The Pearl of The East: The Economic Impact of The Colonial Railways in The Age of High Imperialism in Southeast Asia Dídac Cubeiro Rodríguez

The Pearl of the East: The Economic
Impact of the Colonial Railways in the

Age of High Imperialism in Southeast
Asia Dídac Cubeiro Rodríguez
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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN ECONOMIC HISTORY
The Pearl of the East

The Economic Impact of
the Colonial Railways in
the Age of High Imperialism
in Southeast Asia
Dídac Cubeiro Rodríguez
Palgrave Studies in Economic History
Series Editor
Kent Deng, London School of Economics, London, UK
Palgrave Studies in Economic History is designed to illuminate and enrich
our understanding of economies and economic phenomena of the past.
The series covers a vast range of topics including financial history, labour
history, development economics, commercialisation, urbanisation, indus-
trialisation, modernisation, globalisation, and changes in world economic
orders.
The Pearl of the East

The Economic Impact of the Colonial Railways in
the Age of High Imperialism in Southeast Asia
Department of Applied Economics
Autonomous University of Barcelona
Barcelona, Spain
ISSN 2662-6497 ISSN 2662-6500 (electronic)

Palgrave Studies in Economic History
ISBN 978-3-031-21673-2 ISBN 978-3-031-21674-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21674-9
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Contents
1 Introduction: Ports, Telegraphs, and Railways

at the New Globalization Era in Southeast Asia 1
2 Four Colonies and the Race for the Chinese Market 33
3 The French Railway to China: The Red River Railway 51
4 The Burmese Railway to China: The Irrawaddy River
Railway 83
5 The Philippines Railway: A Link with Hong Kong 121
6 The Dutch East Indies Railway in Java 165
7 Epilogue: The Economic Impact of the Railways
on the Colonial Budget 201
Index 219
v
List of Figures
Fig. 1.1 Railroad at sugar mill in Cuba, 1857 (Source Courtesy

of Museo Naval, Madrid) 3
Fig. 1.2 Share certificate from the Dutch Rhenish Railway dated
1 July 1886 (Source Wikimedia Commons. File Dutch
Rhenish Railway Share Certificate.jpg) 4
Fig. 1.3 Dock of Santiago de Cuba, by Carlos Boudet, 1810
(Source Courtesy of Archivo General de Indias, Seville) 5
Fig. 1.4 Paper mill in the Philippines, by Domingo de Roxas,
1822 (Source Courtesy of Archivo General de Indias,
Seville) 7
Fig. 1.5 A map of the East Indies and the adjacent countries, 1717
(Source Wikimedia Commons. File B26055943A.jpg) 8
Fig. 1.6 Ships waiting for the passage of the Suez Canal around
1880 (Source Wikimedia Commons. File PortSaid Canal
1880.jpg) 17
Fig. 1.7 US Postage Stamp 5 cent 1953 opening of Japan
centennial issue commodore Perry (Source Wikimedia
Commons. File Commodore Matthew C Perry-5c.jpg) 23
Fig. 1.8 Old walls of Barcelona, on the sea, demolished
by 1878 (Source Wikimedia Commons. File
Muralladelmar-ant1878.jpg) 26
Fig. 1.9 The Harbour, Bombay by Francis Frith, Between 1850s
to 1870s (Source Wikimedia Commons. File The
Harbour, Bombay by Francis Frith.jpg) 28
vii
viii LIST OF FIGURES
Fig. 1.10 View of the Bund, Shanghai, 1869 (Source Wikimedia

Commons. File View of the Bund, Shanghai [John
Thompson].jpg) 29
Fig. 1.11 Port workers at Tel Aviv, 1938 (Source Wikimedia
Commons. File Port workers loading crates of oranges
at the Tel Aviv port.jpg) 30
Fig. 2.1 Sugar plantation in East Java. Laying-out of a sugar
cane field according to the Reynoso system, by Ohannes
Kurkdjian, 1921 (Source Wikimedia Commons. File
KITLV-30198.tiff) 36
Fig. 2.2 Rice harvest in Japan, by Elstner Hilton, 1911 (Source
Wikimedia Commons. File Rice Harvest of Japan [1911
by Elstner Hilton].jpg) 40
Fig. 2.3 Menam River from the Royal Dock Yard, Bangkok,
circa 1870–1900, by G.R. Lambert (Source
Wikimedia Commons. File Menam-rivier in Bangkok
RP-F-F01197-X.jpg) 46
Fig. 3.1 Li Hongzhang and Jules Patenotre after signing
the Li-Patenotre Treaty, also known as the Treaty
of Tianjin, 1885 (Source Wikimedia Commons. File
Li Hongzhang and Jules Patenotre after signing
the Li-Patenotre Treaty.jpg) 54
Fig. 3.2 Post and Telegraph building in the French territory
of Kwangchowan in the 1920s (Source Wikimedia
Commons. File Kouang-tchéo-wan.jpg) 57
Fig. 3.3 Steam locomotive number 31 of the Jinpu Railway, 1910
(Source Wikimedia Commons. File JinpuRy-31.jpg) 60
Fig. 3.4 A train of the French Indo-China Yunnan Railroad
is shown arriving at Hanoi Station in 1940 (Source
Wikimedia Commons. File Hanoi, French Indochina, ca.
1940.jpg) 62
Fig. 3.5 Canoe fishing on the Mekong, by Pierre Paul
Cupet, 1894 (Source Wikimedia Commons. File
N5968224JPEG11DM.jpg) 65
Fig. 3.6 600 mm gauge Phu Lang Thuong Lan son line
in Vietnam, 1894 (Source Wikimedia Commons. File 5t
Decuaville040 locmototive Phu Lang Thuong Lang Son
line.jpg) 67
Fig. 3.7 Vietnamese opium smoker, 1900 (Source Wikimedia
Commons. File Vietnamese opium smoker [..].jpg) 70
LIST OF FIGURES ix
Fig. 3.8 Scene of daily life on the Hanoi–Chinese border,

by Héliographie Dujardin, 1903 (Source Revue d’historie
des chemins de fer, 35, 2006; Open edition: https://jou
rnals.openedition.org/rhcf/418) 74
Fig. 3.9 Port of Haiphong, with the rail tracks, 1931 (Source
Wikimedia Commons. File bpt6k97443583.jpg) 76
Fig. 4.1 Burmese war-boat, crewed by thirty men
armed with muskets and dhas. 1852 (Source
Wikimedia Commons. File Burmese war-boat ILN
1852–0327-0004.jpg) 85
Fig. 4.2 A British force arrives in Mandalay, Burma on 28th
November 1885, following the third Anglo-Burmese War
(Source Wikimedia Commons. File British forces arrival
Mandalay 1885.jpg) 86
Fig. 4.3 Inauguration ceremony of the Suez Canal at Port Said,
17 November 1869 (Source Wikimedia Commons. File
L’inauguration du canal de Suez 17 November 1869
Gal18riou001f.jpg) 89
Fig. 4.4 A Thousand Miles on an Elephant in the Shan
States 1890 (Source Wikimedia Commons. File 334
of a thousand miles on an elephant in the Shan States
11205657493.jpg) 99
Fig. 4.5 Strand Road, Rangoon (1870), Myanmar Port Authority
(Source Wikimedia Commons. File Strand Road Rangoon
1870.jpg) 110
Fig. 4.6 Pier with iron forging. Rangoon in the 1870s (Source
Wikimedia Commons. File Vintage photo of a ship
Rangoon in the 1870s.jpg) 111
Fig. 4.7 Rangoon Harbour (1890) (Source Wikimedia Commons.
File Rangoon Harbour.jpg) 113
Fig. 4.8 Showing erosion of right bank of the river (Source
Buchanan [1914, p. 538]) 114
Fig. 4.9 Sinking a Mattress (Source Buchanan [1914, p. 540]) 115
Fig. 4.10 View of the new deep-water channel (Source Buchanan
[1914, p. 542]) 116
Fig. 5.1 Cigar factory of La Flor de La Isabela. Drawing
before the fire of 1898 (Source La Compañía General
de Tabacos de Filipinas 1881–1981. Autor Emili Giral y
Raventós) 133
x LIST OF FIGURES
Fig. 5.2 Inauguration of the Manila to Dagupan Railway (Source

E.M. Barretto Ferrocarril de Manila a Dagupan [Álbum
Recuerdo de Manila], ca. 1885. Palacio la Cumbre,
Subdelegación del Gobierno en San Sebastián) 135
Fig. 5.3 General map of the expansion of the Port of Manila,
1880 (Source Album Obras del Puerto de Manila,
Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid) 145
Fig. 5.4 Port works building on the Malecón del Norte or Muelle
de la Farola, 1887 (Source Album Obras del Puerto de
Manila, Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid) 147
Fig. 5.5 Ten-ton steam crane and a wooden crane, 1887 (Source
Album Obras del Puerto de Manila, Biblioteca Nacional,
Madrid) 148
Fig. 5.6 Priestman dredge iron 60 hp Manila, 1887 (Source
Album Obras del Puerto de Manila, Biblioteca Nacional,
Madrid) 149
Fig. 5.7 Widening of the dike. Eastern port of Manila, 1887
(Source Album Obras del Puerto de Manila, Biblioteca
Nacional, Madrid) 154
Fig. 5.8 Tramway in the church square of the village of Malabon,
1885 (Source E.M.Barretto Tranvia de vapor a Malabón
[Álbum Recuerdo de Manila], ca. 1885. Palacio la
Cumbre, Subdelegación del Gobierno en San Sebastián) 156
Fig. 6.1 The arrest of Diponegoro, 1857 (Source Wikimedia
Commons. File Raden Saleh—Diponegoro arrest.jpg) 170
Fig. 6.2 Railway standing at Semarang NISM Station., KITLV
19,197 Photo Collection, 1901 (Source Wikimedia
Commons. File Trein naar Soerakarta van de Samarang.tif) 175
Fig. 6.3 Map of Ambarawa, the railroad station and Fort Willem I
(1922) (Source http://mahandisyoanata.blogspot.co.id/
2009/10/inside-fort-willem-i-at-ambarawa.html) 177
Fig. 6.4 Ambarawa Station 1906 (Source Wikimedia Commons.
File Treinstation bij Fort Willem I te Ambarawa KITLV
1,400,018.tiff) 178
Fig. 6.5 Section of the railroad track outside Ambarawa, 1900
(Source Wikimedia Commons. File Tandradbaan in de
smalspoorlijn bij Ambarawa op Midden Java 19,354.tiff) 179
Fig. 6.6 Orenstein & Koppel offices in Soerabaja (Source KILTV
Photo Collection, 1890) 181
Fig. 6.7 Locomotive used to transport sugar in Java, 1920 (Source
Wikimedia Commons. File Locomotief gebruitk voor het
transport van suiker op Java 122,405.tiff) 182
LIST OF FIGURES xi
Fig. 6.8 Map of the port of Tanjung Priok in 1908 (Source

Wikimedia Commons. File Kaarten SGD Tandjong Priak
haven van Batavia.jpeg) 186
Fig. 6.9 First inner harbor, Tanjung Priok Batavia, Java
1926 (Source Wikimedia Commons. File Collectie
Tropenmuseum Tandjoengpriok Batavia Java
100007979.jpg) 187
Fig. 6.10 Java and Madoera railways 1889 (Source Collection Dirk
Teeuwen) 188
Fig. 6.11 Java and Madoera railways 1913 (Source Collection Dirk
Teeuwen) 189
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: Ports, Telegraphs,

