Cannons and Colonialism – What Caused the Rise of Europe?

How did Europe grow quickly and become a hub of innovation, making it a global leader in trade and military strength? Here, Ilyas Ali gives us his take.

The 1836 Siege of Constantine during the French conquest of Algeria.

Historians disagree on how Europe came to be so powerful - to say the least.

But one thing is for certain and which all agree on. And that is that to find the answer, we must not look at what happened or who did during an isolated point in time.

Rather, we must grasp the long-term changes that brought Europe to its current position.

Troublesome Geography

One thing that is striking about Europe in 1500 was its political fragmentation. And unlike in places such as China, Europe’s political disunity was not a temporary affair.

In fact, this is as it had always been. Even the mighty Roman Empire had difficulty conquering areas north of the Rhine and Danube rivers.

In comparison to the Ottomans and Chinese, the Europeans were divided into smaller kingdoms, lordships, clans, and confederations in the East.

And the cause that prevented anyone from conquering Europe was geography.

Europe lacked the vast open plains that enabled the Mongols to conquer on horseback in Asia.

Nor were there large rivers like the Nile, Euphrates, or the Yangtze which provided nourishment to easily conquerable peasant populations living along its banks.

Europe was divided by mountains and forests, making it inaccessible for conquerors wishing to dominate the continent. Also, the climate varied considerably across the continent, which made that goal harder still.

But whilst it denied the unification of the continent, it also acted as a barrier to invasion from elsewhere.

Indeed, despite the Mongol horde swiftly conquering much of Asia, it was these same mountains and forests which saved Europe.

Free Economy

Because its geography supported dispersed power, this greatly aided the growth of a free European economy.

Do you remember how Europe had different climates across the continent?

This same variable climate allowed for different products to be made and traded.

For example, due to their different climates, an Italian city-state would sell grapes the English couldn't grow. And in return, the English sent fish from the Atlantic.

And another advantage Europe possessed was its many navigable rivers which allowed the easy transport of goods. And to make transporting goods even easier, many pathways were made through forests and mountains.

And dispersed political power also meant that commerce could never be fully suppressed in Europe. This was a recurring problem that Eastern empires had, but not so much in Europe.

If a king taxed his merchants too much or stopped trade completely, they would move to a more business-friendly part of Europe. And they would take his tax money with them.

Because of this, over time European statesmen learnt that it was in their best interests to strike a deal with these merchants and tradesmen. They would give them a law and order, and a decent judicial system. In return, those merchants would give them tax money to spend on their state and military ambitions.

Military Superiority

Despite its geographic situation, there was still one way to unify Europe: to have superior military technology.

This is what happened with the ‘gunpowder empires’ of the East. For instance, in Japan, the feudal warlord Hideyoshi brought together the country by obtaining cannons and guns that his rivals lacked. This technological superiority allowed him to unify Japan.

And it wasn’t at all impossible for a ‘gunpowder empire’ to arise in Europe. By 1500 C.E., already the French and English had amassed enough artillery at home to crush any internal enemy who rebelled against the state.

Despite Europe having powerful military forces, no one was able to conquer the entire continent -although the Habsburgs would come close though.

So why did this not happen?

The reason this didn’t happen was because of that same decentralization spoken of before. Due to political decentralization, an arms race occurred among all European states.

Europe, you see, had a habit of constantly going to war. To survive, every European polity aimed to be militarily stronger than its neighbors.

This created a competitive economic climate to create superior military technology.

But this also meant that no single power had complete access to the best military technology. The cannon, for example, was being built in central Europe, Milan, Malaga, Sweden, etc.

Nor could one power easily proliferate the most superior ships. There were shipbuilding ports all across the Baltic to the Black Sea, all locked in fierce competition.

One might ask at this point; wouldn’t the disunited European armies easily be crushed by the mighty Ottoman and Chinese armies of the East?

And the answer would probably be yes.

Europe was definitely lagging behind the Eastern empires in the 16th century. However, by the latter half of the 17th century, the Europeans were gaining an upper hand.

This was because the Europeans were successful in creating superior military technology, which set them apart from others.

Although gunpowder and cannons were invented by other civilizations, Europeans improved and enhanced them. They also worked towards creating more powerful variations.

