Lesson video

Hello, and welcome to this lesson.

I'm Mr. Benger and I'll be teaching you for the next four lessons and we're going to be doing a fascinating inquiry.

What did British colonialism looked like in the 19th century? Now don't worry if you don't know exactly what that means yet.

Cause that's what we're going to be learning.

And today's introduction lesson.

We're going to be learning about the British empire from 1776 to 1900.

Now this is an incredibly interesting, challenging and important topic.

British colonialism and the British empire has shaped the lives of millions of people, even billions of people throughout the past few hundred years and continues to have, have legacies today.

I've learned a massive amount in reading and researching and planning the sequence of four lessons for you.

And I hope you would join me so I can share that with you today.

Now for this lesson, make sure that you have a pen, make sure that you have something to write on before we get started.

Make sure that you haven't got any distractions around you so that you're ready to learn and ready to put your full focus into this lesson.

So without any further ado let's get started.

So the title of this lesson is The British Empire 1776 to 1900.

Our inquiry question the big question we're going to be answering over the next few lessons is this what the British colonialism look like in the 19th century.

We'll be unpicking that as we go along over this lesson and the next few lessons, if you need to pause the video now to write this titles down, then feel free to do that.

But if you're done, then let's move on.

We're going to start this lesson by looking at this map.

And it's a pretty interesting image.

Isn't it a pretty interesting map here.

And I want you to start just by looking for every detail you can see there's a lot of detail on this map.

So start by just taking it in and trying to break it down.

What can you see in this map? Pause the video now and just take a moment to see how many details you can find.

So this, at this point, we're not considering exactly what these details mean or what they might suggest.

We just want to focus on what you can see.

Okay so I'm going to share with you now what I can see in this image.

So I can see in the middle, there's a map of the world and you can see that certain parts of the map are coloured in red.

So you can see that Canada's in red Britain looks like it's in red, India's in red parts of Africa in red and Australia down the bottom, right there is in red.

I can see that there are lines joining a lot of these red countries together.

If we look around the outside of the map now I can see at the top that there's the words, freedom, fraternity, and Federation.

And I can see around the outside that there's a lot of different peoples who look like they're all from very different parts of the world.

These people on the, on the right hand side of the map are all presented as a women.

And we can see that there are also some men in this image in particular, I notice in the bottom left, we've got these men in red uniforms who are holding weapons.

What might that mean? We can also see right in the middle of this picture.

We've got a woman sitting on top of the world in some armour with holding a big Trident and with a shield.

That's got the British flag on it.

Now that we've picked apart.

So or identified a lot of these details and there's, there's many more you may have got, let's start to think, what might these details actually mean? What is this map and what might it be telling us about the British empire at the time when it was made? So we've identified what some of the details on this map are, but let's try and think now a bit more about what exactly it is and what it might be trying to tell us about the British empire at this time.

So this is a map of the world showing the extent of the British empire in 1886.

Okay.

If you're not sure what an empire is, where it's a group of countries or areas or people ruled by a single more powerful person that government or country.

So in this case, we've got a number of countries here, Canada, India, Australia, for example, ruled by Britain.

A colony is the name of the term used to describe a country or area controlled by that more powerful country there's often, far away.

So Canada is an example of a British colony.

India is a British colony and Australia is a British colony.

So what is this map telling us? Well, clearly the most obvious thing is telling us is that Britain had colonies as part of his empire all over the world.

And it's showing us those places in red, it's showing us them in red because it's trying, or it could be trying to make us realise just how big the British empire is, how much power has got over these areas.

It's got those lines going between them, which are to show us the different routes that ships might've gone between the carrying goods and carrying different things between these different colonies, these different parts of the British empire.

If we look around the outside, it's again, projecting this image of power we can see right in the middle at the bottom, we've got, Brittania the woman representing Britain, okay.

With the big shields and the big Trident sitting on top of the world, trying to give this impression that that Britain has this power over the world at this time.

And you can see there's a number of different people from all around the world, sort of looking towards and even looking up at Brittania here.

You can notice that a lot of these different peoples, especially on the right there are presented as women.

And this is quite closely linked with the idea at this time that women were weaker and therefore deserved to be controlled.

They're looking up at, at Britannia who is white representing the white race, this white group of people.

And you can see that a lot of these other peoples are people of colour, people from different parts of the world who are presented perhaps as a weaker than Britain who is sitting on top of the world.

You can also see in the bottom left corner, these soldiers in red, this could be an idea of the military power.