and Railways at the New Globalization Era
in Southeast Asia
An Empire of Engineers
The nineteenth century has been considered the era of engineers because
of their marked work in the design and implementation of all types
of infrastructure, such as lighthouses, ports, railroads, roads, supplies,
radio antennas, telegraphs, cable stations, etc. Their actions were instru-
mental in the development of European colonial empires on a global
scale (Smiles 1862). The nineteenth century also represented a change in
the sense that engineers became professionalized. To date, we commonly
see the continuity of scientific families and dynasties holding a sort of
local monopoly over the design and awarding of various engineering
works, including fortifications and military engineering barracks, bridges,
churches, sewers, warehouses, and various civil engineering works. As the
nineteenth century progressed, administrations modernized and gained
access to these professionals, who will bring new ideas and break with
a traditional system of seeing cities, their metropolitan areas, and their
connection with communications and new logistics needs, with a modern
vision of the concept and influenced by a global vision (Safford 2014,
pp. 197–252). These are professional profiles halfway between classical
engineers and scientists, with the main objective of achieving useful
knowledge with a clear characteristic: that of achieving rapid implemen-
tation in reality in cities, ports, etc. These figures usually coincide with
the phases of design and execution and, often, the elaboration of the
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2023
D. Cubeiro Rodríguez, The Pearl of the East, Palgrave Studies
in Economic History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21674-9_1
2 D. CUBEIRO RODRÍGUEZ
budgets of materials and their items and certifications once the works have
started. These professionals, engineers, mathematicians, physicists, archi-
tects, and cartographers were used to create teams in the field. Although
they often acted under the umbrella of the administration, we could
assimilate them to the current engineering studies that we usually find
in our environment but with a multidisciplinary scope. From these teams,
as the nineteenth century progresses, new professionals will emerge, as
well or better trained, who will continue this work inherited from their
predecessors (Lucena and Fernández 2022, p. 305). In the second half of
the nineteenth century, this network will be the driving force behind the
infrastructure of the empire, and it is a transversal model that we find in
different European metropolises, and in those we deal with in this book:
Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, and Spain.
European metropolises suffered a turbulent nineteenth century. This
was particularly difficult in the Netherlands, Spain, and France. In the
Netherlands, Belgium’s independence in 1830 was a severe blow to the
Dutch budget. Belgian industry was located in Wallonia, where there was
already an old tradition of iron and coal mining and metallurgy. It experi-
enced rapid development similar to that of England, thanks to a banking
system favorable to industrial investments, which provided the country
with one of the best railway systems in Europe. In 1830, Belgium had a
highly developed textile industry and an expanding iron and steel industry
in Ghent and Liège. France lived the nineteenth century with contin-
uous changes of government, from the Napoleonic expansion through
the revolution of 1830, the liberal monarchic restoration, or the revo-
lution favorable to the working classes in 1848, with the arrival of the
II Republic. France lost or sold the colonial empire it had built until
1814, mainly in America, and began the construction of a new empire.
It was from 1830 in Africa and Asia, starting with the conquest of
Algiers that same year, that took advantage of the decline of the Ottoman
Empire. Napoleon III increased the French presence in Indochina based
on the presence of French missionaries since the seventeenth century.
In the Spanish case, the French occupation of the Iberian Peninsula
between 1808 and 1814 (Aymes 2003) left Madrid disconnected from
the overseas empire, as the colonies of Spanish America took advantage
of initiating their independence processes from 1820 (Buschmann 2014,
p. 3). After different governments of different complexions, Spain endeav-
ored to maintain what was left of the empire: Cuba, Puerto Rico, the
Philippines, the Carolinas, Marianas and Palau, Equatorial Guinea, and
1 INTRODUCTION: PORTS, TELEGRAPHS, AND RAILWAYS … 3
the Sahara, creating the Dirección General de Ultramar in 1847, which

once endowed with more resources and autonomy, would become the
Ministerio de Ultramar in 1863 (Elizalde 2016, pp. 390–393). Dirección
General de Ultramar first and the Ministerio de Ultramar in second place
decisively directed the work of engineers and the provision of the neces-
sary infrastructure, such as the telegraph in the Philippines in 1836, the
first Spanish railroad in Cuba dated 1837, the cable between Hong Kong
and Manila linked in 1880, or the first telephone call in Havana, made
in 1877, thanks to the acquisition of telephone terminals in the United
States (Lucena and Fernández 2022, p. 306) (Fig. 1.1).
A transversal fact in these countries is that the infrastructure works in
the colonies were carried out by the colonial administrations following
the guidelines dictated by the metropolis. Depending on the adminis-
tration and government in power, control and instructions were more
or less intense, and resources were more or less limited, but in general,
scarce. Most transport infrastructure, such as railroads, tramways, and
other services, operate under concession contracts, usually for periods of
between 50 and 100 years of operation and with guaranteed interest rates
Fig. 1.1 Railroad at sugar mill in Cuba, 1857 (Source Courtesy of Museo
Naval, Madrid)
of return, since bonds were usually issued giving the subscriber of the
debt the right to the collection of a half-yearly or annual coupon.
With Western powers expanding their influence throughout the world,
there was a period of great effervescence in public works invest-
ment, which accompanied private investments in agricultural and mining
exploitations destined for export. This boom in public and business
activities gave civil engineers access to public works projects, historically
reserved in colonies of military or naval engineers. For the case studied
in this book, investments in logistics and communications infrastructure,
such as ports and railroads, the incorporation of civil engineers was espe-
cially relevant, which made a difference in the conception of projects and
in the geographical distribution of infrastructure (Lucena and Fernández
2022, p. 307) (Fig. 1.2).
The incorporation of these civil professionals generated the need to
train more engineers, and throughout Europe, we saw a boom in the
Fig. 1.2 Share certificate from the Dutch Rhenish Railway dated 1 July 1886
(Source Wikimedia Commons. File Dutch Rhenish Railway Share Certificate.jpg)
increase of degrees to supply the engineering corps and their different

specialties. In Spain, they were integrated into the Ministry of Public
Works and specialties were created throughout the nineteenth century:
marine engineers (1821), construction and hydraulic engineers (1825),
mining engineers (1835), civil engineers (1841), forestry engineers
(1843), topographical engineers (1860), agricultural engineers (1868),
railroad mechanical engineers (1896), and geographic engineers (1900).
Due to colonial expansion, it was common for engineers assigned to the
colonies to have no fixed destination, and we found engineering works,
such as bridges or lighthouses, made by the same team of engineers across
the globe (Lucena and Fernández 2022, p. 307) (Fig. 1.3).
Despite increasing specialization in engineering education, graduates
had to be flexible and prepared for a variety of jobs. It was common
for civil engineers, after completing a project or local infrastructure, to
be appointed as municipal architects or assigned to the direction of fire
Fig. 1.3 Dock of Santiago de Cuba, by Carlos Boudet, 1810 (Source Courtesy
of Archivo General de Indias, Seville)
departments or directors of public gas or electricity companies. The indus-

trialization dynamic that Europe experienced in the nineteenth century,
with advances in the use of iron, coal, and steam, transformed the means
of production and transportation. Engineers’ work in their various special-
ties made it possible to maintain colonial possessions, modernize them,
and link them to their metropolises in a period of great global interaction.
The European powers found themselves in multiple scenarios of friction
against each other, delimiting borders, and maintaining orders thousands
of kilometers from the capital. The management of resources, agricul-
tural and mining exploitation, the creation of logistics platforms, and the
storage and transport of goods to reach the final consumer in Europe was
in part possible thanks to the work of these engineers displaced to the
colonies, often facing an enormous task and with very limited resources
(Fig. 1.4).
The Advent of Steam Navigation:

The Control of Rivers and Seas
In the mid-nineteenth century, much of the world was under the influ-
ence of European powers, but they had no effective control over most
territories. Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and East Asia are beyond
the reach of Europeans. The French conquest of Algeria required as many
years and almost as many means as the conquest of Europe by Napoleonic
troops, and the same was true for the Russian conquest of the Caucasus
(Headrick 2011, p. 169). Effective European domination was confined
to the seas and major ports, but Western influence was diluted as one
moved inland from colonies. This fact is distorted by the image given to
us by the maps of the time marking complete areas of domination, and
this is also the case in the countries we study in this book, in the cases of
British Burma, French Indochina, the Dutch East Indies or the Spanish
Philippines (Fig. 1.5).
In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, these barriers to the inte-
rior were blurred by technological advances and steam navigation, which
made a key difference to the colonized people and gave them greater
control over the forces of nature. Naval dominance was very limited at
the age of the sail. Sailing ships rarely go up rivers and are very vulner-
able to fortress defense guns or Chinese junks in shallow waters. With
the advent of the industrial revolution, the use of steam engines on ships
became popular as the nineteenth century progressed. The first successful
Fig. 1.4 Paper mill in the Philippines, by Domingo de Roxas, 1822 (Source
Courtesy of Archivo General de Indias, Seville)
introduction was Robert Fulton’s North River ship in the United States
in 1807. Thanks to his invention, Fulton obtained a monopoly of steam
navigation for the Hudson River and Chesapeake Bay, and the Delaware,
Ohio, and Mississippi rivers. The motorization models were improved
with different designs by other engineers, such as Henry Shreve’s Wash-
ington. This had an engine on the surface of the ship, which allowed
a draft of half a meter, compared to that of its rivals, which required
Fig. 1.5 A map of the East Indies and the adjacent countries, 1717 (Source
Wikimedia Commons. File B26055943A.jpg)
a draft of one meter because the engine was semi-submerged in the

hull (Headrick 2011, p. 173). Shreve boats could travel north of Missis-
sippi year-round, without running aground on the sandbars that formed
when the river’s flow dropped, using the same navigation system used
by canoes. By the mid-nineteenth century, steamboats on American and
European rivers had become popular, but they did not yet have access
to maritime navigation. River navigation was used in Asia by the East
India Company during the Anglo-Burmese wars, which will be discussed
in the chapter on Burma. In 1824, the governor general of India, William
Amherst, incorporated steam warships to organize amphibious attacks on
the Burmese coast. Burma is surrounded by mountains, and the best
access to the interior is from the coast, up the Irrawaddy River, from
Rangoon to Mandalay. Campaigns against the Burmese army were very
limited, for although the British dominated the Bay of Bengal with their
brigantines, they could not advance up the meandering Irrawaddy River.
The Burmese repelled river attacks with fast, shallow-draft boats called
praus, propelled by about a hundred oarsmen on double banks. These
boats had held off British raids in the interior to that date. The East
India Company decided to go for steamships to change the situation and
imported three steamers: the Enterprize, the Pluto, and the Diana. Enter-
prize was used as a transport vessel between Calcutta and Rangoon, and
Pluto and Diana were gunboats with cannons arranged on both sides of
the hull. The Burmese praus could not cope with British naval artillery
(Headrick 2011, p. 180). But perhaps most relevant was not the effec-
tiveness of the river-range gunboats, but the route taken repeatedly by
the Enterprize, which made a coastal sea passage putting steam engines
to the test in a more hostile environment than the river. This aroused
the interest of British shipping companies that focused on improving
the route between India and Great Britain, whose reduction in travel
time could mean a lucrative business. English businessman James Henry
Johnson arrived in Calcutta in search of funding for a steamship line to
cover the route between Britain and the Bay of Bengal. Johnson managed
to raise enough funds to build the Enterprize, a 464-ton vessel with two
sixty-horsepower, ocean-crossing capabilities (Headrick 2011, p. 182)
that took four months to reach Calcutta from London.
To date, communications between Europe and Asia could follow three
possible routes: around Africa, across Syria, and up to the Persian Gulf,
or via Egypt through the Red Sea. The Atlantic route was the safest but
the longest, approximately six to nine months for a sailing ship, and was
normally used for the transport of goods. The other two were faster and
used as couriers. The Persian Gulf route was safer because from Bombay,
the British navy kept pirates on the East African coast. The voyage from
Basra to Bombay was about two months for a sailing ship and counting
the overland voyage to the Mediterranean and then to England, it could
be about five or six months of total voyage. In 1830, the steamship Hugh
Lindsay left Bombay and reached Suez in thirty-three days, 12 of which
she waited to load coal in Aden, arriving in England in fifty-nine days,
a feat for the time. The economic cost was extremely high because of
the amount of coal she had to carry for the journey, and because of this,
this steam line route was only operational for three years, until 1833.
That same year, pressure from English and Indian merchants and busi-
nessmen led the British government to abolish the commercial monopoly
of the East India Company, leaving it a political and military adminis-
trator of India (Headrick 2011, p. 184). By 1837, advances in steam
engines and improvements in ship hulls made it possible to tackle long

ocean routes with steamships. The East India Company sent a 620-ton
ship, Atalanta, to India. Atalanta was the first ship to make the entire
voyage to India around the Cape of Good Hope powered by steam. In
the following years, she will be joined by more steamers, creating a stable
shipping line between the United Kingdom and India (Headrick 2011,
p. 188). By 1840, Britain had extended regular steamship lines across the
eastern Mediterranean to the Red Sea, then to India, and India to Burma
(Headrick 2011, p. 190). Steamships were invaluable in the conquest and
colonization of Southeast Asian rivers that could not be reached by sailing
ships.
Motivations of the Western Powers

