Sunday, November 22, 2009

Cooperation and Rebellion

This section in the book titled, “Cooperation and Rebellion,” has two main focuses, and those two are exactly as the title says, cooperation and rebellion. In these two focuses the two regions/countries that are involved are Europe, and India.


Cooperation

Even though the Colonial Rulers were thought as being above all other races, because they happened to be European, they were not able to do everything themselves. They needed the help of the locals, and the locals willingly helped them out. Locals had no other choice, because being allied to the Europeans was the only way out of their miserable lives. It provided them with the protection that they needed, and it gave them great wealth. As this started to increase, many Europeans saw the importance of education so private organizations, missionaries, ect., started to educate the people of their colonies. As a result, emerged a Western-educated class. People received better jobs, such as teachers, and clerks, and some even went on to being huge roles in society, such as lawyers, doctors and engineers.


Rebellion

While there was cooperation between people, there was also an opposition. The biggest opposition was the Indian Rebellion, which lasted for one year, 1857-1858. This rebellion started, because the military introduced a new type of cartridge that was smeared in cow, and pig fat. These two animals happened to be in some way religiously sacred to all of the people of India, so the Indians saw it as a way of the conquerors trying to make them Christian. Indian troops triggered this rebellion, and it quickly spread to much of India. This rebellion caused the Europeans to look down at the people with even more hate, and it completely ended the alliance that India had with Britan.



1 comment:

  1. I read this section too and i thought it was just another example of how uninformative the textbook is this chapter. It's kind of an extension of what i read last time. Basically all that it says is that sometimes it was easy to take over land and sometimes it wasn't. The only difference between this section and the section i read last time is that the section i read last time concentrated on violence while this section concentrated on diplomacy and treaties.

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