DBQ Essay
Directions: The following question is based on the accompanying Documents 1-8. (The documents have been edited for the purpose of this exercise.) Write your answer on the lined pages provided.
This question is designed to test your ability to work with and understand historical documents.
Write an essay that:
Has a relevant thesis and supports that thesis with evidence from the documents.
Uses all of the documents.
Analyzes the documents by grouping them in as many appropriate ways as possible. Does not simply summarize the documents individually.
Takes into account the sources of the documents and analyzes the authors’ points of view.
Identifies and explains the need for at least one additional type of document.
You may refer to relevant historical information not mentioned in the documents.
Question: After the defeat of Napoleon in Europe and the subsequent liberation movements in the Americas, Europeans began to look at Africa and Asia for future imperial conquests. This new imperial attitude was known as New Imperialism to distinguish it from the previous Age of Discovery. Analyze the impacts of New Imperialism (1800-1914) on the various regions of world.
Document 1
(Background: Many white people felt that they were morally responsible to raise ignorant native peoples to a higher level of civilization. Few captured this notion better that the British poet Rudyard Kipling in his famous poem The White Man’s Burden. His appeal, directed to the United States, became one of the most famous sets of verses in the English-speaking world.)
Rudyard Kipling, The White Man’s Burden
Take up the White Man’s burden-
Send forth the best ye breed-
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives’ need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild-
Your new-caught sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.
Take up the White Man’s burden-
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech