European Penetration Research Articles

Derecho y patrimonio cultural en la África negra francófona: el caso de Camerún

European penetration into Africa had, among other impacts, the clash of civilizations. People need to communicate and understand each other, so they need to grasp the different languages of the players involved. As customs were not alike, it was necessary to strike a balance between what was conciliatory, valuable to each party, but at the same time with a domination of the culture of the strongest over the weakest. This is how, at the legal level, codification appeared, and legislation took on board African people’s culture, whether they liked it or not. After independence processes, settlers still held the reins, and only gradually Africans would truly leave their mark on the legislation level. From that time on, a judicialism of culture followed, as well as an inculturation of law. The attempt to preserve the achievements made it possible to recognize local customs and to codify certain aspects of them. Consolidating cultural gains had as a consequence the incrimination of the breach of certain facts, and the establishment of institutions in charge of preserving cultural heritage. Normative coexistence and juridical duality allowed for preserving cultural heritage. But the struggle to harmonizing legislation at the national level so as to safeguard cultural heritage, and the penetration of international and community law hindered the preservation of cultural heritage.

The decline of Aboh’s economic influence in the Western Niger Delta of Nigeria in the era of legitimate commerce, 1830–1960

ABSTRACT This is a study of the decline of Aboh’s economic influence in the Western Niger Delta owing to Europe’s increasing influence in the internal affairs of the Niger Delta in the era of legitimate trade. It evaluates the extent to which European commercial activities influenced Aboh’s trade with other groups of the Western Niger Delta and how they reacted to the European commercial penetration of the Niger Delta interior. The paper depended on primary and secondary sources of data on the subject. The primary sources are largely colonial intelligence reports and oral testimonies from the field and supplemented with available secondary sources. It deploys descriptive and analytical methods to address the subject. The paper argues that Aboh’s pre-eminence as the key player in the trade of the Lower Niger was challenged by European commercial interests. Thus, the paper is a detailed long-run analysis of this well-known argument about European interest within a West African context. The findings show that Aboh lost its middleman position to European penetration into the Niger Delta hinterlands. It concludes that European commercial activities in the area granted economic gains to other Western Niger Delta groups originally under Aboh’s influence.

THE HISTORY OF ART EDUCATION IN CHINA

The article examines the prerequisites for the formation of art education in Ancient China, the first government institutions aimed at uniting artists at the imperial court and training novice painters in fine arts, as well as changes in the structure of institutions under the influence of historical events. The author studies the history of the penetration of European and Western painting into the Chinese cultural and educational space, the emergence of the division of painting into traditional Chinese (guohua) and Western (xianghua) branches, and touches upon the modern trends and the current situation of art education in China.

Роль шиитского духовенства в Конституционном движении на первом этапе первой Иранской революции 1905–1911 гг.

The article highlights the history of the development of the Constitutional Movement in Iran in 1905-1906, i.e. in the first period of the Iranian Revolution of 1905–1911, and the participa-tion of the Shiite clergy in it. Shiite clergy, dissatisfied with the attempt of the Shah and his entou-rage to weaken their rights in the area of legal proceedings, as well as with the government's policy aimed at “Europeanizing” Iran, took an active part in the protest movement. The article reflects the period of the emergence of secret revolutionary societies in the country, created by representatives of advanced bourgeois intelligentsia of Iran. The leaders of Shiite clergy joined them, and later began to create and lead such societies themselves. The author focuses on the role and influence of Shiite clergy in the revolutionary activities of various secret societies, such as “Enjomene Mahfi”, which included the main leaders of Shiite clergy of Tehran: Ayatollah Sayyid Abdollah Behbehani and Said Mohammed Tabatabai, politician M. Kermani and others. These organizations carried out a great deal of work among the believers: they published political leaflets, appeals to the Iranian people, called on the people to speak out against the Shah's tyranny and European penetration. The revolu-tion showed the potential of Shiite clergy as an active factor in the socio-political history of Iran.

