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Inhistorical contexts,New Imperialism characterizes a period ofcolonial expansion primarily by the majorwestern powers as well as theEmpire of Japan, during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.[1] The period featured an unprecedented pursuit of overseas territorial acquisitions. At the time,states focused on building their empires with new technological advances and developments,expanding their territory through conquest, and exploiting the resources of the subjugated countries. During the era of New Imperialism, the European powers (and Japan) individually conquered almost all ofAfrica and parts ofAsia. The new wave ofimperialism reflected ongoingrivalries among the great powers, the economic desire for new resources and markets, and a "civilizing mission" ethos. Many of the colonies established during this era gained independence during the era ofdecolonization that followedWorld War II.
The qualifier "new" is used to differentiate modern imperialism from earlier imperial activity, such as the formation of ancient empires and thefirst wave of European colonization.[1][2]
The main participants in New Imperialism were theUnited Kingdom,France,Germany,Italy, theNetherlands,Belgium,Portugal,Russia, theUnited States, andJapan.[3][4][5][6]
TheAmerican Revolutionary War (1775–1783) and the collapse of theSpanish Empire inLatin America in the 1820s ended the first era of European imperialism. Especially in Great Britain these revolutions helped show the deficiencies ofmercantilism, the doctrine of economic competition for finite wealth which had supported earlier imperial expansion. In 1846, theCorn Laws were repealed and manufacturers grew, as the regulations enforced by the Corn Laws had slowed their businesses. With the repeal in place, the manufacturers were able to trade more freely. Thus, Britain began to adopt the concept of free trade.[7]
During this period, between the 1815Congress of Vienna after the defeat ofNapoleonicFrance and Imperial Germany's victory in theFranco-Prussian War in 1871, Great Britain reaped the benefits of being Europe's dominant military and economic power. As the "workshop of the world", Britain could produce finished goods so efficiently that they could usually undersell comparable, locally manufactured goods in foreign markets, supplying a large share of the manufactured goods consumed by such nations as the German states, France, Belgium, and the United States.[8][page needed]
The erosion of British hegemony after theFranco-Prussian War, in which a coalition of German states led byPrussia soundly defeated theSecond French Empire, was occasioned by changes in the European and world economies and in the continental balance of power following the breakdown of theConcert of Europe, established by the Congress of Vienna. The establishment of nation-states inGermany andItaly resolved territorial issues that had kept potential rivals embroiled in internal affairs at the heart of Europe to Britain's advantage. The years from 1871 to 1914 would be marked by anextremely unstable peace. France's determination to recoverAlsace-Lorraine, annexed by Germany as a result of the Franco-Prussian War, and Germany's mounting imperialist ambitions would keep the two nations constantly poised for conflict.[9]
This competition was sharpened by theLong Depression of 1873–1896, a prolonged period of price deflation punctuated by severe business downturns, which put pressure on governments to promote home industry, leading to the widespread abandonment of free trade among Europe's powers (in Germany from 1879 and in France from 1881).[10][11]
TheBerlin Conference of 1884–1885 sought to destroy the competition between the powers by defining "effective occupation" as the criterion for international recognition of a territory claim, specifically in Africa. The imposition of direct rule in terms of "effective occupation" necessitated routine recourse to armed force against indigenous states and peoples. Uprisings against imperial rule were put down ruthlessly, most brutally in theHerero Wars inGerman South-West Africa from 1904 to 1907 and theMaji Maji Rebellion inGerman East Africa from 1905 to 1907. One of the goals of the conference was to reach agreements over trade, navigation, and boundaries ofCentral Africa. However, of all of the 15 nations in attendance of the Berlin Conference, none of the countries represented were African.
The main dominating powers of the conference wereFrance,Germany,Britain, andPortugal. They remapped Africa without considering the cultural and linguistic borders that were already established. At the end of the conference, Africa was divided into 50 different colonies. The attendants established who was in control of each of these newly divided colonies. They also planned, noncommittally, to end the slave trade in Africa.