in Asia in the Nineteenth Century
The period between 1870 and 1914 is known as the era of imperi-
alism, an era characterized by the extension of the dominance of colonial
powers, the emergence of new actors in the international scene, and
the emergence of a new model of economic domination (Hobsbawm
2003). During the Industrial Revolution, there were some moments
when markets were saturated, which meant that it was not so easy to
make profits or at least recover initial investments, since industrial prod-
ucts were no longer a novelty and people did not buy them quickly.
When this happened, it was necessary to find new virgin territories from
an economic point of view, new markets, in which to invest these capi-
tals, and the solution once again went through the colonies. With the
triumph of the liberal revolutions in Europe, the bourgeoisie increas-
ingly evolved toward conservative positions for fear of the protests of the
popular masses. On some occasions, the political classes, through propa-
ganda, developed plans of conquest focused on restoring national pride
wounded after previous military defeats. At other times, they only sought
to keep the population entertained or happy with the appearance of great-
ness and unlimited economic progress. Another typical objective of the
popular classes was to try to gain commercial and military control of the
mainland and sea routes, a strategy to keep rivals isolated, often provoking
numerous territorial conflicts, which further paved the way for the First
World War. Specifically, in East Asia, it resulted in the division of parts of
a very weakened China in the hands of the Empress Dowager Tzu-Hsi,
with the loss of Manchuria to Russia, Taiwan, and Korea to Japan, Hong
Kong, and Tibet to Great Britain, and even by countries with reduced
power such as Portugal, which was left with Macao. In addition, China
had to suffer interference in its trade policy and even direct aggressions,
such as the sacking of Beijing by several Western countries under the
pretext of controlling the Boxer revolt (Hobsbawm 2003, pp. 290–292).
Other territories in Southeast Asia were also occupied by Western powers,
such as Indochina by France, Burma by Great Britain, and the Philippines
by the United States, after a long period of Spanish colonization since
the sixteenth century (Osterhammel 2015, p. 575). In addition to Asia,
another great spoil of imperialism was Africa, whose conquest became a
race starting with the British occupation of Egypt in 1882, and in a few
years, left only a few independent countries outside foreign domination,
such as Ethiopia or Liberia (Osterhammel 2015, p. 576).
Many of these colonizing countries behaved in an expansionist
and aggressive military manner in occupied territories. There were
various motivations, technological, geostrategic, racial, but fundamen-
tally economic reasons, or rather, due to changes in the economies of
the countries that followed this imperialist policy. In the second half of
the nineteenth century, the Industrial Revolution created a considerable
distance between the capitalist countries and the industrially undeveloped
ones, with an undoubted economic and military supremacy, paradoxi-
cally without being given by any serious conflict, as Europe enjoyed an
unusually long period of peace based on the balance between the great
European powers (Osterhammel 2015, pp. 566–567). The second half
of the nineteenth century saw the development of the machine gun,
the repeating rifle, and considerable improvements in the accuracy and
range of artillery and explosives, but above all, the mass production of all
these weapons became possible (Osterhammel 2015, p. 566). However,
these technological advances in war machinery were not used en masse
in imperialist adventures; rather, relatively traditional techniques were
used (Osterhammel 2015, pp. 636–637). On the other hand, techno-
logical and scientific advances closely related to the Industrial Revolution
reduced travel times globally, with great improvements in transportation
and communications. The nineteenth century saw the widespread use of
railroads, steamships, telegraphy, and later radio, which made it possible
to govern remote areas from the metropolis (Osterhammel 2015, p. 608).
Beyond that, this reduction in the size of the globe made it possible
to create a global economy with an increasingly dense web of economic
transactions and movements of goods, capital, and workers. World trade
was not new, but in this period, it was boosted to levels never seen before
in what some authors have called the first globalization. Had this not
been the case, there would hardly have been a reason for the powers
to be interested in remote areas of the world (Hobsbawm 2003, p. 70)
because of the high transaction costs involved. One of the reasons for this
interest was that industrialization demanded new products, such as oil,
coal, rubber, and copper. However, one of the phenomena that altered
world trade was the mass consumption of food products, with a clear
example of tea, which was produced in China and distributed in Europe
and America, or similarly, cocoa, coffee, or sugar, which was intended
to nourish the pantries of Western citizens. However, in addition to tea
and spices, the new means of transport and the low production costs in
the areas of origin have made the trade in cereals, meat, fruit, chocolate,
coffee, and tobacco (Hobsbawm 2003, p. 73). The other complemen-
tary motive was the search for new markets for products mass-produced
by the industrial powers, given the deflationary crisis of 1873 caused by
the protectionism of the main European powers, which made it necessary
to seek markets that were not subject to these restrictions (Hobsbawm
2003, pp. 63–64). There were also other justifications for this imperi-
alism. One of them was a certain feeling of superiority, Eurocentrism,
otherness (us/them), which saw in the occupation a civilizing mission
perfectly justified by allowing an inferior culture to come into contact
with a superior one: the conqueror, and to take advantage of its scientific,
technological, and cultural advances (Osterhammel 2015, p. 644).
Much has been written about the influence on American expansionism
of the White Man’s Burden as a civilizing mission to bring humanity
closer to progress and Christian religious righteousness. This fact would
prompt a great sending across the Pacific of missionaries to transmit
the word of God to these other Asian civilizations. Practices of segre-
gation such as that of the Americans were even arrived at as an extension
of the practices of the occupation of the West in the 1890s, when a
social consensus was forged around the idea that the colonies were good
for the nation, but also an excellent occasion to spread one’s cultural
superiority to the world through this civilizing mission (Osterhammel
2015, pp. 570–630). However, on too many occasions such a feeling
of superiority did not translate into an improvement of their living condi-
tions, but rather into a justification for the unscrupulous exploitation of
the conquered nation, as would be the extreme case of Leopold II of
Belgium’s private colony in the Congo (Osterhammel 2015, p. 631).
As imperialism progressed, disputes between the powers increased.

In an attempt to smooth the situation and seek solutions, the Berlin
Conference was organized (1884–1885), which was mainly composed of
representatives of 14 countries involved in the division of Africa since it
was the continent that generated the most disagreements. Attempts to
bring the imperialist process to peaceful stages were insufficient, as the
confrontations accelerated in the first decade of the twentieth century.
Although there were several conflicts between the European powers, the
most important were the Anglo-Boer War between indigenous Dutch
farmers and the English occupiers, and the Fashoda incident (Oster-
hammel 2015, pp. 570–628) between the English and the French with
the withdrawal of the latter.
It is more than evident that although there were some imperialist
colonization’s that did not use the superiority of force, whether agreed
or paid, with the colonies, most of them were. Imperialism used its
power on the seas and on land because of the military and technolog-
ical superiority brought about by industrialized wealth, which made the
balance unbalanced with these colonial territories and some blows against
empires less advanced than those of European powers such as Japan,
China, and Egypt. Acting with force often meant great human massacres
and irreparable damage, with a few exceptions in economic, social, and
cultural aspects, as we will discuss later.
Many times, some of the colonized empires also committed internal
colonization’s in areas nearby their extension to the continent, either with
artificial borders or neighboring regions. China, Japan, and the United
States sometimes committed the same atrocities and ways of doing what
they were suffering on the part of European powers with the populations
of their respective empires. All had similar objectives, such as extending
their area of influence for reasons of commercial, geostrategic, economic,
cultural, or religious wealth through military or technological superiority.
On the other hand, industrialization does not necessarily push impe-
rialist policy, for if industrial capacity had translated directly into interna-
tional power, then in 1860, Belgium, Saxony, and Switzerland would have
been aggressively great powers. The politics of the new era of global impe-
rialism were largely directed toward demanding concessions of canals,
railroads, mining, timber, and plantations favorable to the private inter-
ests of European corporations. By the end of the nineteenth century,
the new joint structure of the world economy was noticeable everywhere
(Osterhammel 2015, pp. 570–619). European colonization and expan-

sion entailed some good and some bad things in the occupied countries
and Europeanized these territories slightly more. Some positive aspects
could be that the increase in population in the occupied countries surely
generated a reduction in diseases and epidemics, which resulted in fewer
deaths and hospitalized people largely to the medicines that Europeans
brought from their places of origin. The Western cultural and educa-
tional policies implemented in the classrooms meant reducing illiteracy
but surely on the rebound eliminated the tribal structure, and with this
acculturation caused a loss of cultural identity. Another positive aspect is
the introduction of new and more profitable crops adapted to the type
of land conquered and its climate. However, the main objective was to
supply exports abroad rather than favoring native populations that worked
on those lands. Another aspect could be to improve, although this was
not always the case, the infrastructure of the territory to make communi-
cations faster, as in the British colony of India, infrastructures that were
also built to improve access to the international market for plantation
agriculture.
However, the exhaustive exploitation of the colonies through the
seizure of their lands, which generally passed into the hands of large
companies or multinationals that abused the natural resources of the
region to their advantage, also had harmful environmental consequences
for the habitat. Disregard for indigenous languages and local cultures,
traditions, and customs often leads to episodes of racial segregation. In
short, it was all about the development of export-oriented economic
activity only for the benefit of the metropolis. The consequences of
this still last to this day in terms of the construction of fictitious
borders, totally arbitrary and without a cultural, historical, or geographical
criterion, sometimes generating ethnic divisions in several states.
The Strategic Importance of Southeast

Asia in the Nineteenth Century
As the nineteenth century progressed, Southeast Asia experienced the
clash of several European colonial empires in a period of growing
interest in the region, which possibly marked its geographical distribution,
defining a large part of its current borders. The European metropolises
understood that they were in one of the last territories of the globe to
colonize, especially after the division of Africa in 1885, staged in Berlin.
The United Kingdom extended its empire over India, Ceylon, Burma,
Malaysia, Sarawak, Brunei, and North Borneo on the Asian continent,
and over the Fiji Islands, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Gilbert, and part of
New Guinea in the Pacific. France occupied Annam, Cochin China, and
Tonkin, forming French Indochina, to which it later added the protec-
torate of Laos and occupied several Polynesian islands, including Tahiti,
New Hebrides, and New Caledonia. Germany, coming out stronger at
the international level, in the midst of the development of a new welt-
politik, took over part of New Guinea and various Pacific islands, such as
Western Samoa and the Marshall Islands, and was very active in China
in order to be well positioned in an eventual distribution of its provinces
or coastal cities (Elizalde 2008, p. 203). Russia continued its eastward
expansion, drawing the Chinese border with its Cossacks and began to
influence Manchuria and Korea, a traditional Chinese tributary kingdom.
Other countries did not participate in this expansive flow at the end of
the nineteenth century but retained empires built earlier. This was the
case in Spain, which exercised sovereignty over the Philippines, Marianas,
Carolinas, and Palau; Portugal, which dominated the ports of Diu, Goa,
Macao, and Timor; and Holland, which had inherited the possessions
of the Dutch East India Company in the Indonesian archipelago, with
important ports on the islands of Java, Sumatra, Celebes, and parts of
Borneo and New Guinea (Elizalde 2008, p. 204).
Two new countries outside Europe, the United States and Japan,
confirmed themselves as new powers in the region, being very active in the
Pacific and the Asian continent, with a military influence that will grow as
we approach the Second World War. From the nineteenth century, Japan
joined the colonial race after its wars of territorial expansion against China
and Russia, where it managed to occupy Korea, southern Manchuria, the
Liao-Tung peninsula, the islands of Formosa, Pescadores, and Sakhalin.
Japanese penetration in China precipitated a new distribution of zones
of influence in that country, as had happened in Africa. Great Britain
was the most important military and commercial power after the Opium
Wars, forcing China to open its ports, but the final years of the nineteenth
century saw renewed international pressure. China was forced to accept
the opening of more ports from which to operate inland: the Germans
settled in Kiao Chow, the Russians in Port Arthur looked for an inland
port that would not freeze in winter, as they did in Vladivostok, the
French in Kwang Cho Wan, and the British in Wei Hai Wei. In addi-
tion, concessions for the construction of railroads in Chinese territories
have intensified. Russia and Germany monopolized the Manchurian and

Shantung railroads. Great Britain negotiated building one in the Yangtze
Valley.
In September 1898, a Sino-German agreement was signed for new
railway construction. In this context, the US government realized that
it was lagging behind in the foreign penetration of Asia. Although its
traders had been operating in this scenario for decades, they did not
have official backing for their operations. In the 1990s, a new internal
debate began in the United States in which political, economic, and mili-
tary circles stressed the desirability of developing a global policy in line
with its new position of international influence. During the second half
of the nineteenth century, the United States annexed several archipelagos
in the Pacific, acquired the Philippines after the war with Spain in 1898,
and a new defense of its interests in China marked the beginning of US
involvement in Asia (Elizalde 2008, p. 204).
The civilian population of the occupied territories reacted to the new
colonizers by creating resistance movements that hindered the advance-
ment of colonial authorities. We have multiple examples from all the
territories, but in the chapters treated in this book, it is worth mentioning
the resistance in the Philippine case in the central mountain range of
Luzon by the Igorrotes or in Mindanao by the Moros, who estab-
lished a strong response to the colonizers. We see similar struggles in
the interior of Java that led to a bloody war in 1825, or Burmese resis-
tance in the north of the country against the British occupation that
confronted them in the three Anglo-Burmese wars. All this resistance
will be gradually forged in the mentality of the new nations, most of
which, after the Japanese withdrawal following their defeat in World War
II, will rise against their colonizers in revolutionary processes to achieve
independence.
At the economic level, the industrial revolution and the rise of liberal
policies expanded credit and investment in the newly colonized territo-
ries, spurred on by a Western market that demanded these new exotic
products. We could speak of the birth of an export plantation economy
on a global scale, with production centers and agricultural plantations
at a great distance from consumer markets. Destination markets also
expanded, covering not only Europe, but also North and South America.
With the arrival of competition from companies from other countries,
there was a transition to protectionist models, which also reached the
colonies with aggressive tariff policies that closed domestic markets to
foreign products. During this period of economic growth and increased

