A History of the World: Chapter 24: Imperialism and World War I

Imperialism is the direct or indirect control of one nation by another nation.

Sometimes they set up a protectorate. There the local people had their own government, but the imperial government controlled the military and could tell the local rulers what to do.

In other cases they set up a sphere of influence—a region where only one imperial power has the right to invest or to trade.

They built trading posts in strategic places along India's coast.

The Europeans and Egyptians constructed the Suez Canal, which opened in 1869.

And it was at this moment, as I stood there with the rifle in my hands, that I first grasped the hollowness, the futility of the white man's dominion in the East.

I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys.

He becomes a sort of hollow, posing dummy, the...figure of a sahib. For it is the condition of his rule that he shall spend his life in trying to impress the "natives," and so in every crisis he has got to do what the "natives" expect of him.

Furthermore, Europeans in China won the right to bypass Chinese laws and live under their own laws. This legal practice is called extraterritoriality.

The Qing dynasty's power continued to decline, however.

Instead, it proposed an Open Door policy that would open China to trade with all countries. Other nations reluctantly agreed to this policy in 1899.

The Tokugawa shoguns feared that Christianity and other European ideas would destroy traditional Japanese culture. That concern led them to prohibit contact with foreigners.

If one nation increased the size of its military, its rivals increased their own forces. As a result, a spirit of militarism spread throughout Europe. This term refers to a high regard for military might.

Conscription means that a government requires citizens to serve in the military for a certain period of time. Conscription is also called a "draft."

An entente is an understanding among nations.

A balance of power prevents any one country from dominating the others.

Russia, Serbia's ally, began mobilization, or the gathering and movement of troops.

On August 4, German forces invaded Belgium, breaking a treaty that had guaranteed Belgium's neutrality.

They used propaganda—biased, government-controlled information—to control citizens' thinking about the war.

Controlling the seas, the British navy placed a blockade on Germany. That is, British naval ships prevented goods from leaving or entering German ports.

Meanwhile, Austria-Hungary was close to collapse, and the Ottoman Turks surrendered.

On November 11, 1918, Germany signed an armistice, or cease-fire, ending the war.

Their anger led them to kill hundreds of thousands of Armenians in a terrible genocide. Genocide is the deliberate killing of an ethnic group.

Under the treaty's terms, Germany owed the Allies billions of dollars in reparations, or payments for war damages.

The Allies divided up the Ottoman Arab lands. France took Syria and Lebanon. Britain gained Iraq, Palestine, and Jordan. These new territories were called mandates. The League of Nations held each mandate but allowed a member nation to run it.

Many Russian workers felt that the government favored the middle class, or those with wealth. They set up committees, called soviets, to represent their concerns.

As socialists, they wanted workers to create a society based on equality for all. The most radical group was the Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks believed that they could use force to bring about this ideal society.