A Short History of the World

by Christopher Lascelles

  Hong Xiuquan’s version of Christianity soon attracted over a million people, urged on by the hope of improved social conditions, land distribution and the equality of women. As a sign of rebellion the men grew their hair long and became known as the hairy rebels. The civil war that followed lasted 14 years and claimed an estimated 20 million lives.

  The rebellion almost toppled the Qing dynasty, especially when the dynasty became distracted by another opium war with the British and the French. However, it failed to achieve its objectives. The rebels had attacked Confucianism, which was still widely accepted in the country, they had alienated the wealthier classes by advocating radical reforms, and their leadership had been increasingly weakened by rivalries. The result was the division of their forces and the refusal of the Europeans to deal with them, unsure if their concessions would continue under the Taiping. Hong Xiuquan ended up killing himself.

  After losing control of many parts of China to local warlords after the death of Hong Xiuquan, the Qing government realised that they would not be able to keep control unless they embarked upon some kind of modernisation programme. Students were sent abroad to study Western ways, factories were established according to Western models and Western science was studied. However, the forces of conservatism proved to be too strong for any major change to be implemented.

  By this stage, several European powers had noticed that China was weak and seized the opportunity to gain territory at its expense. Russia was the first to take advantage, invading Manchuria in north-eastern China in the 1850s. France colonised present-day Vietnam and established a protectorate over Cambodia in 1864, and Britain gained control of Burma in 1885, incorporating it within India and taking Malaysia for good measure. The Netherlands took the East Indies. Japan, having been through its own modernisation programme, defeated China at the end of the century, forcing China to recognise Japanese interest in Korea and to cede Taiwan. For this and other reasons, the Chinese refer to the 19th century as the ‘century of shame and humiliation’.

  Revolution in India (1857)

  Almost immediately after the Crimean War of 1855, the British were faced with a serious rebellion in India. Since the arrival of the Europeans on the subcontinent, the interests of the local population had generally been subordinated to those of the newcomers. Christian missionaries had further challenged the local religions and way of life, unwittingly and unintentionally alienating a large percentage of the population. When the English army introduced rifle cartridges, allegedly greased with pig and cow fat, this incensed Muslim and Hindu sentiments respectively, and the resentment which had been simmering for decades came to a boil.

  In 1857, a hundred years after the Battle of Plassey, the European-trained Indian armies mutinied in an effort to win back control of their own country from the British. Pledging allegiance to the Mughal emperor, they murdered the British inhabitants of Delhi, after which the uprising spread rapidly throughout India. Initially somewhat panicked, the British eventually managed to put down the rebellion as it lacked support and good leadership.

  In 1858, as a direct result of the Indian mutiny, the British government abolished the Mughal dynasty that had by this time ruled India for 300 years. The emperor was exiled to Burma and the British government assumed the direct administration of India, a country with ten times its population. British rule in India prevailed over a good two-thirds of the country for the next 90 years in what came to be known as ‘the Raj’, a term derived from the Sanskrit term ‘raja’ which means King.

  The British government installed a viceroy and dissolved the East India Company. India was too valuable to Britain, both in terms of providing raw materials and in terms of its size as an export market, to risk losing it. To avoid any doubt as to who ruled India, Queen Victoria was declared Empress of India in 1877.

  How King Cotton led to Civil War in America (1861-1865)

  While the mid-19th century saw revolution and war in Europe, civil war in China and uprisings in India among other conflicts, America was also to have its own catastrophe, which stemmed from a clash between an increasingly industrialised North and a cotton and slave-dependent South.

  In Europe, more efficient machines had led to growing demand for both raw and finished cotton – demand that the markets struggled to fulfil. Sensing huge profits, a large number of plantations in the deep South began to focus on cotton. Yet, while the cotton gin had solved the major problem of separating cotton from its sticky seeds, the cotton still needed to be picked. Basic maths by the plantation owners showed them that the more pickers they had, the more land they could harvest, and the richer they would become. As a result, demand for slaves, which had seen a decline in the late 18th century, skyrocketed. The slave population in America almost doubled between 1810 and 1830 and by the 1850s slaves made up approximately half the population of the four main cotton states.

  By 1840, the United States produced more cotton than any country in the world, and the value of cotton exports exceeded the value of all other American exports combined, effectively financing America's early development. Cotton planters became some of the richest men in America. What they did not foresee, however, was that the emphasis on cotton and slavery in the South had led to a dangerous dependence on a one-crop economy and did little to incentivise diversification. The opposite was true of the North (where the climate would not support cotton), which had become increasingly industrialised and therefore less dependent on slaves. As slavery became less and less acceptable globally, the South became more isolated, both nationally and internationally.

