1. Many African and Asian rulers initially tried to drive away the foreigners. Afterwards, violent rebellions against foreign control occurred, but they were suppressed quickly. After political control failed, the colonized nations sought to preserve their cultural identities. Some foreign rulers changed their initial opinion of foreigners and concluded that the West was superior and that it was necessary to reform their societies and copy European achievements. It can be said that the views of imperialism were split between traditionalists and modernizers, with many in between. These two groups competed against each other even before the foreigners came, with the modernizers having a slight edge. However, Europeans were generally accepted by both traditionalists and modernizers, as they were used to having strong leaders. The large majority of subjects was less enthusiastic about foreigners and often rallied behind a strong native leader. This was due to the nonconformists developing a strong desire for human dignity that equated foreign rule with condescension. Secondly, the leaders found ideologies that justified their cause in the Western world. They discovered liberalism and agreed with Western critics of imperialism of a double standard. They were also attracted to modern nationalism, which asserted that every people had the right to control its own destiny.
2. The English manipulated the Indian economic system by allowing the British East India Company to conquer India by 1848. After the Great Rebellion of 1857 and 1858, Britain ruled India directly. It was ruled by Parliament and administered by a tiny, all-white civil service in India. In 1900, this consisted of less than 3,500 top officials. However, this elite was competent, considered the welfare of the peasant masses, but practiced job discrimination and social segregation, and considered the Indians racially inferior. The British community also shared this view of racial inequality.
3. The British realized that they needed educated Indians to serve as subordinates in the gov-ernment and army, so they established a modern system of progressive secondary educa-tion in which all instruction was in English, allowing some Indians to have great opportuni-ties in economic and social advancement. High-caste Hindus began skillful intermediaries and formed a new elite. The new bureaucratic elite developed irrigation projects for agriculture, a grand railroad network for good communications, and large tea and jute plantations for the world economy. The majority of Indians’ lives improved little because of the population increase. With these advancements, the British created a unified, powerful state that included all the different Hindu and Muslim peoples and members of the entire subcontinent under the same general system of law and administration. However, British control led to the rise of nationalism among the Indian elite. The best jobs were sealed off to Indians, and racial discrimination meant injured pride and bitter injustice for the Indian elites. It contradicted Western concepts of human right and equality and was a dictatorship. By 1885, educated Indians had come together in the Hindu Indian National Congress, demanding equality and self-government. By 1907, the radicals in the Congress were calling for complete independence, with the moderates demanding home rule for India through an elected parliament.
4. When Commodore Matthew Perry arrived in Japan in 1853, the samurai were humiliated by the sudden American intrusion and the unequal treaties with Western countries. When foreign diplomats and merchants began to settle in Yokohama, radical samurai reacted in antiforeign terrorism and antigovernment assassination between 1858 and 1863. An allied fleet of American, British, Dutch, and French warship destroyed key forts, weakening the power and prestige of the shogun’s government. In 1867, a coalition led by patriotic samurai seized control of the government peacefully and restored the political power of the emperor in the Meiji Restoration. The government was supposed to meet the foreign threat but instead its leaders dropped their antiforeign attacks and initiated a series of measures, mostly on par with the Dual Revolution, to modernize Japan with Western civilization. In 1871, Japan’s leaders abolished the old feudal structure of aristocratic, decentralized gov-ernment and formed a strong unified state. They also dismantled the four-class legal system and declared social equality. They allow people to travel abroad and created a free, competitive, government-stimulated economy. Railroads and modern factories were built. A powerful modern navy was created, and the army was reorganized along French and German lines, with three-year military service for all males and a professional officer corps. The army was effective and put down a major rebellion by feudal elements in 1877. Japan borrowed and adapted the West’s science and modern technology, particularly in industry, medicine, and education. Students were encouraged to learn abroad, and the government paid large salaries to attract foreign experts. However, by 1890, Japan began to rely more on tradition. It established an authoritarian constitution and rejected democracy, giving the emperor and his ministers great power. Japan opened Korea with gunboat diplomacy in 1876 and defeated China in a war over Korea in 1894 to 1895, taking Formosa. Japan com-peted aggressively with European powers for influence and territory in China, especially Manchuria, where it defeated Russia in the Russo-Japanese War. By 1910, Japan had an-nexed Korea and become a major imperialist power. Japan became the first non-Western country to transform itself and match the West, setting an example for Chinese nationalists and Vietnamese patriots.