In Britain, the age of new imperialism marked a time for significant economic changes.[12] Because the country was the first to industrialize, Britain was technologically ahead of many other countries throughout the majority of the nineteenth century.[13] By the end of the nineteenth century, however, other countries, chiefly Germany and the United States, began to challenge Britain's technological and economic power.[13] After several decades of monopoly, the country was battling to maintain a dominant economic position while other powers became more involved in international markets. In 1870, Britain contained 31.8% of the world's manufacturing capacity while the United States contained 23.3% and Germany contained 13.2%.[14] By 1910, Britain's manufacturing capacity had dropped to 14.7%, while that of the United States had risen to 35.3% and that of Germany to 15.9%.[14] As countries like Germany and America became more economically successful, they began to become more involved with imperialism, resulting in the British struggling to maintain the volume of British trade and investment overseas.[14]
Britain further faced strained international relations with three expansionist powers (Japan, Germany, and Italy) during the early twentieth century. Before 1939, these three powers never directly threatened Britain itself, but the dangers to the Empire were clear.[15] By the 1930s, Britain was worried that Japan would threaten its holdings in the Far East as well as territories in India, Australia and New Zealand.[15] Italy held an interest in North Africa, which threatened British Egypt, and German dominance of the European continent held some danger for Britain's security.[15] Britain worried that the expansionist powers would cause the breakdown of international stability; as such, British foreign policy attempted to protect the stability in a rapidly changing world.[15] With its stability and holdings threatened, Britain decided to adopt a policy of concession rather than resistance, a policy that became known asappeasement.[15]
In Britain, the era of new imperialism affected public attitudes toward the idea of imperialism itself. Most of the public believed that if imperialism was going to exist, it was best if Britain was the driving force behind it.[16] The same people further thought that British imperialism was a force for good in the world.[16] In 1940, the Fabian Colonial Research Bureau argued that Africa could be developed both economically and socially, but until this development could happen, Africa was best off remaining with theBritish Empire.Rudyard Kipling's 1891 poem, "The English Flag," contains the stanza:
Winds of the World, give answer! They are whimpering to and fro--
And what should they know of England who only England know?--
The poor little street-bred people that vapour and fume and brag,
They are lifting their heads in the stillness to yelp at the English Flag![17]
These lines show Kipling's belief that the British who actively took part in imperialism knew more about British national identity than the ones whose entire lives were spent solely in the imperial metropolis.[16] While there were pockets of anti-imperialist opposition in Britain in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, resistance to imperialism was nearly nonexistent in the country as a whole.[16] In many ways, this new form of imperialism formed a part of the British identity until the end of the era of new imperialism with the Second World War.[16]
WhileSocial Darwinism became popular throughoutWestern Europe and theUnited States, the paternalistic French and Portuguese "civilizing mission" (in French:mission civilisatrice; in Portuguese:Missão civilizadora) appealed to many European statesmen both in and outside France. Despite apparent benevolence existing in the notion of the "White Man's Burden", the unintended consequences of imperialism might have greatly outweighed the potential benefits. Governments became increasingly paternalistic at home and neglected the individual liberties of their citizens. Military spending expanded, usually leading to an "imperial overreach", and imperialism created clients of ruling elites abroad that were brutal and corrupt, consolidating power through imperial rents and impeding social change and economic development that ran against their ambitions. Furthermore, "nation building" oftentimes created cultural sentiments ofracism andxenophobia.[18]
Many of Europe's major elites also found advantages in formal, overseas expansion: large financial and industrial monopolies wanted imperial support to protect their overseas investments against competition and domestic political tensions abroad, bureaucrats sought government offices, military officers desired promotion, and the traditional but waning landed gentries sought increased profits for their investments, formal titles, and high office. Such special interests have perpetuated empire-building throughout history.[18]
The enforcement ofmercantilist policies played a role in sustaining New Imperialism. This restricted colonies to trade only with respective metropoles, which strengthened home-country economies. At first through growingchartered companies and later through imperial states themselves, New Imperialism shifted towards the use offree trade, the reduction of market restrictions andtariffs, and the coercion of foreign markets to open up, often throughgunboat diplomacy or concertedinterventionism, such aspolice actions.[citation needed]
Observing the rise of trade unionism, socialism, and other protest movements during an era of mass society both in Europe and later in North America, elites sought to use imperialjingoism to co-opt the support of part of the industrial working class. The new mass media promoted jingoism in theSpanish–American War (1898), theSecond Boer War (1899–1902), and theBoxer Rebellion (1900). Theleft-wing German historianHans-Ulrich Wehler has definedsocial imperialism as "the diversions outwards of internal tensions and forces of change in order to preserve the social and political status quo", and as a "defensive ideology" to counter the "disruptive effects of industrialization on the social and economic structure of Germany".[19] In Wehler's opinion, social imperialism was a device that allowed the German government to distract public attention from domestic problems and preserve the existing social and political order. The dominant elites used social imperialism as the glue to hold together a fractured society and to maintain popular support for the socialstatus quo. According to Wehler, German colonial policy in the 1880s was the first example of social imperialism in action, and was followed up by the 1897Tirpitz Plan for expanding the German Navy. In this point of view, groups such as the Colonial Society and theNavy League are seen as instruments for the government to mobilize public support. The demands for annexing most ofEurope andAfrica inWorld War I are seen by Wehler as the pinnacle of social imperialism.[19]
In the 17th century, the British businessmen arrived in India and, after taking a small portion of land, formed theEast India Company. The British East India Company annexed most of the subcontinent of India, starting with Bengal in 1757 and ending with Punjab in 1849. Many princely states remained independent. This was aided by apower vacuum formed by the collapse of theMughal Empire in India and the death of Mughal EmperorAurangzeb and increased British forces in India because of colonial conflicts with France. The invention ofclipper ships in the early 1800s cut the trip to India from Europe in half from 6 months to 3 months; the British also laid cables on the floor of the ocean allowing telegrams to be sent from India and China. In 1818, the British controlled most of the Indian subcontinent and began imposing their ideas and ways on its residents, including different succession laws that allowed the British to take over a state with no successor and gain its land and armies, new taxes, and monopolistic control of industry. The British also collaborated with Indian officials to increase their influence in the region.
