“Letter to the Dead” (2000)

Friends, nothing has changedin essence.

Wages don't cover expenses,wars persist without end,and there are new and terrible viruses,beyond the advance of medicine.From time to time, a neighborfalls dead over questions of love…

Some astronauts stay in spacesix months or more, testingequipment and solitude.In each Olympics new records are predictedand in the countries social advances and setbacks.But not a single bird has changed its songwith the times.

We put on the same Greek tragedies,reread "Don Quixote," and springarrives on time each year.

Some habits, rivers, and forests are lost.Nobody sits in front of his house anymoreor takes in the breezes of the afternoon,but we have amazing computers

that keep us from thinking.

On the disappearance of the dinosaursand the formation of the galaxieswe have no new knowledge.Clothes come and go with the fashions.Strong governments fall, others rise,countries are divided,and the ants and the bees continuefaithfully to their work.

Nothing has changed in essence.

We sing congratulations at parties,argue football on street corners,die in senseless disasters,and from time to timeone of us looks at the star-filled skywith the same amazement we hadwhen we looked at caves.And each generation, full of itself,continues to thinkthat it lives at the summit of history.

Affonso Romano de Sant' Anna [translated from the Portuguese]

“Whatever happens we have got

The Maxim gun and they have not.”

- British writer Hilaire Belloc

IMPERIALISM THRU 1870

TWO PHASES OF MODERN IMPERIALISM

• 1st phase: 16th and 17th century takeover of the Americas

– Major players: Spain, Portugal, British, Dutch, French

– The Three “G”s: God, Glory, Gold….European competition

• 2nd phase: 1750-1900 takeover of Asia and Africa

– Major players: British, Dutch, French, Germans, Italians, Belgians, United States, Japan

– The Three “C”s: Civilizing, Commerce, Christianity….European competition

Chapter 26: 1750-1870• Changes and Exchanges in Africa

– New states & goods exchanged:

• Zulu, Sokoto, Egypt

• “Legitimate trade” • Interior of Africa:

European explorations

• Algeria

Chapter 26: 1750-1870• India under British Rule

• Britain’s Eastern Empire

–South Africa, Indian Ocean, Australia, New Zealand

SNAPSHOT OF THE WORLD: 1870

Historiography of Imperialism

• Before we look at primary sources, let’s read what one historian argues about 19th century imperialism.

– What are the Western ideas that spread throughout the world during the 19th century?

– How does he argue these ideas spread?

– Were any groups attracted to Western ideas? Why?

– How was Westernization resisted?

– Is the world continuing to move toward the Western model…? (cf. Islamic and other traditions)

Primary Source Analysis Time!

Algeria• Prelude to the

“Scramble for Africa”

• The Three “C”s

• Immigration; seizing resources; aggressive racism; cultural changes

Algerian Primary Sources:Women as victims or agents for…?

• How did different manifestations of French colonialism impact the lives of North African women?

• Were women oppressed? If so, was it due to their own culture or because of imperialism?

• How do the stories of these individual women contradict or support the images and stereotypes of Arab or Muslim women found in current media?

FROM THE PERSONAL ACCOUNT OF A FRENCH SOLDIER, CAPTAIN CARETTE

…The Berber-speaking inhabitants have always been known for their spirit of independence as well as for the veneration they accord to local Muslim saints, male and female. Fatima N’Soumer, a Berber holy woman, was born in 1830, the year of the French invasion of Algeria. Clad in a red cloak, she led armed resistance to the French military assaults upon the Kabyle mountains from 1854 to 1857. Fighting side by side with the men, she and her followers were able to beat off the army—for a while.

FROM THE PERSONAL ACCOUNT OF A FRENCH SOLDIER, CAPTAIN CARETTE

As a result of her actions, Fatima’s political and religious influence stretched all over the Kabylia, where her disciples believed that she had miraculous powers from God to cure the sick, ward off evil, and foretell the future in oracles. Nevertheless, outnumbered and lacking sufficient military equipment, she was captured by the French army in July of 1857, which ended militant Kabyleresistance for the time being. Fatima was imprisoned for the next six years and, as a result, her health deteriorated; she died in 1863 at the age of 33 years. Her memory, however, has persisted to this day in oral traditions.

Source: Rozet, Claude Antoine. Maure riche. Mauresque en ville, avec le sarmah sur la tête.Maure artisan. Mauresque en ville.

1833. In Voyage dans la régence d’Alger ou, Description du pays occupé par l’armée française en Afrique. Paris: A. Bertrand, 1833.

Source: Rozet, Claude Antoine. Maure riche. Mauresque en ville, avec le sarmah sur la tête.Maure artisan. Mauresque en ville.

1833. In Voyage dans la régence d’Alger ou, Description du pays occupé par l’armée française en Afrique. Paris: A. Bertrand, 1833.

The ladies of the harem generally reside at the Bardo[palace in Tunis], except two or three months in the summer when Prince Mohammed takes his family to his country-house, situated near the sea at Marsa, from whence they have beautiful views of the sea…for although the ladies’ windows…are so constructed, that it is impossible for them to be seen by people outside, yet they can themselves see from within very tolerably all that passes. And this “privilege” I think forms their chief employment and pleasure. It was at this marine villa that we saw the Lillah.

Source: Miss Smith, who accompanied British diplomat to home of Prince Muhammad, brother of ruler of Tunis (1837-1855)

We entered by a great arched door . . . into a square courtyard, in which we were pleased with the sight of peacocks, turkeys, Barbary doves and other birds. . . . [W]e entered a marble patio…in which played refreshingly two or three marble fountains, the noise of the falling water gracefully enchanting the ear, and the scattered spray diffusing a delightful coolness through the place...I felt glad as I crossed the patio to find these poor captives were not quite deprived of one of God’s greatest blessings — Heaven’s pure air! I observed at a window, on one side of the patio, several women apparently embroidering and making clothes for the family. As they looked up from their windows with curious gaze at us, a whimsical thought passed my mind of the animals in the zoological gardens whose cages very much resembled their grated windows.

Source 1. Lalla Zaynab (1850-1904), to French authorities

[From First Letter]

No sooner had my beloved father expired on June 2 of this year [1897] then, the next day during the funeral, my cousin appeared at the religious center; he has been waiting for this moment in order take over and to seize the inheritance of my father. Thus he came to my residence with this in mind, accompanied by male and female followers. He used force to enter into my home and seized the keys to all the rooms. I stood firm against this violation of my home.

Source 2. Lalla Zaynab (1850-1904)

[From Second Letter]

You [i.e., the French general] know how much my recently deceased father, Shaykh Sidi Muhammad ibn al-Qasim, cared for France and was devoted to the public good ... his conduct and his works were always in perfect harmony with the ideas of the French government. All that he possessed—land, goods, and flocks—were willed to me in numerous inheritance documents which I now have in my possession….Upon my father’s death, I took his place [as religious leader] and, in accordance with custom, I distributed alms to the poor, the miserable, the unfortunate, and to [penniless] students as well as to travelers and my father’s religious disciples.... I have come to ask you in the name of my father and the services that he rendered to put a stop to the injustices and theft of which I am a victim; I appeal to your fairness and impartiality.

Source: “Beautiful Fatima.” Late 19th century photograph. Algiers. The Getty Research Institute.

British India: Let’s Remind Ourselves

What was it like to live under the Mughals?

Mughals: Centralized or decentralized empire?

First phase of EIC expansion (1600s-1750s)

Second phase of EIC expansion (1750s-1857)

Robert Clive, Battle of Plassey in 1757

Then the Sepoy Mutiny (1857-58)

British India Primary Sources