Opium Wars - Imperialism in China

During the imperialism all the way in China, Europeans wanted to get some of the good natural resources that thay had. One of the most important resources the Europeans wanted to get, was Chinese tea. When the Europeans came to China, the chinese were never willing to give them their valuable tea. The only way they could get the tea was by trade. One of the items traded to the Chinese was a plant called opium. It was a type of drug in some way. The chinese wanted to buy it abd in return, they would give them tea. Most of the imports of opium to China was strictly forbidden. However, the trade continued to grow with the increasing number of opium addicts. Since this trade continued, the Chinese ended up spending most of their money on the drug. China began to fall moneywise , and thus, the opium wars began.
Since China was rapidly losing its money, the chinese army quickly began to collapse. Tax collectors in China began charging more and more to the local villages. People were getting poorer and poorer by the minute. Britain, on the other hand, decided to force the issue of increased trade rights. The trade of opium also started to destroy the original trade order of China. After a while, China finally decided to burn all the opium in their possession. The British did not take it well and occupied positions around China.
Although China was determined to defeat the British, they had no sucess. Britain was able to defeat them easily because of the advanced technology they had. China still had their money problem, so it was difficult to supply their soldiers with enough weapons. Not wanting to lose any more of their troops and their pride, they made a treaty with the British. This allowed them to open new ports for better trade.

Film Lesson: "Mountain of the Moon"

Over the last two days, we watched an interesting film called "Mountains of the Moon". This film was basically about how these two European explorers wanted to find the source of the Nile River. To do that, instead of going up the river to its source, they decided to walk through the middle of Africa in hope of finding the source near Africa's center. However, finding the source of the Nile was not an easy task. To find the sorce, they had to walk on foot the entire way. Africa's terrain was not really inviting. In fact some of it was mountainous! They had to carry all these heavy loads by walking. Many people died of fatigue and more then half of them deserted. Another big problem was the local tribes in the area. There was one scene where their camp was ambushed by a whole bunch of people from a trbe. Many were killed. Some also died of diseases, such as milarea.
It took them a good couple of months but eventually John Speek was able tto find the true source of the Nile. In honor of the queen of England, he decided to name the enormous lake, Lake Victoria. It was actually a very strange name at first. For one thing, the lake was always there but the Europeans believed that they "discovered" it just now. A second factor, was that the sorce of the Nile was located in the heart of Africa and it belonged to Africa. John Speek named it after his queen all the way in Europe. It's strange that an African lake has a European name.
During the course of the film Speek and his travel partner, Burton, showed many of the gadgets that were from Europe, to the native peoples of Africa. Many of the Africans were amazed at all these new devices. They have never seen such things in their life before. For example, the gun. When Burton gave the tribeleader the gun, he was simply astounded. He knew that his tribe's spears were no match for the deadly firearm. This wasone of the reasons why Europe was able to cinquer Africa so suddenly. If it was spear against guns, who do you think would win? Of corse the European guys with guns!

Imperialism Project

Over the past few days, we worked on a project about imperialism. Imperialism is when one country tries to take over another country to gain control over their economic, social, and political lives. For this project, we had to attach certain labels of things (for example tea, cotton, etc.) on certain parts of different countries. We also had to draw some sort of trade route to show where some of the products came and went. Keep in mind that all of the trade routes we drew, were over water. Many of the product, including slaves themselves, were transported from one place to another by ship. The main point of this imperialism project was to show what countries in Europe went to what parts of the world to take over. Many of the European countries went to Africa and took almost every part of Africa they could get their hands on.
I learned a lot from this from this project. I was able to learn what countries took over what parts of the world. I can't remember much about the project but i do remember coloring the countries that certain parts of Europe took over. I remember both France and Spain taking over a good part of Africa and perhaps even parts of the new world. (Present day N.A) I also remember all the different types of products that they shipped from all over. They had tea that came from China, all the way back to Europe. Slaves were also taken from Africa and brought over to the New World so they could work on plantations.