Some Hindu and Muslimsepoys rebelled in 1857, resulting in theIndian Rebellion. After this revolt was suppressed by the British, India came under the direct control of the British crown. After the British had gained more control over India, they began changing around the financial state of India. Previously, Europe had to pay for Indian textiles and spices in bullion; with political control, Britain directed farmers to grow cash crops for the company for exports to Europe while India became a market for textiles from Britain. In addition, the British collected huge revenues from land rent and taxes on its acquired monopoly on salt production. Indian weavers were replaced by new spinning and weaving machines and Indian food crops were replaced by cash crops like cotton and tea.
The British also began connecting Indian cities by railroad and telegraph to make travel and communication easier as well as building an irrigation system for increasing agricultural production. When Western education was introduced in India, Indians were quite influenced by it, but the inequalities between the British ideals of governance and their treatment of Indians became clear.[clarification needed] In response to this discriminatory treatment, a group of educated Indians established theIndian National Congress, demanding equal treatment andself-governance.
John Robert Seeley, a Cambridge Professor of History, said, "Our acquisition of India was made blindly. Nothing great that has ever been done by Englishmen was done so unintentionally or accidentally as the conquest of India". According to him, the political control of India was not a conquest in the usual sense because it was not an act of a state.[citation needed]
The new administrative arrangement, crowned with Queen Victoria's proclamation asEmpress of India in 1876, effectively replaced the rule of a monopolistic enterprise with that of a trained civil service headed by graduates of Britain's top universities. The administration retained and increased the monopolies held by the company. The India Salt Act of 1882 included regulations enforcing a government monopoly on the collection and manufacture of salt; in 1923 a bill was passed doubling the salt tax.[20]
After taking control of much of India, the British expanded further intoBurma,Malaya,Singapore andBorneo, with these colonies becoming further sources of trade and raw materials for British goods. France annexed all ofVietnam andCambodia in the 1880s; in the following decade, France completed itsIndochinese empire with the annexation ofLaos, leaving the kingdom of Siam (nowThailand) with an uneasy independence as a neutral buffer between British and French-ruled lands. The United States laid claim to the Philippines, and after theSpanish–American War, took control of the archipelago as one of its overseas possessions.
