export economies?
This African region got its name from the French trading posts set up to acquire tusks and enslaved people.
What is the Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire)?
As urban populations grew, the demand for food in industrialized nations was met by imports made possible by this technology.
What is refrigeration?
Before railroads, transportation from colonial interiors to the coast was limited to roads or this, which was often unusable in rainy seasons.
What is water
Imperialist powers forced subject nations to switch to these crops, grown for commercial value rather than local use.
What are cash crops?
In 1721, Britain's Parliament banned textiles made of this from India to protect the native wool industry.
What is cotton?
Originating in West Africa, this product was used for candle making and as a lubricant for European factory machinery.
What is palm oil?
The push for cash crops led to this, a lack of agricultural diversity where only one type of crop is grown.
What are monocultures
This De Beers founder dreamed of a railroad stretching from Cape Town, South Africa, to Cairo, Egypt.
Who is Cecil Rhodes?
This new technology, along with refrigerated ships, allowed countries like Argentina and Uruguay to export beef globally.
What is compression refrigeration?
During the American Civil War, this country benefited most from the global cotton shortage by ramping up its own production.
What is Egypt?
This mineral was produced in Mexico, while Chile became a major producer of copper for telegraph cables.
What is silver
The clearing of large forest areas for farming in developing nations took a heavy toll on the climate and this biological factor.
What is biodiversity
Developed in 1870, these became practical for long distances once more efficient steam engines were created.
What are steamships
This fertilizer, made of bat and seabird excrement, was so desirable that U.S. President Millard Fillmore made its import a priority.
What is guano?
In 1839, Charles Goodyear developed this process, which eliminated the problem of rubber softening in heat and hardening in cold.
What is vulcanization?
By 1891, this mining company accounted for 90 percent of the world’s diamond production.
What is De Beers Mining Company?
Growing only one crop in an area for long periods has the negative effect of rapidly depleting this.
What is the soil's natural fertility?
Invented in 1832, this technology allowed news to travel instantaneously and often followed railroad routes.
What is the electric telegraph?
Between 1840 and 1880, millions of tons of guano were dug by hand in Peru and Chile, often by this type of "bonded" laborer.
Who are indentured Chinese or Polynesian laborers?
In the Amazon, these powerful individuals forced indigenous people into virtual slavery to meet rubber quotas.
Who are rubber barons?
Cecil Rhodes’ policies as Prime Minister of the Cape Colony paved the way for this 20th-century system of racial segregation.
What is apartheid
Today, many former colonies must import basic food because their land was badly damaged by the historical development of these.
What are monocultures?