The idea that Britain has conquered the world using its superior strength and force.

And so we can see here, this image is projecting an idea of the power of the British empire over different peoples and different lands all over the world.

So clearly this map has given us one quite clear view on what the British empire looks like on what British colonialism looked like around the world.

This was a map produced in Britain to celebrate and to promote the empire.

But over the next few lessons, we're going to be trying to think more deeply, I guess, about these issues.

What did British colonialism look like in the 19th century? This is the question we're going to be trying to answer.

And it's a question that has challenged and been debated by historians for many, many years now, and has led to some fascinating debates and research and some fascinating history about the history of Britain and the history of the world.

In this lesson we're just going to start by trying to break down this question.

What exactly does it mean when we say British colonialism and what does it mean when we say the 19th century? What happened when, when was this? Okay, and what happened to the British empire at this time? So we're going to start by breaking down the question today before in future lessons we look, we go around the world to look at what British colonialism looked like in different places.

So first, if we're going to be able to answer this question, we have to really know what colonialism means.

And so to start us off, we're just going to have a look at what this word, what it does mean.

So a colony where the word colonialism comes from a colony is a country or area controlled by a more powerful country there's often, far away.

So remember we saw on the map, a number of different colonies, such as Australia, Canada, and India, and the plural of colony is colonies.

Now this word colonialism, what does that mean? Well, the colonialism is the ideas and methods used to control the colonies and to benefit from them.

So again, the ideas and methods used to control colonies and benefit from having them is known as colonialism.

Take a moment to write these definitions down if you're not sure about them and pause the video now.

Okay so let's just quickly test our understanding with a very quick quiz.

So India is an example of a British colony or India is an example of a British colonialism, which option here is correct.

Pause the video if you need a bit more time to think.

Okay so the answer is colony.

So India is an example of a British colony.

Let's have a go at another one so the British empire, which we saw on the map earlier was made up of many different colony or was it made up of many different colonies? Again, pause the video if you need time to think.

Okay.

Yes.

Well done.

The answer is colonies.

So the British empire was made up of many different colonies and our final one, the ways in which Britain tried to control its colonies are known as what? So the ways in which Britain tries to control its colonies are known as colonies, colonisation or colonialism, which one of these is correct.

Okay the answer is colonialism.

So the ways in which Britain try to control its colonies are known as colonialism.

So the different methods, different ideas that Britain has for controlling them are known as colonialism.

So returning to our inquiry question, what did British colonialism look like in the 19th century? We now know a bit of basic idea of what colonialism is.

We've got a basic definition.

Let's look at this British bit now and break that down.

So we'll go back to colonialism a bit later and a bit more detailed, but British, why have I picked the British British colonialism here? Well, the fact is that there were many countries that had empires at this time and many countries that had different colonies.

So you can see here, an example of another country that had colonies is France.

So France in the dark blue there you've got France itself has got parts of Africa.

And it's also got parts of East Asia, including Vietnam, but we are going to be focusing in this inquiry on the British empire and British colonialism.

But just to say, you know, there were other countries that had colonies at this time.

We also need to know about where we are in time and we're going to be focusing on the 19th century.

So what did British colonialism look like in the 19th century? So you can see there's this timeline here we start in in 1558 when queen Elizabeth, the first was crowns that's many hundreds of years before the 19th century.

Of course the 19th century is the 18 hundreds.

So you can see here, queen Elizabeth was crowns around that time is when the British empire started to grow.

Then we've got in the 16 hundreds of 17 hundreds.

So that's the 17th and 18th centuries.

We've got the enlightenment.

So at a time when there are a lot of new ideas about science and about how to rule countries and different places, then we have here the American revolution, which we're going to look at in a bit more detail in a moment, 1776.

And that's just before the 19th century, when we have a lot of the industrial revolution as well.

So you may know about that when a rise in technology and industry and factories led to a lot more things, being built in very different ways.

We move on finally, just so we can get an idea of where we are to the 20th century.

So the 19 hundreds, when we have the first world war and the second world war, and we are currently today in the 21st century, the present day, the two thousands.

So we are looking at this bit here in red from around 1800 onwards, the 19th century.

So starting then with our timeline of how the British empire developed from the 1776 to 1900.

So roughly over the course of the 19th century, we start here in 1776 with this map of the British empire.

And so you can see that in 1776, actually, most of Britain's empire was in America here in the orange and also the green, red and blue.

And these are especially those ones in green, red and blue are Britain's American colonies.

