How did dictator General Portirio Díaz contribute to economic and political instability in Mexico?

How was Siam different from the other nations of Southeast Asia?

Ask questions about the clothes you wear, the food you eat, or the technology you use. What do you want to know about the raw materials that went into these products or how they were manufactured?

What demand did the United States make on Japan in $1853 ?$

How did Western nations come to dominate much of the world in the late 1800s?

What internal problems threatened the Qing dynasty?

Connections to Today Compare the economic relationship between developed and developing countries today to the relationship between industrial powers and the lands they colonized durign the Age of Imperialism. How are they they similar? How are they different?

Writing Activity: Write an Explanatory Essay Read the following passage in which a Brazilian writer describes how the richer class dresses. "At that time ... Brazil did not manufacture a yard of silk, a shoe, a spool of thread; everything was imported. . . Men's clothing for a tropical climate was made of English wool suitable for life in the unheated homes of an English winter. I asked myself: how did they stand the heat? The ladies when they took off their shoes at home used slippers of heavy wool, as if they were in Siberia. . . . Except for the poor, I never saw in the Pernambuco [the writer's hometown] of my time anyone dressed in light clothing.

• Gilbert Amado, Historia da Minha Infancia Use the passage and what you have learned about imperialism to write a two-paragraph essay. In the first paragraph, explain how the elite in Pernambuco dressed so impractically. In the second paragraphy, use this evidence to explain what this suggests about the values of the colonial elite.

Both foreign and Chinese belief systems influenced China during the 1800s. Some Chinese wanted to adopt Western ways, while others wanted to maintain Confucian ways. How did the choices China made influence its future relationship with Western nations? Do you think China's history would have been different if if had made the same choices as Japan? Take a stand as to why or why not.

How did British rule lead to growing Indian nationalism?

How did the Monroe Doctrine establish new goals for U.S. foreign policy?

How did European imperialism cause political conflict among peoples in different colonies?

Describe the ideology of Sun Yixian in his quest for a new China.

This 1892 cartoon from a British newspaper shows British colonialist Cecil Rhodes.