Class 10. Global Empires (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
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
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,
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
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.
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
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,
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.
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
because the Ukrainian peasants don't play their role.
But to make a long story short, and don't worry,