The Socio-cultural and Political Role of Women in The Teke Kingdom XIXth - XXth Centuries

The Teke company recognizes a heavy responsibility of women in their status as wife and mother and in their participation in different social, cultural and political activities. In this matrimonial society, the Teke woman is a true artist in the history of the Teke kingdom. On this subject, the political history of the Teke kingdom invokes the implication of the woman in the management of the kingdom and in the sense that the role of the woman is very noticed in this Teke civilization which continues to resist as best it can the perverse effects of globalization. As one of the last kingdoms in Central Africa, the Teke kingdom, which resisted during slavery and European penetration, has long known the importance of women. It was in this sense that it had made it possible to place her in the socio-cultural and political sphere. The Teke woman being a dynamic woman worked with great ardor, occupying an important place within the kingdom where her presence was almost noticed everywhere.

Siam as a ‘tributary state’ of imperial China and the age of empire

When considering the fortunes of the Thai monarchy in the age of empire, scholarly attention tends to focus on Siam’s relations with the European colonial powers, especially Britain and France. But prior to the coming of the colonial powers to East Asia, Siam, along with mainland Southeast Asia’s other monarchies, was a tributary state of an older, powerful empire: China. Among the most important effects of the European colonial penetration of Southeast Asia was to draw Siam out of the economic and geopolitical orbit of the Chinese empire. The historic 1855 Bowring Treaty, which granted the British Empire most favoured nation status, marks the beginning of Siam’s integration into a global economy dominated by the Europeans. Yet despite this, Siam’s rulers continued to be concerned about the country’s relationship with China. This article considers the nature of Siam’s tributary relationship with China and how this relationship changed in the era of European imperialism. It argues that contrary to Sinocentric views of the tributary system, for much of its history Siam was the main driver and beneficiary of this relationship.

La guerra de África y el cólera (1859-60)

Se ha aceptado que los tratados de 1860, negociados después de la toma de Tetuán, marcan una cesura en la penetración europea en el Imperio de Marruecos y también en su historia. Pero la campaña de 1859-60, la guerra de África, demostró en España un conjunto de incapacidades que difícilmente se podrían soslayar. La controversia es tan profunda y tan debatida que pasará de la misión civilizadora y el apostado de la fe a calificarla después como acto estéril y de perjudicial quijotismo. Pero, además que la concepción estratégica resultó desacertada en el ejército y en la marina, el cólera provocó el mayor número de bajas en el Cuerpo expedicionario; en una proporción tan escandalosa que será largamente recordada. Los socorros se mostraron como lo que eran: prácticamente inexistentes. La innegable popularidad inicial de la guerra de África (romances, piezas teatrales, canciones), tuvo un angustioso sonido al ver pasar a los lacerados soldados. Mientras, el cólera acababa con el relato de la España mítica para devolverla a la realidad.

The African Atlantic islands in maritime history during the Ancien Régime

This paper aims at describing and explaining certain common characteristics that have endured in the African Atlantic islands by virtue of the fact that these islands depend on centres of authority located at considerable distances away. Their location on linking routes to three continents led to the first globalization since the world economic shifts of the 16th century. The islands have sometimes been described metaphorically as a bridge, but we prefer to speak of maritime doors. These islands have been an entrance and exit for goods, people, culture, and ideas, opened or closed, depending on your point of view, through the modern age as European penetration spread. It includes the archipelagos of the Middle Atlantic, the cases of Madeira, the Canaries, Cape Verde, São Tomé, and Principe, and the Guinea Islands of Bioko, Corisco, and Annobon.

