HIS 102 WEEK 9: IMPERIALISM
Reading Assignment for the week:
- Read the appropriate chapters in the
textbook (chapter 26 and 27 in the 7th or 6th ed. of Perry).
- Read Achebe, Things Fall
Apart (You may wish to participate in an Online Discussion of this reading.).
-
Listen to some further information about imperialism
as a Realaudio file
or as a wav file. You can also read the information as
a txt file.
Questions to
Consider while studying this week's material:
- How is what happened in
Egypt in the second half of the nineteenth century illustrative of the
affects of imperialism?
- What were the basic premises
of the Social Darwinists?
Key Terms to study
while reading the textbook:
- Third Republic
- Affaire Dreyfus
- Sepoy Mutiny
- Meiji restoration
- Imperialism
Suggested Websites for further study:
- For extra credit please suggest to your instructor a
relevant website for this unit of the course. Send the title of the site, the url and a
brief explanation why you find the information interesting and applicable to
the material being studied this week.
Submit the Achebe Paper:
The governor of your state is planning to go on an
economic tour of West Africa to find new markets for the industries in your
state. Because of an economic recession, this is an especially important
undertaking, and the governor wants to be carefully prepared when he arrives in
Africa. As part of the advance planning team you are to consider how
Nigerian society has changed over the past century and especially to
note How the appearance of Europeans altered Ibo society in a one-page paper; the governor is
busy and does not want to read more than one page. You should use direct
material (quotes, evidence) from Things Fall Apart to support your points.
The paper requires that you gather evidence
from a textual source (Things Fall Apart) to reconstruct the past (task
1), and that you then interpret that past by analyzing the evidence (task
2). As you read Things Fall Apart and take notes, you should look for any
information that explained how Ibo society changed after contact with Europeans,
for example, the construction of the church is certainly one piece of evidence.
Your paper must follow the following format:
- typed using a word processor
(font size 10 or 12 only)
- one-inch margins
- double-spaced
- page number citations for your
quoted evidence
- not to exceed one (1) page--I
will not read beyond one page
- name, date and HIS 102 at
the top left
- must have a brief introduction
and conclusion (each not to exceed two sentences)
-
must follow the specific writing requirements of this course
as explained in
Charlie's History Writing Center.
- You may consider submitting a draft
of your paper to
your instructor for feedback before submitting the paper for a grade. Along
with your draft, please send
three questions that you would like answered about your draft; the questions can
be general (Is my introduction clear?) or specific (Is the phrase, "Gilgamesh was
king," written correctly?). Your instructor will not edit your paper, but will answer your
three questions.
- At times, you may be asked
to rewrite your essay before it is graded. This is done for your own benefit
and will result in an improved grade.
- You may also choose to resubmit
your paper--along with the original--after making the corrections and taking into consideration the
comments noted on the original. This will result in an additional two (2.5)
points being added to your paper grade, if your paper is improved.
Before proceeding, you might wish to read
the short background information and
review the study questions on Achebe.
This assignment should be sent by e-mail according to the Electronic Submission
Information instructions.
You may also wish to post or respond in the
Blackboard online discussion forum
for this assignment. Please review the instructions for
Using the Blackboard
Discussion Forums, if necessary.
The Achebe Paper is worth a maximum of
50 points.
Notes:
By the second half of the nineteenth
century, European states (and the United States) had grown more powerful
and technologically advanced than countries in the rest of the
world. This set the stage
for a renewed effort to expand and establish European (and American) influence and control
over territories in Australia, Africa, Asia and the Pacific Rim. That effort
soon turned, quite literally, into a mad scramble to extend national power and
prestige overseas. In Africa, the race was on to carve up Africa into European
spheres-of-influence. This imperialist competition
helped to increase tensions among countries in Europe and was one of
the contributing factors leading to World War I.
The United States also erected its own
overseas empire by the turn of the twentieth century. As a direct result
of the Spanish-American War, the U.S. obtained, for all practical purposes,
Cuba and the Philippines as colonial possessions. Islands in the Caribbean
and the Pacific, such as Hawaii, also came under American control. There
was also the American economic empire in Central and Southern America,
carved out by powerful U.S. business concerns who practically functioned
as behind-the-scenes dictators. Thus, America was as much a participant
in the race for empire as the European states.
This was also the age of Impressionism. See the trip to the Art Institute of Chicago by two of my students.
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