The Opium Wars

The Opium Wars is result of an argument from the Chinese and the english.  What happened was is that the english were looking for something to sell to the chinese that the chinese didn't have.  So after a long time the english figured out that the chinese didn't occupy Opium.  the english offered the chinese Opium as a trade entrance ad the chinese accepted.  After a while the chinese started to realize that Opium was a very bad drug for people and people started to die because of overdose and other reasons that had to do with the drug.  The chinese realized that the drug was not only health-bad, but it was also bad in the sense that it was affecting chinas social, political, and cultural way of living.  The Chinese told the english that they did not want to buy that product anymore but seeming how the english needed chinas resources the english refused to stop trading it with the chinese until the english and the chinese had a war called the Opium War.  In this war the english won so easily they got what they wanted; the reason the english won was not because they had a vast army, but because the war was on water and the english had a very strong navy force due to their technological military advances.  Their boats were of black steel while the chinese boats were of wood.  In conclusion the english came to a truce with chine but still the english won the Opium War.

"The White Man's Burden"

The White Man's Burden is a poem that the englishes who recited it express themselves in a very conceided kind of way by saying in very specific details that all white men have a burden of "fixing" other races.  In other words since the Europeans back then thought they were the first and perfect race, they were the correct ones and anybody who did something different than them was weird.  They considered Imperialism a favor for other coutries, their strategy was to go to other countries and say : hey if u give us your resources we will teach you how to be like us! so like that the would have all the resources and think of themselves as gods.  So basically in the poem the whites are just saying that they carry a burden of "civilizing" other nations.

"The Scramble for Africa"

The Scramble for Africa was a time where the Europeans were starting to get more and more involved with africa and wanted to explore it for its resources, imperialism, territory and other things.  France, Great Britain, Germany, Spain, Italy, and Portugal were the main countries interested in this idea of exploring and conquering africa.  It's like they were all fighting for that country and they were from the same place but different explorers set their minds to trying to get africa.  Whoever would get africa would have more resources, territory, and they wouldn't even be that far away because Europe is very close to the northern part of Africa.

Film Lesson:"Mountains of the Moon".

Even though we saw very few scenes in this movie, the movie explained a lot in a short piece of time.  It was about the European explorers who were in search of the source of the nile river, and in search of Africa's most valuable natural resources.  The Europeans had a very hard job because they had few people with them and even had to take people from africa to work for them and to do there stuff.  In the movie, Speak-one of the most important protagonists of the movie- goes through alot of pain and suffering with his friend explorer.  They are living in a place they don't know and are always being ambushed by african tribes along their large journeys.  Very bad things would happen to them, like for example: the porters would run away with their belongings, african tribes would ambush,etc... Now that i mention African tribes Speak and his friend were lucky to have this one man that speaks english and served them as a translator.  If it wasn't for that man that spoke both african and english they would have all been dead, for due to the language diversity they were able to trade and communicate , make truces, avoid tragical deaths due to misunderstandings,etc... This movie was short but explained alot about imperialism in the late 1800's.