· First Amendment – Establishment Clause, Free Exercise Clause; freedom of speech, of the press, Freedom of Religion, and of assembly; right to petition,
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
· Second Amendment – Militia (United States), Sovereign state, Right to keep and bear arms.
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
· Third Amendment – Protection from quartering of troops.
No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.
· Fourth Amendment – Protection from unreasonable search and seizure.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
· Fifth Amendment – due process, double jeopardy, self-incrimination, eminent domain.
No person shall be held to answer for any capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
· Sixth Amendment – Trial by jury and rights of the accused; Confrontation Clause, speedy trial, public trial, right to counsel
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district where in the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.
· Seventh Amendment – Civil trial by jury.
In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.
· Eighth Amendment – Prohibition of excessive bail and cruel and unusual punishment.
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
· Ninth Amendment – Protection of rights not specifically enumerated in the Bill of Rights.
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
· Tenth Amendment – Powers of States and people.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Document 2
Approved by the National Assembly of France, August 26, 1789
The representatives of the French people, organized as a National Assembly, believing that the ignorance, neglect, or contempt of the rights of man are the sole cause of public calamities and of the corruption of governments, have determined to set forth in a solemn declaration the natural, unalienable, and sacred rights of man, in order that this declaration, being constantly before all the members of the Social body, shall remind them continually of their rights and duties; in order that the acts of the legislative power, as well as those of the executive power, may be compared at any moment with the objects and purposes of all political institutions and may thus be more respected, and, lastly, in order that the grievances of the citizens, based hereafter upon simple and incontestable principles, shall tend to the maintenance of the constitution and redound to the happiness of all. Therefore the National Assembly recognizes and proclaims, in the presence and under the auspices of the Supreme Being, the following rights of man and of the citizen:
1. Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be founded only upon the general good.
2. The aim of all political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression.
3. The principle of all sovereignty resides essentially in the nation. No body nor individual may exercise any authority which does not proceed directly from the nation.
4. Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; hence the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except those which assure to the other members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights. These limits can only be determined by law.
5. Law can only prohibit such actions as are hurtful to society. Nothing may be prevented which is not forbidden by law, and no one may be forced to do anything not provided for by law.
6. Law is the expression of the general will. Every citizen has a right to participate personally, or through his representative, in its foundation. It must be the same for all, whether it protects or punishes. All citizens, being equal in the eyes of the law, are equally eligible to all dignities and to all public positions and occupations, according to their abilities, and without distinction except that of their virtues and talents.
7. No person shall be accused, arrested, or imprisoned except in the cases and according to the forms prescribed by law. Any one soliciting, transmitting, executing, or causing to be executed, any arbitrary order, shall be punished. But any citizen summoned or arrested in virtue of the law shall submit without delay, as resistance constitutes an offense.
8. The law shall provide for such punishments only as are strictly and obviously necessary, and no one shall suffer punishment except it be legally inflicted in virtue of a law passed and promulgated before the commission of the offense.
9. As all persons are held innocent until they shall have been declared guilty, if arrest shall be deemed indispensable, all harshness not essential to the securing of the prisoner’s person shall be severely repressed by law.
10. No one shall be disquieted on account of his opinions, including his religious views, provided their manifestation does not disturb the public order established by law.
11. The free communication of ideas and opinions is one of the most precious of the rights of man. Every citizen may, accordingly, speak, write, and print with freedom, but shall be responsible for such abuses of this freedom as shall be defined by law.
12. The security of the rights of man and of the citizen requires public military forces. These forces are, therefore, established for the good of all and not for the personal advantage of those to whom they shall be intrusted.
13. A common contribution is essential for the maintenance of the public forces and for the cost of administration. This should be equitably distributed among all the citizens in proportion to their means.
14. All the citizens have a right to decide, either personally or by their representatives, as to the necessity of the public contribution; to grant this freely; to know to what uses it is put; and to fix the proportion, the mode of assessment and of collection and the duration of the taxes.
