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Era of Imperialism

Five centuries of European empire examined from the perspective of colonized peoples. From Mansa Musa's Mali to the fall of apartheid, explore how imperialism reshaped Africa, Asia, the Americas, the Middle East, and the Pacific - and how the colonized resisted, survived, and rebuilt. Who really profited from the Atlantic slave trade? Why did Haiti pay reparations to slaveholders until 1947? How did a legal fiction called terra nullius erase 65,000 years of Aboriginal civilization?

Illustration of the Berlin Conference of 1884, where European powers divided Africa

The Berlin Conference of 1884-85. European powers carved up Africa with no African representation.

History

  • Asia Under Empire (1600-1947) Explore how European powers transformed Asia from 1600 to 1947, tracing the East India Company's rise from merchant to ruler, the extraction of wealth that reshaped economies, and the resistance movements—from armed rebellion to Gandhi's nonviolent campaigns—that ultimately ended colonial rule.
  • Conquest and Catastrophe: The Americas (1492-1600) When Europeans arrived in the Americas, disease killed far more people than weapons ever could—and powerful Indigenous empires fell not to superior technology but to strategic alliances and internal divisions.Explore how conquest actually unfolded, from Cortés's unlikely victory at Tenochtitlan to the brutal labor systems that extracted wealth for centuries.
  • The Atlantic System: Slavery and Plantation (1500-1888) Trace how the Atlantic slave trade reshaped continents and economies from 1500 to 1888, examining the brutal Middle Passage, African agency amid victimization, and how Caribbean sugar plantations accumulated wealth for Europe while devastating African populations.
  • The Middle East and the Mandate System (1800-1948) Explore how European powers dismantled the Ottoman Empire and redrew the Middle East through secret treaties, broken promises, and the League of Nations mandate system—reshaping a region whose borders and conflicts still define global politics today.
  • The World Before Empire Discover how sophisticated civilizations thrived across Africa, the Americas, and beyond without the centralized empires we typically study.From the gold-rich kingdoms of West Africa to the engineering marvels of the Inca, explore the diverse political systems, technologies, and societies that shaped the world before European expansion.

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