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Formal colonization of theDutch East Indies (nowIndonesia) commenced at the dawn of the 19th century when the Dutch state took possession of allDutch East India Company (VOC) assets. Before that time the VOC merchants were in principle just another trading power among many, establishing trading posts and settlements (colonies) in strategic places around the archipelago. The Dutch gradually extended their sovereignty over most of the islands in the East Indies. Dutch expansion paused for several years during an interregnum of British rule between 1806 and 1816, when the Dutch Republic was occupied by the French forces ofNapoleon. The Dutch government-in-exile in England ceded rule of all its colonies to Great Britain. However,Jan Willem Janssens, the governor of the Dutch East Indies at the time, fought the British before surrendering the colony; he was eventually replaced byStamford Raffles.[21]
The Dutch East Indies became the prize possession of theDutch Empire. It was not the typical settler colony founded through massive emigration from the mother countries (such as the USA or Australia) and hardly involved displacement of the indigenous islanders, with a notable and dramatic exception in the island ofBanda during the VOC era.[22] Neither was it a plantation colony built on the import of slaves (such as Haiti or Jamaica) or a pure trade post colony (such as Singapore or Macau). It was more of an expansion of the existing chain of VOC trading posts. Instead of mass emigration from the homeland, the sizeable indigenous populations were controlled through effective political manipulation supported by military force. The servitude of the indigenous masses was enabled through a structure of indirect governance, keeping existing indigenous rulers in place. This strategy was already established by the VOC, which independently acted as a semi-sovereign state within the Dutch state, using theIndo Eurasian population as an intermediary buffer.[23]
In 1869, British anthropologistAlfred Russel Wallace described the colonial governing structure in his book "The Malay Archipelago":[24]
"The mode of government now adopted in Java is to retain the whole series of native rulers, from the village chief up to princes, who, under the name of Regents, are the heads of districts about the size of a small English county. With each Regent is placed a Dutch Resident, or Assistant Resident, who is considered to be his "elder brother," and whose "orders" take the form of "recommendations," which are, however, implicitly obeyed. Along with each Assistant, Resident is a Controller, a kind of inspector of all the lower native rulers, who periodically visits every village in the district, examines the proceedings of the native courts, hears complaints against the head-men or other native chiefs, and superintends the Government plantations."
In 1839, China found itself fighting theFirst Opium War with Great Britain after thegovernor-general ofHunan andHubei,Lin Zexu, seized the illegally traded opium. China was defeated, and in 1842 agreed to the provisions of theTreaty of Nanking.Hong Kong Island was ceded to Britain, andcertain ports, includingShanghai andGuangzhou, were opened to British trade and residence. In 1856, theSecond Opium War broke out; the Chinese were again defeated and forced to the terms of the 1858Treaty of Tientsin and the 1860Convention of Peking. The treaty opened new ports to trade and allowed foreigners to travel in the interior. Missionaries gained the right to propagate Christianity, another means of Western penetration. The United States and Russia obtained the same prerogatives in separatetreaties.
Towards the end of the 19th century, China appeared on the way to territorial dismemberment and economic vassalage, the fate of India's rulers that had played out much earlier. Several provisions of these treaties caused long-standing bitterness and humiliation among the Chinese:extraterritoriality (meaning that in a dispute with a Chinese person, a Westerner had the right to be tried in a court under the laws of his own country), customs regulation, and the right to station foreign warships in Chinese waters.
In 1904, theBritish invaded Tibet, a pre-emptive strike against Russian intrigues and secret meetings between the13th Dalai Lama's envoy andTsar Nicholas II. The Dalai Lama fled into exile to China and Mongolia. The British were greatly concerned at the prospect of a Russian invasion of the Crown colony of India, though Russia – badly defeated by Japan in theRusso-Japanese War and weakened byinternal revolution – could not realistically afford a military conflict against Britain. China under theQing dynasty, however, was another matter.[25]
Natural disasters, famine and internal rebellions had enfeebled China in the late Qing. In the late 19th century, Japan and the Great Powers easily carved out trade and territorial concessions. These were humiliating submissions for the once-powerful China. Still, the central lesson of thewar with Japan was not lost on the Russian General Staff: an Asian country using Western technology and industrial production methods could defeat a great European power.[26] Jane E. Elliott criticized the allegation that China refused to modernize or was unable to defeat Western armies as simplistic, noting that China embarked on a massive military modernization in the late 1800s after several defeats, buying weapons from Western countries and manufacturing their own at arsenals, such as theHanyang Arsenal during theBoxer Rebellion. In addition, Elliott questioned the claim that Chinese society was traumatized by the Western victories, as many Chinese peasants (90% of the population at that time) living outside the concessions continued about their daily lives, uninterrupted and without any feeling of "humiliation".[27]
The British observer Demetrius Charles de Kavanagh Boulger suggested a British-Chinese alliance to check Russian expansion in Central Asia.