The Ottomans and the Chinese invented this technology, but they didn't feel the need to improve. There was not much of a threat which forced them to innovate and better those weapons like before. When they were weak, they innovated and improved, but once they had become mighty, they stopped.

But due to the competitive climate in Europe, improvement was a matter of survival. They improved the grain quality of the gunpowder they used, they changed the materials of the weaponry to make them lighter and more powerful.

In their shipbuilding large strides were taken also. They learned how to build big, sturdy ships for the rough Atlantic waters. Then, they learned how to equip these ships with powerful cannons for destructive potential.

And it was these new ships and weaponry that would soon allow them to travel across the whole world and conquer territories in other continents.

All this innovation allowed the Europeans to soon supersede the Eastern empires, and for the age of colonialism to soon begin.

Colonialism

With their powerful ships in tow, Europe started venturing outside of its continental borders.

Using the long-range capabilities of the new ships, they controlled ocean trade routes and demonstrated their powerful cannons by bombarding resisting coastal settlements.

The Portuguese and Spanish were the first to explore. The Portuguese dominated the spice trade with powerful ships. Additionally, they carved out an empire stretching from Aden, to Goa, and to Malacca.

The Spanish, in turn, went West into the New World and quickly overcame the comparatively primitive populations of South America in a matter of a few short years. And as a result of their successes, they sent home silver, furs, sugar, hides, etc.

Soon the Dutch, the English, and the French joined in as the Europeans kicked off their bid for world domination.

New crops such as potatoes and maize, along with various meats gave the Europe steady nutrition. And access to the Newfoundland fisheries by the English gave Europe steady access to fish and seafood.

Whale oil and seal oil, found in the Atlantic, brought fuel for illumination.

Moreover, Russia’s eastward expansion also brought other previously inaccessible such as hemp, salts, and grains.

All of this created what is now known as the ‘modern world system’ which allowed Europe to connect the world using their new technologies and exploit various opportunities across the globe in a manner never done so before.

Less Obstacles

What allowed the Europeans to achieve this success was that they simply had fewer hindrances.

It was not that there was something special about them. Rather it was that the necessary conditions which allowed Europe to succeed were not present elsewhere.

In China, India, and Muslim lands, there wasn't the correct mix of ingredients like in Europe. Europe had a free market, strong military, and political pluralism.

And because of this they appeared to stand still while Europe advanced to the center of the world stage.

Ilyas writes at the Journal of Warfare here.

The 3 Key Reasons for European Empires

European colonization took place over many centuries and for varied reasons, but some reasons were more important than others. Here, Parthika Sharma and Aarushi Anand look at the three key reasons that led to the growth of European empires.

Rudyard Kipling in Calcutta, India, 1892.

Take up the White Man's burden -

    Send forth the best ye breed -

Go bind your sons to exile

    To serve your captives' need;

To wait in heavy harness

    On fluttered folk and wild -

Your new-caught sullen peoples,

    Half devil and half child.

-Rudyard Kipling, White Man’s Burden

Since the beginning of time, humans have sought to dominate their counterparts. The Assyrian empire was superseded by the Persian empire, preparing the way for Greek expansion, which peaked under Alexander the Great, with its borders threatening to spill out of the Indus. The easternmost expansion was accomplished with the conquest of Bengal and the founding of the Delhi Sultanate under Muhammad Ghori. The urge for expansion is in human nature.

In its simplest form, imperialism can be defined as the process by which one state expands its dominance over another through conflict, conquest, and exploitation. In the long histories of the USSR, Japan, the USA, and Europe, two distinct phases of imperialism can be recognized, when it reached unprecedented extent and ferocity.

During the Age of Discovery, following the footsteps of the Portuguese; Britain, Spain, and France, colonized lands throughout North and South America in pursuit of the 3Gs- Gold, God and Glory. However, the so-called "New World" of the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci was in fact not at all new: People had been living in the Americas for centuries; people, who would eventually become slaves in their own land.

This was however not the end. After a short period of calm, there was an explosion of imperialism yet again that had long lasting repercussions and has been seen by certain scholars as one of the leading causes of the war to end all wars- World War 1, changing the world forever. In 1885, only 10% of Africa was colonized by European powers, by 1905, only 10% was not colonized. Britain and France were the first nations to embark on colonial missions in the 19th and 20th centuries and they were after the 3Cs- Christianisation, commerce, and civilisation as mentioned by Livingstone.

