Chapter 17 Vocabulary

Emilio Aguinaldo: was the leader of the Filipino revolt against the United States after the United States defeated Spain in the Spanish American War. His bitter insurrection lasted until 1906.

Richard Burton and John Speke: were English Geographers, who charted the source of the Nile River at Lake Victoria. 

Joseph Arthur de Gobineau (1816-1882): took race as the most important index of human potential and in his four-volume Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races.  Gobineau divided humanity into four main racial groups, each of which had its own peculiar traits.

Sir Robert Clive: defeated the Mughal Empire in numerous engagements culminating in Battle of Plassey in 1757. After Plassey, the Mughals were forced to grant the British such extensive military and economic concessions.

Charles Darwin (1809-1882): was the English biologist who wrote On the Origin of Species, in which he argued that all living species had evolved over thousands of years in a ferocious contest for survival.

Jules Ferry: was a French politician who (after the stinging defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1871) sought commercial gain and national prestige by expanding eastwards into the African interior from Senegal and southwards from Algeria and Tunisia. Ferry was also the driving force to colonize in French Indo-China and in Madagascar. 

Mohandas K Ghandi became the most famous and most influential member of the Indian National Congress. Gandhi was trained as a lawyer in London and became famous in South Africa from 1893 to 1915, defending the rights of Indian immigrant workers living under the apartheid system. Gandhi would migrate to his Native India and become the most important figure in India’s campaign for Independence in the first half of the twentieth century.

Kamehameha: was a young Hawaiian prince who imitated western ways and, using British military technology, founded a Hawaiian kingdom

Rudyard Kipling was the British author of the poem "The White Man’s Burden," which became a justification for British imperialism.

Leopold II: was the Belgian king (reigned 1865-1909) who employed Henry Morton Stanley to develop a colony called the Congo Free State.

Queen Lili’uokalani: was the last monarch of the Hawaiian kingdom. She was overthrown by U.S. businessmen and sugar plantation owners in 1893.

David Livingstone: was the Scottish minister who traveled through much of central and southern Africa in search of suitable locations for mission posts.

Captain John Macarthur: began experiments in breeding fine-wool sheep using Spanish merinos from Cape Province, South Africa. The merino was gradually transformed into a superior wool-growing animal, which transformed Australia into a world leader in wool production.

Menelik II was the Ethiopian ruler who came to the throne in 1889 and adopted an aggressive program of modernization, building roads, setting up Western style schools and hiring European military experts to bring the army up to European standards. In 1896, he decisively defeated an Italian invasion at Adowa.

Mongkut was the Thai king who ruled Siam from 1851 to 1868. He carefully studied Western culture, languages and technology and shrewdly used this knowledge to negotiate with the Western powers to sign Unequal Treaties, but maintain his kingdom’s independence

James Monroe: was the United States. President (1817-1825) who issued a proclamation called the Monroe Doctrine, which warned European states against imperialistic designs in the western hemisphere. In essence, Monroe proclaimed the Americas to be a U S protectorate.

Thomas Stamford Raffles: was the British founder of the Southeast Asian port of Singapore, which soon became the trade center in the Straits of Melaka. From there the British spread to Malaya.

Cecil Rhodes: built an African empire supported by the diamond mines of South Africa. Rhodes promoted the superiority of the British "race" and worked towards global domination of the British Empire. His great dream was to build a railway across Africa, from Cairo in the north to the Cape of Good Hope in the south. In 1877, he said, “We are the finest race in the world and the more of the world we inhabit, the better it is for the human race.”

Theodore Roosevelt: was the American President who added the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, stating that in the event of flagrant wrongdoing by a Latin American State, the U.S. had the right to intervene in that nation’s internal affairs

Ram Mohan Roy: was the influential Indian leader who helped forge a sense of Indian identity and nationalism. Roy is sometimes called the “Father of Modern India” because h argued for the construction of a society based on both modern European science and the Indian tradition of devotional Hinduism

Herbert Spencer was an English philosopher and Social Darwinist, who used these theories to explain differences between strong and weak societies and individuals. Many European nations and Japan used these ideas to justify their imperialistic ambitions.

Henry Morton Stanley: was an American journalist who undertook a well-publicized expedition to Africa to find Dr. Livingstone and report on his activities.

