# The Extra-European World

History II · Contemporary History · https://tryals.app/learn/history-ii/the-extra-european-world

## Not a Periphery

World history is not simply European expansion. Non-Western societies faced their own crises and followed distinct paths.

* **China** was weakened by external and internal forces. The **Opium Wars** (1839–1842 and 1856–1860) ceded Hong Kong. Far deadlier was the internal **Taiping** rebellion (1850–1864).
* **Japan** modernised rapidly after the **Meiji Restoration** of **1868**. It defeated China in 1895 and Russia in 1905.
* **India** shifted from East India Company control to **Crown rule from 1858** after the major **rebellion of 1857**. Queen Victoria later became Empress.
* **Latin America** achieved independence between 1810 and 1826. However, British trade and capital soon dominated its new republics.

## Africa and the Global Economy

Before 1880, European presence in **Africa** was mostly **coastal**.

The **Berlin Conference** (1884–1885) established ground rules for imperial expansion:

* It established the principle of **effective occupation**.
* It guaranteed free navigation on rivers like the Congo.
* It recognised King Leopold's claim over the Congo region.

The **Great Divergence** debate asks when European wealth pulled ahead. Pomeranz argued that around 1750, the Yangzi delta and England had comparable living standards. Access to coal and colonies drove the split.

> **Common pitfall:** believing the Berlin Conference drew Africa's colonial borders. It merely set procedural rules for European powers, accelerating the partition on the ground.

## Practice questions

10 of this lesson's 14 practice questions, with answers. The full set is in the app.

### 1. The Taiping civil war killed something in the order of twenty to thirty million people, far more than the Opium Wars. How should that change an account of nineteenth-century China?

A. It makes internal crisis, not European intervention, the principal fact of the period
B. It shows that external imperialist incursions were entirely inconsequential to Qing governance
C. It proves that the Opium Wars were fought primarily to suppress domestic religious rebellions
D. It indicates that maritime treaty ports had negligible economic influence on the inland provinces

**Answer:** A. It makes internal crisis, not European intervention, the principal fact of the period

**Why:** The two are connected, foreign defeat weakened Qing prestige and fiscal capacity, and the settlement relied on new provincial armies that permanently altered the balance between centre and province. But a narrative in which gunboats are the main event misplaces a war that killed on the scale of the First World War.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-ii/the-extra-european-world/the-taiping-civil-war-killed-something-in-the-order-of-twenty-to

### 2. Japan’s response to Western pressure differed sharply from China’s. Which features of the Meiji settlement made that difference?

A. A conscript national army replacing feudal military service
B. A written constitution and centralised state institutions
C. State-sponsored industrialisation and railway building
D. A refusal of all contact with foreign technology and advisers

**Answer:** A. A conscript national army replacing feudal military service; B. A written constitution and centralised state institutions; C. State-sponsored industrialisation and railway building

**Why:** The Meiji leadership treated foreign technique as something to acquire and control rather than resist, sending missions abroad and hiring foreign advisers on contract. The pressure was much the same as China faced; the response was a coherent state-building programme, and by 1905 Japan had defeated a European great power.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-ii/the-extra-european-world/japans-response-to-western-pressure-differed-sharply-from-chinas

### 3. Pomeranz argues that around 1750 the Yangzi delta and England had comparable living standards. If divergence was not inherent to domestic institutions, what follows for explanations of Europe's subsequent economic leap?

A. Divergence originated from earlier agricultural productivity gaps
B. European institutional superiority emerged prior to modern trade
C. Domestic market integration alone determined industrial growth
D. Coal and colonial resources broke local ecological bottlenecks

**Answer:** D. Coal and colonial resources broke local ecological bottlenecks

**Why:** Treating institutional superiority or ancient productivity advantages as inevitable mistranslates a contingent ecological breakthrough into permanent civilisational divergence. Windfalls of coal and colonial trade relieved land pressures that constrained other advanced regions.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-ii/the-extra-european-world/pomeranz-argues-that-around-1750-the-yangzi-delta-and-england-had

### 4. The Berlin Conference of 1884 to 1885 drew the borders that partitioned Africa among the European powers.

**Answer:** False

**Why:** **False**, though it is one of the most durable classroom errors. The conference agreed rules, most consequentially that a claim required effective occupation, and recognised Leopold II’s Congo. The partition itself was carried out afterwards by separate treaties, chartered companies and military expeditions.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-ii/the-extra-european-world/the-berlin-conference-of-1884-to-1885-drew-the-borders-that

### 5. Complete the account of the scramble for Africa.

**Answer:** Before about 1880 European presence in Africa was overwhelmingly **coastal**, and within roughly thirty years almost the whole continent was under European rule. The Berlin Conference agreed that a claim required **effective** occupation, which arguably **accelerated** the partition by making paper claims worthless. The Congo was recognised as the personal possession of **Leopold II**.

