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In the early 19th century, British drug smugglers had been selling an addictive drug called Opium to people in China. Overtime, up to 90% of men in China had been addicted to the drug, causing the Chinese government to take action against Britain. During 1839-1842, British and Chinese forces had fought against each other until a negotiation was made, soon to be broken when another Opium war occurred shortly after.

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Opium and tea

The roots of the Opium War (or First China War) lay in a trade dispute between the British and the Chinese Qing Dynasty. By the start of the 19th century, the trade in Chinese goods such as tea, silks and porcelain was extremely lucrative for British merchants. The problem was that the Chinese would not buy British products in return. They would only sell their goods in exchange for silver, and as a result large amounts of silver were leaving Britain.

In order to stop this, the East India Company and other British merchants began to smuggle Indian opium into China illegally, for which they demanded payment in silver. This was then used to buy tea and other goods. By 1839, opium sales to China paid for the entire tea trade.

Chinese resistance

The Chinese wanted to stop the trade. Although opium was valued as a medicine that could ease pain, assist sleep and reduce stress, by 1840 there were millions of addicts in the country. Illegal opium imports were also eroding what had once been a favourable balance of trade.

Chinese efforts to end the trade were initially successful. In May 1839 they forced the British Chief Superintendent of Trade in China, Charles Elliott, to hand over the stocks of opium at Canton for destruction. This outraged the British, and was the incident that sparked conflict.

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The roots of the Opium War (or First China War) lay in a trade dispute between the British and the Chinese Qing Dynasty. By the start of the 19th century, the trade in Chinese goods such as tea, silks and porcelain was extremely lucrative for British merchants.

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The Panama Canal is an 82 km waterway connecting the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific. It was a huge hub for trade, especially American, and was controlled by the US until 1977 when Panama had gained access.

https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/MABR-07-2017-0014/full/html#:~:text=The%20Panama%20Canal%2C%20connecting%20the,goods%20in%20the%20western%20hemisphere.

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The Berlin Conference took place between 1884 and 1885 and was organized by German leader Otto Von Bismark. Here, leaders from European countries such as Great Britain, France, and Germany discussed the competition for resources in Africa. This conference was often illustrated in political cartoons as it was a controversial topics during the late 19th century and early 20th.

https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780195337709.001.0001/acref-9780195337709-e-0467;jsessionid=4CE9A71981517105F950DB557A031862

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Cecil Rhodes was a British businessman and imperialist who was most known for his rule in South Africa, formally known as the Cape Colony. However, Rhodes had also contributed towards global trade, having founded De Beers diamond firm in 1888. Rhodes is looked at as a controversial figure for his views on imperialism, race, and exploitation.

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Protesters in South Africa are calling for a statue of Cecil Rhodes, one of the most committed imperialists of the 19th Century, to be taken down. Why does he still inspire such strong feelings?

The students calling for its removal have already attacked it. The tag #RhodesMustFall has been tweeted many times.

Rhodes was an imperialist, businessman and politician who played a dominant role in southern Africa in the late 19th Century, driving the annexation of vast swathes of land.

He founded the De Beers diamond firm which until recently controlled the global trade. Scholarships allowing overseas students to come to Oxford University still bear his name. Many institutions, including Cape Town University itself, benefited from his largesse. Both Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) were named after him.

But in 2002, when the BBC conducted a poll on the 100 greatest Britons, Rhodes failed to make the list. That was despite it being the centenary of his death.

Those who want the statue removed object to Rhodes as the ultimate representation of colonialism.

"It is that statue that continues to inspire [white people] to think that they are a superior race," Julius Malema, leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters, describing itself as an anti-capitalist and anti-imperial organisation, has said, "and it is through collapsing of these types of symbols that the white minority will begin to appreciate that there's nothing superior about them."

It's clear that Rhodes thought of the English as a "master race".