Osei Tutu was the first Asantahene of the Asante and created the Asante Kingdom.

Theodore II of Ethiopia brought Ethiopia out of its medieval isolation and began to modernize the country. Even though Theodore was defeated by the British (and committed suicide rather than surrender), his successors were able to keep Ethiopia independent up to the present day.

Queen Victoria: was the British monarch (1837-1901) whose government supplanted the authority of the East India Company with direct rule in India.

Shaka Zulu was who finally united various Zulu tribes in 1816. He was called the Black Napoleon because he taught the Zulu to fight in an organized, efficient manner. Thus the Zulu gained a fearsome military reputation and not only dominated the native peoples in Southern Africa, but also came into conflict with the Boers and the British who, between them, finally subdued the Zulu by 1879.

The Asante in West Africa developed a highly centralized, semi-military government led by a chief known as the Asantahene. They controlled the Sahara trade and acquired firearms from European slave traders. They used these weapons to build a strong army and dominate the region around Ghana. Their power grew until the early 1800s when they even opposed Euro-American attempts to destroy the slave trade. In 1821 the British began a 70-year struggle with the Asante.

The Berlin Conference: was called by German chancellor Otto von Bismarck to devise ground rules with fourteen European states for the colonization of Africa

The Boers: were descendants of Dutch colonists who had arrived in the Cape long before the British. It took the British two difficult wars, in 1895 and 1899-1902, to subdue the Boers.

East India Company or English East India Company or British East India Company: was a Joint stock company that had a monopoly on English trade with India and China. By 1800, the British East India Company controlled almost one-fourth of India. After the Sepoy Rebellion of 1857, the British government replaced the EEIC with direct rule under a British viceroy.

"The Great Game" was the British name for the period of risky pursuit of influence and intelligence engaged in by British military officers and imperialist adventurers.

The Great Trek to the north and east in the 1830 by the Boers (who had been displaced by the British). The Boers eventually founding the Orange Free State and South African Republic (Transvaal) just north of British South Africa.

Imperialism: is the policy of expanding a nation’s authority by territorial acquisition or the establishment of political and economic hegemony over other nations.

The Indian National Congress, founded in 1885 with British approval, was an Indian reform group which served as a forum for educated Indians to communicate their views on public affairs to colonial officials. The Congress aired Indian grievances and openly sought self-rule.

Maori: is the name given to the indigenous population of New Zealand.

The All-India Muslim League represented 25% of the population of India and along with the Indian National Congress campaigned for self-rule.

Maji Maji was a rebellion of 1905-1906 in Tanganyika to expel the Germans from East Africa. Rebels sprinkled themselves with magic water “maji-maji”, which they believed would protect them from German weapons and the result was 75,000 dead rebels.

The Maxim gun: was a primitive machine gun or rifled machine gun used by Europeans.

The Panama Canal: was a U.S. engineering project (promoted by American President Theodore Roosevelt) that built a canal across Panama, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

The Russo-Japanese War: began with a surprise Japanese attack on Russian Port Arthur and ended in a surprise victory by the Japanese Navy over the Russian Navy at the Battle of Tsushima.

The Sino-Japanese War  ended in a total Japanese victory. The war forced the Chinese to recognize the independence of Korea, which really meant that Korea was now a protectorate of Japan. China also ceded Taiwan, the Pescadores Islands and Liaodong Peninsula to Japan to complete her humiliation.

The Scramble for Africa is a term used to describe prodigious and unprecedented outburst of  European imperialism that took place in Africa between 1875 and 1900.

Scientific Racism: was the 19th century theory that race was the most important factor in determining human potential.

The Raj was the name for the British rule or kingdom in India.

Sati or Suttee: was the Indian custom of burning widow on the husband’s funeral pyre practiced by Hindus. It was strongly opposed by Ram Mohan Roy and Mohandas Gandhi.

Social Darwinism: was Darwin’s Theory of Evolution applied to cultural and social factors. Social Darwinists adapted them to human races and societies.

Treaty of Waitangi was a deceptive treaty which deprived the Maori (Natives of New Zealand) of their lands. They resisted fiercely, but were no match for European organization and weapons – and they too, like the Aborigines and the American Indians were sent to live on reservations