Key Dates For Chapter 1

Question 1

When was the Suez Canal Opened?

Answer 1

November 17, 1869

Question 2

The beginning and end of the First Boer War?

Answer 2

From 16 December 1880 until 23 March 1881 between the United Kingdom and Boers of the Transvaal.

Question 3

Who organised the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885?

Answer 3

Otto von Bismarck, the chancellor of Germany, called on representatives of 13 nations in Europe as well as the United States to take part in the Berlin Conference in 1884 to work out a joint policy on the African continent.

Question 4

Dates of the Berlin Conference?

Answer 4

The conference was opened on November 15, 1884, and continued until it closed on 26 February 1885.

Question 5

The date of signing the Shimonoseki Treaty?

Answer 5

The 17 April 1895

Question 6

The Date of the Jameson Raid?

Answer 6

From 29 December 1895 to 2 January 1896

Question 7

The Date of Kruger Telegram?

Answer 7

The 3 January 1896

Question 8

The start and end of the Spanish American War?

Answer 8

From April 21 1898 to August 13, 1898

Question 9

The year of the Fashoda Incident?

Answer 9

In 1898

Question 10

The start and end of the Second Boer War?

Answer 10

From 1 October 1899 to 31 May 1902

Question 11

The date of the Formation of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance?

Answer 11

The 30 January 1902

Question 12

The start and end of the Russo-Japanese War?

Answer 12

From 8 February 1904 to 5 September 1905

Question 13

The Date of the start and end of Algeciras Conference?

Answer 13

From 16 January 1906 to 7 April 1906

Question 14

The date of the Start and end of WWI?

Answer 14

From 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918

Question 15

The date of the Wilson’s Fourteen Points Speech?

Answer 15

On January 8, 1918

Question 16

The USA’s entry in WWI?

Answer 16

On April 6, 1917

Question 17

When did McKinley send an ultimatum to Spain, about Cuba?

Answer 17

McKinley sent an ultimatum to Spain on March 27. Let Spain, he wrote, abandon reconcentration in fact as well as in name, declare an armistice, and accept U.S. mediation in peace negotiations with the insurgents. In a separate note, however, he made it clear that nothing less than independence for Cuba would be acceptable.

Question 18

When and why did Spain declare war on the USA?

Answer 18

Upon being informed of the signing of the resolutions, the Spanish government at once severed diplomatic relations and on April 24 declared war upon the United States. Congress declared war on April 25 and made the declaration retroactive to April 21.

The resolutions were :
the president, reporting but not emphasizing Spain’s latest concessions, advised Congress in a special message on April 11 that “the war in Cuba must stop.” From Congress he asked authority to use the armed forces of the United States “to secure a full and final termination of hostilities between the government of Spain and the people of Cuba.” Congress responded emphatically, declaring on April 20 that “the people of Cuba are, and of right ought to be, free and independent.” It demanded that Spain at once relinquish authority over Cuba and withdraw its armed forces from the island and authorized the president to use the army and navy of the United States to enforce that demand.

Question 19

Key dates for the Invasion of the Philipines

Answer 19

The first blow fell in Manila Bay on May 1, 1898. Dewey, picked by Roosevelt for the command, led his squadron into the bay before dawn and in a leisurely morning engagement destroyed the anchored Spanish ships with naval gunfire. American casualties amounted to only seven slightly wounded men. Dewey remained in control of the bay while a military force was sent out to assist him in taking possession of the city of Manila. By the end of July some 11,000 U.S. troops under Maj. Gen. Wesley Merritt had arrived in the Philippines, and on August 13 they occupied Manila.

Question 20

Key Events for the Invasion of Cuba

Answer 20

An army of regulars and volunteers—including Roosevelt’s regiment of “Rough Riders” (minus their horses) and the buffalo soldiers of the 9th and 10th cavalries—embarked at Tampa and landed on the Cuban coast east of Santiago. The U.S. objective was to trap Cervera between the army and navy, thus forcing him either to surrender or to come out and fight. On July 1, in the hard-fought Battles of El Caney and San Juan Hill (in which the Rough Riders played a major role, contributing to the popular image of Roosevelt as a war hero), U.S. troops penetrated the outer defenses of Santiago. Their hold was so precarious and the incidence of malaria and other diseases was so widespread that their commander, Maj. Gen. William R. Shafter, considered withdrawing to await reinforcements. This idea was abandoned on July 3 when Cervera, under orders from Havana, led his squadron out of Santiago harbour and tried to escape westward along the coast. In the ensuing battle, all of Cervera’s ships, under heavy fire from the U.S. fleet, were beached in a burning or sinking condition. U.S. losses were insignificant. Two weeks later the city of Santiago surrendered to Shafter.