  The slave trade with Africa had been abolished by the United Kingdom in 180793 and by the USA in 1808. Despite this, existing slaves had not actually been not freed and an internal slave trade had developed within the states where slavery was prevalent; the ban on the importation of slaves had only increased their price. The election of Abraham Lincoln over a pro-slavery contender to the presidency of the USA in November 1860 was the last straw for the South. While the large majority of Northerners were indifferent to the issue of slavery – the emancipation movement was a vocal but distinct minority – it was enough of an issue in the south to cause major amounts of angst. Led by South Carolina, seven states left the Union and in February 1861, a month before Lincoln gave his inauguration speech, the Confederate States of America were formed, with Jefferson Davis as their president.

  When Confederate forces attacked Fort Sumter, a Union stronghold on an island in the harbour of Charleston in South Carolina in April 1861, Lincoln had no choice but to go to war. He was determined to do everything in his power to prevent the country being split asunder. This held far more importance to him than the issue of slavery. Lincoln even wrote a famous letter in which he stated that he would keep slavery if it would end the war. Slavery was far from the only issue that got him elected in the North and most northerners who fought for the Union fought for preserving the Union, not freeing the slaves. Conversely, the large majority of Confederate soldiers were not slaveholders and had little interest in preserving slavery. They most likely fought because they viewed the Union armies as invaders. In many ways the Civil War was a battle of elites for economic power. Eleven southern states eventually joined the Confederacy, splitting the United States in two.

  The North was in a stronger position from the start. It had a larger army as well as at least twice the population. It was also more industrialised, which meant it could produce more war materials, and had a better transport infrastructure, which meant it was easier for it to resupply its troops. The North also controlled the Navy, which proved significant in blockading the South and preventing aid and supplies from arriving from Europe. Despite this, the Confederate general Robert E. Lee led the South to a number of initial victories, even invading the North in 1862 and 1863.

  However, Lee’s advance ended in July of the same year at the bloody three-day battle at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. It was here, several months later, at the dedication of a new cemetery to honour
the fallen, that Lincoln made his famous ‘Government of the people, by the people, for the people’ Gettysburg address, which is regarded as one of the most famous speeches in American history. Ulysses S. Grant, the Union’s most senior general, who went on to become the eighteenth US president, took command of the Union forces nine months after Gettysburg and waged a total war against the South until it was brought to its knees. The war officially ended on 9th April 1865 when Lee surrendered to Grant. Lincoln was assassinated five days later, at the age of 56, by a Southern sympathiser.

  The Civil War was the most catastrophic event in American history; more than 600,000 Americans died, the majority through disease, a greater number than those who have died in all other American wars combined, and more than the American losses in both the First and Second World Wars. Hundreds of thousands were also wounded. The South was destroyed and the period of reconstruction that followed lasted over ten years. The economic devastation lasted much longer, well into the 20th century. The war did, however, end the debate over slavery.

  The Expansion of America (1783–1867)

  American independence had been accompanied by a huge growth in population, doubling to eight million between 1790 and 1814, and subsequently increasing to 23 million by 1850.

  Much of this latter growth had come from an influx of Europeans seeking to escape Europe after 1815 and attracted by the almost unlimited demand for labour in an expanding economy. A substantial number of Irish arrived in America from 1846 onwards in an attempt to escape a terrible famine that occurred between 1846 and 1851 as a result of the devastation of Ireland’s potato crop. The result of this influx of people was an economic boom that led to the major westward expansion of the United States.

  In 1803, under President Jefferson, America purchased the Louisiana territory – all two million square kilometres of it – from Napoleon, who had required funds to wage his wars in Europe94 and the purchase of land roughly the size of Europe effectively doubled the size of the country at the time. The annexation by the Americans of Texas in 1845 caused a war with the Mexicans, who were forced to concede California, and Alaska was bought from the Russians in 1867 for USD 7.2 million dollars.95 In 1898, after a ten-week war with Spain, the US gained Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines, though they never became states.

  The growth in its manufacturing industry and the production of cheap steel, a metal that is less expensive to produce and lighter and stronger than iron, allowed America to develop the railroads that were instrumental in opening its territory to trade and settlement. The railroad, the steamship, and the telegraph reduced the cost and time of transportation and communication, and helped create a new market for American goods. By the end of the 19th century, the United States had become the largest and most competitive industrial nation in the world. In Europe, the flood of cheap American food led to falling European death rates and an increase in the population, which subsequently acted as a driving factor for industrialisation on the mainland.

  New Nations: Austria-Hungary, Italy, and Germany (1867–1871)

  Increased population growth and surging nationalism saw Germany and Italy, long a patchwork of independent states, both become nations in the 19th century.

  In 1848 much of Italy was controlled by foreign powers. A movement called the ‘risorgimento’ aimed to unify Italy and take the country back to its former glory. A number of Italian states joined forces to oust Austria from its control of northern Italy, and the remaining states came under Italian control through diplomatic initiatives. Under the inspired leadership of the Italian prime minister Camillo Cavour, Italy was united fully in 1870.

