Colonial Policy Quotes
3rd Viscount Palmerston. This historical quotations illustrates the worst of the British Empire. British merchants were making large profits shipping opium to China and selling it there. Drug addiction became a major problem and some local Chinese Authorities passed laws banning the importing and selling of opium. However, the English merchant ship captains paid no attention to these laws claiming their rights as Englishmen to free trade. The Chinese finally seized a number of shipments of opium and burned them. The British then appointed Captain Elliot to lead a squadron of ships to China, arrange for payment in compensation for the value of the seized opium and to open up the opium trade, by force if necessary. The Chinese position was not unreasonable and Captain Elliot was not able to secure the concessions the English government wanted without starting a small war with the loss of many lives. Temple, who was the Foreign Minister at this time, fired Elliot and replaced him with someone who was less concerned about problems of drug addiction and the Chinese. Thus began the First Opium War. Note that the then British view of equity was that if they had to send an expedition of ships and soldiers to force the Chinese to allow the English to sell opium, then part of the terms must be that the Chinese pay the costs for the British ships and soldiers who invaded their country and forced them to keep poisoning their own people. See {621319} for Captain Elliot’s view.
There had been no tradition of self government or even rights in Germany and some like Hamilton thought that the immigrants from such a totalitarian tradition would not handle the relative freedom of America. They were wrong.
Bismarck articulated this throughout the German government and provided cogent reasoning as to why colonialism was a counter-productive policy. History shows him to be prescient about the difficulties of Empire. Nonetheless, in the mad scramble of the European powers for Africa, and the public opinion weighing in cavor of Empire, Germany got sucked in just like the others and Bismarck reluctantly changed his policies. He was right the first time.
While not generally known, the Articles of Confederation contemplated the strong possibility that Canada would become part of the United States. However, there was too strong a Tory element in Canada and it did not happen. The Constitution was not drafted until 1787 and was ratified later. In the interim the young United States functioned under the Articles of Confederation, in a sense, our first Constitution.
McKinley was then Secretary of War and Taft was Chairman of the Commission on the Philippines.
Not all whites were allowed to usurp all Indian lands. There were many attempts to limit white settlement to avoid friction with the Indians although the overall tendency was for the whites to take over and dominate the land.
The King wanted colonists for the American colonies, but did not want Roman Catholics.
With different concepts of land ownership Europeans and Indians were at odds over purchases from the earliest times. This was the first of the many efforts to eliminate problems of contention with Native Americans over land.
The American colonists were not allowed to sell their tobacco or other commodities directly to foreign nations. They could only sell them to English merchants who in turn would sell them to foreign markets. Thus, the large profits on American tobacco were made by English merchants and not by American farmers or merchants.