During the Ili crisis when Qing China threatened to go to war against Russia over the Russian occupation of Ili, the British officerCharles George Gordon was sent to China by Britain to advise China on military options against Russia should a potential war break out between China and Russia.[28]
The Russians observed the Chinese building up their arsenal of modern weapons during the Ili crisis, the Chinese bought thousands of rifles from Germany.[29] In 1880 massive amounts of military equipment and rifles were shipped via boats to China from Antwerp as China purchased torpedoes, artillery, and 260,260 modern rifles from Europe.[30]
The Russian military observer D. V. Putiatia visited China in 1888 and found that in Northeastern China (Manchuria) along the Chinese-Russian border, the Chinese soldiers were potentially able to become adept at "European tactics" under certain circumstances, and the Chinese soldiers were armed with modern weapons like Krupp artillery, Winchester carbines, and Mauser rifles.[31]
Compared to Russian controlled areas, more benefits were given to the Muslim Kirghiz on the Chinese controlled areas. Russian settlers fought against the Muslim nomadic Kirghiz, which led the Russians to believe that the Kirghiz would be a liability in any conflict against China. The Muslim Kirghiz were sure that in an upcoming war, that China would defeat Russia.[32]
The Qing dynasty forced Russia to hand over disputed territory in Ili in theTreaty of Saint Petersburg (1881), in what was widely seen by the west as a diplomatic victory for the Qing.[33] Russia acknowledged that Qing China potentially posed a serious military threat.[34] Mass media in the west during this era portrayed China as a rising military power due to its modernization programs and as major threat to the western world, invoking fears that China would successfully conquer western colonies like Australia.[35]
Russian sinologists, the Russian media, threat of internal rebellion, the pariah status inflicted by theCongress of Berlin, and the negative state of the Russian economy all led Russia to concede and negotiate with China in St Petersburg, and return most of Ili to China.[36]
Historians have judged the Qing dynasty's vulnerability and weakness to foreign imperialism in the 19th century to be based mainly on its maritime naval weakness while it achieved military success against westerners on land, the historian Edward L. Dreyer said that "China’s nineteenth-century humiliations were strongly related to her weakness and failure at sea. At the start of the Opium War, China had no unified navy and no sense of how vulnerable she was to attack from the sea; British forces sailed and steamed wherever they wanted to go. ... In theArrow War (1856–60), the Chinese had no way to prevent the Anglo-French expedition of 1860 from sailing into theGulf of Zhili and landing as near as possible to Beijing. Meanwhile, new but not exactly modern Chinese armies suppressed the midcentury rebellions, bluffed Russia into a peaceful settlement of disputed frontiers in Central Asia, and defeated the French forces on land in theSino-French War (1884–1885). But the defeat of the fleet, and the resulting threat to steamship traffic to Taiwan, forced China to conclude peace on unfavorable terms."[37]
The British and Russian consuls schemed and plotted against each other at Kashgar.[38]
In 1906,Tsar Nicholas II sent a secret agent to China to collect intelligence on the reform and modernization of the Qing dynasty. The task was given toCarl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim, at the time a colonel in the Russian army, who travelled to China with French SinologistPaul Pelliot. Mannerheim was disguised as an ethnographic collector, using a Finnish passport.[26] Finland was, at the time, a Grand Duchy. For two years, Mannerheim proceeded throughXinjiang,Gansu,Shaanxi,Henan,Shanxi andInner Mongolia toBeijing. At the sacred Buddhist mountain ofWutai Shan he even met the 13th Dalai Lama.[39] However, while Mannerheim was in China in 1907, Russia and Britain brokered theAnglo-Russian Agreement, ending the classical period of the Great Game.
The correspondent Douglas Story observed Chinese troops in 1907 and praised their abilities and military skill.[40]
The rise of Japan as an imperial power after theMeiji Restoration led to further subjugation of China. In a dispute over regional suzerainty,war broke out between China and Japan, resulting in another humiliating defeat for the Chinese. By theTreaty of Shimonoseki in 1895, China was forced to recognizeKorea's exit from theImperial Chinese tributary system, leading to the proclamation of theKorean Empire, and the island ofTaiwan was ceded to Japan.
In 1897, taking advantage of themurder of two missionaries, Germany demanded and was given a set ofmining and railroad rights aroundJiaozhou Bay inShandong province. In 1898, Russia obtained access toDairen andPort Arthur and the right to build a railroad acrossManchuria, thereby achieving complete domination over a large portion of northeast China. The United Kingdom, France, and Japan also received a number of concessions later that year.
The erosion of Chinese sovereignty contributed to a spectacular anti-foreign outbreak in June 1900, when the "Boxers" (properly the society of the "righteous and harmonious fists") attackedforeign legations inBeijing. ThisBoxer Rebellion provoked a rare display of unity among the colonial powers, who formed theEight-Nation Alliance. Troops landed atTianjin and marched on the capital, which they took on 14 August; the foreign soldiers then looted and occupied Beijing for several months. German forces were particularly severe in exacting revenge for the killing oftheir ambassador, while Russia tightened its hold on Manchuria in the northeast until its crushing defeat by Japan in theRusso-Japanese War of 1904–1905.