**Why:** The effective-occupation rule is the detail that turns a procedural agreement into a cause. Once a claim had to be backed by administration on the ground, every power had an incentive to send expeditions immediately rather than negotiate at leisure, so a conference intended to regulate competition intensified it.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-ii/the-extra-european-world/complete-the-account-of-the-scramble-for-africa

### 6. Arrange these developments outside Europe, earliest first.

**Answer:**

1. Spanish American wars of independence begin
2. The first Opium War opens Chinese treaty ports
3. The Taiping civil war begins
4. The rebellion in India ends East India Company rule
5. The Meiji Restoration begins Japan’s transformation
6. Japan defeats Russia in war

**Why:** Compressed into one sequence the century looks less like European expansion and more like a worldwide crisis of old regimes. Four of the six are internal upheavals in large states; the European role is to raise the pressure, not usually to be the main actor.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-ii/the-extra-european-world/arrange-these-developments-outside-europe-earliest-first

### 7. Arrange the steps of the transfer of authority in India.

**Answer:**

1. The East India Company governs through conquest, alliance and revenue collection
2. Rebellion breaks out across northern India in 1857
3. The rebellion is suppressed with great violence
4. The Company is abolished and the Crown assumes direct rule
5. Victoria is proclaimed Empress of India

**Why:** The rebellion produced the empire in its familiar form. What preceded it was a chartered trading company that had acquired a subcontinent almost inadvertently; what followed was a formal imperial administration with a viceroy, a civil service and, eventually, a monarch styled empress, a structure created by the failure of the previous one.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-ii/the-extra-european-world/arrange-the-steps-of-the-transfer-of-authority-in-india

### 8. Sort each claim by whether it belongs to the traditional account of European advantage or to the GREAT DIVERGENCE revision of it.

**Answer:**

- Traditional account: European superiority was long established by 1750, European institutions and culture explain the lead by themselves
- Great Divergence revision: Coal and colonial land relieved a constraint that bound China, The gap opened chiefly in the nineteenth century

**Why:** The revision has not been simply accepted, Broadberry and others date the divergence earlier on national-accounts evidence, but it changed the burden of proof. Claims of long-standing European superiority now have to be demonstrated against a specific comparable region, rather than assumed from the outcome.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-ii/the-extra-european-world/sort-each-claim-by-whether-it-belongs-to-the-traditional-account-of

### 9. Latin American states won political independence between 1810 and 1826 but went on exporting primary commodities and importing manufactures and capital. Why do historians treat that as a distinct kind of dependence?

A. Formal sovereignty coexisted with an economy vulnerable to foreign markets and creditors
B. British administrators were appointed to supervise local taxation and direct legal policy
C. New republics signed international treaties that formally forbade domestic manufacturing
D. Residual constitutional ties kept the new republics de jure subject to Spain until 1898

**Answer:** A. Formal sovereignty coexisted with an economy vulnerable to foreign markets and creditors

**Why:** The concept is informal empire: control exercised through trade, credit and the threat of intervention rather than through administration. A state whose budget depends on the world price of guano or coffee, and whose railways are built with foreign loans, makes fewer independent choices than its constitution implies, without any foreign flag being raised.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-ii/the-extra-european-world/latin-american-states-won-political-independence-between-1810-and

### 10. By 1870 the European powers already administered most of the African interior, and the decades after 1880 merely formalised what existed.

**Answer:** False

**Why:** **False.** Around 1870 something like a tenth of Africa was under European rule, overwhelmingly at the coast; by 1914 it was close to the whole continent. That the change took roughly three decades is what makes "scramble" an apt word and what makes explanations resting on slow accumulation implausible.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/history-ii/the-extra-european-world/by-1870-the-european-powers-already-administered-most-of-the-african