But why was the need for 3Cs suddenly so important that it transformed different polities, cultures and economies and why now? Over the years, historians have offered a variety of hypotheses and justifications to make sense of the issue.

Economic Reasons

The answer to this question for liberals and Marxists is economy. Liberals such as J.A. Hobson argued that capitalism rising at this time led to the masses having less and less and capitalists having large surpluses which could not be invested internally as there was little purchasing power. This underconsumption of masses and oversaving of capitalists made foreign investment "the taproot of imperialism," with government intervention to safeguard the investments that followed.

For Marxist scholar R. Hilferding imperialism was the final and most advanced phase of capitalism.  Monopoly capitalists like Germany and Britain looked to imperialist expansion as a way to ensure reliable supplies of raw materials, markets for industrial goods, and avenues for investment. VI Lenin described imperialism as the pinnacle of capitalist progress, which could only be overthrown by revolution. He highlighted the necessity of seeking out new investment opportunities, and the need of preventing others from acquiring a monopoly. Imperialism and war were therefore necessary since it is a fundamental aspect of capitalism that wealth will eventually end up in fewer and fewer hands.

However, was the economy really the answer? Certain avenues go against the argument. Governments like Britain made investments in places like Argentina that weren't colonies. Because of a lack of finance, industrialization in France during the 19th century was extremely sluggish. In the end, it invested more money in Russia than it did in itself. At the end of the 19th century, northern nations like Norway, Denmark, and Finland had industrialized but had no interest in colonizing. Thus it seems like the imperialists wanted more than just resources.

Karl Kautsky postulated that imperialism results from the persistent desire of industrialized capitalist nations to enlarge the agricultural regions dependent on them. Only when the hinterland builds its own industrial capability and uses the tool of protective tariffs to break free from its economic dependence does sovereignty become important.

Social Reasons

According to Joseph Schumpeter, the older pre-capitalist class whose riches depended on expansionist strategies were motivated by economic considerations. Only Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Russia were truly imperialist nations because imperialism flourished where absolutism had the strongest hold. According to this argument, when modern industries developed, the Yukur class felt as though the entrepreneurial elite was pushing them out of the way. They could only keep their position by putting the military at the center, which was crucial in colonialism.

Few others believe that imperialism was all about balancing and unbalancing power relations. The conservative argument states that imperialism was required to uphold the current social order and prevent social revolution in the more industrialized nations. On a similar note, political theorists argue that imperialism was simply a manifestation of the balance of power and through this a nation tried to achieve favorable change in the status quo. The notion of prestige and power was advanced by D.K. Fieldhouse. The desire to establish national prestige meant gaining "places in the sun" for the French and the Germans.

Cultural Reasons

But the most popular arguments are probably the racist ones. Charles Darwin's theory of the survival of the fittest was applied to social conditions by Herbert Spencer, resulting in the argument of Social Darwinism, which claimed that White European conquerors were more biologically adapted to the struggle for survival than the colonized. The White Man's Burden by Rudyard Kipling suggested that they had the "burden" of conveying the blessings to the native people. The ‘best race’, the whites had taken up the responsibility of ‘taming’ the “fluttered folk” and “wild”, the “half devil, half child”, without actually consulting if the natives wanted their ‘superior culture.’

This is expanded into the favor argument. It is argued that imperialism also had a humanitarian achievement of abolishing slavery. However, it is imperative to point out that these countries were the ones who started it. Establishment of Indian universities, introduction of technologies like steamships, canals and railways were turned to beneficial ends. However, the technologies were first introduced only to aid British functioning. It was argued that the Western medicine benefited indigenous people by eradicating epidemics- cholera, yellow fever, malaria, dysentery and plague. But it spread more diseases than it eradicated.

As pointed out by Edward Said, the formation of imperial culture has major roots in Orientalism, illustrated by disparaging and unflattering assertions and stereotypes. In terms of popular culture, Victorian era novels such as Jane Eyre (which contrasts Indianness with the true Christian British self) and adventures of Sherlock Holmes, (associating the East with wealth, mystery, and criminality), are classic instances of panoptical delusion.