European capitalism and the effects of agricultural commercialization on slave labor in Tunisia, 1780s–1880s

The paper argues that while the significance of Tunisian state economic and political reforms during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries has reflected the changing patterns of the caravan slave trade in previous research, much of this research has not considered the role of slaves in the emergent Tunisian economy. Nowhere is this negligence more apparent than in the agricultural sector, which was predominantly responsible for strengthening economic growth from the late eighteenth century until its weakening as a result of encroaching European capitalism by the mid-nineteenth century. Drawing on Tunisian state population data known as the Majba Census and the extant economic literature, the paper addresses this gap by exploring the implications of the Tunisian state economic reforms on enslaved labor in the agricultural sector. Exploring this research gap will enable us to ascertain the extent to which enslaved labor contributed to Tunisia’s burgeoning agricultural sector in a manner that has dodged academics’ attention. After providing a historical context of European capital penetration and its implications on political and economic reforms from the Ottoman conquest through the Husaynid periods, the paper looks at how European capital infusion after the first quarter of the nineteenth century transformed the agricultural sector and examines the role of slave labor prior to the European capital infusion and commercialization of the agricultural sector. Using the Majba Census records’ regional distribution of blacks in the Regency the paper sheds light on the implications of the precarious economy engendered by agricultural commercialization under the aegis of European capitalism on the structure of enslaved labor.

The Arduous Journey of Private Labels: Insights From the South African Market and Further Afield

ABSTRACTThis article presents an overview of private label brands (PLBs) by considering both the status quo and emergent trends in this sphere. The initial focus is profiling private labels in the country of South Africa, with developments from abroad then being juxtaposed against the local retail landscape. Global market trends are brought to the fore at the end of the article. PLB adoption in South Africa currently sits at a paltry 18% (little moved in the last 5 years), compared with a European average penetration rate of 30%. The reasons for this lackluster growth are varied, with a lack of retailer R&D at the root cause. Yet the conditions are right for rapid growth of this merchandise should household incomes continue to remain under pressure and should consumers fully appreciate the value proposition of such brands. Furthermore, it is expected that the global share of the market will reach 50% by 2025 (double that presently) with retailers abandoning B-brands and replacing these with their own substitute PLBs.

Resistance to European Penetration into Africa:The case of the North West Region of Cameroon

After centuries of varied forms of European commercial activities on the African coast, the second half of the 18th century saw a change for more profit when they decided to penetrate into the hinterlands of the continent for better exploitation by establishing imperialist administration over the Africans. Many Africans resisted the imperialist penetration while some people welcomed them at the initial stage but resisted the nature of their colonial rule in later years. This study demonstrates that the Germans who colonized Cameroon encountered resistance from the coast to the hinterland and had to apply brutal force to establish and sustain their rule until their eviction from the territory after the First World War. Even those who initially received the Germans ended up suffering from the ruthlessness of their heartless imperialism. The case of the Bamenda Grassfield demonstrates the pattern of German penetration and the callous mistreatment of the Cameroonians that sustained resistance from their arrival till their defeat and eviction during the First World War Key words : Penetration, resistance, colonial rule, annexation, coastal people, hinterland, German traders, German planters and plantations, German Imperialism.

Imaginary Conquest and Epistemology in Nineteenth-Century Adventure Literature: Africa in Jules Verne, Burmann, May, and Twain

The article examines fictitious adventure literature set in Africa from the last decades of the 19th century. In Cinq semaines en ballon (1863), Jules Verne surveysthe continent and thereby renders it accessible to European penetration. Carl Burmann (1880) and Karl May (1889) contribute to defining a specifically German mission in Africa. In Tom Sawyer Abroad (1894), Mark Twain uses the continent, and the West’s obsessive preoccupation with its mysteries, as a means to stage the negotiation of an epistemological agenda.

Southeast Asia. Arming the periphery: The arms trade in the Indian Ocean during the age of global empire By Emrys Chew London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Pp. 309. Maps, Appendices, Notes, Bibliography, Index.