15. Society has the right to require of every public agent an account of his administration.
16. A society in which the observance of the law is not assured, nor the separation of powers defined, has no constitution at all.
17. Since property is an inviolable and sacred right, no one shall be deprived thereof except where public necessity, legally determined, shall clearly demand it, and then only on condition that the owner shall have been previously and equitably indemnified.
Document 3
Written by Olympe De Gouges, 1791
“[Olympe] De Gouges was a butcher’s daughter … who wrote several plays and a number of pamphlets on the coming Estates General. In this work [Les Droits de la Femme] de Gouges states that the Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen is not being applied to women. She implies the vote for women, demands a national assembly of women, stresses that men must yield rights to women, and emphasizes women’s education.”–Darline Gay Levy, Harriet Branson Applewhite, and Mary Durham Johnson, eds., Women in Revolutionary Paris, 1789-1795 (Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1980), p. 87.
Note: De Gouges’s devotion to the cause of women’s rights led to her being charged with treason under the rule of the National Convention. She was arrested, tried, and later, in November of 1793, executed by the guillotine.
Man, are you capable of being just? It is a woman who poses the question; you will not deprive her of that right at least. Tell me, what gives you sovereign empire to opress my sex? Your strength? Your talents? Observe the Creator in his wisdom; survey in all her grandeur that nature with whom you seem to want to be in harmony, and give me, if you dare, an exampl of this tyrannical empire. Go back to animals, consult the elements, study plants, finally glance at all the modifications of organic matter, and surrender to the evidence when I offer you the menas; search, probe, and distinguish, if you can, the sexes in the administration of nature. Everywhere you will find them mingled; everywhere they cooperate in harmonious tpgetherness in this immortal masterpiece. Man alone has raised his exceptional circumstances to a principle. Bizarre, blind, bloated with science and degenerated–in a century of enlightenment and wisdom–into the crassest ignorance, he wants to command as a despot a sex which is in full possession of its intellectual faculties; he pretends to enjoy the Revolution and to claim his rights to equality in order to say nothing more about it.
For the National Assemby to decree in its last sessions, or in those of the next legislature:
Mothers, daughters, sisters [and] representatives of the nation demand to be constituted into a national assembly. Believing that ignorance, omission, or scorn for the rights of woman are the only causes of public misfortunes and of the corruption of governments, [the women] have resolved to set forth a solemn declaration the natural, inalienable, and sacred rights of woman in order that this declaration, constantly exposed before all members of the society, will ceaselessly remind them of their rights and duties; in order that the authoritative acts f women and teh athoritative acts of men may be at any moment compared with and respectful of the purpose of all political institutions; and in order that citizens’ demands, henceforth based on simple and incontestable principles, will always support the constitution, good morals, and the happiness of all. Consequently, the sex that is as superior in beauty as it is in courage during the sufferings of maternity recognizes and declares in the presence and under the auspices of the Supreme Being, the following Rights of WOman and of Female Citizens.
Woman is born free and lives equal to man in her rights. Social distinctions can be based only on the common utility.
The purpose of any political association is the conservation of the natural and impresciptible rights of woman and man; these rights are liberty property, security, and especially resistance to oppression.
The principle of all sovereignty rests essentially with the nation, which is nothing but the union of woman and man; no body and no individual can exercise any authority which does not come expressly from it (the nation).
Liberty and justice consist of restoring all that belongs to others; thus, the only limits on the exercise of the natural rights of woman are perpetual male tyranny; these limits are to be reformed by the laws of nature and reason.
Laws of nature and reason proscibe all acts harmful to society; everything which is not prohibited by these wise and divine laws cannot be prevented, and no one can be constrained to do what they do not command.
The law must be the expression of the general will; all female and male citizens must contribute either personally or through their representatives to its formation; it must be the same for all: male and female citizens, being equal in the eyes of the law, must be equally admitted to all honors, positions, and public employment according to their capacity and without other distinctions besides those of their virtues and talents.