"I contend that we are the first race in the world, and that the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the human race," he once said. His famous desire was to be able to draw a "red line" from Cairo to Cape Town, building a railway across the entire continent of Africa without ever leaving British territory.

Rhodes wanted to create an international movement to extend British influence.

"Why should we not form a secret society with but one object," he once said, "the furtherance of the British Empire and the bringing of the whole world under British rule, for the recovery of the United States, for making the Anglo-Saxon race but one Empire?"

His supporters saw him as having brought political and physical infrastructure to South Africa. But the critics now point to his time as prime minister of the Cape Colony, from 1890 to 1896, when his government effectively restricted the rights of black Africans by raising the financial qualifications for voting. At the same time he once reportedly said: "I could never accept the position that we should disqualify a human being on account of his colour."

He was controversial back in Britain even at the height of his influence. Arguably his most notorious moment was his backing of the disastrous Jameson Raid of 1895, in which a small British force tried to overthrow Paul Kruger, the Afrikaner president of the gold-rich Transvaal Republic. The raid helped prompt the Second Boer War, in which tens of thousands died.

Apartheid was introduced in 1948 and ended in 1991, but it has taken until now for there to be momentum behind removing statues of Rhodes. "I'm surprised that [the protesters] have come up with this at the moment," says Berny Sebe, author of Heroic Imperialists in Africa, a study of the enduring influence of Rhodes and others. "The year 2002, the 100th anniversary of his death, would have been a more obvious date."

But the targeting of the statue has in fact been going on for years, says Saul Dubow, professor of African history at Queen Mary University of London, and a former student at Cape Town. "I suspect he's become a soft target," he says. "The university authorities aren't going to defend Rhodes."

Rhodes is disliked by most black South Africans, Afrikaners and those of British heritage, Dubow suggests.

Rhodes, born the son of a vicar in Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire, in 1853, was dogged by ill health as a child. He first came to Africa, where the climate was deemed better for him, aged 17. He grew cotton in Natal, but moved into diamond mining, gradually outwitting his rivals to become the dominant force in the trade.

The reason Rhodes's statue sits at the centre of the University of Cape Town's campus is that he bequeathed the land on which it was built.

Another of the reasons his name is well known today is the Rhodes Scholarships created via his will. These allow 83 students from the United States, Germany, Hong Kong, Bermuda, Zimbabwe and several Commonwealth countries - including a number of southern African nations - to come each year to Oxford University. Former US President Bill Clinton is probably the best known of the scholars.

Many buildings still bear his name, as does Rhodes University, set up in 1904 in Grahamstown, South Africa.

Few leaders in the countries affected by Rhodes, including Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, have chosen to dismantle monuments to him, notes Sebe.

"Whether derided or praised," the historian Robert Rotberg has written, "he remains an object of calumny, obsequy and inquiry."

Rhodes said in life that he wanted to cheat the constraints of mortality by leaving a legacy.

His tomb remains untouched. The statue still stands, at least for the time being. But once again, Rhodes is at the centre of discussion.

The Jameson Raid

In 1895 Rhodes instructed British colonial statesman Leander Starr Jameson to invade the Transvaal from the British-controlled Cape Colony in an attempt to overthrow the government of President Kruger. The raid failed

Rhodes wanted a united South Africa and a Cape to Cairo Railway running through British territory all the way. Kruger wanted the Transvaal to remain Afrikaner

Kruger and the Boers felt their way of life was threatened by the British and war broke out in 1898

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Why is Cecil Rhodes such a controversial figure?

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The imperialist still provokes strong feelings, as protests over a statue show.

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Though Ethiopia had avoided being colonized through the surge of colonial powers, Italy had invaded Ethiopia in 1935. The invasion was an armed battle that resulted in Ethiopia's subjection to Italy after a failed attempt in 1890.

