Introduction to the Documents, Chapter 25

The rise of industrial economies in Europe drove European nations to expand their empires in Africa and Asia. In search of markets, resources, and occasionally adventure, Europeans gained control of an increasingly large part of the globe through commerce and colonization. At the same time, states like the Ottoman Empire mixed western European notions of civilization with their own cultures to develop alternative visions of a “modern society.” The documents in this chapter present different perspectives on the global progress of modernization and westernization: from the Ottoman Empire’s government as it sought to draw on modern Western ideas to reform and strengthen its state, from a leading voice of British imperialism, from an African who fought and then submitted to British colonial rule, and from Africans who endured terrible abuses in the Belgian Congo. All of the documents offer insight on how non-Western peoples adapted and endured as nationalism, progress, and empire changed their worlds.