Document 4
The Monroe Doctrine
The Monroe Doctrine is the first formal statement of interest in Latin America by the United States. Issued by U.S. President James Monroe in a message to Congress in December 1823, the statement reflected growing concern in the United States that European powers would encourage Spain to re-impose its rule over newly independent Latin American countries. In practice, the declaration had no direct impact because the United States had little military capability to extend its influence. However, it was an early statement of U.S. intentions to constrain Latin America’s independence, and it was later used to justify U.S. intervention in Latin America.
A precise knowledge of our relations with foreign powers as respects our negotiations and transactions with each is thought to be particularly necessary ….
At the proposal of the Russian Imperial Government, made through the minister of the emperor residing here, full power and instructions have been transmitted to the minister of the United States at St. Petersburg to arrange by amicable negotiation the respective rights and interests of the two nations on the northwest coast of this continent. A similar proposal had been made by His Imperial Majesty to the government of Great Britain, which has likewise been acceded to. The government of the United States has been desirous, by this friendly proceeding, of manifesting the great value which they have invariably attached to the friendship of the emperor and their solicitude to cultivate the best understanding with his government.
In the discussions to which this interest has given rise and in the arrangements by which they may terminate the occasion has been judged proper for asserting, as a principle in which the rights and interests of the United States are involved, that the American continents, by the free and independent conditions which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers ….
It was stated at the commencement of the last session that great effort was then making in Spain and Portugal to improve the condition of the people of those countries and that it appeared to be conducted with extraordinary moderation. It need scarcely be remarked that the result has been so far very different from what was then anticipated. Of events in that quarter of the globe, with which we have so much intercourse and from which we derive our origin, we have always been anxious and interested spectators.
The citizens of the United States cherish sentiments the most friendly in favor of the liberty and happiness of their fellow men on that side of the Atlantic. In the wars of the European powers in matters relating to themselves we have never taken any part, nor does it comport with our policy so to do.
It is only when our rights are invaded or seriously menaced that we resent injuries or make preparation for our defense. With the movements in this hemisphere we are of necessity more immediately connected, and by causes which must be obvious to all enlightened and impartial observers.
The political system of the allied powers is essentially different in this respect from that of America. This difference proceeds from that which exists in their respective Governments; and to the defense of our own, which has been achieved by the loss of so much blood and treasure, and matured by the wisdom of their most enlightened citizens, and under which we have enjoyed unexampled felicity, this whole nation is devoted.
We owe it, therefore, to candor and to the amicable relations existing between the United States and those powers to declare that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety. With the existing colonies or dependencies of any European power we have not interfered and shall not interfere, but with the Governments who have declared their independence and maintained it, and whose independence we have, on great consideration and on just principles, acknowledged, we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them, or controlling in any other manner their destiny, by any European power in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States.
In the war between those new Governments and Spain we declared our neutrality at the time of their recognition, and to this we have adhered, and shall continue to adhere, provided no change shall occur which, in the judgment of the competent authorities of this Government, shall make a corresponding change on the part of the United States indispensable to their security.
The late events in Spain and Portugal shew that Europe is still unsettled. Of this important fact no stronger proof can be adduced than that the allied powers should have thought it proper, on any principle satisfactory to themselves, to have interposed by force in the internal concerns of Spain. To what extent such interposition may be carried, on the same principle, is a question in which all independent powers whose governments differ from theirs are interested, even those most remote, and surely none more so than the United States.
Our policy in regard to Europe, which was adopted at an early stage of the wars which have so long agitated that quarter of the globe, nevertheless remains the same, which is not to interfere in the internal concerns of any of its powers; to consider the government de facto as the legitimate government for us; to cultivate friendly relations with it, and to preserve those relations by a frank, firm, and manly policy, meeting in all instances the just claims of every power, submitting to injuries from none. But in regard to those continents, circumstances are eminently and conspicuously different. It is impossible that the allied powers should extend their political system to any portion of either continent without endangering our peace and happiness; nor can anyone believe that our southern brethren, if left to themselves, would adopt it of their own accord.
