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Chapter 20 - The Age of Imperialism

• Liberal reforms were taking place, and one of the more influential ones was compulsory elementary school for children. A more literate population created a wide audience for newspapers; the news inspired many to become politically aware and to form and join labor unions. As more people became eligible to vote, politicians had to curry the favor of their contituents. Campaigning became a neccessity, and campaign promises had to be delivered upon for a politician to stay in office since the public was increasingly aware and empowered. Slowly, women became more politically active and demanded to be recognized as equal citizens with the right to vote.
• While women of high social standing were fighting for their rights in western Europe and America, native populations in overseas colonies and banana republics were being cruelly forced into subjugation and labor on plantations by their imperialist overlords -- none of these populations was granted the same rights as their colonists expected for themselves in their home country. Jewish people, who had long been considered second-class citizens in many areas, began to see some hope for equality from the promise of Enlightenment ideals. Ultranationalism, however, became widespread, and part of ultranationalism was racism, exemplified by the Aryan myth popular in Germany. Tsar Alexander III, reacting to the assassination of his predecessor, came down hard against the Jews, forcing them to move toward the west where the ultranationalist hostility was brewing.
• A European nation would claim a foreign region as its own, quickly suppress any resistance with incredible decisiveness using their vastly superior weapons, and exploit the local population in the name of civilizing or Christianizing them. The colonists saw themselves as more evolved than the people they conquered, and were thereby justified in using them nearly as slaves to build infrastructure projects, grow cash crops, mine for minerals, and otherwise extract value from the lands. These ventures could be extremely profitable, even if many proved to be boondoggles, and competition between nations to secure the good ones could be fierce. As this competition heated up, the spoils of expansion were seen as prizes of national prestige. Finally, participants in colonial expansion were often lured by the sense of adventure that could come about by traveling to new, exotic locales and conquering the adversities such an undertaking would throw at them.
• European colonists felt they were doing right by their nations and their God by going into foreign lands, bringing what they felt was an inexorable truth: that the white race and its way of life would dominate all others in due time, and the Christian faith was the only way to a good life that would lead to a pleasant afterlife -- "sky cake," as Patton Oswalt puts it. Europeans, in the long run, would learn valuable new things about the people and places they colonized. Products, medicines, foods, and culture came back to influence the zeitgeist of the colonists' home countries, leading to a more holistic worldview. Native populations were exposed to the innovations of the West. At first, unfortunately, this may have come in the form of rifles, but eventually as the wider picture of things like representative government and industrial technologies. Large numbers of people were brought into a worldwide economy. Anyplace a steamship could travel was brought into play as a potential part in the forces of politics on that same worldwide scale.