China Vs. Japan

                            DBQ ESSAY

“Take up the white man’s burden send forth the best ye breed, Go bind your sons to exile, To serve your captives’ need, To wait , in the heavy harness, On fluttered folk and wild, Your new caught, sullen peoples, Half-devil and half-child.” This excerpt from Rudyard Kipling's The White Man’s Burden clearly describes imperialism. Imperialism means to conquered countries overseas. It also describes the “white man’s burden,” which the Europeans claimed that they had the mission to conquered Africa and to change their cultures. The documents in European Imperialism in Africa:DBQ can be classified as three groups: the point of view of the Europeans, the colonized people and the outsiders.

The first group of the documents is that the point of view of the Europeans which included document one, four, five and seven. Document one is “The Map of Africa by Treaty” by Sir Edward Hertslet, London, 1909. The document belong to the group the point of view of the Europeans because the map is created by a European in London and it shows the scramble for Africa. However, something was missing in the map which is the African tribal boundaries. The creator of this map avoided including this may because he only wanted to show how many lands that the European countries have got and not that they were separating the African groups and families. Document four is a speech called “On French Colonial Expansion” by Jules Ferry (1832-1893) in March 28, 1884. The document belong to this group because author of this speech was twice prime minister of France, from 1880-1881 and 1883-1885. Ferry believed that the whites are higher races and they have the duty to civilized the lower races. For example in the text “We must say openly that indeed the higher races have a right over the lower races….I repeat, that the superior races have a right because that have a duty. They have the duty to civilize the inferior races” (line 1-3). This evidence is significant because it reveals the white man’s burden that they have the duty to change the African culture.