It is equally impossible, therefore, that we should behold such interposition in any form with indifference. If we look to the comparative strength and resources of Spain and those new governments, and their distance from each other, it must be obvious that she can never subdue them. It is still the true policy of the United States to leave the parties to themselves, in the hope that other powers will pursue the same course.
Source: James Monroe. “The Monroe Doctrine.” In The Evolution of Our Latin American Policy: A Documentary Record, edited by James W. Gantenbein, 323-25. New York: Columbia University Press, 1950.
Document 5
In Opposition to Monroe
The Monroe Doctrine was formulated in 1823 as a warning to Europeans not to intervene in the Western Hemisphere. In subsequent years, however, the United States used the statement as a means to justify U.S. involvement in Latin American affairs. This address, by Roque Saenz Peña, was delivered in 1898 in response to U.S. involvement in the Spanish-Cuban war, and is typical of Latin American responses to the U.S. violation of sovereignty. Roque Saenz Peña was a well-known and highly respected South American political leader who later became president of Argentina (1910-14).
The Doctrine of President Monroe, contained in the message of December [1823], was a declaration against intervention; but that declaration contained mental reservations which rendered its objectives doubtful and its effects pernicious; in principle it condemned European interventions, but in fact it did not oppose American interventions, which means that it is not a general, scientific doctrine with unity of concept and principle but rather a national, specific act. It appears to the world as the whim of a strong and invincible power. …
That Doctrine in my opinion is the cause and origin of the present perversions of public law. The Mackinley [sic) doctrine is simply the latest chapter in the Monroe Doctrine and the Polk doctrine; they are not three doctrines, they are three acts sanctifying a single usurpation: the intervention of the United States in the destinies and life of the people of the Americas.
When the divine-right governments of Europe were threatening to spread their system over this continent, the declaration of the United States was justified on political grounds, however much justification it may have lacked on juridical grounds: it was an arbitrary act opposing an illegal act. But in the present posture of law, diplomacy, and humanity both the arbitrary and the illegal ought to disappear. No American nation exists nor ever has existed with sufficient political and international capacity to assume to represent the entire continent and to serve as the spokesman for its free peoples; just as there never has existed a single foreign chancellery for the New World, so also there is no single sovereign for the hemisphere.
President Monroe’s claims to authority were not only debatable: they were fictitious because no American state had delegated nor alienated its authority to determine its relations with other nations of the world. The warnings which Monroe directed toward Europe were not ratified by the new nations in whose name he spoke and whose destinies he undertook to dispose of; the so-called Doctrine did not emerge from the halls of Congress but remained an internal action without diplomatic or international ramifications. The essence of that Doctrine in fact was unacceptable not only to Europe, where it evoked protests from Russia and later from Great Britain, but also to the free nations of this continent. To condemn European interventions while at the same time reserving an American right of intervention and to exercise such a right unilaterally and without consultations is not in fact to censure intervention but rather to claim a monopoly of it. …
The position of the Latin-American states vis a vis a government which has taken over the officious management of the New World in relation to Europe is to ask: From what source did you obtain your solicitorship? Whence came your police authority and your inquisitorial powers over independent states which are no less inviolable than those of Europe? Will we have to search of them in the right of primogeniture, which is an accident of birth rather than law? Will we find them in the right of geographical proximity, which is an accident of nature and not reason?