Extraterritorial jurisdiction was abandoned by the United Kingdom and the United States in 1943.
Mainland Chinese historians refer to this period as thecentury of humiliation.
The "Great Game" (Also called theTournament of Shadows (Russian:Турниры теней,Turniry Teney) in Russia) was the strategic, economic and political rivalry, emanating toconflict between theBritish Empire and theRussian Empire for supremacy inCentral Asia at the expense of Afghanistan, Persia and the Central Asian Khanates/Emirates. The classic Great Game period is generally regarded as running approximately from theRusso-Persian Treaty of 1813 to theAnglo-Russian Convention of 1907, in which nations likeEmirate of Bukhara fell. A less intensive phase followed the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, causing some trouble with Persia and Afghanistan until the mid-1920s.
In the post-Second World War post-colonial period, the term has informally continued in its usage to describe the geopolitical machinations of thegreat powers andregional powers as they vie forgeopolitical power as well as influence in the area, especially in Afghanistan and Iran/Persia.[41][42]
Between 1850 and 1914, Britain brought nearly 30% of Africa's population under its control, to 15% for France, 9% for Germany, 7% for Belgium and 1% for Italy:Nigeria alone contributed 15 million subjects to Britain, more than in the whole ofFrench West Africa, or the entire German colonial empire. The only nations that were not under European control by 1914 wereLiberia andEthiopia.[43]
Britain's formaloccupation of Egypt in 1882, triggered by concern over theSuez Canal, contributed to a preoccupation over securing control of theNile River, leading to theconquest of neighboring Sudan in 1896–1898, which in turn led to confrontation with a French military expedition atFashoda in September 1898. In 1899, Britain set out to complete its takeover of the futureSouth Africa, which it had begun in 1814 with the annexation of theCape Colony, by invading the gold-richAfrikaner republics ofTransvaal and the neighboringOrange Free State. The charteredBritish South Africa Company had already seized the land to the north, renamedRhodesia after its head, the Cape tycoonCecil Rhodes.
British gains in southern and East Africa prompted Rhodes andAlfred Milner, Britain's High Commissioner in South Africa, to urge a"Cape to Cairo" empire: linked by rail, the strategically important Canal would be firmly connected to the mineral-rich South, though Belgian control of theCongo Free State and German control ofGerman East Africa prevented such an outcome until the end of World War I, when Great Britain acquired the latter territory.
Britain's quest for southern Africa and its diamonds led to social complications and fallouts that lasted for years. To work for their prosperous company, British businessmen hired both white and black South Africans. But when it came to jobs, the white South Africans received the higher paid and less dangerous ones, leaving the black South Africans to risk their lives in the mines for limited pay. This process of separating the two groups of South Africans, whites and blacks, was the beginning ofsegregation between the two that lasted until 1990.
Paradoxically, the United Kingdom, a staunch advocate of free trade, emerged in 1913 with not only the largest overseas empire, thanks to its long-standing presence in India, but also the greatest gains in the conquest of Africa, reflecting its advantageous position at its inception.
Until 1876, Belgium had no colonial presence in Africa. It was then that its king,Leopold II created theInternational African Society. Operating under the pretense of an international scientific and philanthropic association, it was actually a private holding company owned by Leopold.[44]Henry Morton Stanley was employed to explore and colonize theCongo River basin area of equatorial Africa in order to capitalize on the plentiful resources such as ivory, rubber, diamonds, and metals.[citation needed] Up until this point, Africa was known as "the Dark Continent" because of the difficulties Europeans had with exploration.[45] Over the next few years, Stanley overpowered and made treaties with over 450 native tribes, acquiring him over 2,340,000 square kilometres (905,000 sq mi) of land, nearly 67 times the size of Belgium.[citation needed]
Neither the Belgian government nor the Belgian people had any interest in imperialism at the time, and the land came to be personally owned by King Leopold II. At theBerlin Conference in 1884, he was allowed to have land named theCongo Free State. The other European countries at the conference allowed this to happen on the conditions that he suppress the East African slave trade, promote humanitarian policies, guarantee free trade, and encourage missions to Christianize the people of the Congo. However, Leopold II's primary focus was to make a large profit on the natural resources, particularly ivory and rubber. In order to make this profit, he passed several cruel decrees that can be considered to be genocide. He forced the natives to supply him with rubber and ivory without any sort of payment in return. Their wives and children were held hostage until the workers returned with enough rubber or ivory to fill their quota, and if they could not, their family would be killed. When villages refused, they were burned down; the children of the village were murdered and the men had their hands cut off. These policies led to uprisings, but they were feeble compared to European military and technological might, and were consequently crushed. The forced labor was opposed in other ways: fleeing into the forests to seek refuge or setting the rubber forests on fire, preventing the Europeans from harvesting the rubber.[citation needed]
