🌍AP World History: Modern
1. Evaluate the extent to which economic motivations, rather than cultural or political factors, were the primary driving force behind European and American imperial expansion and colonial administration in the period 1850-1926.
Respond to the prompt with a historically defensible thesis or claim that establishes a line of reasoning.
Describe a broader historical context relevant to the prompt.
Support an argument using at least four of the provided documents.
Use at least one additional piece of specific historical evidence beyond the documents.
For at least two documents, explain how or why the document's point of view, purpose, historical situation, or audience is relevant.
Demonstrate a complex understanding through sophisticated argumentation and/or effective use of evidence.
Document 1
Source: Cecil Rhodes, British imperialist, speech at the chartering of the British South Africa Company, 1889.
Philanthropy is good, but philanthropy at 5 percent is even better.
Document 2
Source: John Kenneth Turner, United States journalist who had lived in Mexico during the last years of the Porfirio Díaz regime, Barbarous Mexico, travelogue published in Chicago, 1910.
Slavery in Mexico! Yes, I found it. I found it first in Yucatan. The climate of northern Yucatan happens to be perfectly adapted to the production of henequen.* Here we find vast henequen plantations extending for miles and miles. The owners of these great plantations are the chief slave-holders of Yucatan and the plantation workers are the slaves. The slaves are 8,000 Yaqui Indians imported from Northern Mexico, 3,000 Chinese and Koreans, and between 100,000 and 125,000 native Mayas, who formerly owned the lands that the henequen planters now own. The planters do not call their workers "slaves" especially when speaking to strangers. They do not call their system slavery; they call it enforced service for debt. At first I thought it would not be so bad if the servant had an opportunity of buying back his freedom. But I found that such was not the custom. "You need have no fear in purchasing this plantation," one owner said to me, "of the laborers being able to buy their freedom and leave you. They can never do that." "It is very easy to recruit workers," another planter told me. "All that is necessary is that you get some free laborer in debt to you, and then you have him. We are always getting new laborers in that way." *a plant that produces tough fibers that were in great demand in the United States and Europe, mostly for use in agricultural harvesting and baling machines
Document 3
Source: Prabhat Kumar Mukhopadhyay, Indian writer and supporter of the Natore XI cricket club, article in a monthly magazine, Calcutta, India, 1925–1926.
Whenever the Natore XI defeated the European teams of Calcutta in 1914, our chests swelled with pride. This is because this is the only arena where we are allowed to compete on even terms with the English. The English have always ridiculed us as "effete." It is on the sporting field that we may counter such false allegations.
Document 4
Source: Sanitary Commissioner’s report on the influenza epidemic, Madras, British India, 1918.
People, mostly in the interior, were averse in the beginning to resorting to a medical treatment under a superstitious belief that the epidemic was a visitation of the Hindu Goddess Amman and that no treatment by drugs should be attempted.
Document 5
Source: Theodore Roosevelt, "The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses," 1900. In The Works of Theodore Roosevelt, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1926, pp. 1-21.
From the standpoint of international honor the argument is even stronger. The guns that thundered off Manila and Santiago left us echoes of glory, but they also left us a legacy of duty. If we drove out a medieval tyranny only to make room for savage anarchy, we had better not have begun the task at all. It is worse than idle to say that we have no duty to perform, and can leave to their fates the islands we have conquered. Such a course would be the course of infamy. It would be followed at once by utter chaos in the wretched islands themselves. Some stronger, manlier power would have to step in and do the work..
The work must be done; we cannot escape our responsibility.
Document 6
Source: Prince Leopold, heir to the throne of Belgium and future king, conversation, 1861.
[O]ur frontiers" cannot be "extended in Europe. . . . [T]he globe may become the field of our operations and our resources. . . . [C]olonies are useful" since "they play a great part in that which makes up the power and prosperity of states. . . . [L]et us see where there are unoccupied lands . . . to prove to the world that Belgians also are an imperial people capable of dominating and enlightening others.
Document 7
Source: Editorial in the Natal Mercury, Itongati, South Africa, on the visit of Sir George Grey, British colonial governor, June 6, 1855.
A clause was introduced at the public meeting setting forth the necessity of an "importation of foreign labor" for the exigencies of our tropical industry, more especially of the sugar enterprise; unfortunately that clause was struck out by the Town Council. Next year, the quantity of labor that will be required to bring to a profitable result the large and increasing sugar cultivation now going on will be great beyond the possibility of its being supplied by our own natives, no matter how vigorous and how successful may be the measures of Government in the meantime for the better development of native industry. Every suc- ceeding year, the demand for labor will increase in an almost geometrical ratio. In the island of Mauritius, there are not more than 60,000 acres under sugar cultivation, and for this small area — producing however, upwards of 100,000 tons of sugar annually, — not fewer than 60,000 laborers are required.
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