We will have to conclude finally and emphatically that force creates doctrine, that the army establishes rights. The Latin-American republics must vindicate, both by honor and title, the generous force of a new doctrine-a doctrine which was consecrated by Bolivar in convoking and organizing the Panama Congress. Bolivar possessed a sure insight into the future and was able to foresee from a distance that [Monroe’s] message of December had its Achilles heel. …
The theme which Bolivar stressed in convoking that Congress consecrated the doctrine of non-intervention not against Europe but against every foreign power; that was the doctrine in its juridical and universal character; that was the true policy to which the peoples of the Americas aspired to in order to become sovereign and free not only in relation to Europe but in relation to all nations. But that redemptive doctrine of free nations which clipped the wings of the eagles of the Capitol provoked the discontent of the Cabinet in Washington to such an extent that the United States was not represented at Panama; one of its delegates arrived late and ill, and the other never arrived because he died on the way. Bolivar proposed not only to establish the true doctrine but also to elevate the stature of these republics by correcting the inert plasticity to which they had been reduced by the message of December 2; he wished to give them political capacity so that they could act of their own accord and strength when deciding their destinies or speaking in the name of America, or working under the care of the United States ….
Source: Roque Saenz Peña. “A Doctrine of Intervention.” In Latin America: Yesterday and Today, edited by John Rothchild, 383-85. New York: Bantam, 1973.
Document 6
Manchester is the great manufacturing city for cloth, thread, cotton. Thirty or forty factories rise on the tops of the hills. Their six stories tower up; their huge enclosures give notice from afar of the centralization of industry. The wretched dwellings of the poor are scattered haphazard around them.
The land is given over to industry’s use. Heaps of dung, rubble from buildings, putrid, stagnant pools are found here and there among the houses and over the bumpy, pitted surfaces of the public places. On ground below the level of the river and overshadowed on every side by immense workshops, stretches marshy land which widely spaced muddy ditches can neither drain nor cleanse. Narrow, twisting roads lead down to it. They are lined with one-story houses whose ill-fitting planks and broken windows show them up, even from a distance, as the last refuge a man might find between poverty and death. None- the-less the wretched people reduced to living in them can still inspire jealousy of their fellow beings. Below some of their miserable dwellings is a row of cellars to which a sunken corridor leads. Twelve to fifteen human beings are crowded pell-mell into each of these damp, repulsive holes.
A sort of black smoke covers the city. The sun seen through it is a disc without rays. Under this half daylight 300,000 human beings are ceaselessly at work. A thousand noises disturb this damp, dark labyrinth, but they are not at all the ordinary sounds one hears in great cities.
From this foul drain the greatest stream of human industry flows out to fertilize the whole world. From this filthy sewer pure gold flows. Here humanity attains its most complete development and its most brutish; here civilisation works its miracles, and civilised man is turned back almost into a savage.
—Alexis de Tocqueville, historian, Journeys to England and Ireland, published in 1835
Document 7 and 8
This preservation of favourable individual differences and variations, and the destruction of those which are injurious, I have called Natural Selection, or the Survival of the Fittest. . . . Natural selection acts solely through the preservation of variations in some way advantageous, which consequently endure. Owing to the high geometrical rate of increase of all organic beings, each area is already fully stocked with inhabitants; and it follows from this, that as the favored forms increase in number, so, generally, will the less favored decrease and become rare. Rarity, as geology tells us, is the precursor to extinction.
—Charles Darwin, scientist, The Origin of Species, published in 1872
The main conclusion here arrived at, and now held by many naturalists who are well competent to form a sound judgment, is that man is descended from some less highly organized form. The grounds upon which this conclusion rests will never be shaken, for the close similarity between man and the lower animals in embryonic development, as well as in innumerable points of structure and constitution, both of high and of the most trifling importance—the rudiments which he retains, and the abnormal reversions to which he is occasionally liable—are facts which cannot be disputed. . . .
We have seen that man incessantly presents individual differences in all parts of his body and in his mental faculties. These differences or variations seem to be induced by the same general causes, and to obey the same laws as with the lower animals. In both cases similar laws of inheritance prevail. Man tends to increase at a greater rate than his means of subsistence; consequently he is occasionally subjected to a severe struggle for existence . . . .