investment, part of it went to infrastructure, creating real logistical bases
to promote the export plantation economy. Asian countries experienced
a major effort on the part of the metropolis and businessmen to provide
these territories with infrastructure in the form of ports, railroads, public
works, and new forms of communication such as telegraph and later radio
stations. A key moment in the development of this region came with the
opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, which brought Europe closer to Asia,
considerably reducing maritime travel times between the two continents
(Elizalde 2008, p. 205) (Fig. 1.6).
Technical and scientific advances have brought about profound trans-
formations in societies and lifestyles. The communication revolution
prompted the creation of transoceanic steamship lines and the construc-
tion of railroads. The laying of cables and the extension of the telegraph
allowed new immediacy in contact and in the transmission of news,
promoting economic transactions at a distance, and the insurance of
goods. The new means of transport brought the lifestyles of different
sectors of the population closer together and encouraged the mobility of
citizens. The barriers between towns and countries began to blur. Rapid
urbanization and urban concentration have occurred. Electric light has
facilitated the improvement of quality of life in cities. With electricity,
ships could be equipped with cold storage chambers that made it possible
to bring exotic fruit to Western consumers. Notions of time and distance
Fig. 1.6 Ships waiting for the passage of the Suez Canal around 1880 (Source
Wikimedia Commons. File PortSaid Canal 1880.jpg)
change with human relationships. Streetcars crossed cities that widened,

separated industry from the center, and created wealthy and working-class
neighborhoods. Clocks appeared on church steeples, marking the arrival
and departure of streetcars. Between 1861 and 1920 more than forty-five
million inhabitants left Europe in search of new opportunities in other
parts of the world. We witnessed the multiplication of scientific, cultural,
and intellectual relations between increasingly close and interconnected
societies, with all that this entailed for the transmission of ideas and
currents that were changing societies around the world (Elizalde 2008,
p. 205). All these processes that intersected in the nineteenth century
and that transformed international relations between states, peoples, and
individuals had a clear reflection in Asia and the Pacific and a direct reper-
cussion on the European colonies in Southeast Asia that we deal with in
this book.
The Markets of China and Japan

in the Nineteenth Century
Until the beginning of the nineteenth century, trade relations between
Europe, China, and Japan were very scarce. In both Asian countries, the
first contact with Western culture was thanks to Christian missionaries, in
particular the Jesuits (Pointing, 2001a, p. 715). On a commercial level,
Portugal had dealings with China since the sixteenth century from Macao,
and in Japan, the policy of sakoku, or closure, limited those commercial
contacts with a small Dutch presence in Dejima as well as exchanges with
China or Korea (Madrid et al. 2001, p. 213). The East India Company
had a monopoly on British trade with China, with whom it traded on
a small scale in certain ports, although foreigners were not allowed to
settle in the country (Brown 2011, p. 275). British interests in China
were purely commercial, with the ambition to expand the market and buy
Chinese products in great demand in Europe. With this goal in mind, the
British sent several trade delegations without success. In 1793, Macartney
was received as a foreign barbarian who came to pay obeisance to his gifts.
To his demands to establish trade relations, they replied that they had no
need for his products since, in China, they had everything they needed
and of better quality. Lord Amherst’s delegation in 1816 was not even
received by the Chinese court.
Although other products, such as silks or ceramics, were traded, the
main interest of the British was Chinese tea, a plant that had become a
staple product to the point that the English parliament had passed a law
requiring the East India Company to always maintain warehouses with
a year’s consumption (Brown 2011, p. 305). In just one century, the
import of Chinese tea increased from 13,000 tons to 360,000 tons in
1820, which gives an idea of British interest in that market (Pointing,
2001a, p. 714). The government itself was an interested party, since a
tenth of its revenue came precisely from a tax levied on the Chinese
tea trade (Brown 2011, p. 305). On the other hand, Great Britain had
few products to offer since Chinese demand was covered by domestic
production with products of similar quality to what the British could offer.
The latter tried to compensate for cotton brought from India, a British
colony, but this market never reached a sufficient volume (Pointing,
2001a, p. 714) for the sale of textiles. This led the East India Company
to decide to compensate for this enormous trade deficit by selling another
product from its colonies, opium. Although China initially considered
legalizing it (Brown 2011, p. 305), the negative effects of this drug in
terms of both human costs and the corruption it generated meant that
it was soon banned, although the British continued to smuggle it in
ever greater quantities. The turning point was observed in 1834. That
year, Great Britain eliminated the commercial monopoly of the East India
Company, which increased trade on the British side and, therefore, the
massive arrival of opium in China. Two years later, in 1836, Emperor
Daoguang banned the trafficking and consumption of opium, launching a
harsh persecution that did not forget either consumers or corrupt officials,
which caused its price to fall drastically as demand plummeted (Brown
2011, p. 307). In 1839, the emperor commissioned Lin Zexu to eradi-
cate root trade, achieving considerable success in a short time. In the same
year, Chinese pressure forced the British superintendent of trade to seize
all opium and hand it over to the Chinese authorities who proceeded to
destroy it. Under pressure from merchants and fear of the tax on tea, the
British government decided to respond militarily to what they considered
aggression against their subjects. In 1840, a fleet of 16 warships, 4 armed
steamers, 27 transports, and numerous troops arrived in China, which
in a few months broke the Chinese resistance and forced a negotiation
formalized in the Treaty of Nanjing, signed in 1842, which in prac-
tice meant giving freedom to the British to trade even with opium, the
surrender of Hong Kong Island, and substantial indemnities (Pointing,
2001a, p. 715). In the following years, other European countries signed
similar treaties with Chinese authorities, and the provisions signed by the
British were tacitly applied to all foreigners arriving in China, including

those from smaller nations. The opening of the world’s largest market, at
that time, approximately 400 million people pushed Westerners into ever
greater pressure on China (Martinez 2014, pp. 16–17). The restrictive
clauses of the Treaty of Nanjing were superseded by the Treaty of Tientsin
of 1856, when China stops the ship Arrow accused of transporting unper-
mitted quantities of opium, and provides Britain with a concession in
Shanghai, the opening of some cities to trade and the removal of limits
on the opium market. The British and their French allies had steamers
armed with steel breech-loading guns firing explosive bombs with which
in 1857 Rear Admiral Sir Michael Seymour destroyed the Chinese fleet
and took Guangzhou (Headrick 2011, p. 198).
This situation undoubtedly brought with it a defiant attitude from
some representatives of the Qing government, which generated the
outbreak of a new armed conflict, this time with the addition that France
was one of the English allies. The Second Opium War (1857–1860),
culminated with the signing of the Beijing Conventions in 1860, in
addition to the gratuitous and unjustified Anglo-French invasion and
destruction of Yuanmingyuan, the summer palace of the Chinese emperor
(Martinez 2014, p. 18). From 1860 onward, an unstoppable process of
Western penetration began, which lasted well into the twentieth century.
This means that the number of ports open to trade increased consider-
ably, the Chinese economic sphere was controlled by the Euro-American
empires, and the number of countries with treaties signed with China
increased, such as the one signed by Spain in 1864.
Another pressure on the Chinese regime during the second half of
the nineteenth century, until 1884, came from Russia, which expanded
throughout Central Asia as if it were a colonial empire. The Russian
conquest for Asia, which seized a significant part of Chinese territory,
was another fundamental transition in world history. The region had long
been crucial in Eurasian history: it lay on the main route of the ancient
Silk Road between Persia and China and had historically been controlled
by Persians and Chinese at different times, while others had been broken
up into independent states (Osterhammel 2015, p. 713).
From 1890 onward, Western powers would claim economic and
political privileges from the Chinese authorities, who would nominally
maintain national sovereignty, greatly weakened by military defeats (Lee
2009). In this sense, the Japanese victory in 1895 showed that Japan
was a power to be reckoned with in the new East Asian scenario, where
the European empires had very limited naval and military power and
Japan now exercised a counterpoint in China’s decisions. Historically,
the Western positions in China in that period are clearly delimited: the
Russians in Manchuria, Germany in Shantung, Great Britain in the Lower
Yangtze, and France in Yunnan, business and economic interests did not
coincide, and we find investments from different nations all over China.
On the other hand, we must consider the growing power of Japan in
northern China after 1905 and the growing commercial position of the
United States, with important business interests, after the annexation of
the Philippines in 1898, advocating the commercial opening of Chinese
ports and the maintenance of their political independence.
The turn of the century represented the international expansion of rail-
roads and maritime steam lines, and East Asia was no exception. Motor
vehicles would arrive in the region around 1910 and would not initially
compete for railroads, a means used mainly for the transport of goods. In
the 1890s, rail was the most efficient and fastest form of transportation
(Lee 2009). Concessions on railway lines, therefore, would mark colonial
economic policies in Southeast Asia, with projects approved in the Philip-
pines, the Dutch East Indies, Indochina, and Burma. In China, no major
railroad line was built until the beginning of the twentieth century, and
Western administrations struggled to obtain railroad concessions, mining
operations, and export ports.
Thus, foreign investment has grown rapidly in China. Foreign capital
financed railroads, mines, and shipping companies, and investment
banking was established in Shanghai, such as the English Hong Kong
and Shanghai Banking Corporation or the French Banque de l’Indochine,
with branches in Shanghai, Canton, and Tianjin. With the construction of
railroads, China offered significant work contracts for French companies
that gained access to them because of their experience in similar projects
in Indochina, promoted from 1898 onward by Governor General Paul
Doumer. His government gave great impulse to infrastructure, financed
on three main sources of income in Indochina: monopolies on salt and
alcohol, and the opium distribution business. Public investment was
concentrated on four major projects: the creation of an irrigation system
in the plains of Cochin; the dredging and expansion of the port of Saigon;
and two railway projects, the Yunnan line, between Kunming and the port
of Haiphong on the Gulf of Tonkin, and the Indochinoise railway line,
covering the route between Hanoi, the capital, and Saigon.
The railway experience in Indochina allowed access to concessions in

China, where French entrepreneurs conducted two important projects.
In 1899, a Franco-Belgian group won the concession for the Beijing-
Hankow railroad with a length of 1,221 km, and years later, in 1905, the
243 km Shangxi railroad project was completed in 1907.
Railroad concessions granted related privileges, such as mining rights
or leases for ports served by railroads (Lee 2009). In turn, certain political
privileges were allowed, in particular, subsidies on a minimum return on
investment or privileges such as establishing police, posts offices, and tele-
graph posts along the track (Cubeiro 2011). The right to deploy foreign
troops on railway lines consolidated the position of foreign powers in
China, generating social unrest and a growing aversion to foreignness.
Foreign influence also reached Japan at the same time and came under
similar pressures, although it was better able to control the process, given
its political stability. Until the nineteenth century, foreign contacts were
discouraged by the emperor and the daimyos and were reduced to Dutch
presence in Dejima, commercial contacts with Korea, and with China.
Russia was the first to attempt to establish relations in 1793 and 1804,
followed by the British in 1808 and 1837, all of which were rejected by
the sakoku policy (Madrid et al. 2011, p. 213) of the Tokugawa shogu-
nate. However, events in China made it clear that the policy of isolation
could not last, and the Dutch let them know in 1844, taking advantage
of their position of privilege. The Dutch themselves later informed Japan
of the intention of the United States to send an expedition to open trade
and diplomatic relations (Pointing, 2001a, p. 725).
The interest of the United States had several motives. The country
experienced great economic development and was in need of interna-
tional markets, and they thought that a similar pressure to that of Great
Britain on China could be successful. Moreover, the United States won
the states of Oregon and California from Britain and Mexico, respectively,
thus opening up to the Pacific. In addition, Americans had discovered an
area near Kamchatka that was particularly good for whaling, and they
needed nearby ports where they could stock up and acquire coal (Madrid
et al. 2011, p. 214). In the United States, Japan was considered a key
supply point midway to Chinese ports. Unlike Great Britain with the
Chinese, the Americans saw Japan as a geostrategic showcase as a direct
bridge to China on a commercial level, rather than to trade directly with
Japan’s material goods, but rather with China’s products and market
consumption in both imports and exports. China, which was poorer than
Japan as well as having a higher population density and requiring more

consumption, could also import European and American products, as well
as export better goods such as tea that interested the English and Euro-
peans, as well as other Chinese products. For these reasons, President
Fillmore attempted to establish a trade route with Japan. With that objec-
tive in 1853, Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry arrived at the port of
Uraga, carrying a letter from the president and another of his own, whose
reply was expected on his next trip. In the letter, they requested protec-
tion, permission for the arrival of ships, provisions, and establishment of
a trade agreement (Madrid et al. 2011, p. 215). Although Japan initially
resisted this last point, Perry returned with a fleet of warship-forced nego-
tiations. Finally in March 1854 they reached an agreement that opened
Shimoda and Hakodate to shipping and allowed a US consul to settle in
Edo (Pointing, 2001a, p. 725) (Fig. 1.7).
Gradually, the Japanese gave in to Western ambitions so that within
a few years, four other powers (Russia, France, Great Britain, and the
Netherlands) joined the trade agreement signed with the United States.
However, by the end of these negotiations, Japan was forced to give
an unequal agreement, similar to that with China. There were notable
Fig. 1.7 US Postage Stamp 5 cent 1953 opening of Japan centennial issue
commodore Perry (Source Wikimedia Commons. File Commodore Matthew C
Perry-5c.jpg)
differences in both cases: foreign presence was limited to commercial

ports, in line with the policy that sought to avoid foreign pollution,
the opium trade was banned, and Japanese industry took advantage of
the arrival of foreign technology. Despite this resistance, foreign influ-
ence provoked a nationalist reaction that strengthened the opponents of
the Tokugawa shogunate, which ultimately led to its downfall in the late
1860s (Pointing, 2001a, p. 726).
Regarding the differences in the actions of the two powers, the objec-
tives of Britain and the United States in the two eastern countries were
different, which ultimately dictated different courses of action. In the
British case, their main interest was to get a single product into a country
that was self-sufficient, so their strategy was to generate demand that did
not exist before that of opium. Only when this trade was threatened did
it use military superiority to impose its conditions. On the other hand,
the United States was interested in establishing trade relations to place its
manufacturers, as well as to obtain fishing grounds for its whaling fleet,
for which it did not hesitate to use the threat of its military force to
achieve its objectives. However, Great Britain was aware that it was nego-
tiating with a country with a serious internal crisis that had to face several
pockets of rebellion. Japan, also self-sufficient and closed for centuries to
outside influence, enjoyed remarkable peace and stability under the Toku-
gawa shogunate. Despite these initial differences, the methods of the two
powers were similar, using their enormous military superiority to impose
unequal treaties.
The Rise of Port Cities in the Nineteenth Century