No population figures exist from before or after the period, but it is estimated that as many as 10 million people died from violence, famine and disease.[46] However, some sources point to a total population of 16 million people.[47]
King Leopold II profited from the enterprise with a 700% profit ratio for the rubber he took from Congo and exported.[citation needed] He used propaganda to keep the other European nations at bay, for he broke almost all of the parts of the agreement he made at the Berlin Conference. For example, he had some Congolese pygmies sing and dance at the1897 World Fair in Belgium, showing how he was supposedly civilizing and educating the natives of the Congo. Under significant international pressure, the Belgian government annexed the territory in 1908 and renamed it theBelgian Congo, removing it from the personal power of the king.[44] Of all the colonies that were conquered during the wave of New Imperialism, the human rights abuses of theCongo Free State were considered the worst.[48][49][50]
France gained a leading position as an imperial power in the Pacific after makingTahiti andNew Caledonia protectorates in 1842 and 1853 respectively.[51] Tahiti was later annexed entirely into the French colonial empire in 1880, along with the rest of theSociety Islands.[52]
The United States made several territorial gains during this period, particularly with theoverthrow andannexation of theKingdom of Hawaiʻi and acquisition of most of Spain's colonial outposts following the 1898Spanish–American War,[53][54] as well as the partition of the Samoan Islands intoAmerican Samoa andGerman Samoa.[55]
By 1900, nearly all islands in the Pacific Ocean were under the control of Britain, France, the United States, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Ecuador, and Chile.[51]
Chile's interest in expanding into theislands of the Pacific Ocean dates to the presidency ofJosé Joaquín Prieto (1831–1841) and the ideology ofDiego Portales, who considered that Chile's expansion into Polynesia was a natural consequence of its maritime destiny.[56][A] Nonetheless, the first stage of the country's expansionism into the Pacific began only a decade later, in 1851, when—in response to an American incursion into theJuan Fernández Islands—Chile's government formally organized the islands into a subdelegation ofValparaíso.[58] That same year, Chile's economic interest in the Pacific were renewed after itsmerchant fleet briefly succeeded in creating an agricultural goods exchange market that connected theCalifornian port ofSan Francisco withAustralia.[59] By 1861, Chile had established a lucrative enterprise across the Pacific, itsnational currency abundantly circulating throughout Polynesia and its merchants trading in the markets ofTahiti,New Zealand,Tasmania, andShanghai; negotiations were also made with theSpanish Philippines, and altercations reportedly occurred between Chilean and American whalers in theSea of Japan. This period ended as a result of theChilean merchant fleet's destruction by Spanish forces in 1866, during theChincha Islands War.[60]
Chile's Polynesian aspirations would again be awakened in the aftermath of the country's decisive victory against Peru in theWar of the Pacific, which left the Chilean fleet as the dominant maritime force in the Pacific coast of the Americas.[56] Valparaíso had also become the most important port in the Pacific coast of South America, providing Chilean merchants with the capacity to find markets in the Pacific for its new mineral wealth acquired from the Atacama.[61] During this period, the Chilean intellectual and politicianBenjamín Vicuña Mackenna (who served as senator in theNational Congress from 1876 to 1885) was an influential voice in favor of Chilean expansionism into the Pacific—he considered that Spain's discoveries in the Pacific had been stolen by the British, and envisioned that Chile's duty was to create an empire in the Pacific that would reachAsia.[56] In the context of this imperialist fervor is that, in 1886, CaptainPolicarpo Toro of theChilean Navy proposed to his superiors the annexation ofEaster Island; a proposal which was supported by PresidentJosé Manuel Balmaceda because of the island's apparent strategic location and economic value. After Toro transferred the rights to the island's sheep ranching operations from Tahiti-based businesses to the Chilean-basedWilliamson-Balfour Company in 1887, Easter Island's annexation process was culminated with the signing of the "Agreement of Wills" between Rapa Nui chieftains and Toro, in name of the Chilean government, in 1888.[62] By occupying Easter Island, Chile joined the imperial nations.[63]: 53
The extension of European control over Africa and Asia added a further dimension to the rivalry and mutual suspicion which characterized international diplomacy in the decades preceding World War I. France's seizure ofTunisia in 1881 initiated fifteen years of tension with Italy, which had hoped to take the country, retaliating by allying with Germany and waging a decade-long tariff war with France. Britain's takeover of Egypt a year later caused a marked cooling of its relations with France.