Perceptions rooted in culture govern acculturation of ideas and goods: cross culturalization was also marked by exotica. Claude Monet’s water lilies and Japanese bridge displays an Asian-influenced water garden with a shade of spirituality in Giverny, France. Paul Gaugin painted the locals of the Pacific island of Tahiti with an intense focus on /through the prism of sexuality.Maile Arvin notably observes that a logic of possession through whiteness animates colonial subject, transforming both the land and its people into exotic, feminine objects owned by the whites. Thus the mimetic response to defend the tyranny of "the other" and boost imperial self-esteem was to create a cultural contrast between Europeans and Non-Europeans.

What do you think were the key drivers of European colonialism? Let us know below.

Bibliography

• Joll, James. "Europe since 1870: an international history." (No Title) (1973).

• Gallagher, John, and Ronald Robinson. "The imperialism of free trade." The Economic History Review 6.1 (1953): 1-15.

• Brewer, Tony. Marxist theories of imperialism: A critical survey. Routledge, 2002.

• Etherington, Norman. "Reconsidering theories of imperialism." History and Theory 21.1 (1982): 1-36.

• Porter, Andrew. "European Imperialism, 1860-1914." (2016).

• Pugh, Martin, ed. A companion to modern European history: 1871-1945. John Wiley & Sons, 1997.

Author Bio

Aarushi is a graduate in History honors from Miranda House, University of Delhi. Her areas of interest include Medieval history and Art history. She likes watching movies and writing blog reviews. She is also interested in sketching, origami and semantics.

Parthika is a graduate in History honors from Miranda House, University of Delhi. Her interest lies in Mughal History, Art Restoration and linguistics. She loves painting, clicking photographs, engaging in impromptu choreography and learning new strings on her guitar.

The ‘Scramble for Africa’ – Then and Now

When European nations ‘scrambled’ for territory in Africa in the 1800s, the results were catastrophic for its indigenous peoples. A new scramble is now on and the jury is still out on whether Africans will actually benefit this time. Dan McEwen looks at ‘The Scramble for Africa’, then and now.

The 1884 Berlin Conference, as illustrated in "Illustrierte Zeitung"

‘Scrambling’ Everywhere But Africa

Blame Portugal. Ranked 109th by size, little Portugal was the first European country to make it big as a colonial power. Under Prince Henry the Navigator, Portuguese merchants were well ahead of the curve in the so-called ‘Age of Exploration’. Their trading ships had long been slowly feeling their way along Africa’s west coast and by the mid-1400s, their crews were making fortunes trading in slaves, sugar and gold. 

While Christopher Columbus was famously sailing across the Atlantic in 1492 with visions of Oriental sugarplums dancing in his head, the intrepid Portuguese were defeating the Ottomans in a power struggle for control of the lucrative Arab/Indian trade routes. Victorious, they continued east, becoming the first Europeans to arrive by sea in China and then Japan. So toxic was their contact with the shogunate however, Portuguese traders were expelled in 1639 and Japan sealed itself off in two hundred years of self-imposed isolation from the West!

Another small nation, Holland, replaced the Portuguese, enabling The Dutch East India Company [VOC], to become the largest company to ever have existed in recorded history! Next came the Spanish, venturing westward from their possessions in Central America, laying claim to several Pacific islands, including the Philippines. The French, latecomers to the rush, established outposts in Indochina, Vietnam and on a sprinkling of Polynesian islands before being lapped by the British. Their world-class navy would resort to gunboat diplomacy to forcibly establish colonies in China. Later, the Germans, Americans and Russians likewise bullied their way into the Pacific. 

Back in the western hemisphere, the British and French went head-to-head for supremacy in North America even as Spanish explorers, conquerors and settlers following Columbus’ lead, headed for the Caribbean and Central and South America. In their quest for "gold, glory, and God", in that order. Hernán Cortés conquered the Aztec empire in Mexico, at a cost of 240,000 Aztec lives and Francisco Pizarro followed suite, nearly wiping out the Incas by 1572.  