In the mid-nineteenth century, the acceleration of the economy in the
phase known as imperialism, together with advances in communica-
tions, caused trade between the metropolis and the colonies to multiply,
bringing raw materials or food products from the colonies on a large scale,
as in the case of tea. This has led to a significant increase in maritime
traffic and, consequently, to an increase in the importance of ports as
nodes of this trade, often accompanied by the development of railroads.
The principles of port specialization have appeared. The city is already
another reality beyond the ports; another reality that will not discover
its need for reconciliation and approximation with its port, or vice versa.
The intimate coexistence of the primitive port and city is explained by
spatial association and maximum functional interdependence. This evolu-

tion will lead to the segregation of port space from urban space. The
effects of the Industrial Revolution were transcendental, both on ports
and in their cities. Industrialization promoted not only the movements of
the colonization processes but also all commercial communication flows
between the different cargo ports. The application of steam energy, not
only to mechanical processes but also to means of transport, will lead to
the emergence of the railroad, which, with its new tracks and stations, will
transform vessels from sailing ships to steamers, none to vessels with more
powerful capacity and larger length, beam, and draft, which will impose
significant adaptations on port spaces (Grindlay Moreno2008, p. 55).
Thus, international trade in goods favored the development of port
cities, both in the colonies and in Western metropolises, with the most
prominent examples being Shanghai, Hong Kong, London, Antwerp,
and Marseilles. This is not a new phenomenon in the nineteenth century,
but a quantitative and qualitative leap. If these commercial ports concen-
trated on all activities and were often governed by monopolistic entities
such as the East India Company, the rise of shipping and new materials
caused ports to be divided into three main functions (Osterhammel 2015,
p. 402).
Some of these ports specialize in passenger transport and are located
close to urban centers. Others have focused on mercantile traffic, which
in Europe was located further away from urban centers and was aided
by the railroad for freight transport. Finally, others specialize in warships,
becoming naval bases sometimes equipped with shipyards that concen-
trate naval military power (Osterhammel 2015, p. 402). Shipyards were
often financed by states who were aware of the importance of having a
modern fleet.
The growth of these ports generated the need for larger land areas for
handling and storage of goods, an increase in the length and depth of
the docks, and greater extension and depth of the docks. All of this led
to major expansion processes that forced an initial separation of the port
from the city, which lost, through progressive functional specialization,
the traditional urban character it had until then, acquiring the general
configuration with which it was viewed throughout the twentieth century.
However, there were also extraordinary urban opportunities, sometimes
linked to the demolition of walls, due to the creation of wide open spaces
of great scenic quality. On some occasions, the new lands generated by the
port expansions were parceled and sold, producing outstanding residential
neighborhoods by the sea and following the exemplary urban experience

of the expansion of the city in their layout (Grindlay Moreno2008, p. 55).
This indicates that the port was built in an administrative enclave
different from the municipal enclave at the heart of the city, which,
in addition to other issues, gave rise to later differences and conflicts
between the two. There is a distinction between a socialized public
domain and a purely functional public domain. Thus, the design of the
socialized part will correspond to urban planning, while the functional
part or “technocratized public space” will be the exclusive competence of
civil engineering. During the twentieth century, the isolation of the port
from the city intensified and culminated (Grindlay Moreno2008, p. 56).
In the nineteenth century, we will see how urban spaces were redesigned,
and in many maritime localities, the outer walls were removed to aerate
the streets of the city and open them to the sea, as we see in the cases of
London, Marseilles, Genoa, and Barcelona (Fig. 1.8).
This redistribution of space was also exported to colonial cities and
ports. In Asia, both China and Japan followed this path, but also in
the cities studied in this book, such as Batavia, Rangoon, Manila, and
Fig. 1.8 Old walls of Barcelona, on the sea, demolished by 1878 (Source
Wikimedia Commons. File Muralladelmar-ant1878.jpg)
Haiphong. A paradigmatic case can be found in the city of Bombay,

thanks to the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, and since 1875, this
city and its ports have been modernized to the standards of the best
European ports. The same can be seen in Tokyo, which became the
most outstanding urban construction project at the end of the nine-
teenth century thanks to the great magnitude of the reforms. In China,
it is considered that in 1888, the first modern docks were inaugu-
rated in Hong Kong, the year in which the country’s port modernity
began. However, the reform progressed very slowly along the Chinese
coast because the excess labor per economic extreme posed a brake on
mechanization (Osterhammel 2015, pp. 403–404).
The new ports formed a special world of massive freight, heavy manual
labor, and new mechanization processes. Some of the most common tasks
in port activities have become mechanized, thereby reducing handling
costs. Increased activity and the need to compete with other commer-
cial nodes boosted engineering advances in Europe and colonial cities
aimed at loading, unloading, and transporting goods, although in China,
these advances were slower because the abundance of cheap labor did
not make them as necessary (Osterhammel 2015, p. 403). However,
throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, all major
ports modernized, and those that did not modernize lost importance.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, in Europe, the large,
modern ports were in London, Marseilles, and Antwerp, and in Asia in
Bombay, thanks to the opening of the Suez Canal; in Osaka, thanks to
strong government support; and in China in Hong Kong and Shanghai,
which monopolized international Chinese overseas trade (Osterhammel
2015, p. 404). All these ports created their own administrations, although
in China or Japan in part, they were outside the control of the state
where they were located as they were ceded to foreign governors or
oligarchies under treaty ports or unequal treaties (Osterhammel 2015,
p. 419) (Fig. 1.9).
There have also been improvements in navigation technologies. Of
particular note is the replacement of wooden ships with iron ships.
Another aspect was the transition from sailing ships to fuel-powered
ships. This was another major trend in technological advances that began
around the 1870s and was globally noticeable by the 1890s. These
changes improved the transport capacity, lower freight and fare prices,
greater sailing speed, greater independence from good or bad weather,
and the possibility of maintaining lines with regular schedules. The speed
Fig. 1.9 The Harbour, Bombay by Francis Frith, Between 1850s to 1870s
(Source Wikimedia Commons. File The Harbour, Bombay by Francis Frith.jpg)
was not only noticeable in the length of the voyage, but the steamers
made shorter stopovers than the sailing ships.
However, this change in technology created new needs, such as the
supply of coal, which in turn justified the dominance of these powers
in areas producing precious coal, as well as the need for ports where to
refuel. This also clearly increased the pace of life and work in the ports.
Another consequence of the success of steamships was the overcoming, in
part, of the barriers between maritime traffic and the great navigable rivers
(Osterhammel 2015, pp. 404–405). One example is the case of Rangoon,
studied in this book in the chapter on Burma, where steamers could access
the Irrawaddy Delta to the port of Burmese city located on the outskirts
of the city. Another clear case is that of the Chinese city of Hankou (now
Wuhan). Between 1863 and 1901, ocean steamers of all sizes sailed up
to Hankou, a great inland city located in the center of China, when the
waters of the Yangtze River were high. It was only after the turn of the
century, thanks to a thorough reform, that Shanghai’s port facilities were
able to monopolize the final destination of ocean voyages (Figs. 1.10 and
1.11).
The construction of the railroad had a great influence on the opera-
tion of these port cities, connecting them with the mines and agricultural
plantations of the interior, as we see in this book in the different chap-
ters, creating a winning combination between interior production and
maritime exportation. There is no dispute that ports that are poorly
communicated or not connected to railroads have no future. In the
modern world, great port cities are enclaves of meeting and interaction
of transport by sea or land.
From a social history perspective, the most important aspect of a port
city, especially in the case of industrializing ports, is the diversity and
mobility of its labor markets. There were good reasons to define port
cities not only by their geographical location but also by the peculiari-
ties of their employment structure. The main difference between a port
and inland city is the extraordinary importance of short-term employ-
ment. Day laborers were in demand from one day to the next, and there
Fig. 1.10 View of the Bund, Shanghai, 1869 (Source Wikimedia Commons.
File View of the Bund, Shanghai [John Thompson].jpg)
Fig. 1.11 Port workers at Tel Aviv, 1938 (Source Wikimedia Commons. File
Port workers loading crates of oranges at the Tel Aviv port.jpg)
were a large number of men looking for work. The ports demanded a
large amount of exclusively male labor, even though it was seasonal work,
poorly paid, and in exploitative conditions, to which there was a lack of
welfare networks and a general climate of crime and danger in the ghettos
that were created around the port areas. However, the mechanization
of transport work led to a decrease in demand for labor. It was not a
novelty that, in the nineteenth century, ports had a mainly unstable and
fluctuating population (Osterhammel 2015, p. 406).
In China’s port cities, immigrants from inland provinces tended to
meet again in the same business sector, live near each other, and develop
their own social environments, trade organizations, and recruitment
networks. In Shanghai, there was a mosaic of communities of different
styles, with solidarity of common origin. However, the formation of place-
based groups is not unique to the Asian cities. The transcontinental
network of port cities always tended to favor ethnically differentiated
structures, as we see in the example of the city of Trieste or in the port
of New York (Osterhammel 2015, p. 407).
This also created problems, as security forces of all kinds tended to

view ports as hotbeds of unrest and criminality. On many occasions, dock
workers had been on the frontlines of battles or revolts against colo-
nialism, the new bourgeoisie, or foreign interests. However, the ports
were more open than inland cities, not only to foreigners but also to
foreign ideas.
Another characteristic of ports in the middle of the nineteenth century
is that they were often dominated by small oligarchies of merchants,
bankers, and shipping companies, which created chambers of commerce
as organs of defense of their own interests and guarantee of social exclu-
sivity. This was true in Rotterdam and Bremen, as it was in Shanghai
and Izmir (Osterhammel 2015, p. 409). These oligarchies controlled the
administration of the ports economically, as well as the police, and even
legally, creating their own legal corpus and courts. Despite this, in general,
the policy was one of the lax controls that favored trade while avoiding
serious class conflicts. The landowners had less political influence in port
cities, although they maintained their power in large inland cities.
Thus, the ports that were created at the end of the nineteenth century
became hubs of passenger and merchandise traffic, at the hands of impe-
rialism and making possible a quantitative leap in international trade. To
do so, the ports created an administration, a series of technical innova-
tions, and employed their own labor force, but this was a phenomenon
that took place independently of urban development, nor was it reversed
by it. In the case of Asia, it is even more remarkable because the main
ports were in the hands of a foreign administration that lived with its
eyes turned toward the sea and not toward the interior. Therefore, the
economic and political influence of port cities is undoubted, but at the
urban level, their influence beyond the attraction of international trade
and the creation of labor, and their influence on the economy of the inte-
rior of the colonies, apart from the transport of the products of the export
plantations, is much more debatable.
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CHAPTER 2
Four Colonies and the Race for the Chinese

Market
A Favorable Environment
During the last decades of the nineteenth century until the 1930s,
economic growth in Southeast Asia (we understand Southeast Asia at the
end of the nineteenth century: Burma, British colony, Thailand or inde-
pendent Siam, Malaysia British colony, Indonesia or Dutch East Indies,
Dutch colonies, Indochina, French colonies and the Philippines, Spanish
colonies until the end of the century, and from 1898 onwards, American
colonies until independence) was a common fact among the economies of
the region, despite finding differences in the growth patterns of different
countries. Particularly relevant are the studies of Maddison, who analyze
Indochina and the Dutch East Indies (Maddison 1990, p. 364). In
the case of the Philippines, the most relevant growth model studies are
provided by Hooley, with an attempt to explain the growth of the Philip-
pines (Hooley 2005, pp. 464–488) and Booth, who emphasizes the
analysis of the impact of the provision of new land for the plantation
economy in the Philippine archipelago (Booth 2007, pp. 241–266). It
should also be noted that these models often work with partially estimated
data for dates for which there are no historical references, particularly
when data from more remote areas must be covered. In the case of the
Philippines, we have worked with data from engineering and execution
projects for the Spanish period, and census data for the North American
period.
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 33