5. After China appeared to be on the verge of collapse in 1860, the government was able to use its traditional strengths and come back. This was due to the traditional ruling groups temporarily producing new and effective leadership that put down the Tai Ping rebellion. The empress dowager Tzu Hsi governed shrewdly and insightfully and revitalized the bu-reaucracy. There was less destructive foreign aggression because the Europeans had ob-tained their goal of commercial and diplomatic relations. Some Europeans, like an Irishman, reorganized China’s customs office and increased the government tax receipts, while an American diplomat represented China in foreign lands and helped strengthen the central government. The Sino-Japanese War of 1894 to 1895 and its harsh peace treaty revealed China’s helplessness in the face of aggression, triggering a demand for foreign concessions and protectorates in China. In 1898, it appeared that the European powers might divide China among themselves, but jealously toward competitors and the U.S. Open Door policy saved China. Some Chinese favored modernization with Western institutions, as evident in the government’s hundred days of reform in 1898 to meet the foreign challenge. Radical reformers like Sun Yat-sen wanted to overthrow the dynasty and establish a republic. Some traditionalists wanted to turn back to ancient pratices, political conservatism, and financial hatred of the foreigners. Conservative, antiforeign patriots fought with foreign missionaries and their undermining reverences for ancestors. Secret societies like the Boxers rebelled in the Boxer Rebellion of 1900 to 1903, killing more than two hundred foreign missionaries and several thousand Chinese Christians alone in northeastern China. Peking was occupied and plundered by foreign armies, who then charge a high indemnity. Anarchy and foreign influence spread, with many antiforeign, antigovernment revolutionaries plotting. In 1912, an uprising toppled the Manchu Dynasty, and a Western-style republic and elected parliament were established.
1. Marie became interested in radioactivity after reading the work of scientist Henri Becque-rel, whose findings that uranium emitted strange radiation excited her. She found that only uranium and thorium were radioactive. She discovered that the radioactivity given off by radioactive compounds was much greater than expected, meaning that there was another radioactive element.
2. When observing bismuth and barium, the Curies concluded that two new elements were present. Marie chose to call one of them polonium and its relative radium.
3. Marie was able to isolate the highly unstable metal, licradium.
4. During World War I, Marie Curie began to install X-ray units in European hospitals and trained nurses and volunteers in their use. She realized that X-ray pictures could locate a bullet or shell fragment so that doctors could find it easier.
1. Einstein’s three papers were “The Quantum Theory”, “The Electrodynamics of Moving Bo-dies” (the special theory of relativity), and “The General Theory of Relativity”. The quantum theory enabled the invention of the photoelectric eye and other inventions. Einstein won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921 because of it. The special theory of relativity stated that objects approaching the speed of light start to be distorted. This led to the equation, E=mc2. The general theory of relativity attempted to express all physical laws using equations.
2. The special theory of relativity was Einstein’s most famous publication. Relativity was be-lieved to mean that all bodies in the universe can be brought under one, unified set of de-terminate laws. Objects approaching the speed of light become shorter and heavier. Time and space are the same but in different forms, as movement can only be detected and measured as relative movement. No objects except for light can reach the speed of light. The speed of light is a constant and absolute. The relation between mass and energy is E=mc2. Gravity between stars and their planets is not due to physical forces but rather to the curvature of space itself.
3. Einstein also proposed the Unified Field Theory, which sought to fill the gaps in the General Relativity theory for electromagnetism. He ultimately failed in this theory.
4. Einstein wrote to President Franklin Roosevelt in 1939, saying that the Nazi physicists were already working with nuclear fission. Roosevelt then launched the Manhattan Project and created the first atomic bomb months before the Germans were to have completed theirs.
1. Pasteur’s first important research in chemistry was on tartrate acid crystals, showing that there existed right-handed and left-handed mirror-image isomers in the acid. This allowed him to discover a living ferment, or a microorganism, in some foods. He theorized that by excluding certain microorganisms from foods and beverages, fermentation due to yeast could be prevented. He advocated the germ theory and thus the importance of eating clean foods with clean hands and antiseptic methods for physicians and surgeons.
2. Pasteurization is the killing of harmful bacteria, such as tuberculosis, by heating a beverage, especially milk, so that the bacteria die.
3. Pasteur’s interest in anaerobiosis led to use this phenomenon against anthrax. He first iden-tified the particular bacterium responsible for the disease, anthrax bacillus, and then atte-nuated it by exposing it to air, placing it in certain heated cultures, and by transmitting it through animals. Vaccination of diseases was done by placing weakened strains of the dis-ease in an animal and thereby immunizing it.
4. After five years of research, Pasteur finally produced an effective rabies vaccine. However, when administered to humans, if the victim had not shown the symptoms of the disease and was inoculated, the vaccine could cause hydrophobia. If the symptoms were already shown then the victim was too late. He reasoned to get rabies through a rabid dog and then inoculate himself, but a boy walked in having been bitten fourteen times by a mad dog. Af-ter fourteen injections and a month of recovery, the boy survived. Out of the 350 people treated in the first few weeks after the inoculations became public, only one died, and she was brought in 37 days after being bitten.
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