—Charles Darwin, scientist, The Descent of Man, published in 1883
Document 9
The revolutionaries applied the principles of equality to the Negroes: had they consulted the physiologists, they would have learned that the Negro, in accordance with his formation, is not susceptible under equal conditions of education, of being raised to the same level of intelligence as the European.
—Henri de Saint-Simon, 19th-century French social reformer
Document 10 (Secondary Source)
The following excerpt describes the Boxer Rebellion, the late-19th-century uprising that sought to drive foreign influences from
China.
The foreigners called them “Boxers” because of the ritualistic martial arts they practiced. Their lives had long been a losing struggle against cycles of flood, drought, and famine. The arrival in China of increasing numbers of foreigners had only deepened their misery. Some foreigners came in pursuit of commerce, and the new technologies they brought with them— steamboats and locomotives, telegraph systems and mining equipment—not only offended the spirits of earth, water, and air but also robbed many Chinese of their jobs. Christian missionaries—fresh-faced and idealistic men and women from the American Midwest, bearded priests from Germany and France—came in search of souls. Often ignorant, dismissive, or contemptuous of native culture, they and their aggressive proselytizing threatened the very fabric of Chinese family and village life. The Boxers despised their Chinese converts as traitors, “rice Christians” who had sold themselves for a square meal. . . . [The Boxers] set up boxing grounds, often in temple precincts, where they drilled and these became the movement’s focal points. Young men flocked “to watch the excitement,” as one of them described it, and stayed, mesmerized by the drama of mass ritual. . . . The Boxer ceremonies were also compelling because they were so closely intertwined with Chinese popular culture. The gods the Boxers called on to possess them were well known from the colorful and dramatic operas performed at temple fairs and village celebrations. . . . [T]he movement’s meteoric rise was above all a heartfelt response to desperate and worsening conditions in northern China and an increasing sense of impotence. Shantung was a natural springboard for the Boxers. This already desperately poor, overpopulated province—the birthplace of Confucius—had been hard hit economically by the increasing tide of foreign goods flooding into China, particularly foreign textiles. New foreign technology was also wreaking havoc. The steamboats and steam launches, plying busily up China’s rivers and canals, had put thousands of bargemen out of work, just as, in other provinces of northern China, railways were destroying the livelihood of camel-men, mule-drivers, chair bearers, and innkeepers. . . . Shantung had also been wracked by successive floods and droughts. . . . Such economic and natural disasters made the province a fertile recruiting ground for the Boxers, who blamed foreign interference and the Christian converts for alienating China’s traditional gods and causing them to punish the land and its people.
—Diana Preston, historian, The Boxer Rebellion, published in 2000
Document 11 (Secondary Source)
The following excerpt discusses the 19th-century Serbian nationalist movement that sought to break away from the Ottoman – Empire and form a new nation-state.
In the first half of the nineteenth century, with history as their inspiration, the Serbs moved toward first autonomy within the Ottoman Empire and then full independence. . . . Ilija Garašanin, the statesman who did so much to shape Serbian nationalism and to build the structures for the new Serbian state, drew on history to point his fellow Serbs toward their destiny. The Serbian Empire had been destroyed by the Ottoman Turks, but now the time had come to restore it. We are, he said in a document that remained secret until the start of the twentieth century, the “true heirs of our great forefathers.”
