Explain the bases of European hegemony in the world of the nineteenth century. How did the rest of the world react to European imperialism? What are the ongoing effects of this period of European dominance today?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Answers will vary but correct responses should include: The conflict between Britain and China over the opium trade showed how the balance of power in the world had shifted during the early stages of industrialization. For most of recorded history—for most of this book—China had been the source of most world-shaping technological innovations and the world's greatest power. Britain, by contrast, had spent most of history on the edge of Eurasia—literally, a marginal part of the world—absorbing influences from outside rather than radiating its own influence to the rest of the world. Now the positions were reversed. The change of power occurred in the context of a new feature of global history in the nineteenth century: the rise—beginning, like industrialization, in Western Europe and rapidly coming to include Russia, the United States, and Japan—of enormous empires that spread across the globe and virtually carved up the world among them. Reacting to European imperialism, regions deployed industrially equipped armies and navies to control production of key commodities. The combination of land and sea empires became commonplace. Over the nineteenth century, demographic, industrial, and technological strides transformed Europe's place in the world. The result was a period of European world dominance. By 1900, European powers ruled much of the world, and European political influence and business imperialism guided or controlled much of the rest. Already, however, Japan and the United States had overtaken many European countries in industrial strength and in their capacity for war. In the twentieth century, European empires would collapse as spectacularly and as quickly as they had arisen. Meanwhile, even under imperialism, people continued to make their own history, thanks to systems of indirect rule and the empires' reliance on collaborators. Still, the nineteenth remains a century of "European miracle": the sudden, startling climax of long, faltering commercial outthrust, imperial initiatives, and scientific progress. The new expanding empires were of immense importance in global history as arenas of cultural exchange that still has effects today.