Question 21

The Consequences of the acquision of the Philipines, i.e. resistance

Answer 21

Two days earlier the Philippine-American War had begun when fighting broke out between U.S. troops and Aguinaldo’s insurgents outside Manila. For the next three years the Filipinos carried on a guerrilla warfare campaign against U.S. rule. By the time fighting ended, some 20,000 Filipino troops and 200,000 civilians were dead. An estimated 4,300 Americans perished, the overwhelming majority as a result of disease.

Question 22

Consequences of the Spanish-American war.

Answer 22

. The United States emerged from the war a world power. It now had insular possessions in the Caribbean and stretching across the Pacific, including Hawaii, whose annexation had been hastened by the war. Although economic motives had played little discernible part in bringing on the war, they were plainly present in shaping the peace. The winning of footholds in the Caribbean, in the Far East, and in the ocean between climaxed a half-century of tentative and intermittent quests for assurance of access to foreign markets. The war made certain that a U.S.-built canal would be cut through the Isthmus of Panama. It stimulated enthusiasm for the U.S. Navy, which soon grew from fifth or sixth to second place among the world’s war fleets. It prompted drastic reform in the U.S. Army, which had been poorly prepared for war and had lost far more men to exposure and disease than to enemy weapons. It also advanced the career of the country’s first world-minded president, Theodore Roosevelt. Within a few years of the war’s conclusion, the United States had made the Caribbean a U.S. lake, was taking a leading part in the politics of the Far East (with initiatives such as the Open Door policy), and was preparing, in spite of itself, to play a determining role in the affairs of Europe.

Question 23

The Start and End of the Boxer Rebellion?

Answer 23

Technically 1898-1901
By late 1899 the Boxers were openly attacking Chinese Christians and Western missionaries.
By May 1900, Boxer bands were roaming the countryside around the capital at Beijing. Finally, in early June an international relief force of some 2,100 men was dispatched from the northern port of Tianjin to Beijing.
On June 13 the empress dowager ordered imperial forces to block the advance of the foreign troops, and the small relief column was turned back. Meanwhile, in Beijing the Boxers burned churches and foreign residences and killed suspected Chinese Christians on sight. On June 17 the foreign powers seized the Dagu forts on the coast in order to restore access from Beijing to Tianjin. The next day the empress dowager ordered that all foreigners be killed. The German minister was murdered, and the other foreign ministers and their families and staff, together with hundreds of Chinese Christians, were besieged in their legation quarters and in the Roman Catholic cathedral in Beijing.
Imperial viceroys in the central Yangtze River (Chang Jiang) valley and in South China ignored government orders and suppressed antiforeign outbreaks in their jurisdiction. They thus helped establish the myth that the war was not the policy of the Chinese government but was a result of a native uprising in the northeast, the area to which the disorders were mainly confined.

An international force of some 19,000 troops was assembled, most of the soldiers coming from Japan and Russia but many also from Britain, the United States, France, Austria-Hungary, and Italy. On August 14, 1900, that force finally captured Beijing, relieving the foreigners and Christians besieged there since June 20. While foreign troops looted the capital, the empress dowager and her court fled westward to Xi’an in Shaanxi province, leaving behind a few imperial princes to conduct the negotiations. After extensive discussions, a protocol was finally signed in September 1901, ending the hostilities and providing for reparations to be made to the foreign powers.
Perhaps a total of up to 100,000 or more people died in the conflict, although estimates on casualties have varied widely. The great majority of those killed were civilians, including thousands of Chinese Christians and approximately 200 to 250 foreign nationals (mostly Christian missionaries). Some estimates cite about 3,000 military personnel killed in combat, the great bulk of them being Boxers and other Chinese fighters.

Question 24

Why was Imperialism possible?

Answer 24

Technological, Political Economic and social reasons

One necessary condition that characterized this New Imperialism, often overlooked, is technological. Prior to the 1870s Europeans could overawe native peoples along the coasts of Africa and Asia but lacked the firepower, mobility, and communications that would have been needed to pacify the interior. (India was the exception, where the British East India Company exploited an anarchic situation and allied itself with selected native rulers against others.) The tsetse fly and the Anopheles mosquito—bearers of sleeping sickness and malaria—were the ultimate defenders of African and Asian jungles. The correlation of forces between Europe and the colonizable world shifted, however, with the invention of shallow-draft riverboats, the steamship and telegraph, the repeater rifle and Maxim gun, and the discovery (in India) that quinine is an effective prophylactic against malaria. By 1880 small groups of European regulars, armed with modern weapons and exercising fire discipline, could overwhelm many times their number of native troops.