How State Power Shifted
Tightening a grip already held
- Some states with existing colonies strengthened their control over those colonies and in some cases assumed direct control over colonies previously held by non-state entities.
- The CED's examples: the Congo passing from King Leopold II's private ownership to the Belgian government, and Indonesia and Southeast Asia passing from the Dutch East India Company to Dutch government control.
- So one form of expansion is a government taking over from a company or an individual.
Select all the non-state-to-state transfers the CED names.
The CED names exactly those two.
Who acquired, and who declined
- European states as well as the United States and Japan acquired territories throughout Asia and the Pacific, while Spanish and Portuguese influence declined.
- Two of the acquiring powers are not European — the CED says so in the same clause.
- And the sentence contains a decline as well as a rise, which is a comparison built into the evidence.
Select all the powers the CED says acquired territories in Asia and the Pacific.
Spanish and Portuguese influence is named as declining in the same sentence.
Africa: warfare and diplomacy
- Many European states used both warfare and diplomacy to expand their empires in Africa — Britain in West Africa, Belgium in the Congo, France in West Africa.
- Both matters: treaties, protectorates and negotiated concessions did as much work as force.
- An answer that describes only conquest has used half of the CED's own method list.
Which process of shifting power is this?
Sort each case by the CED's mechanisms.
Select all the methods the CED says European states used in Africa.
Both matters — treaties and concessions did as much work as force.
Not every imperial power in this period was European. The CED names the United States and Japan acquiring territories in Asia and the Pacific alongside European states, and lists Spanish and Portuguese decline in the same sentence. A Europe-only answer contradicts the clause it is quoting.
A settler colony differs from a trading post because it...
The CED names New Zealand as an example.
Settler colonies are a distinct type
- Europeans established settler colonies in some parts of their empires — the CED names New Zealand.
- A settler colony imports a permanent population, so the relationship with indigenous peoples is about land itself.
- That makes its politics different from a trading post or an administered territory.
The objective asks you to ____ processes by which state power shifted.
Same century, different mechanisms — and the CED supplies both sides.
Expanding overland, not overseas
- The United States, Russia and Japan expanded their land holdings by conquering and settling neighbouring territories.
- So the CED puts contiguous expansion in the same subtopic as overseas empire, and asks you to compare the processes.
- The comparison is the objective: same century, different mechanisms, and the CED supplies both sides.
The Congo shifts from being one king's private property to being a Belgian state colony. Nothing about the territory changed; what changed is who is legally responsible for it, and therefore which public can be held to account for what happens there. That is a shift in state power in the CED's exact sense.
States strengthened control over existing colonies and took over from non-state entities (Congo, Dutch East Indies). European states, the United States and Japan acquired territories in Asia and the Pacific while Spanish and Portuguese influence declined. In Africa, states used both warfare and diplomacy. Settler colonies are a distinct type, and the U.S., Russia and Japan expanded overland.