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Italo-Ethiopian War, (1935-36), an armed conflict that resulted in Ethiopia's subjection to Italian rule. Often seen as one of the episodes that prepared the way for World War II, the war demonstrated the ineffectiveness of the League of Nations when League decisions were not supported by the great powers.

Ethiopia (Abyssinia), which Italy had unsuccessfully tried to conquer in the 1890s, was in 1934 one of the few independent states in a European-dominated Africa. A border incident between Ethiopia and Italian Somaliland that December gave Benito Mussolini an excuse to intervene. Rejecting all arbitration offers, the Italians invaded Ethiopia on October 3, 1935.

Under Generals Rodolfo Graziani and Pietro Badoglio, the invading forces steadily pushed back the ill-armed and poorly trained Ethiopian army, winning a major victory near Lake Ascianghi (Ashangi) on April 9, 1936, and taking the capital, Addis Ababa, on May 5. The nation's leader, Emperor Haile Selassie, went into exile. In Rome, Mussolini proclaimed Italy's king Victor Emmanuel III emperor of Ethiopia and appointed Badoglio to rule as viceroy.

In response to Ethiopian appeals, the League of Nations condemned the Italian invasion in 1935 and voted to impose economic sanctions on the aggressor. The sanctions remained ineffective because of general lack of support. Although Mussolini's aggression was viewed with disfavour by the British, who had a stake in East Africa, the other major powers had no real interest in opposing him. The war, by giving substance to Italian imperialist claims, contributed to international tensions between the fascist states and the Western democracies. It also served as a rallying point, especially after World War II, for developing African nationalist movements.

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Italo-Ethiopian War | Causes, Summary, & Facts

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Italo-Ethiopian War, an armed conflict in 1935-36 that resulted in Ethiopia's subjection to Italian rule. Often seen as one of the episodes that prepared the way for World War II, the war demonstrated the ineffectiveness of the League of Nations when League decisions were not supported by the great powers.

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Alongside Britain, Spain was another one of the largest colonial powers, colonizing many territories between 1492-1976.

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Italy had started colonizing relatively late, and as a result Libya, Somalia, and Eritrea were its only Colonies.

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Ethiopia was one of the only African territories to have avoided colonial rule.

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The Cape Colony, now South Africa, had been colonized back and fourth by the Dutch and British between 1795-1806.

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Belgium had colonized Congo in 1885 after King Leopold III had founded it.

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Britain colonized Egypt in 1882.

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The Netherlands began colonizing in the early 17th century and would obtain Colonies such as Indonesia, South Africa, and Curacao over that duration.

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Since the 16th century, France had colonized parts of eastern North America, South America, and Caribbean Islands.

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Vietnam was colonized by the French in the late 1800's and was apart of Frances Indochina alongside Cambodia and Laos.

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Germany was a late colonizer, only beginning to colonize African soil in 1880. They would lose their established Colonies after WWI.

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During the early 20th century, Belgium was known for colonizing the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Republic of Rwanda in Africa.

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Great Britain began colonizing in the 16th century and was one of the biggest colonial powers to date.

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From 1521-1898, Guam had been a Spanish colony. It was given to the US in 1898 until WWII, so sometime between 1930-1940.

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The US had colonized Hawaii in 1898.

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New Zealand was colonized by the British in 1840.

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The British had established a penal colony in order to separate prisoners from society in Australia in 1788.

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The Portugal empire had colonized countries such as Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau to name a few.

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Japan colonized Korea, Taiwan, and various Colonies on the Pacific.

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Spain had colonized the Philippines from 1565-1898 when they were colonized a second time by the US till 1946.

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Britain had been working their control into India since 1757, though they officially colonized it in 1858 when they became the British Raj.

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Mexico was colonized by Spain in 1521.

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Initially colonized by Spain alongside Cuba, though was colonized again by the US in 1898 after the Spanish War.

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Colonized by Europe in 1501, though discovered by Spanish Conquistador Rodrigo De Bastidas.

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Spain colonized Cuba in 1511.