"What happened after Columbus was like a thousand kudzus [weeds] everywhere,” laments author/historian Charles C. Mann.“Throughout the hemisphere, ecosystems cracked and heaved like winter ice.” 

Indeed, the impact of all this “exploration” on native populations was apocalyptic. Between 1492 and 1600, 55 million people, 90% of the indigenous populations in the Americas, died from European diseases like smallpox, measles and influenza. This traumatic population loss caused chaos among the indigenous tribes, making them even easier prey for technologically-advanced European powers. And now it was Africa’s turn.

The First ‘Scramble’

History books call it ‘The Scramble for Africa’, making it sound like an innocuous party game.  Africans call it ’The Rape of Africa’. By the mid 1800s, the European nations were elbowing each other aside in their headlong rush to plant their flag on African soil. Mostly it was about money.

As history professor Ehiedu E.G. Iweriebor at New York’s City University frames it; “The European scramble and the partition and eventual conquest of Africa was motivated by ...the imperatives of capitalist industrialization, including the demand for assured sources of raw materials, the search for guaranteed markets and profitable investment outlets.”

All this ‘scrambling’ made the imperialist governments as nervous as cats that a war would breakout in Europe over some far off colonial territory. To prevent this, wily, old Otto von Bismarck, the first Chancellor of a newly-united Germany, hosted a conference that still stands as an unparalleled act of racial and cultural arrogance. At the 1884 Berlin Conference, six European powers - Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal and Belgium - sat around a table and divided the so-called “Dark Continent” among themselves, redrawing the map of the continent to create 30 new colonies. 

The 110 million Africans who lived in those colonies were never consulted about the new borders. No Africans were invited to attend the conference and; “African concerns were, if they mattered at all, completely marginal to the basic economic, strategic, and political interests of the negotiating European powers,” says historian/author Thomas Pakenham. Between 1870 and 1914, “A motley band of explorers, politicians, evangelists, mercenaries, journalists and tycoons blinded by romantic nationalism or caught up in the scramble for loot, markets and slaves,” increased European control of African territory from 10 per cent in 1870 to almost 90 percent by 1914. Resistance was futile. 

Although most African rulers bitterly contested being handed over to unknown foreign powers, they were no match for rapid-fire rifles, gatling guns and field artillery. Their many battles frequently turned into one-sided massacres. Despite a stunning defeat at Isandlwana, British redcoats rallied and crushed the two million-strong Zulu nation in nine weeks. The Boers conducted a campaign of genocide against the natives who resisted their occupation, driving 24,000 of them into the desert to starve. As many as 300,000 Namibians died in a famine engineered by the German colonizers to bring them to heel. Eight million inhabitants of the Congo were exterminated by their Belgium overseers through a barbarous system of forced labor dedicated to supplying rubber for European vehicle tires. [Ethiopia and Liberia were the only countries not colonized - Ethiopia defeated an inept Italian army at Adwa in 1896, and Liberia became a country that some of the Black populations of the Americas moved to.]

From ‘Civilizing’ to Conquering

The motives the colonizers ascribed to this flagrant land-grab were rooted in a bedrock belief in their racial supremacy over the non-white, 'lesser' races of the world. “The French colonial ideology explicitly claimed that they were on a "civilizing mission" to lift the benighted natives out of backwardness to the new status of civilized French Africans.” But it was the British who proved especially adept at this pernicious snobbery, believing they had some higher calling to drag their Africa colonies into the modern world. Like the Spanish, they had a slogan: ‘Commerce, Christianity and Civilization.’ [Note its money first, civilizing last, just like the Spanish.] And it seems they still believe that. In 2014, former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown was unapologetic in his defense of the country’s tarnished record. “The days of Britain having to apologize for its colonial history are over. We should celebrate much of our past rather than apologize for it.” 

Tragically for Africa, it wasn’t just the Brits. “Almost without exception... [the colonization of Africa] is a story of the rankest greed enforced by disgusting levels of violence against the native Africans. In colony after colony, all the brave talk about white man’s civilization and justice and religion turned out to hypocritical garbage,” accuses professor Patrick Bond at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban.

