Class 10. Global Empires (4) Classe 10. Empires mondiaux (4) Klas 10. Wereldrijken (4) Klasa 10. Globalne imperia (4) Aula 10. Impérios mundiais (4) 10. Sınıf Küresel İmparatorluklar (4)

and then it's going to be the British and the French

who are the most important colonial powers.

In the 18th century, it's going to be the British

and the French who are competing for world domination.

A side effect of the British-French competition

for world domination is this country, right?

If you remember the sort of general thesis

that states can come into existence

because of a sort of friction between two greater powers,

in the case of the United States of America,

that would be the friction between the British

and the French empires.

It's particularly a side effect

of what the world calls the Seven Years' War

but which American history calls the French and Indian War,

slightly obscurely.

So that war, 1756 to 1763,

which is also a European war, and we'll get to it,

is when the French and the British redivide

and where it's going to be clear

that the British control Canada, the British control India.

It was the threat of the French that kept these colonies,

the American colonies, close to Britain.

When the French threat was removed,

then, structurally, the colonies could start

to relax their attitude towards the British.

It made rebellion possible.

And then, of course, the French came in

at the end of the Revolutionary War.

Now, why is that interesting?

I mean, because, you know, American history,

I don't know about you guys, but okay,

well, okay, maybe it's really interesting.

Okay, I find it more interesting all the time.

I admit it.

I find American history more interesting all the time.

But one of the things which is interesting about 1776

is that it's Europeans liberating themselves from Europeans,

Europeans who are defined as colonists

liberating themselves from a European empire, right?

And as they liberate themselves,

they of course preserve longer than the imperial power ze natuurlijk langer behouden dan de keizerlijke macht

one of the features of the empire, which was slavery, right?

But so it's an interesting moment where Europeans are,

people of European origin define themselves

as an independent state and they actually win.

Now, I just want you to mark the 1776 date

because the 1776 date,

that's when the Revolutionary War took place

in the United States.

Then you're in the same world historical moment

not just as the French Revolution,

okay, I admit that's important too,

but you're also in the same historical moment

as the end of the Kazakh state,

which we're going to get to in the next lecture,

and you're in the same historical moment

as the end of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

So back in Europe, you're in a moment where this question

of European empires controlling Europeans is also relevant

but in a slightly different direction.

So one way to think about the end of the 18th century

is that it's an interesting moment of exchange is dat het een interessant moment van uitwisseling is

involving European empires

and European empires controlling Europeans.

It's also an interesting moment about...

So roughly at the same time is the moment

when the Ottoman Empire starts to withdraw from Europe.

The first couple of decades of the 19th century,

the Ottoman Empire is going to be withdrawing from Europe,

and that power is going to cease to be an imperial power

over part of the Balkans, Greece, and Serbia.

Okay, the next thing...

And I realize this is a lot.

I hope this, like, feels more like entertainment

than, you know, than oppression, dan, weet je, dan onderdrukking,

or at least ideally entertaining oppression.

But the next thought that I want you to have,

it has to do with how empire continues to work

in the world in the age of nationalism.

So it's very easy to say

the nation is against the empire, right?

And that's a very convenient sort of position to be in En dat is een heel handige positie om in te zitten

because in that case, empire bad, nation good, right?

Empire big, nation small.

Empire old, nation new. Right?

The nation can start fresh,

has no historical baggage, all of that.

But the truth is that in the 19th century,

empire and nation are very much entangled with one another.

So when Jefferson describes the United States, for example,

as an empire of liberty, that doesn't, I mean,

that doesn't really make any sense conceptually,

but you can see why he's saying it.

It is because the United States is an empire,

and you know, the liberty part is restrained

to a certain group, of course.

On the European continent, maybe the best example

of this entanglement are the Napoleonic Wars. van deze verstrengeling zijn de Napoleontische oorlogen.

On the European continent, the idea that you can start fresh

is most closely associated with the French Revolution.

The idea that we're now in a new period

where we understand humanity

and we have a science of humanity en we hebben een wetenschap van de mensheid

and we can start fresh, we're enlightened,

is most strongly associated with the French Revolution.

And when the French Revolution leads to Napoleon Bonaparte,

the notion of his wars across Europe

is that these are wars of national liberation.

And that's not entirely false.

All over Europe, he, you know,

dispatches his various brothers-in-law

and they start new countries

with new names and new currencies,

and Napoleon is seen by many people as a national liberator.

But at the same time,

what Napoleon is building is also an empire

where the metropole is clearly going to be Paris.

So you have this ambiguity about what is national

and what is imperial and how the two work together.

And you also have this very powerful idea

which is characteristic of the 19th century and forward

that I can build an empire

by talking about your national liberation.

The French pioneer that, not just Napoleon Bonaparte,

but actually Napoleon II in the 1860s, 1870s.

1859 is really when it starts.

I can create an empire by liberating you nationally.

