Question

Compare the roles that the Second Industrial Revolution played in the development of Brazil and British India. How significant a difference was created by the fact that Brazil was an independent country and British India was a colony?
Analyze the impact of imperialism on conquered peoples and explain the reasons for the differences between the images and ideologies of imperialism distributed in the Western world and the actual experiences of the conquered peoples.

Answer 1

Answer:

The second industrial revolution of the late nineteenth century intensified the global nature of industrialization. Much more so than the early industrial revolution, it depended on imported raw materials, such as rubber, oil, and bauxite, to manufacture a range of goods including chemicals and sophisticated machines. Neither Brazil nor British India was industrialized, so both served as raw materials producers. Brazil's products included coffee, sugar, and rubber, the latter a product for which the emergence of the automobile industry had created a great deal of demand. India's included cotton, jute, and tea. Colonialism did impose constraints on India that Brazil did not face, including some related to industrialization. British administration ruled India according to assumptions that benefited itself, like the idea that a colonial possession should serve as a raw materials producer and a consumer of finished goods, not a producer of finished goods. Similarly, much of the value of its products was siphoned off by the British in order to recoup the costs of colonial rule. While Brazil was free from these concerns, however, indigenous planter elites seeking to maintain their privileges had a similar impact on the lives of the majority of its people. One of the last countries to abolish slavery, Brazil was structured in such a way that the bulk of people were excluded from participation in politics and, ideologically, from inclusion in the nation. Brazilian elites, free to govern themselves where Indians were not, would have seen major differences between their status and India's; for the Indian masses and Brazil's peasant, former slave, and Indian population, the difference in political structures might not have mattered as much.