Imperialism Dbq Essay

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Being that Great Britain and Japan are both island nations, it was only so much they could provide for themselves during the time of industrialization and imperialization. They had limited resources and had to resort to other ways to grow economically and become or continue to be powerful nations. This resulted to harsh methods when it came to imperialization.

In terms of imperialism, it was not always fair, but it was often justified, possibly to falsely clear the conscious of seemingly blinded imperialists. As seen from Cecil Rhodes, "My cherished idea is a solution for the social problem, i.e., in order to save . . . the United Kingdom from a bloody civil war, we colonial statesmen must acquire new lands to settle the surplus population, …show more content…

There was a steady increase of opium exports even after China banned the highly addictive drug prior to the Opium Wars, this demonstrates imperialism by the greed and need for economic gain by still enforcing trade after a law was imposed for them not to, this can be seen in fifth document, a bar graph titled "British Opium Exports to China". The British simply cared about their imperialistic ways and had no regards for the Chinese and their wishes for the Opium trading to cease. Prior to the formal exports of opium, Britain saw that China did not like the trading of it and continued to smuggle it even after China officially banned it, due to the fact that opium was a highly addictive drug. This then led to the Opium wars, another example of imperialism connecting to industrialization and modernization. Britain has limited resources due to its inconvenient placement geographically speaking, it is an island nation. So therefore, Britain used a nation with better resources and location placement, China. They made them sign an unfair treaty, the Treaty of Nanjing. This treaty further helped Britain imperialistically, due to the geographically centered terms of the treaty, they had better access to ports, complete control of a main city in China, and "fair" …show more content…

After the industrialization and modernization concerning their military (navy) and their adoption of western technology, such as canons and weapons, and even the typical lookin western military uniform, Japan then became one of the most powerful countries in Asia, around the late 1800s. You can also see in document 9, a map showing Japan's territorial expansion from 1930 - 1939, more specifically, Japan's expansion into Eastern China, seemingly for better access to ports resources. Demonstrating Beasley's writings exactly, Japan used its neighbors for its economic gains. One more example of this would be outside information I retained from the lesson "The Rise of Modern Japan", after Japan's victory with taking some of China's territory, they initiated the Russo-Japanese war, where they launched a surprise attack on Russia with their powerful navy. This shows that imperialism was bettered by the industrialization and improvement of their military forces, they drove Russians out of their own territories and seized their

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