And in 1776 though, disaster struck for the British empire and the American colonies decided they didn't want to be part of the British empire anymore.

And so they rebelled and eventually they gained their independence and well England lost or Britain lost its empire in America.

And this was a disaster for the British empire.

They'd lost some of their most important colonies, but the British empire started to rebuild itself and it rebuilt itself by looking a lot more to the East of the world.

And so you can see by our map here that we've already looked at Britain now has control over India in the East and also Australia moving on to 1898.

So almost the end of the 19th century, you can see that Britain then has control of India and Australia, but also large parts of Africa in the middle there as well.

So after the disaster of losing its American colonies back in 1776, then now has gained an empire in large parts of the world.

So for our key developments check then have a read through the different statements on this slide and see if you can put them in the right place.

So which one of these descriptions goes in 1776, which one of these describes the empire in 1886 and which one describes the empire in 1898 and near the end of the 19th century.

You only need to copy down the bits in bold if you want to.

So take a moment to pause the video and fill in your own version of this timeline on your paper.

So pause the video now.

Okay so here are the correct answers.

So we should have the in 1776, most of the colonies of the British empire were located in North America and also the Caribbean, which I didn't mention earlier, but some islands near to North America.

So most of the colonies of the British empire were located in North America and the Caribbean in this year, Britain's American colonies claimed independence, 1886.

So by what, over a hundred years later, by this time the British empire had shifted its attention East and it expanded its power over colonies, including India and Australia.

And by the end of the 19th century in green there, we've got the British empire has gained many more colonies in Africa.

So check your answers and correct them if you need to.

So now let's return to that slightly tricky word of colonialism in our inquiry question, what did British colonialism look like in the 19th century? We've already seen a definition where we, we said that colonialism means the ideas and the different ways or methods that Britain kept control over the colonies.

But what actually is it? What is colonialism? What did that actually look like? So I've got here on slide.

Some common features of historians characterizations.

Their descriptions of colonialism are identified by professor Daniel Butts and adapted by me.

And so according to many historians, colonialism the methods and ideas that Britain used a control of the colonies, commonly involved, political dominance, economic exploitation, and culturalism and racism.

Now, what did those things mean? Well, here are some definitions.

I'll read them out to you and then you can pause the slide to write them down, please.

So political dominance means having power over how a place and this people are governed, how they are ruled.

Economic exploitation means unfairly taking advantage of other people to increase your own wealth, your money.

So economic things to do with money exploitation, taking advantage of people.

Culturalism is the belief that the British way of life, it was better than those of other cultures and racism meant at the time, the belief that the white race was biologically superior to other races.

So pause the video and write those down.

So let's break down these key features a bit further.

So what do we actually mean when we say that One of the ways that Britain exert its power, one of the ways that Britain enforced colonialism upon its colonies was a political dominance.

So political dominance, one of the main features was this idea of hierarchy, hierarchy, meaning an order of power from top to bottom.

So at the top of the hierarchy, the people with the most power would be the British in the colonies.

So the British would put themselves at the top and that would often involve having the queen at the top.

So queen Victoria for most of the 19th century and then having different governors and people below the queen to rule the different colonies.

Now, these people that were the British at the top of the hierarchy would use their power to make the laws of the colony.

And so these laws would be able to control what the people in the colonies could or could not do.

The British would use often military force and violence to enforce their power.

So if people in the colonies resisted British power, the British would use force and violence to secure and gain more power.

And our final point there is just to say that political dominance, Britain's place at the top of the hierarchy in the colonies, having the most power, wasn't always secure.

A lot of the time the bridges were anxious, they were scared they would be kicked out.

And that's a lot of the time why they use this force and violence to enforce that position.

And people in the colonies often resisted British force and often resisted British colonialism as they were.

That's where this point about resistance comes from.

And we'll see some examples over the course of this inquiry of how people in India, in Australia and in Ireland resisted the British empire and British colonial rule.

Let's just check our understanding here.

So I've got four different options, which two of these scenarios would represent examples of the political dominance of colonialism.

So option one, British people by tea produced in a colony.

Does that show clearly political dominance option to queen Victoria appoints a governor to rule a colony.

The government makes new laws that the people of the colony have to follow.

Does that show political dominance option three, the people in a colony protest against British rule, the British government, a governor of the colony orders, the army to violently crush, the protests and option for a British person moves abroad to a colony and sets up a business there.

He returns to Britain 10 years later with loads of money.

