Imperialism

Imperialism

During the 1700's and 1800's, the Imperialist movement in Great Britain grew rapidly. They expanded their influence over many countries, including India and China. In both Lin Tse-hsu's letter to Queen Victoria and Gandhi's article on the British in India, the reader gets two first hand accounts of the impact the British had on other countries.

In Tse-hsu's letter, he talked about the opium trade Great Britain had with China. Although opium was illegal in England, the trade of it with China was still allowed. Tse-hsu tried to appeal to Queen Victoria and asked her to aid in China's attempts to end the drug trade. "Even though the barbarians may not necessarily intend to do us harm, yet in coveting profit to an extreme, they have no regard for injuring others. Let us ask, where in your conscience?" A few months after the letter was written, the Opium War broke out between China and England. The war was over quickly, with the British's superior naval power making the victory an easy one. The result of the war was the Nanking Treaty, which, concluded at gunpoint in 1842, ceded the Chinese island of Hong Kong, near Guangzhou, to Britain and opened five ports—Guangzhou, Xiamen, Fuzhou, Ningbo, and Shanghai—to foreign trade and residence. Known as treaty ports, these cities contained large areas called concessions that were leased in perpetuity to foreign powers. Through its clause on extraterritoriality, the treaty stipulated that British subjects in China were answerable only to British law, even in disputes with Chinese. The treaty also had a most-favored-nation clause, which meant that whenever a nation extracted a new privilege from China, that privilege was extended automatically to Britain. China had no say in these proceedings, however, whenever they expressed any disapproval of the Great Britain's sanctions, they were quickly silenced by the British navy.

Meanwhile, the English East India Company continued to extend its control over Indian territory throughout the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Treaties made with Indian princes provided for the stationing of British troops within these princely states. To pay for the troops the British were often given revenue-collecting rights in certain parts of the states; this gave them indirect control over these areas. Many of these states were annexed when succession to the throne was in doubt or when the ruler acted in ways that seemed contrary to British interests.