Switzerland AG 2023
D. Cubeiro Rodríguez, The Pearl of the East, Palgrave Studies
in Economic History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21674-9_2
The main factors in determining growth in the area were, at the

external level, access to markets and the increase in international trade
and, at the internal level, access to arable land and the availability of a
surplus of labor that maintained and pushed average wages downward.
While it is true that natural resources and arable land were a source of
wealth in the period between 1870 and 1929 in the area, with signif-
icant growth in production, dependence on the external sector marked
the pace of production, especially in plantation economies, and not so
much the availability of arable land. The same can be said of the available
labor force. Exports transferred higher average and uniform wages to the
rural population, which subsisted mainly in systems of self-consumption
economies and initial handicraft industry.
Access to an abundant source of natural resources is a common pattern
that focuses Southeast Asian countries on economic growth, based on the
sale of these raw materials in international markets. This led to a scenario
of low industrial investment and relatively low development of local finan-
cial institutions, which did not grow stimulated by a nascent industry, as
in the classic cases of industrialization in Europe.
European mercantile and financial institutions assumed these financing
needs in most cases, and in the cases of the Philippines and Thailand,
a large part of the investment capital came mainly from the United
Kingdom. This commercial structure, centered on the exploitation of
natural resources, will require, for the most part, little capital to make the
investments, even in the initial stages (development theories state that in
the early stages, regions need external capital to make the initial produc-
tive investments and establish production, often large sums to finance
infrastructure) and will soon be a net capital generator, via the profits
of the companies. One of the reasons for this initial low dependence on
foreign capital for investment is the existence of a network of small indige-
nous farms throughout Southeast Asia, which allowed the system to be
capitalized and quickly enter the international market, allowing business
profits to be reinvested in improvements in local production, leading to
mechanization and growth in production.
Access to international markets was possible due to the flexibility
of most governments of Southeast Asian countries at the time, which
in fact promoted foreign trade and, in general, a policy of non-
intervention, leaving investment and resource exploitation in the hands
of entrepreneurs. In fact, a large portion of infrastructure investment was
financed by private capital. For example, railway lines initially installed
on the Philippine Island of Cebu were financed by British industrialists
to extract coal from mines located in the interior of the island. With
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Colonial Parties—Whig and Tory.
The parties peculiar to our Colonial times hardly have a place in

American politics. They divided people in sentiment simply, as they
did in the mother country, but here there was little or no power to
act, and were to gather results from party victories. Men were then
Whigs or Tories because they had been prior to their emigration
here, or because their parents had been, or because it has ever been
natural to show division in individual sentiment. Political contests,
however, were unknown, for none enjoyed the pleasures and profits
of power; the crown made and unmade rulers. The local self-
government which our forefathers enjoyed, were secured to them by
their charters, and these were held to be contracts not to be changed
without the consent of both parties. All of the inhabitants of the
colonies claimed and were justly entitled to the rights guaranteed by
the Magna Charta, and in addition to these they insisted upon the
supervision of all internal interests and the power to levy and collect
taxes. These claims were conceded until their growing prosperity and
England’s need of additional revenues suggested schemes of indirect
taxation. Against these the colony of Plymouth protested as early as
1636, and spasmodic protests from all the colonies followed. These
increased in frequency and force with the growing demands of King
George III. In 1651 the navigation laws imposed upon the colonies
required both exports and imports to be carried in British ships, and
all who traded were compelled to do it with England. In 1672 inter-
colonial duties were imposed, and when manufacturing sought to
flank this policy, their establishment was forbidden by law.
The passage of the Stamp Act in 1765 caused high excitement, and
for the first time parties began to take definite shape and manifest
open antagonisms, and the words Whig and Tory then had a plainer
meaning in America than in England. The Stamp Act was denounced
by the Whigs as direct taxation, since it provided, that stamps
previously paid for should be affixed to all legal papers. The colonies
resented, and so general were the protests that for a time it seemed
that only those who owed their livings to the Crown, or expected aid
and comfort from it, remained with the Tories. The Whigs were the
patriots. The war for the rights of the colonies began in 1775, and it
was supported by majorities in all of the Colonial Assemblies. These
majorities were as carefully organized then as now to promote a
popular cause, and this in the face of adverse action on the part of
the several Colonial Governors. Thus in Virginia, Lord Dunmore had
from time to time, until 1773, prorogued the Virginia Assembly,
when it seized the opportunity to pass resolves instituting a
committee of correspondence, and recommending joint action by the
legislatures of the other colonies. In the next year, the same body,
under the lead of Henry, Randolph, Lee, Washington, Wythe and
other patriots, officially deprecated the closing of the port of Boston,
and set apart a day to implore Divine interposition in behalf of the
colonies. The Governor dissolved the House for this act, and the
delegates, 89 in number, repaired to a tavern, organized themselves
into a committee, signed articles of association, and advised with
other colonial committees the expediency of “appointing deputies to
meet in a general correspondence”—really a suggestion for a
Congress. The idea of a Congress, however, originated with Doctor
Franklin the year before, and it had then been approved by town
meetings in Providence, Boston and New York. The action of Virginia
lifted the proposal above individual advice and the action of town
meetings, and called to it the attention of all the colonial legislatures.
It was indeed fortunate in the incipiency of these political
movements, that the people were practically unanimous. Only the
far-seeing realized the drift and danger, while nearly all could join
their voices against oppressive taxes and imposts.
The war went on for colonial rights, the Whigs wisely insisting that
they were willing to remain as colonists if their rights should be
guaranteed by the mother country; the Tories, chiefly fed by the
Crown, were willing to remain without guarantee—a negative
position, and one which in the high excitement of the times excited
little attention, save where the holders of such views made
themselves odious by the enjoyment of high official position, or by
harsh criticism upon, or treatment of the patriots.
The first Continental Congress assembled in Philadelphia in
September, 1774, and there laid the foundations of the Republic.
While its assemblage was first recommended by home meetings, the
cause, as already shown, was taken up by the assemblies of
Massachusetts and Virginia. Georgia alone was not represented. The
members were called delegates, who declared in their official papers
that they were “appointed by the good people of these colonies.” It
was called the “revolutionary government,” because it derived its
power from the people, and not from the functionaries of any
existing government. In it each colony was allowed but a single vote,
regardless of the number of delegates, and here began not only the
unit rule, but the practice which obtains in the election of a President
when the contest reaches, under the constitution and law, the
National House of Representatives. The original object was to give
equality to the colonies as colonies.
In 1776, the second Continental Congress assembled at
Philadelphia, all the colonies being again represented save Georgia.
The delegates were chosen principally by conventions of the people,
though some were sent by the popular branches of the colonial
legislatures. In July, and soon after the commencement of hostilities,
Georgia entered the Confederacy.
The Declaration of Independence, passed in 1776, drew yet plainer
lines between the Whigs and Tories. A gulf of hatred separated the
opposing parties, and the Tory was far more despised than the open
foe, when he was not such, and was the first sought when he was.
Men who contend for liberty ever regard those who are not for them
as against them—a feeling which led to the expression of a political
maxim of apparent undying force, for it has since found frequent
repetition in every earnest campaign. After the adoption of the
Declaration by the Continental Congress, the Whigs favored the most
direct and absolute separation, while the Tories supported the
Crown. On the 7th of June, 1776, Richard Henry Lee, of Virginia,
moved the Declaration in these words:
“Resolved, That these united colonies are, and of right ought to be,
free and independent states; that they are absolved from all
allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection
between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be,
totally dissolved.”
Then followed preparations for the formal declaration, which was
adopted on the 4th of July, 1776, in the precise language submitted
by Thomas Jefferson. All of the state papers of the Continental
Congress evince the highest talent, and the evils which led to its
exhibition must have been long but very impatiently endured to
impel the study of the questions involved. Possibly only the best lives
in our memory invite our perusal, but certain it is that higher
capacity was never called to the performance of graver political
duties in the history of the world.
It has been said that the Declaration is in imitation of that
published by the United Netherlands, but whether this be true or
false, the liberty-loving world has for more than a century accepted it
as the best protest against oppression known to political history. A
great occasion conspired with a great author to make it grandly
great.
Dr. Franklin, as early as July, 1775, first prepared a sketch of
articles of confederation between the colonies, to continue until their
reconciliation with Great Britain, and in failure thereof to be
perpetual. John Quincy Adams says this plan was never discussed in
Congress. June 11, 1776, a committee was appointed to prepare the
force of a colonial confederation, and the day following one member
from each colony was appointed to perform the duty. The report was
submitted, laid aside August 20, 1776, taken up April 7, 1777, and
debated from time to time until November 15th, of the same year,
when the report was agreed to. It was then submitted to the
legislatures of the several states, these being advised to authorize
their delegates in Congress to ratify the same. On the 26th of June,
1778, the ratification was ordered to be engrossed and signed by the
delegates. Those of New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode
Island, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and South
Carolina signed July 9th, 1778; those of North Carolina July 21st;
Georgia July 24th; Jersey November 26th, same year; Delaware
February 22d and May 5th, 1779. Maryland refused to ratify until the
question of the conflicting claims of the Union and of the separate
States to the property of the crown-lands should be adjusted. This
was accomplished by the cession of the lands in dispute to the United
States, and Maryland signed March 1st, 1781. On the 2d of March,
Congress assembled under the new powers, and continued to act for
the Confederacy until the 4th of March, 1789, the date of the
organization of the government under the Federal constitution. Our
political life has therefore three periods, “the revolutionary
government,” “the confederation,” and that of the “federal
constitution,” which still obtains.
The federal constitution is the result of the labors of a convention
called at Philadelphia in May, 1787, at a time when it was feared by
many that the Union was in the greatest danger, from inability to pay
soldiers who had, in 1783, been disbanded on a declaration of peace
and an acknowledgment of independence; from prostration of the
public credit and faith of the nation; from the neglect to provide for
the payment of even the interest on the public debt; and from the
disappointed hopes of many who thought freedom did not need to
face responsibilities. A large portion of the convention of 1787 still
clung to the confederacy of the states, and advocated as a substitute
for the constitution a revival of the old articles of confederation with
additional powers to Congress. A long discussion followed, and a
most able one, but a constitution for the people, embodying a
division of legislative, judicial and executive powers prevailed, and
the result is now daily witnessed in the federal constitution. While
the revolutionary war lasted but seven years, the political revolution
incident to, identified with and directing it, lasted thirteen years.
This was completed on the 30th of April, 1789, the day on which
Washington was inaugurated as the first President under the federal
constitution.
The Particularists.
As questions of government were evolved by the struggles for

independence, the Whigs, who of course greatly outnumbered all
others during the Revolution, naturally divided in sentiment, though
their divisions were not sufficiently serious to excite the
establishment of rival parties—something which the great majority of
our forefathers were too wise to think of in time of war. When the
war closed, however, and the question of establishing the Union was
brought clear to the view of all, one class of the Whigs believed that
state government should be supreme, and that no central power
should have sufficient authority to coerce a state, or keep it to the
compact against its will. All accepted the idea of a central
government; all realized the necessity of union, but the fear that the
states would lose their power, or surrender their independence was
very great, and this fear was more naturally shown by both the larger
and the smaller states. This class of thinkers were then called
Particularists. Their views were opposed by the
Strong Government Whigs
who argued that local self-government was inadequate to the

