Transcription
Well, let's start Unit 6 with a banger and talk about all the new ideologies that led to a second and distinct wave of imperialism during the period 1750 to 1900. So if you're ready to get them brain cows milked, let's get to it.
Let's begin, as is proper, with a little context. Hopefully, you'll recall that during the last period, several Western European states got their power pants on and set their sights on building maritime empires, which is to say sea-based empires. They focused on dominating the Indian Ocean trade and then colonizing the crap out of the Americas.
Now, in this current period, I'd like to tell you that Europeans were like, "Hey, you remember all that Enlightenment stuff? Yeah, all those ideas about how people were born with liberty and by rights ought to govern themselves? You think all our worldwide domination of people who don't want to be dominated kind of contradicts all that stuff?" That's hilarious! You almost had me. No, in this period, imperial powers went ahead and embarked on a new wave of imperialism. While God, golden glory were still very much motivating them, as it did in the previous wave, there are a few more nuanced motivations for imperialism during this period.
I'm going to introduce you to four major ideologies that arose in part because of the Industrial Revolution. But before I do, let me just mention that if you need help getting an A in your class and a five on your exam in May, then you might want to check out my AP World Himler review guide. It's got exclusive whole unit review videos that are not here on YouTube, guides to follow along, practice questions, and full-length practice exams and answer keys for every dang bit of it. So you know, if that's something you're into, check the link in the description.
Okay, so the first ideology that motivated the second wave of imperialism is called nationalism, which describes a sense of commonality among a people based on shared language, religion, and social customs. That's often linked with a desire for self-rule within a territory. Now that is a massive honking change, so let me try to explain it a little. You see, prior to this period, generally speaking, people across the world often understood themselves as subjects of a sovereign, like a king or queen or emperor or sultan or whatever.
But in this period, thanks to the spread of Enlightenment ideas and industrialization, people's loyalties were becoming more and more linked to their own people, which is to say their nation. I don't think I can overstate the massive influence of nationalism on the historical developments in this time period. Within Europe, the unification of Italy and then Germany were the results of nationalistic desires of people who wanted to live in a consolidated state of their own.
As nationalism took hold of various states, that threw a metric buttload of fuel onto imperial ventures during this period. And why? Well, because nationalism says, "We're a people, and we love our history and culture and we want to be united." But it's not that huge of a leap between that good part of nationalism and the dark underbelly, which says, "Yeah, we're pretty much better than all you other chumps."
So, nationalistic impulses led imperial states into a bitter rivalry to claim larger and larger empires across the world because that's how you achieved great power status in that age.
So now let's move on to the second ideology that drove imperialism during this period, namely scientific racism. And you know that's exactly what it sounds like. By definition, this is the idea that humans can be hierarchically ranked in distinct biological classes based on race. Now, of course, if you've been with me since Unit 4, you'll know that racist arguments for colonization are not new.
But what's new about scientific racism is the science part. "Hey guys, we all know that white people are the best, but do you think there's any way that we can use science to prove it?" So prior to this period, Europeans still divided the world into us and them, but the division was more religious in nature. We were the Christians, and they were all the non-Christian heathens worshiping other gods.
But scientific racism took this division into the secular realm and attempted to classify humanity according to race, which you might be surprised to hear was a classification that they just made up. So scientific racists developed various practices to justify the superiority of the white race above all others. For example, the pseudo-science of phrenology was the study of the shape and size of human skulls.
To be fair, phrenologists were definitely scientifically rigorous about their studies, but their conclusions were... questionable. They decided that since the skulls of white people were, on average, larger than the skulls of other races, that proved the superiority of the white race. That means that the imperial projects of white Europeans into the lands of what they call the "child races" were altogether justified.
And I know this is feeling a little bleak, but I still need to introduce you to the third ideology that motivated the new imperialism during this period, and it's called social Darwinism. Now, maybe you've heard of biological Darwinism; it was the brainchild of boy Charles Darwin, who argued that the species currently in existence developed and evolved from lower life forms over a long period of time through the process of natural selection.
Basically, Darwin's theory emphasized that certain species survived and grew more populous precisely because they were better adapted to their environment. In other words, the rule of the biological world was this: only the fittest survive. Now social Darwinists looked at this biological theory and grew a question mark over their head. "I wonder," said they, "if this also explains how human societies develop?"
Spoiler alert: their answer to that question was a big fat heck yes. That reasoning went like this: if only the fittest survive and thrive in nature, then applied to human society, that must mean that Western industrial societies have proven that their ways are best suited for the current global environment. After all, industrial imperial states were getting stupid rich and all kinds of powerful on the world stage.
So in their minds, whatever they were doing must be the fittest way to survive. And if the strong eat the weak in nature, then why shouldn't strong nations eat weak nations?
Finally, the fourth ideology that contributed to this new imperialism was known as the civilizing mission, which describes a sense of duty Western societies possessed in order to bring the glories of their civilizations to quote-unquote lower civilizations. They understood themselves as having won the Darwinian right to colonized lands in order to convert peoples to Christianity.
Along with that, some imperial powers reorganized colonial governments according to Western models, and there was a significant effort to impose Western-style education on many colonial populations, which also aimed to root out or suppress indigenous language and culture among the colonized people.
So put all these ideologies in a pot and, baby, you got a stew going! And that stew smells exactly like the second wave of imperialism.
We'll look at exactly how that took place in the next video. Okay, click here to keep reviewing for Unit 6, and click here to grab my AP World Himler review guide, which has everything you need to get an A in your class and a five on your exam in May.
I'll catch you on the flip-flop. I'm L out.