The Opium Wars

The Opium war started when Britain wanted Chinas tea. China was always an isolated country. So china didn’t want to trade with any nation. This made the British pretty furious. So the British decided to make the Chinese drug addicts in order to trade their tea for their opium. (The drug) The British succeeded. The Chinese people were addicted and couldn’t stop taking Opium. No one in China knew how to plant or even find Opium. So their only source was Britain. The British started trading their opium for Chinas tea. The Chinese emperor didn’t approve of this; Opium was destroying their nation. But Britain didn’t choose to stop; they were making a lot of money out of their tea, when they got it for a little price (opium). The Chinese decided that they had to go to war in order to stop these trades. But unfortunately Britain won. Because of Chinas isolation they were behind in technology. But Britain wasn’t. Their steam powered boats, cannons and machine guns were no match for Chinas swords and sailboats.

"The White Man's Burden"

The meaning for burden is a chore, duty, job, etc. So basically it’s someone’s responsibility .Now the white man’s burden would mean the white man’s job/responsibility. The poem was written during United States imperialism towards the Philippine islands. So the author Rudyard Kipling was writing about how its Americas job to imperialize other countries like they were doing to the Philippine islands. In my opinion I think that America is still imperialistic. Now America is imperializing Iraq like they were doing to the Philippine islands.

"The Scramble for Africa"

The term "The Scramble for Africa" means that all the major powers that were above Africa planned to invade and conquer parts of Africa but also had to compete with each other. The nations involved in this "Scramble" were: Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany, Great Britian, Holland, Belgium and France. These nations were looking to spread their beliefs and thought since each were the superior race that they should teach the Africans manners. It was also a competion between themselves and the other nations. They were able to dominate Africa easily because they had better technology and since Africa was already divided into tribes, they didn't want to unite to take care of the nations. This scramble affected the people because millions died doing work for them and many people were relocated to different parts of Africa. Even today, Africa is still divided into the parts that the nations conquered.

Film Lesson: "Mountains of the Moon"

The Europeans had a lot of hard ships being in Africa. They faced disease,enemy tribes,low food and water. The reason the source of the Nile river (Lake Victoria) is named after the British Queen is because when John Speak found it he called it that to show that Europeans discovered it. The Europeans had a big advantage over the African people and that advantage was guns.The African people never seen anything like it before, Africans carried around spears and Shields as there weapons. Then when the machine gun was invented the Europeans went back to Africa and took it over with ease.