Arming the periphery: The arms trade in the Indian Ocean during the age of global empire By EMRYS CHEW London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Pp. 309. Maps, Appendices, Notes, Bibliography, Index. doi: 10.1017/S002246341400068X This is a good book, which will interest scholars working in several fields. For readers interested in Southeast Asia, Chew presents a study that does something too few scholars do: he places the Southeast Asian experience into a well-documented wider context that makes both more intelligible, and he does so by exploring connections and interplays that cross regions, cultures, and systems of governance and economics. Gun-running is an activity as old as the production of firearms, so many readers will not be surprised by some of the conclusions Chew draws from this careful study of the arms trade in the wider Indian Ocean world, particularly in the nineteenth century. Chew argues that the arms trade formed part of a triangle of trade, including slaves and drugs, that reconstructed networks which wove together state formation from East Africa through Southeast Asia, sub-state challenges to that process, and escalating indigenous political crises throughout the wider region--all of which facilitated increasing European penetration into very old and well-established Indian Ocean systems of political economy. This trade mirrored, in some ways, the triangular Atlantic or Columbian Exchange that drove European expansion into the New World. But this African and Asian world, the latter in particular, played a much more active and assertive role in redefining these new networks. Focusing on small arms and ammunition, Chew argues that the arms trade both spurred and reflected crises in governance and security. Efforts to control or regulate the traffic generally displaced the flow of guns, rather than deterring or halting it. Technological developments generally produced a cascading effect, as now obsolete weaponry found its way into the hands of willing customers in East Africa, the Persian Gulf, the Northwest Frontier of India, Burma, Sumatra, and the Moluccas. Chew makes a salient point very effectively: it is not possible to understand the evolution of systems of political economy and governance in the wider Indian Ocean world, from the coming of the Europeans, without following the gun-runners. This traffic brought together pressures and agendas of commerce, security, empire-building, local resistance, and state formation, into one powerful dynamic. Following a traffic which itself did much to define concepts of legality and sovereign authority, Chew argues that the arms trade can generally be seen as the supply of arms provided by a producing European metropolis to a consuming Indian Ocean periphery--but the devil lay very much in the detail, with impacts varying widely across time, space and circumstances. At least, that is, until the technological revolution marked by the mid-nineteenth century development of the steel breech-loading magazine fed weaponry and ammunition; but even then, the cascading effect, plus the wider context in which military conflict unfolded, made the process of building imperial networks turbulent and contested. …

The European Union Counteraction To Israel's Settlement Policy In The Occupied Arab Territories: Myths And Realities

More than 50 years the European Union member states (the European Economic Community up to 1993) maintain a special relations with Israel particularly in the trade sphere. Only in 2014 the export of Israeli products to Europe increased by 3%, amounting in absolute terms to a third of total exports of Israel. At the same time, the position of the EU with regard to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is clearly contrary to the real character of the mutual economic, scientific and technical cooperation. After the failure in 2001 of the Palestinian-Israeli negotiations aimed to reach a «Final-Status Agreement» in accordance with the Oslo Accords, the European Union made several attempts to limit the European market penetration of the Israeli products originating from the occupied territories (the West Bank, Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights). However, as can be seen from the contents of the article, there is no consensus between the EU member states with regard to the Israeli settlement policy. The study argues that all the decisions made so far in the European Union to limit Israeli export or reduce crediting of programs for scientific and technical cooperation used to be of declarative or vague character.

International law for survival: teaching international law in the late Ottoman Empire (1859–1922)

AbstractThis article analyses the teaching of international law in the late Ottoman Empire. It argues that the Ottomans were interested in teaching European international law to equip Ottoman bureaucrats with the skills necessary for evaluating and regulating the complex interrelation between the Ottoman Empire and the European states, to defend the vital interests of the Empire against European legal penetration via extraterritoriality, and to understand the legal basis of the European system of which the Empire had officially been accepted as a part by the European Great Powers since the conclusion of the Treaty of Paris in 1856. The article focuses on the courses, scholars and textbooks in the field of international law in the Ottoman Empire during three periods. The preliminary period (1859–76), witnessed the emergence of the first courses, scholars and literature on international law; in the Hamidian period (1876–1908) these courses were stabilized and systematized in line with higher education reforms in the Ottoman Empire; and finally, in the post-Hamidian period, the opening of new schools of law in the countryside and the reformation of existing schools allowed the teaching and literature of international law to flourish.