Okay so pause the video.

If you need time to think which two of those shows political dominance.

Okay so the answers here are options two and three.

Those are the options that best show political dominance.

So option two, the Victoria and the governors at the top of the hierarchy, making the law option three, we have that resistance to British power, but also the British using their army, the military to violently, enforce their power and crush the protests option one, and option four are more to do with the economy.

Most who have money and things like that, which we're going to look at next.

So our second feature is economic exploitation.

Another feature of colonialism.

What did this look like? Well, this could look like taking land so often, always in colonies.

The British took land away from the people who originally lived their.

Taxes so Britain might charge the people in the colonies taxes.

So they have to pay money to the British government and then labour, labour meaning work.

So they might have the people in the colonies do work for them and might use them often and not pay them very much to do work.

And therefore the British would earn money using the work of the people in the colonies.

And if we look back at our map here, we can see in this bottom left corner, we've got a man carrying a heavy load.

And so that clearly looks like a sign of economic exploitation shown in this map.

Our final feature that we've got here, even though there are potentially others we could talk about, but the final one we're goes talk about is culturalism and racism.

So this was based upon the idea of a cultural hierarchy.

So the idea that the British or Britain was at the top, they thought that Britain had the best culture and racial hierarchy.

So the idea of white supremacy that they thought that white people were better than all other people.

Let's have a look at this in a bit more detail.

So culturalism is the belief that the British way of life was better than those of other cultures.

This attitude, that glorified British society, as the best in human history, culturalism showed little respect for the cultures and ways of life of other people and the societies.

Racism is the belief that the white race was superior to other races.

In the 19th century racism was based upon the incorrect scientific belief that humanity is split up into different groups called races, which are biologically separate from one another.

This idea has now been proven, scientifically false.

So if we return to our map then we can see some of these ideas at play.

You can see Brittania, there's white woman representing a powerful Britain sitting on top of the world with all these other people of colour, from different parts of the world, looking up at her.

So the idea here is that a British culture Britain was superior.

It also shows that racial hierarchy, because we've got these British people shown as white, and we've got all these other peoples from other parts of the world who are clearly being presented as below the white people.

And so these are some of the ideas that underpinned the empire.

And we'll look at these in more detail over the course of this inquiry, how these ideas of culturalism and racism shaped British colonialism in different colonies.

So to finally test our understanding here, which option represents each aspect of colonialism.

So which one of these shows political dominance, which one shows economic exploitation, which shows culturalism and which shows racism, pause the video now to read through these different options, you can see political dominance is also, is already done for you.

So you're looking for the other three.

So please pause now to read these options and decide which one is which aspects of colonialism.

Okay so here are the answers.

So you should have got that number one there our first one in a blue A British person tries to convert people in a colony to Christianity.

She says that Christianity is the religion of civilization and other religions are backwards.

That's culturalism because this British person is saying that the British way of life British Christianity is better than all other religions going onto the green racism, British people violently take land from native people in a colony.

They say this is fair because the white race on naturally superior better and therefore deserve to have the land.

So this is an example of racism because the British people are saying that the white race is naturally better than other peoples and therefore deserve to be able to take their land.

So they believe that the white racists do periods.

Other races is an example of racism, economic exploitation, a British person moves abroad to a colony and sets up a business.

He has people from the colony work for him.

He doesn't pay them well and treats them badly.

He returns to Britain.

10 years later, with loads of money.

So you can see in this example here, the British person is using power in order to make money from the colonies and so this is economic exploitation.

We move on now to our comprehension questions to finish off the lesson.

So here are five questions that we should now be able to answer based on what we've learned today.

I will read them out for you.

Where were most of Britain's colonies by 1776? Question two.

What happened in 1776, that was disastrous for the British empire? Questions three why did many people refer to the British empire as the empire on which the sun never sets in the 19th century? What were some of the key features of British colonialism in the 19th century? And then finally, question five, a challenge question for which you'll need to read the challenge, reading in the reading pack on the worksheet, how was China affected by British power? Despite the fact that it was not an official British colony.

So pause the video now and read the slides on the next page and answer the comprehension questions.

When you come back to this video, it will be in the same place as you are now.

So pause the slides, read the information and have a go at answering those comprehension questions, come back and we'll go through some of the answers.

So let's have a go through these then.

So question one what were most of Britain's call aware or where most of Britain's colonies by 1776, an acceptable answer for this question is America and the Caribbean, but a good answer written in a full sentence in 1776, most of Britain's colonies were located in North America and the Caribbean.