—Margaret Macmillan, historian, The Uses and Abuses of History, published in 2010
Document 12 and 13
The aim of the Qing Restoration, which began around 1860 CE, was to reinvigorate the Confucian state through administrative and tax reforms. To tackle the thorny problem of foreign threats, the reformers’ initial response was the adoption of Western military technology and diplomatic practices, conveniently encapsulated as “self-strengthening.” It became apparent early on that the adoption of one Western technological or diplomatic innovation would inevitably lead to the adoption of another. Modern guns and boats would require new military training, just as their manufacture would require machinists and engineers, and they in turn would demand support industries such as coal mining and a modern transportation infrastructure. To finance these projects, the self-strengtheners branched out into money-making enterprises. A steamship company and textile mills followed, first under government purview, but eventually in private hands. To meet demands, modern education was introduced. The combined effect of modern commerce, industry, and education had led to major diversification and enrichment of the Chinese elites. They were now poised for greater say in the polity. When their demands were not satisfied, they deserted the Qing Court, and the dynasty collapsed in 1912.
—David Pong, professor emeritus of East Asian history, The Fall of the Qing, 1840–1912, published in 2013
From about 1826 to 1877 CE, the Ottoman government at Istanbul made a major effort at revitalizing its empire, which had been declining at an increasingly precipitous rate since its expansion had been halted at Vienna at the end of the 17th century CE. This effort sought to modernize the empire by adopting some social, political and technological institutions from the West. The reforms were to be implemented by a “modernized” civil bureaucracy. The effort failed in its primary goal of arresting the empire’s decline, although the Ottomans did delay the eclipse of their state for almost another hundred years, and in the process laid the groundwork on which 20th-century-CE Turkish modernizers were able to build.
—Walter F. Weiker, political scientist and historian, The Ottoman Bureaucracy: Modernization and Reform, published in 1968
Document 14 (Secondary Source)
This book makes no claim to destroy other interpretations of nineteenth-century imperialism. Rather it aims to provoke fresh thinking on this subject, by adding the technological dimension to the list of factors other historians have already explored.
Though advances occurred in every period, many of the innovations that proved useful to the imperialists of the scramble first had an impact in the two decades from 1860 to 1880. These were the years in which quinine made Africa safer for Europeans; quick-firing breechloaders replaced muzzleloaders among the forces stationed on the imperial frontiers; and the compound engine, the Suez Canal, and the submarine cable made steamships competitive with sailing ships, not only on government- subsidized mail routes, but for ordinary freight on distant seas as well. Europeans who set out to conquer new lands in 1880 had far more power over nature and over the people they encountered than their predecessors twenty years earlier had; they could accomplish their tasks with far greater safety and comfort.
What the breechloader, the machine gun, the steamboat and steamship, and quinine and other innovations did was to lower the cost, in both financial and human terms, of penetrating, conquering, and exploiting new territories. So cost-effective did they make imperialism that not only national governments but lesser groups as well could now play a part in it. Even individuals like Henry Stanley and Cecil Rhodes could precipitate events and stake out claims to vast territories which later became parts of empires. It is because the flow of new technologies in the nineteenth century made imperialism so cheap that it reached the threshold of acceptance among the people and governments of Europe, and led nations to become empires. Is this not as important a factor in the scramble for Africa as the political, diplomatic, and business motives that historians have stressed?
—Daniel R. Headrick, historian, The Tools of Empire, published in 1981
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No need to work on your paper at night. Sleep tight, we will cover your back. We offer all kinds of writing services.
Essays
No matter what kind of academic paper you need and how urgent you need it, you are welcome to choose your academic level and the type of your paper at an affordable price. We take care of all your paper needs and give a 24/7 customer care support system.
Admissions
Admission Essays & Business Writing Help
An admission essay is an essay or other written statement by a candidate, often a potential student enrolling in a college, university, or graduate school. You can be rest assurred that through our service we will write the best admission essay for you.
Reviews
Editing Support
Our academic writers and editors make the necessary changes to your paper so that it is polished. We also format your document by correctly quoting the sources and creating reference lists in the formats APA, Harvard, MLA, Chicago / Turabian.
Reviews
Revision Support
If you think your paper could be improved, you can request a review. In this case, your paper will be checked by the writer or assigned to an editor. You can use this option as many times as you see fit. This is free because we want you to be completely satisfied with the service offered.