What the exam asks
- Section I, Part A (Multiple Choice): Stimulus sets (trade tables, colonial railway maps, migration indentures) ask you to identify causes or effects of imperial expansion and distinguish between immediate catalysts and underlying structural causes.
- Section II, Question 1 (DBQ): You have a recommended 60 minutes (including a 15-minute reading period) to write an essay using seven provided documents. Prompts frequently ask you to “Evaluate the extent to which imperialism affected...” or “Evaluate the causes of...”, requiring you to judge the relative significance of different historical factors.
Core ideas
Causation: Primary vs. Secondary and Short- vs. Long-Term
To earn top marks on causation prompts, you must rank causes and effects rather than simply listing them:
- Primary causes are the most important causes: the ones your argument says did the most to bring a development about (e.g., industrial economies’ demand for raw materials like rubber and copper, and for new markets for manufactured goods).
- Secondary causes are contributing causes that mattered less on their own, for example by speeding a process up or helping to justify it (e.g., the 1884–1885 Berlin Conference, missionary lobbying, or the pseudoscientific ideas of Social Darwinism).
- Do not confuse importance with timing: a long-term (underlying) cause or a short-term trigger can be either primary or secondary. Which cause is primary is a claim you must support with evidence.
- Short-term effects occur within years or a few decades (e.g., the violent suppression of the 1857 Indian Rebellion or the 1898 Battle of Omdurman).
- Long-term effects reshape structures across generations (e.g., economies dependent on a single cash crop, diaspora communities (groups living far from their ancestral homeland) across the Caribbean and Pacific, and Western-educated nationalist movements).
Relative Significance of the Effects of Imperialism (1750–1900)
| Category | Key Historical Developments | Relative Significance |
|---|---|---|
| Economic (ECN) | Much land and labor shifted from subsistence farming to export-oriented cash crops (cotton in Egypt and India, palm oil in West Africa) and to extracting raw materials (wild rubber in the Congo; guano, a fertilizer made from bird droppings, in Peru; diamonds in South Africa). | Most foundational: Economic restructuring drove political annexations, forced labor regimes, and global migration patterns. |
| Political (GOV) | Transition from company rule to direct/indirect state control (e.g., British Raj after 1857); arbitrary borders drawn in Africa; rise of anti-colonial resistance (Túpac Amaru II, Samory Touré, Yaa Asantewaa, Ghost Dance) and early nationalism (Indian National Congress, 1885). | High short-term disruption of indigenous states; long-term creation of modern nation-state boundaries and nationalist frameworks. |
| Demographic & Social (SIO/ENV) | Surge in indentured servitude (Indian and Chinese laborers to Mauritius, Trinidad, Fiji, and Malaya); settler colonialism (Australia, Algeria); creation of ethnic enclaves; strict racial hierarchies and gender imbalances in urban/mining centers. | Permanently altered the demographic makeup of the Americas, Southeast Asia, and Oceania; sparked exclusionary laws (Chinese Exclusion Act, White Australia Policy). |