establishment and perpetuation of political freedom, and that it
afforded little or no power to successfully resist foreign invasion.
Some of these went so far as to favor a government patterned after
that of England, save that it should be republican in name and spirit.
The essential differences, if they can be reduced to two sentences,
were these: The Particularist Whigs desired a government republican
in form and democratic in spirit, with rights of local self-government
and state rights ever uppermost. The Strong Government Whigs
desired a government republican in form, with checks upon the
impulses or passions of the people; liberty, sternly regulated by law,
and that law strengthened and confirmed by central authority—the
authority of the national government to be final in appeals.
As we have stated, the weakness of the confederation was
acknowledged by many men, and the majority, as it proved to be
after much agitation and discussion thought it too imperfect to
amend. The power of the confederacy was not acknowledged by the
states, its congress not respected by the people. Its requisitions were
disregarded, foreign trade could not be successfully regulated;
foreign nations refused to bind themselves by commercial treaties,
and there was a rapid growth of very dangerous business rivalries
and jealousies between the several states. Those which were
fortunate enough, independent of congress, to possess or secure
ports for domestic or foreign commerce, taxed the imports of their
sister states. There was confusion which must soon have approached
violence, for no authority beyond the limits of the state was
respected, and Congress was notably powerless in its attempts to
command aid from the states to meet the payment of the war debt, or
the interest thereon. Instead of general respect for, there was almost
general disregard of law on the part of legislative bodies, and the
people were not slow in imitating their representatives. Civil strife
became imminent, and Shay’s Rebellion in Massachusetts was the
first warlike manifestation of the spirit which was abroad in the land.
Alive to the new dangers, the Assembly of Virginia in 1786,
appointed commissioners to invite all the states to take part in a
convention for the consideration of questions of commerce, and the
propriety of altering the Articles of Confederation. This convention
met at Annapolis, Sept. 11th, 1786. But five states sent
representatives, the others regarding the movement with jealousy.
This convention, however, adapted a report which urged the
appointment of commissioners by all the states, “to devise such other
provisions as shall, to them seem necessary to render the condition
of the Federal government adequate to the exigencies of the Union;
and to report such an act for that purpose to the United States in
Congress assembled, as, when agreed to by them and afterwards
confirmed by the legislatures of every state, will effectually provide
for the same.” Congress approved this action, and passed resolutions
favoring a meeting in convention for the “sole and express purpose of
revising the Articles of Confederation, and report to Congress and
the State legislatures.” The convention met in Philadelphia in May,
1787, and continued its sessions until September 17th, of the same
year. The Strong Government Whigs had previously made every
possible effort for a full and able representation, and the result did
not disappoint them, for instead of simply revising the Articles of
Confederation, the convention framed a constitution, and sent it to
Congress to be submitted to that body and through it to the several
legislatures. The act submitting it provided that, if it should be
ratified by nine of the thirteen states, it should be binding upon those
ratifying the same. Just here was started the custom which has since
passed into law, that amendments to the national constitution shall
be submitted after approval by Congress, to the legislatures of the
several states, and after approval by three-fourths thereof, it shall be
binding upon all—a very proper exercise of constitutional authority,
as it seems now, but which would not have won popular approval
when Virginia proposed the Annapolis convention in 1786. Indeed,
the reader of our political history must ever be impressed with the
fact that changes and reforms ever moved slowly, and that those of
slowest growth seem to abide the longest.
The Federal and Anti-Federal Parties.
The Strong Government Whigs, on the submission of the

constitution of 1787 to Congress and the legislatures, and indirectly
through the latter to the people, who elect the members on this issue,
became the Federal party, and all of its power was used to promote
the ratification of the instrument. Its ablest men, headed by
Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, advocated adoption before
the people, and their pens supplied much of the current political
literature of that day. Eighty-five essays, still noted and quoted for
their ability, under the nom de plume of “Publius,” were published in
“The Federalist.” They were written by Hamilton, Madison and Jay,
and with irresistible force advocated the Federal constitution, which
was ratified by the nine needed states, and Congress was officially
informed of the fact July 2d, 1788, and the first Wednesday in
March, 1789, was fixed as the time “for commencing proceedings
under the constitution.”
This struggle for the first time gave the Federalists an admitted
majority. The complexion of the State legislature prior to it showed
them in fact to be in a minority, and the Particularist Whigs, or Anti-
Federals opposed every preliminary step looking to the
abandonment of the Articles of Confederation and the adoption of a
Federal constitution. They were called Anti-Federals because they
opposed a federal government and constitution and adhered to the
rights of the States and those of local self-government. Doubtless
party rancor, then as now, led men to oppose a system of
government which it seems they must have approved after fighting
for it, but the earlier jealousies of the States and the prevailing ideas
of liberty certainly gave the Anti-Federals a popularity which only a
test so sensible as that proposed could have shaken. They were not
without popular orators and leaders. Patrick Henry, the earliest of
the patriots, and “the-old-man-eloquent,” Samuel Adams, took
special pride in espousing their cause. The war questions between
Whig and Tory must have passed quickly away, as living issues,
though the newspapers and contemporaneous history show that the
old taunts and battle cries were applied to the new situation with a
plainness and virulence that must still be envied by the sensational
and more bitterly partisan journals of our own day. To read these
now, and some of our facts are gathered from such sources, is to
account for the frequent use of the saying touching “the ingratitude
of republics,” for when partisan hatred could deride the still recent
utterances of Henry before the startled assembly of Virginians, and
of Adams in advocating the adoption of the Declaration, there must
at least to every surface view have been rank ingratitude. Their good
names, however, survived the struggle, as good names in our
republic have ever survived the passions of the law. In politics the
Americans then as now, hated with promptness and forgave with
generosity.
The Anti-Federals denied nearly all that the Federals asserted. The
latter had for the first time assumed the aggressive, and had the
advantage of position. They showed the deplorable condition of the
country, and their opponents had to bear the burdens of denial at a
time when nearly all public and private obligations were dishonored;
when labor was poorly paid, workmen getting but twenty-five cents a
day, with little to do at that; when even the rich in lands were poor in
purse, and when commerce on the seas was checked by the coldness
of foreign nations and restricted by the action of the States
themselves; when manufactures were without protection of any kind,
and when the people thought their struggle for freedom was about to
end in national poverty. Still Henry, and Adams and Hancock, with
hosts of others, claimed that the aspirations of the Anti-Federals
were the freest, that they pointed to personal liberty and local
sovereignty. Yet many Anti-Federals must have accepted the views of
the Federals, who under the circumstances must have presented the
better reason, and the result was as stated, the ratification of the
Federal constitution of 1787 by three-fourths of the States of the
Union. After this the Anti-Federalists were given a new name, that of
“Close Constructionists,” because they naturally desired to interpret
the new instrument in such a way as to bend it to their views. The
Federalists became “Broad Constructionists,” because they
interpreted the constitution in a way calculated to broaden the power
of the national government.
The Confederacy once dissolved, the Federal party entered upon
the enjoyment of full political power, but it was not without its
responsibilities. The government had to be organized upon the basis
of the new constitution, as upon the success of that organization
would depend not alone the stability of the government and the
happiness of its people, but the reputation of the party and the fame
of its leaders as statesmen.
Fortunately for all, party hostilities were not manifested in the
Presidential election. All bowed to the popularity of Washington, and
he was unanimously nominated by the congressional caucus and
appointed by the electoral college. He selected his cabinet from the
leading minds of both parties, and while himself a recognized
Federalist, all felt that he was acting for the good of all, and in the
earlier years of his administration, none disputed this fact.
As the new measures of the government advanced, however, the
anti-federalists organized an opposition to the party in power.
Immediate danger had passed. The constitution worked well. The
laws of Congress were respected; its calls for revenue honored, and
Washington devoted much of his first and second messages to
showing the growing prosperity of the country, and the respect which
it was beginning to excite abroad. But where there is political power,
there is opposition in a free land, and the great leaders of that day
neither forfeited their reputations as patriots, or their characters as
statesmen by the assertion of honest differences of opinion.
Washington, Adams, and Hamilton were the recognized leaders of
the Federalists, the firm friends of the constitution. The success of
this instrument modified the views of the anti-Federalists, and
Madison of Virginia, its recognized friend when it was in
preparation, joined with others who had been its friends—notably,[1]
Doctor Williamson, of North Carolina, and Mr. Langdon, of Georgia,
in opposing the administration, and soon became recognized leaders
of the anti-Federalists. Langdon was the President pro tem. of the
Senate. Jefferson was then on a mission to France, and not until
some years thereafter did he array himself with those opposed to
centralized power in the nation. He returned in November, 1789, and
was called to Washington’s cabinet as Secretary of State in March,
1790. It was a great cabinet, with Jefferson as its premier (if this
term is suited to a time when English political nomenclature was
anything but popular in the land;) Hamilton, Secretary of the
Treasury; Knox, Secretary of War, and Edmund Randolph, Attorney-
General. There was no Secretary of the Navy until the administration
of the elder Adams, and no Secretary of the Interior.
The first session of Congress under the Federal constitution, held
in New York, sat for nearly six months, the adjournment taking place
September 29th, 1789. Nearly all the laws framed pointed to the
organization of the government, and the discussions were able and
protracted. Indeed, these discussions developed opposing views,
which could easily find separation on much the same old lines as
those which separated the founders of constitutional government
from those who favored the old confederate methods. The
Federalists, on pivotal questions, at this session, carried their
measures only by small majorities.
Much of the second session was devoted to the discussion of the
able reports of Hamilton, and their final adoption did much to build
up the credit of the nation and to promote its industries. He was the
author of the protective system, and at the first session gave definite
shape to his theories. He recommended the funding of the war debt,
the assumption of the state war debts by the national government,
the providing of a system of revenue from the collection of duties on
imports, and an internal excise. His advocacy of a protective tariff
was plain, for he declared it to be necessary for the support of the
government and the encouragement of manufactures that duties be
laid on goods, wares, and merchandise imported.
The third session of the same Congress was held at Philadelphia,
though the seat of the national government had, at the previous one,
been fixed on the Potomac instead of the Susquehanna—this after a
compromise with Southern members, who refused to vote for the
Assumption Bill until the location of the capital in the District of
Columbia had been agreed upon; by the way, this was the first
exhibition of log-rolling in Congress. To complete Hamilton’s
financial system, a national bank was incorporated. On this project
both the members of Congress and of the cabinet were divided, but it
passed, and was promptly approved by Washington. By this time it
was well known that Jefferson and Hamilton held opposing views on
many questions of government, and these found their way into and
influenced the action of Congress, and passed naturally from thence
to the people, who were thus early believed to be almost equally
divided on the more essential political issues. Before the close of the
session, Vermont and Kentucky were admitted to the Union.
Vermont was the first state admitted in addition to the original
thirteen. True, North Carolina and Rhode Island had rejected the
constitution, but they reconsidered their action and came in—the
former in November, 1789, and the latter in May, 1790.
The election for members of the Second Congress resulted in a
majority in both branches favorable to the administration. It met at
Philadelphia in October, 1791. The exciting measure of the session
was the excise act, somewhat similar to that of the previous year, but
the opposition wanted an issue on which to rally, they accepted this,
and this agitation led to violent and in one instance warlike
opposition on the part of a portion of the people. Those of western
Pennsylvania, largely interested in distilleries, prepared for armed
resistance to the excise, but at the same session a national militia law
had been passed, and Washington took advantage of this to suppress
the “Whisky Rebellion” in its incipiency. It was a hasty, rash
undertaking, yet was dealt with so firmly that the action of the
authorities strengthened the law, and the respect for order. The four
counties which rebelled did no further damage than to tar and
feather a government tax collector and rob him of his horse, though
many threats were made and the agitation continued until 1794,
when Washington’s threatened appearance at the head of fifteen
thousand militia settled the whole question.
The first session of the Second Congress also passed the first
methodic apportionment bill, which based the congressional
representation on the census taken in 1790, the basis being 33,000
inhabitants for each representative. The second session which sat
from November, 1792, to March, 1793, was mainly occupied in a
discussion of the foreign and domestic relations of the country. No
important measures were adopted.
The Republican and Federal Parties.
The most serious objection to the constitution before its