Still other African scholars contend the partitioning of tribal lands into those 30 colonies had the most enduring affects on the African peoples. A 2016 study found that, “by splitting ethnicities across countries, the colonial border design has spurred political violence. Ethnic partitioning is systematically linked to civil conflict, discrimination by the national government, and instability. The study, which included more than 85,000 households across 20 African countries found that “members of partitioned groups have fewer household assets, poorer access to utilities, and worse educational outcomes, as compared to individuals from non-split ethnicities in the same country.” Furthermore, conflicts in partitioned lands are deadlier and last longer.

After World War Two, the victors assumed that decolonization would solve all these problems, and between 1945 and 1960, three dozen new states in Asia and Africa achieved autonomy or outright independence from their European colonial rulers. Alas, in state after state, the transition to independence led to violence, political turmoil, and organized revolts that only added to the misery of endemic poverty, hunger and disease. Tellingly, a comparison of 18 African countries found that only six saw economic growth after achieving independence.

Regrettably, most of the continent’s 54 countries remain devastated by; “...crippling rates of poverty, hunger, and disease.” 62% of Africans have no access to standard sanitation facilities. Only 43% have access to electricity and the internet. According to the World Health Organization, sub-Saharan Africa remains the region with the highest under-5 mortality rate in the world. Yet there’s a cautious optimism that Africa’s fortunes are finally about to change for the better.

The New Scramble

By the usual standards of measurement, Africa is poised on the cusp of greatness. In 2019, six of the world’s 15 fastest growing economies were in Africa. The continent has a booming population of 1.3 billion and will soon outnumber the Chinese. This brings with it a “demographic dividend”: the average age in Africa is 19, meaning there’s a huge and growing pool of labor at a time when labor forces in more advanced countries are aging fast. Importantly, a major impediment to economic development is finally being addressed.

The continent’s colonial-era infrastructure remains one of the biggest drags on economic growth. “Africa’s new national states were so small and economically weak that they could not, without giant loans, even begin to embark on the policies of national development they eagerly promised,” writes investigative journalist Lee Wengaf. No nation had the economic wherewithal resources to take on the kind of major projects – highways, railroads, power dams and sea ports – needed to compete in the global marketplace. “Hobbled with weak infrastructures...and insufficient capital to technologically advance, these economies fell increasingly behind.” 

China is changing all that. The bottomless pockets of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have already shelled out billions in funding for 200 major infrastructure projects that promise to truly modernize the continent. Beijing’s willingness to invest in Africa long-term is particularly embarrassing to those ‘civilizing” European powers who never quite got around to it. Governments and businesses from all around the world are rushing to strengthen diplomatic, strategic and commercial ties. From 2010 to 2016, more than 320 embassies were opened in African nations. Facebook and Google are madly laying rings of cables around the continent to improve internet connectivity. 

However, to many, the new scramble looks a lot like the old one. The Financial Times commented that China’s pattern of operation in Africa, “draws comparisons with Africa’s past relationship with European colonial powers, which exploited the continent’s natural resources but failed to encourage more labor-intensive industry.”

Dylan Yachyshen of the Foreign Policy Research Institute agrees, warning that; “Accompanying its ambitious infrastructure projects, Chinese state banks made massive loans to African states, employing debt-trap diplomacy that renders states subservient to Chinese interests if they cannot pay. Though China has not established colonies, the trajectory of its activity in Africa parallels that of the infancy of the ‘Scramble for Africa’.”

Iranian-American journalist and historian John Ghazvinian put it much more forcefully in Untapped: The Scramble for Africa’s Oil. “Foreign oil companies have conducted some of the world’s most sophisticated exploration and production operations…but the people of the Niger Delta have seen none of the benefits. While successive military regimes have used oil proceeds to buy mansions in Mayfair...many in the Delta live as their ancestors would have done hundreds, even thousands of years ago.”

What is to be done? Patrick Lumumba, a lawyer specializing in African laws argues persuasively that the continent’s nations must unite in a pan-African economic union similar to the EU with a single passport, a single currency and a single army as essential prerequisites for African nations to take control of their own destinies.

“We [African nations] are weak politically, we are economically weak, socially we are disorganized, culturally and spiritually we are confused. As long as we remain as we are Africa will be re-colonized in the next 25 years.” 

What do you think of the ‘Scramble for Africa’? Let us know below.

Now, read Dan’s article on the lessons from World War I here.