I mean, I don't even have to tell you

how much continuity that idea has had, right?

Right down to the war in Ukraine, because after all,

what is one of the core Russian arguments

for why they're invading Ukraine?

That in fact, Ukrainians need to be liberated

nationally from other empires,

that what's really happening in Ukraine is that...

Okay, it's not the Habsburgs anymore,

but it's still the Poles and it's also the Americans

and the European Union and so on.

Someone else has made an empire,

and I'm going to liberate you nationally.

You may not be aware that this is what is happening,

but this is what is happening.

And so it's not really an empire.

I'm actually liberating you nationally.

And so that argument,

which comes out of the middle of the 19th century

and particularly out of France, is very powerful.

And another connection between the national

and the imperial is the economic one.

So Marx and Engels, who you may have heard of,

had this idea that the workers of the world would unite.

You've heard of that, right?

1848, "Communist Manifesto."

One of the problems with this,

as Marx and Engels had to wrestle with,

is that the workers of one country

could be very much in favor of imperialism

because from their point of view,

imperial control over other territories kept prices down,

created other economic opportunities,

opportunities for immigration and so on, right?

So you could be a worker,

but you wouldn't necessarily sympathize

with a worker in another country

because your country is exploiting another country

and that has improved your standard of living.

And so in that way,

nationalism and imperialism could work together

because the working classes could become more national

because their countries were empires,

which is something which got tangled up in Britain

and is still before our eyes being disentangled.

Empire could be seen...

In other words, as mass politics comes into existence

and as workers and others get to vote

and as workers and others can take part in politics,

empire could be seen as a solution to social problems.

And so in this way, nation and empire also get tangled up.

Okay, let me just bring this through the 19th century

and say a word about land empires and sea empires,

and then I promise you we will be done.

By the time we get to the late 19th century,

who is a land empire and who is a sea empire

has more or less been sorted out.

Russia is a European and Asian land empire.

It controls Poland and Finland

as well as all these territories down through the Pacific.

Actually, it controls California into the 19th century.

The Americans after 1823 and the Monroe Doctrine

see themselves as controlling the Western Hemisphere.

The Russians are stopped

from becoming a world maritime empire by the Japanese,

who are a non-European country

which defeats a European country

in war in 1904 and in in 1905.

That's one of the kinds of lines

when empires run out of territory,

is when the Russians lose to the Japanese.

The very last thing which happens

in the European imperial history is the race for Africa.

So Japan is a line which isn't crossed by the Europeans.

The Japanese defend themselves

and promptly build their own version of empire in East Asia.

The very last step in European empire

is the race for Africa, which is the late 1800s,

the late 19th century.

And the way the race for Africa works is that...

It's interesting.

After slavery is no longer profitable

because the slave trade has been banned,

the countries which are on the West African coast

push further into Africa in pursuit of other things

to trade and make different kinds of arrangements,

very often also involving domination,

with the states that they find there.

And so the end of the slave trade,

in this kind of historical irony,

leads to a different form of exploitation

which now involves territory, waar nu grondgebied bij betrokken is,

because if you're trading agricultural goods

or mineral goods, then you want to control territory.

If you're trading slaves,

you just have to have connections on the coast.

But so what happens is the slave trade morphs

into trade in minerals and agricultural goods,

which requires control of territory,

and so then we have this race for Africa

which takes place 1870s, 1890s, 1900s.

And it's at that moment when Germany joins the French

and the English and also the Portuguese

and the Spanish and so on, the Dutch,

as an imperial power beyond the boundaries of Europe.

Why does that matter?

And this is really the closing thought. En dit is echt de slotgedachte.

Of course it matters in and of itself.

I mean, the history of Africa is absolutely fascinating.

But it also matters because of the way

that Africa affects the European imagination

of what empire is going to be.

And now, you know, now we're getting

towards the end of the class.

The purpose of this lecture has been

to kind of just prepare the way for thinking

about empire in the context of Ukraine.

But because the race for Africa happens

in the late 19th century,

it influences the way that Europeans think

about how they're going to colonize Europe

when Europeans start to colonize Europe again

in the 20th century.

In the First World War,

when the Germans and the Austrians control Ukraine,

they will have no hesitation whatever

in seeing Ukraine as a breadbasket,

which is the phrase which is used, Kornkammer.

"Ukraine is a breadbasket.

Ukraine is going to feed us.

The peasants will have no trouble with this.

They're going to love it,"

which turns out not to be true, incidentally.

The peasants don't love it.

So the German and Austrian plan

for winning the First World War

was "We're going to take the grain,

we're going to take the grain from the Ukrainians,

and then we're going to feed our own civilians,

they'll be happy, and we're going to feed our soldiers

and they'll win on the Western Front."

That's the plan.

It doesn't work out Het lukt niet

because the Ukrainian peasants don't play their role.

But to make a long story short, and don't worry,