ratification was the absence of a distinct bill of rights, which should
recognize “the equality of all men, and their rights to life, liberty and
the pursuit of happiness,” and at the first session of Congress a bill
was framed containing twelve articles, ten of which were afterwards
ratified as amendments to the constitution. Yet state sovereignty,
then imperfectly defined, was the prevailing idea in the minds of the
Anti-Federalists, and they took every opportunity to oppose any
extended delegation of authority from the states of the Union. They
contended that the power of the state should be supreme, and
charged the Federalists with monarchical tendencies. They opposed
Hamilton’s national bank scheme, and Jefferson and Randolph
plainly expressed the opinion that it was unconstitutional—that a
bank was not authorized by the constitution, and that it would
prevent the states from maintaining banks. But when the Bill of
Rights had been incorporated in and attached to the constitution as
amendments, Jefferson with rare political sagacity withdrew all
opposition to the instrument itself, and the Anti-Federalists gladly
followed his lead, for they felt that they had labored under many
partisan disadvantages. The constitution was from the first too
strong for successful resistance, and when opposition was
confessedly abandoned the party name was changed, also at the
suggestion of Jefferson, to that of Republican. The Anti-Federalists
were at first disposed to call their party the Democratic-Republicans,
but finally called, it simply Republican, to avoid the opposite of the
extreme which they charged against the Federalists. Each party had
its taunts in use, the Federalists being denounced as monarchists,
the Anti-Federalists as Democrats; the one presumed to be looking
forward to monarchy, the other to the rule of the mob.
By 1793 partisan lines under the names of Federalists and
Republicans, were plainly drawn, and the schism in the cabinet was
more marked than ever. Personal ambition may have had much to do
with it, for Washington had previously shown his desire to retire to
private life. While he remained at the head of affairs he was unwilling
to part with Jefferson and Hamilton, and did all in his power to bring
about a reconciliation, but without success. Before the close of the
first constitutional Presidency, however, Washington had become
convinced that the people desired him to accept a re-election, and he
was accordingly a candidate and unanimously chosen. John Adams
was re-elected Vice-President, receiving 77 votes to 50 for Geo.
Clinton, (5 scattering) the Republican candidate. Soon after the
inauguration Citizen Genet, an envoy from the French republic,
arrived and sought to excite the sympathy of the United States and
involve it in a war with Great Britain. Jefferson and his Republican
party warmly sympathized with France, and insisted that gratitude
for revolutionary favors commanded aid to France in her struggles.
The Federalists, under Washington and Hamilton, favored non-
intervention, and insisted that we should maintain friendly relations
with Great Britain. Washington showed his usual firmness, and
before the expiration of the month in which Genet arrived, had
issued his celebrated proclamation of neutrality. This has ever since
been the accepted foreign policy of the nation.
Genet, chagrined at the issuance of this proclamation, threatened
to appeal to the people, and made himself so obnoxious to
Washington that the latter demanded his recall. The French
government sent M. Fauchet as his successor, but Genet continued to
reside in the United States, and under his inspiration a number of
Democratic Societies, in imitation of the French Jacobin clubs, were
founded, but like all such organizations in this country, they were
short-lived. Secret political societies thrive only under despotisms. In
Republics like ours they can only live when the great parties are in
confusion and greatly divided. They disappear with the union of
sentiment into two great parties. If there were many parties and
factions, as in Mexico and some of the South American republics,
there would be even a wider field for them here than there.
The French agitation showed its impress upon the nation as late as
1794, when a resolution to cut off intercourse with Great Britain
passed the House, and was defeated in the Senate only by the casting
vote of the Vice-President. Many people favored France, and to such
silly heights did the excitement run that these insisted on wearing a
national cockade. Jefferson had left the cabinet the December
previous, and had retired to his plantation in Virginia, where he
spent his leisure in writing political essays and organizing the
Republican party, of which he was the acknowledged founder. Here
he escaped the errors of his party in Congress, but it was a potent fact
that his friends in official station not only did not endorse the non-
intervention policy of Washington, but that they actively antagonized
it in many ways. The Congressional leader in these movements was
Mr. Madison. The policy of Britain fed this opposition. The forts on
Lake Erie were still occupied by the British soldiery in defiance of the
treaty of 1783; American vessels were seized on their way to French
ports, and American citizens were impressed. To avoid a war,
Washington sent John Jay as special envoy to England. He arrived in
June, 1794, and by November succeeded in making a treaty. It was
ratified in June, 1795, by the Senate by the constitutional majority of
two-thirds, though there was much declamatory opposition, and the
feeling between the Federal and Republican parties ran higher than
ever before. The Republicans denounced while the Federals
congratulated Washington. Under this treaty the British surrendered
possession of all American ports, and as Gen’l Wayne during the
previous summer had conquered the war-tribes and completed a
treaty with them, the country was again on the road to prosperity.
In Washington’s message of 1794, he plainly censured all “self-
created political societies,” meaning the democratic societies formed
by Genet, but this part of the message the House refused to endorse,
the speaker giving the casting vote in the negative. The Senate was in
harmony with the political views of the President. Party spirit had by
this time measurably affected all classes of the people, and as
subjects for agitation here multiplied, the opposition no longer
regarded Washington with that respect and decorum which it had
been the rule to manifest. His wisdom as President, his patriotism,
and indeed his character as a man, were all hotly questioned by
political enemies. He was even charged with corruption in expending
more of the public moneys than had been appropriated—charges
which were soon shown to be groundless.
At the first session of Congress in December, 1795, the Senate’s
administration majority had increased, but in the House the
opposing Republicans had also increased their numbers. The Senate
by 14 to 8 endorsed the message; the House at first refused but
finally qualified its answers.
In March, 1796, a new political issue was sprung in the House by
Mr. Livingstone of New York, who offered a resolution requesting of
the President a copy of the instructions to Mr. Jay, the envoy who
made the treaty with Great Britain. After a debate of several days,
more bitter than any which had preceded it, the House passed the
resolution by 57 to 35, the Republicans voting aye, the Federals no.
Washington in answer, took the position that the House of
Representatives was not part of the treaty-making power of the
government, and could not therefore be entitled to any papers
relating to such treaties. The constitution had placed this treaty-
making and ratifying power in the hands of the Senate, the Cabinet
and the President.
This answer, now universally accepted as the proper one, yet
excited the House and increased political animosities. The
Republicans charged the Federals with being the “British party,” and
in some instances hinted that they had been purchased with British
gold. Indignation meetings were called, but after much sound and
fury, it was ascertained that the people really favored abiding by the
treaty in good faith, and finally the House, after more calm and able
debates, passed the needed legislation to carry out the treaty by a
vote of 51 to 48.
In August, 1796, prior to the meeting of the Congressional caucus
which then placed candidates for the Presidency in nomination,
Washington issued his celebrated Farewell Address, in which he gave
notice that he would retire from public life at the expiration of his
term. He had been solicited to be a candidate for re-election (a third
term) and told that all the people could unite upon him—a statement
which, without abating one jot, our admiration for the man, would
doubtless have been called in question by the Republicans, who had
become implacably hostile to his political views, and who were
encouraged to believe they could win control of the Presidency, by
their rapidly increasing power in the House. Yet the address was
everywhere received with marks of admiration. Legislatures
commended it by resolution and ordered it to be engrossed upon
their records; journals praised it, and upon the strength of its plain
doctrines the Federalists took new courage, and prepared to win in
the Presidential battle which followed. Both parties were plainly
arrayed and confident, and so close was the result that the leaders of
both were elected—John Adams, the nominee of the Federalists, to
the Presidency, and Thomas Jefferson, the nominee of the
Republicans, to the Vice-Presidency. The law which then obtained
was that the candidate who received the highest number of electoral
votes, took the first place, the next highest, the second. Thomas
Pinckney of South Carolina was the Federal nominee for Vice-
President, and Aaron Burr of the Republicans. Adams received 71
electoral votes, Jefferson 68, Pinckney 59, Burr 30, scattering 48.
Pinckney had lost 12 votes, while Burr lost 38—a loss of popularity
which the latter regained four years later. The first impressions
which our forefathers had of this man were the best.
John Adams was inaugurated as President in Philadelphia, at
Congress Hall, March 4th, 1797, and in his inaugural was careful to
deny the charge that the Federal party had any sympathy for
England, but reaffirmed his endorsement of the policy of
Washington as to strict neutrality. To this extent he sought to soften
the asperities of the parties, and measurably succeeded, though the
times were still stormy. The French revolution had reached its
highest point, and our people still took sides. Adams found he would
have to arm to preserve neutrality and at the same time punish the
aggression of either of the combatants. This was our first exhibition
of “armed neutrality.” An American navy was quickly raised, and
every preparation made for defending the rights of Americans. An
alliance with France was refused, after which the American Minister
was dismissed and the French navy began to cripple our trade. In
May, 1797, President Adams felt it his duty to call an extra session of
Congress, which closed in July. The Senate approved of negotiations
for reconciliation with France. They were attempted but, proved
fruitless; in May, 1798, a full naval armament was authorized, and
soon several French vessels were captured before there was any
declaration of war. Indeed, neither power declared war, and as soon
as France discovered how earnest the Americans were she made
overtures for an adjustment of difficulties, and these resulted in the
treaty of 1800.
The Republicans, though warmly favoring a contest, did not
heartily support that inaugurated by Adams, and contended after
this that the militia and a small naval force were sufficient for
internal defense. They denounced the position of the Federals, who
favored the enlargement of the army and navy, as measures
calculated to overawe public sentiment in time of peace. The
Federals, however, through their prompt resentment of the
aggressions of France, had many adherents to their party. They
organized their power and sought to perpetuate it by the passage of
the alien and sedition, and a naturalization law.
The alien and sedition law gave the President authority “to order
all such aliens as he shall judge dangerous to the peace and safety of
the United States, or shall have reasonable grounds to suspect are
concerned in any treasonable or secret machinations against the
government thereof, to depart out of the territory of the United
States, within such time as shall be expressed in such order.” The
provisions which followed were in keeping with that quoted, the 3d
section commanding every master of a ship entering a port of the
United States, immediately on his arrival, to make report in writing
to the collector of customs, the names of all aliens on board, etc. The
act was to continue in force for two years from the date of its passage,
and it was approved June 25th, 1798.
A resolution was introduced in the Senate on the 25th of April,
1798, by Mr. Hillhouse of Connecticut, to inquire what provision of
law ought to be made, &c., as to the removal of such aliens as may be
dangerous to the peace of the country, &c. This resolution was
adopted the next day, and Messrs. Hillhouse, Livermore and Read
were appointed the committee, and subsequently reported the bill. It
passed the Senate by 16 to 7, and the House by 46 to 40, the
Republicans in the latter body resisting it warmly. The leading
opposing idea was that it lodged with the Executive too much power,
and was liable to great abuse. It has frequently since, in arguments
against centralized power, been used for illustration by political
speakers.
The Naturalization law, favored by the Federalists, because they
knew they could acquire few friends either from newly arrived
English or French aliens, among other requirements provided that
an alien must reside in the United States fourteen years before he
could vote. The Republicans denounced this law as calculated to
check immigration, and dangerous to our country in the fact that it
caused too many inhabitants to owe no allegiance. They also
asserted, as did those who opposed Americanism later on in our
history, that America was properly an asylum for all nations, and
that those coming to America should freely share all the privileges
and liberties of the government.
These laws and the political resentments which they created gave a
new and what eventually proved a dangerous current to political
thought and action. They were the immediate cause of the Kentucky
and Virginia resolutions of 1798, Jefferson being the author of the
former and Madison of the latter.
These resolutions were full of political significance, and gave tone
to sectional discussion up to the close of the war for the Union. They
first promulgated the doctrine of nullification or secession, and
political writers mistake who point to Calhoun as the father of that
doctrine. It began with the old Republicans under the leadership of
Jefferson and Madison, and though directly intended as protests
against the alien and sedition, and the naturalization laws of
Congress, they kept one eye upon the question of slavery—rather that
interest was kept in view in their declarations, and yet the authors of
both were anything but warm advocates of slavery. They were then
striving, however, to reinforce the opposition to the Federal party,
which the administration of Adams had thus far apparently
weakened, and they had in view the brief agitation which had sprung
up in 1793, five years before, on the petition to Congress of a
Pennsylvania society “to use its powers to stop the traffic in slaves.”
On the question of referring this petition to a committee there arose
a sectional debate. Men took sides not because of the party to which
they belonged, but the section, and for the first time the North and
South were arrayed against each other on a question not then treated
either as partisan or political, but which most minds then saw must
soon become both partisan and sectional. Some of the Southern
debaters, in their protests against interference, thus early threatened
civil war. With a view to better protect their rights to slave property,
they then advocated and succeeded in passing the first fugitive slave
law. This was approved February 12, 1793.

The Pearl of The East: The Economic Impact of The Colonial Railways in The Age of High Imperialism in Southeast Asia Dídac Cubeiro Rodríguez

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The Pearl of The East: The Economic Impact of The Colonial Railways in The Age of High Imperialism in Southeast Asia Dídac Cubeiro Rodríguez

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The Pearl of the East: The Economic

Impact of the Colonial Railways in the

The Pearl of the East

The Pearl of the East

ISSN 2662-6497 ISSN 2662-6500 (electronic)

Cover illustration: Getty Images - Jupiterimages

1 Introduction: Ports, Telegraphs, and Railways

Fig. 1.1 Railroad at sugar mill in Cuba, 1857 (Source Courtesy

Fig. 1.10 View of the Bund, Shanghai, 1869 (Source Wikimedia

Fig. 3.8 Scene of daily life on the Hanoi–Chinese border,

Fig. 5.2 Inauguration of the Manila to Dagupan Railway (Source

Fig. 6.8 Map of the port of Tanjung Priok in 1908 (Source

Introduction: Ports, Telegraphs,

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

the Sahara, creating the Dirección General de Ultramar in 1847, which

increase of degrees to supply the engineering corps and their different

departments or directors of public gas or electricity companies. The indus-

The Advent of Steam Navigation:

a draft of one meter because the engine was semi-submerged in the

engines and improvements in ship hulls made it possible to tackle long

Motivations of the Western Powers

As imperialism progressed, disputes between the powers increased.

(Osterhammel 2015, pp. 570–619). European colonization and expan-

The Strategic Importance of Southeast

have intensified. Russia and Germany monopolized the Manchurian and

foreign products. During this period of economic growth and increased

change with human relationships. Streetcars crossed cities that widened,

The Markets of China and Japan

British were tacitly applied to all foreigners arriving in China, including

The railway experience in Indochina allowed access to concessions in

Japan as well as having a higher population density and requiring more

differences in both cases: foreign presence was limited to commercial

The Rise of Port Cities in the Nineteenth Century

spatial association and maximum functional interdependence. This evolu-

neighborhoods by the sea and following the exemplary urban experience

Haiphong. A paradigmatic case can be found in the city of Bombay,

This also created problems, as security forces of all kinds tended to

Buschmann, Rainer F. 2014. Iberian Visions of the Pacific Ocean, 1507–1899.

Four Colonies and the Race for the Chinese

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 33

The main factors in determining growth in the area were, at the

The parties peculiar to our Colonial times hardly have a place in

As questions of government were evolved by the struggles for

who argued that local self-government was inadequate to the

The Strong Government Whigs, on the submission of the

The most serious objection to the constitution before its

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