  Germany’s first step to unification had occurred in 1806 when 16 states left the Holy Roman Empire to create a new Germanic union – the Confederation of the Rhine – under the protection of Napoleon. A month later Emperor Francis II had dissolved the Holy Roman Empire. At the Congress of Vienna in 1815, no attempt was made to restore the Holy Roman Empire and the Deutsche Bund, or ‘German Confederation’, came into existence. Leadership initially fell to Austria but the country had no intention of unifying the states which, as nationalism gained momentum, looked more and more to the leadership of the Prussian prime minister, Otto von Bismarck.

  A brilliant diplomat, Bismarck rammed his reforms through the German Reichstag, or parliament. Claiming that ‘the fate of nations is not decided by speeches or votes, but by blood and iron’, Bismarck dealt with any nation that sought to block his plans, notably beating the Austrian army in seven weeks in 1866. After unifying the Protestant northern German states under Prussian leadership, a victorious war against the French in 1871 was all it took for him to unify the remaining southern and Catholic German states in a Second Reich, with King Wilhelm as their Kaiser or Caesar. (The first German Reich was the Holy Roman Empire of Germany. Hitler would try and create the third one.) A rapidly industrialising Germany then became the dominant military land power in Europe – possibly the most important political development on the continent between the revolutions of 1848 and the war of 1914.

  Ousted from control of northern Italy and expelled from the German Federation following their defeat by Germany in 1866, the Austrians realised that it was in their best interests to strengthen their position by effecting a compromise with the largest national group in their empire, the Hungarians. In 1867, a compromise was reached under which a dual Austro-Hungarian monarchy came into being.96 Franz Joseph was declared king of Hungary and a separate parliament was established at Budapest, but the new empire would have a unified foreign policy, army and monetary system. In theory this prevented the Austrian Empire from further disintegration. In reality, the preponderance of Slavs in the new empire would lead to troubles down the line.

  The Scramble for Africa (1880–1914)

  Around this time, Europe became increasingly interested in the continent of Africa. Before 1870, inland continental Africa had been largely ignored by the European powers, partly due to a simple lack of interest on their part and partly due to a lack of resistance to tropical diseases, a problem that gave Africa the name ‘White Man’s Grave’. The inroads they had made were predominantly in coastal towns that served as either trading posts or re-fuelling stations, as in the case of Cape Town. The interior was unknown and Africa was also referred to as the ‘Dark Continent’ for that reason.

  However, as Europe industrialised, the need grew for raw materials to feed its factories and more and more countries began to look to Africa as a new source of supply as well as a market into which they could sell their newly manufactured goods. The discovery of quinine, which gave some protection against malaria, together with the invention of new vaccines, contributed to reducing the high number of European deaths from disease and opened the country to further exploration. The final impetus was a religious one; European Christians saw a whole new continent ready for the word of God.

  Almost from the beginning, European nations competed aggressively for land. The French had lost territory (and pride) to the Germans in 1871 and their American empire no longer existed, thanks largely to Britain. They had also obtained a renewed taste for colonial possessions following their invasion of Algeria in 1830. Africa offered them a new opportunity for expansion.

  Britain was looking to expand its empire, which had also been reduced since the independence of its American colonies. It was also concerned about a rapidly industrialising Germany which was pursuing an aggressive policy of growth under Kaiser Wilhelm II. Sandwiched among the great powers in the middle of Europe, King Leopold II of Belgium felt that this was his one chance to gain territory in a way that did not involve war; after all, more territories equated to higher prestige. Leopold would go on to seize the Congo as his personal property. Portugal, Italy and a host of other countries also sought to get into the game.

  In 1882 the British invaded and occupied Egypt, concerned that instability there would affect the operation of the Suez Canal – built in 1869 – which significantly reduced the time a
nd cost of travel to India. In an attempt to protect Egypt from invasion, Britain also conquered the Sudan to Egypt’s south. With the strategic port of Cape Town in its hands since the beginning of the century, its route to India was now secure; however, the inevitable response to these actions was a rush by other European powers to gain territory in Africa. The speed at which they rushed into the continent encouraged Bismarck to call an international conference in Berlin to set the rules for dividing it up. No Africans were invited.

  Within 20 years, most of the continent was under the control of one European power or another. Of all the African countries, only Abyssinia (later Ethiopia) and Liberia were never conquered by Europeans. As with other European conquests, the locals were not given much consideration, with large numbers enslaved and killed in an effort to exploit the territory and its resources. The newly developed machine gun made up for the lack of manpower allocated by European governments in their attempt to tame what they considered an uncivilised land.

  One of the overriding and lasting effects of European colonisation was the imposition of borders that cut across tribal boundaries and caused conflicts that continue to this day. In their haste to delineate their new colonies, the powers arbitrarily drew straight lines on a map, ignoring any linguistic groups or existing tribal loyalties. It would take half a century or so before the African countries felt confident enough to rise up against their colonial masters and demand their independence.