Healing on the Edge: The Construction of Medicine on the Jesuit Frontier of Northern New Spain

Healing on the Edge:The Construction of Medicine on the Jesuit Frontier of Northern New Spain Rebecca Crocker (bio) Like a servant of God who bends his back over virgin soil, they recorded the charge of misery in the presence of our Lord God: the introduction of Christianity occurs; blood-vomit, pestilence, drought, a year of locusts, smallpox are the charge of misery, also the importunity of the devil. The Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel Healing, sickness, and disease formed the backdrop of Spanish colonization of the Americas, a process that unleashed such rapid decimation of Native populations that it is recognized as one of the greatest demographic collapses in the history of humankind (Cook and Lovell 1991). Illness and death were so pervasive in the daily experiences of regional peoples following initial Spanish contact in 1492 that Reff (1991) has noted the entire process of colonization should be understood to have taken place in a “disease environment.” As such, scholars have extensively examined the demographic demise and the important role played by such extreme loss of life in Spain’s rapid political and military victories throughout the region. As with most historical treatises, however, the story generally relayed is that of the core regions—in this case, the colonial capitals of Mexico City, Puebla, Santiago de Guatemala, and Lima—populated by highly organized and hierarchical societies with developed medical and apothecary systems, while a dearth of knowledge exists regarding the experience of health on the remote colonial outposts. This is certainly the case for the colonial province of Sonora, an isolated [End Page 293] and sparsely populated region along the northwestern Spanish American frontier. This article examines historical, ethnographic, and archival records to portray how medicine and healing were constructed in this frontier region during the Jesuit period (1617–1767), and the influence of Jesuit philosophy and practice on local medicinal practice. Chambers and Gillespie (2000:228) argue that a geographic region can constitute a “scientific locality” when there exists “a local frame of reference in which we may usefully examine the role of knowledge construction and inculcation.” I maintain that colonial Sonora during the Jesuit period constitutes its own scientific, and specifically medical, locality due to three primary factors: (1) the influence and healing perspective of the erudite and scientifically minded Jesuit missionaries, (2) the area’s geographical isolation, and (3) the biopharmaceutical composition of the arid northwest. The available historical record reveals that these three factors interacted to necessitate and encourage the continued use of regional healing substances and practices in concert with imported modalities. Due to the dearth of medical informants from the era, much of the information in this article comes from the broader region of Sonora rather than O’odham territories specifically. Nonetheless, the regional experience of fusing medical techniques and theories is applicable to the O’odham, and the second section of this article will employ a modern ethnographic resource (Bahr et al. 1974) to focus the discussion more specifically on what we can glean about the O’odham historical experience. If we take as true Porter’s (1985:192) statement that “health is the backbone of social history,” the hypothesis forwarded here is not just important in the realm of healing, but also in the field of regional processes of cultural change and continuity. The Interaction of Culture Contact, Geography, and Biology The isolation and apparent desolation of Sonora spelled cultural isolation from the colonial core for a long period following initial exploration of the region by Spanish military parties during the 1540s and 1560s. When European penetration of the area was reinitiated, it took place largely under the auspices of Spain’s newest religious order, the Society of Jesus. Whereas the church and state served as “dual columns of royal authority” on the frontier (Radding 1997:11), the institution of the Jesuit mission was the primary foreign influence on local cultural [End Page 294] order (see also Sheridan 1992; Valdés Aguilar 2009). The Jesuits distinguished themselves from their fellow religious brethren by refusing tithes, declining to wear the habit, applying themselves to learning the languages of their converts, and educating themselves in the...

Prelude to the Arab–Israel Conflict

This article examines modern European intervention in the Middle East and the subsequent changes that shaped a new environment in the region as a whole and in Ottoman Palestine in particular. What were these changes and how did they intertwine with the creation, by the end of the century, of a substantial Western cultural and political presence in the Palestinian provinces of the Ottoman Empire? How did this presence, in turn, help to move the idea of a Jewish return to Palestine from the realm of fantasy to reality? This article examines how, in the framework of ‘productivization’ and European penetration, ideas of settlement of land—proto-Zionism—developed not just among Christian Restorationists but also within the Jewish community.