These colonies were a great source of power and wealth for Britain.

Question two, what happened in 1776, that was disastrous for the British empire.

So an acceptable answer, Britain lost its its American colonies.

A good answer in 1776, the American colonies decided to rebel against the British empire and form an independent country.

The United States of America Britain was shocked at losing some of his most important colonies.

Number three, why did many people refer to the British empire as the empire on which the sun never sets in the 19th century? An acceptable answer.

Britain claimed control of colonies all over the world.

A good answer is that in the 19th century, the British empire rebuilt itself after the disaster of 1776 throughout the 19th century, Britain claimed control over colonies all over the world in Asia, Australia, and Africa.

This led people to call the British empire, the sun on which the empire on which the sun never sets because there was always somewhere in the British empire where it was daytime.

So I should have said before, as we go through these, you can add to your answers.

You can correct them or give yourself a tick for all the details you got.

And just pause on each slide if you need a bit more time.

So you can just re rewind the video a bit.

If you need to look back at questions, one and two as well, question four them, what were some of the key features of British colonialism in the 19th century, an acceptable answer, political dominance, economic exploitation, culturalism, and racism.

A good answer might give a bit more detail about some of these.

So here I've talked a bit more about political dominance.

So there were many different features of British colonialism.

These included political dominance, economic exploitation, culturalism, and racism.

Each of these could come in different forms. For example political dominance could mean being at the top of the hierarchy, governing the country.

It could also mean using military power and violence to assert control.

And finally, question five.

Our challenge question.

How was China affected by British power? Despite the fact that it was not an official colony China acceptable answer, China was forced to sign agreements that gave power and economic benefits to Britain and a good answer, even though China was never officially a British colony, it remained under the control of the Ching empire.

The British empire used its military power to wage Wars against China and force China to sign agreements, giving away some power and benefits to Britain.

For example China was forced to sign an agreement that allowed Britain to make money selling opium and dangerous drug to Chinese people returning to our inquiry question.

Then what did British colonialism look like in the 19th century? Where have we got to today? What today we've looked at some of the key features of colonialism, and we've looked quite closely at this map to look at how it may be represents some of these key features in different ways.

However there's a lot more we need to do if we want to answer this question properly, because colonialism didn't happen on a map.

And it happened in real places and was experienced by real people.

So we've looked at some key features of colonialism today, but what did it actually look like? We'll be answering this question over the next few lessons where we'll be going to India and looking at what coloniasism looked like there.

Will be looking at how colonialism was experienced by different people in Australia.

And we'll be looking closer to home or Ireland at how colonialism was experienced in Ireland.

This is what the next few lessons will look like.

And the key thing we've got to remember here is that colonialism was experienced in many different places and it was experienced by many different people.

And therefore, if we want to answer this question properly, we've got to look at how it was different in different places.

We've got to think to ourselves, what did, or what were some of the common features of colonialism in different places, but actually, how was it different in different places and how well did it look different to different people and from different perspectives.

And so as we go through this inquiry, we're going to be looking at three different places and a few different perspectives within that, for what colonialism looks like, how, what did it look like from the British perspective, them trying to impose control.

And what did it look like from different perspectives of the people who live there, who lived under colonialism now for this inquiry, I'd pick three places where I think colonialism, colonialism did look quite different, but there are other examples I could have chosen.

And so if you're interested in some other places and experiences of colonialism, for example, in the Caribbean or in Africa, which I haven't been able to include here, then there are other inquiries on Oak, which will help you to understand those.

So in planning these lessons for you on India, Australia, and Ireland, the next three lessons, I've been using some great history books so this book here, India conquered by John Wilson, this one Amritsar 1919 by Kim Wagner, Cultures of empire edited by Catherine Hall.

And I've also used two books that I've found while that I've got online so I can't show them to you, the Cambridge history of Australia and the Cambridge history of Ireland.

Now I'm really excited to share with you what I've learned from reading these books.

And it just gives you a small snapshot of some of the history of British colonialism.

There's so much more that could be explored, but I really hope you would join me and allow me to share with you there's really important thought provoking and challenging history.

Okay so the only thing left for me to say today is thank you, thank you for joining me in this lesson and well done for your hard work today.

Stop the video and move on now to the final quiz.

And after that, I hope that at some point in the future, you will join me for our lesson two, when we'll be looking at what colonialism looked like in India, and for copyright reasons, here are some references to pictures.