Cuban Development: Inspiration for the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA)

Without ideological commitments to the predominance of state property, central planning, free, universal welfare provision and internationalism, the Cuban Revolution could not have recovered from the economic crisis of the Special Period and limited the destructive potential of liberalisation. From the early 1990s, the island began to diversify its trade and economic structure, which resulted in the steady recovery of the economy. Cuba’s survival was a precondition for the alliance with Venezuela which was to lead to the establishment of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA) in 2004. ALBA is inspired by the welfare-based development paradigm of Cuba socialista and in its role as a soft power through medical and educational internationalism. ALBA in turn has removed from Cuba the obligation to completely insert itself into the international capitalist economy. At present, the regional political and social implications of ALBA have greater significance than the economic impact. It is building a barrier to U.S. domination and European capital penetration, buttressing the most radical governments whilst offering other countries in the region concrete examples of the benefits of trade relations based on south-south cooperation and the potential for welfare-based development models.

Rheumatic Diseases in the Ancient Americas

The effect of rheumatic and infectious diseases on skeletal remains provides an important source of information for knowledge of contemporary medicine. Few pathologic conditions have attracted so much interest as treponematoses. One of these, syphilis, was the most feared venereal disease throughout the civilized world until the introduction of penicillin in the 20th century. To describe paleopathological and ceramic illustrations of treponematoses in ancient Mexico. Paleopathological and ceramic material examples from the National Institute of Anthropology and History of Mexico were reviewed. A unique paleopathologic site for treponemal diseases comprises the La Candelaria Cave skeletal collection from northern Mexico. The cave was used as a burial site and contained the bones of at least 83 adults and 33 subadults. Fifty-one percent of the recovered skulls possess erosions of the vault consistent with treponematoses. Some of these exhibit the impressive frontal bone lytic changes with irregular borders typical of caries sicca. In addition, periostosis of the long bones was found in up to 88% of the study sample, including 6 examples of saber-shin deformity of tibias. Radiocarbon dating (-C) of a bone retrieved from the cave ranges from 1100 to 1300 A.D. Additionally, a Pre-Hispanic ceramic figurine from the Mexican state of Nayarit depicting a lame man with multiple nodular skin lesions that suggest gummatous treponemal infection is described. These ancient specimens reinforce the notion that treponemal infection was present on the American Continent before European penetration of the New World. These very advanced paleopathologic lesions and ceramic representations demonstrate the degree to which these diseases wrought devastation before the antibiotic era. In ancient times, treponematoses were true rheumatic diseases that produced profound skeletal abnormalities marked by periosteal accretion and bone destruction.

The Struggle for Fishing Resources in the Pacific Northwest in the Late Twentieth Century

From the beginnings of the European penetration of the areas eventually to comprise the United States and Canada, first explorers, then resource seekers, and finally settlers commonly reported enthusiastically about the abundant riches and enormous extent of the lands they encountered. Nothing in their experiences in Europe prepared them for the overwhelming size of the land, forests that seemed to stretch endlessly westward, abundant animal life, rivers and lakes that drained an immense interior, and richly fertile soils. Almost immediately, a belief blossomed in the minds of early settlers that America was blessed with “inexhaustible resources.” As settlement moved inland and up river valleys during the colonial period, farmers found fresh soils to exploit for tobacco and wheat, and plentiful fur resources lured men beyond the Appalachians. After independence, as settlement moved westward, Americans found rich soils in the Old Northwest and Old Southwest, vast expanses of prairie lands, enormous forests of pine, and mineral wealth beyond most people's imagination: gold, silver, iron, copper, and finally oil. While Native peoples had occupied these lands for thousands of years, these resources, which so amazed Europeans, had been only lightly exploited. Indeed, one can argue that much of the extraordinary wealth and economic power accumulated in the United States by the early twentieth century can be explained by the aggressive exploitation of the cheap, abundant, and hardly-used resources available in North America.