The most striking conflicts of the era were theSpanish–American War of 1898 and theRusso-Japanese War of 1904–05, each signaling the advent of a new imperialgreat power; the United States and Japan, respectively. TheFashoda incident of 1898 represented the worst Anglo-French crisis in decades, but France's buckling in the face of British demands foreshadowed improved relations as the two countries set about resolving their overseas claims.
British policy in South Africa and German actions in the Far East contributed to dramatic policy shifts, which in the 1900s, aligned hitherto isolationist Britain first with Japan as an ally, and then with France and Russia in the looserTriple Entente. German efforts to break the Entente by challenging French hegemony inMorocco resulted in theTangier Crisis of 1905 and theAgadir Crisis of 1911, adding to tension and anti-German sentiment in the years precedingWorld War I. In the Pacific, conflicts between Germany, the United States, and the United Kingdom contributed to theFirst andSecond Samoan Civil War.
Another crisisoccurred in 1902–03, when there was a stand-off betweenVenezuela backed byArgentina, theUnited States (seeDrago Doctrine andMonroe Doctrine) and a coalition of European countries.
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One of the biggest motivations behind New Imperialism was the idea ofhumanitarianism and "civilizing" the "lower" class people in Africa and in other undeveloped places. This was a religious motive for many Christian missionaries, in an attempt to save the souls of the "uncivilized" people, and based on the idea that European Christians were morally superior. Most of the missionaries that supported imperialism did so because they felt the only "true" religion was their own. Similarly, French, Spanish and Italian Catholic missionaries opposed the Protestant British, German, and American missionaries. At times, however, imperialism did help the people of the colonies because the missionaries ended up stopping slavery in some areas. Therefore, Europeans claimed that they were only there because they wanted to protect the weaker tribal groups they conquered. The missionaries and other leaders suggested that they should stop such "savage" practices ascannibalism,idolatry andchild marriage. This humanitarian ideal was described in poems such as theWhite Man's Burden and other literature.
In many instances, the humanitarianism was sincere, but often with misguided choices. Although some imperialists were trying to be sincere with the notion of humanitarianism, at times their choices might not have been best for the areas they were conquering and the natives living there. As a result, some modernhistorical revisionists have suggested that new imperialism was driven more by the idea of racial and culturalsupremacism, and that claims of "humanitarianism" were either insincere or used as pretexts for territorial expansion.[64]
The Dutch Ethical Policy was the dominant reformist and liberal political character of colonial policy in the Dutch East Indies during the 20th century. In 1901,the DutchQueen Wilhelmina announced that the Netherlands accepted an ethical responsibility for the welfare of their colonial subjects despite clearly being discriminatory towards the oppressed colonised peoples. This announcement was a sharp contrast with the former official doctrine that Indonesia was mainly awingewest (region for making profit). It marked the start of moderndevelopment policy, implemented and practised byAlexander Willem Frederik Idenburg, whereas other colonial powers usually talked of acivilizing mission, which mainly involved spreading their culture to colonized peoples and expanding their culture.
The Dutch Ethical Policy (Dutch:Ethische Politiek) emphasised improvement in material living conditions. The policy suffered, however, from serious underfunding, inflated expectations and lack of acceptance in the Dutch colonial establishment, and it had largely ceased to exist by the onset of theGreat Depression in 1929.[65][66] It did however create an educated indigenous elite able to articulate and eventually establish independence from the Netherlands.
The "accumulation theory" adopted byKarl Kautsky,John A. Hobson and popularized byVladimir Lenin centered on the accumulation of surplus capital during and after theIndustrial Revolution: restricted opportunities at home, the argument goes, drove financial interests to seek more profitable investments in less-developed lands with lower labor costs, unexploited raw materials and little competition. Hobson's analysis fails to explain colonial expansion on the part of less industrialized nations with little surplus capital, such as Italy, or the great powers of the next century—the United States and Russia—which were in fact net borrowers of foreign capital. Also, military and bureaucratic costs of occupation frequently exceeded financial returns. In Africa (exclusive of what would become theUnion of South Africa in 1909) the amount of capital investment by Europeans was relatively small before and after the 1880s, and the companies involved in tropical African commerce exerted limited political influence.
The "World-Systems theory" approach ofImmanuel Wallerstein sees imperialism as part of a general, gradual extension of capital investment from the "core" of the industrial countries to a less developed "periphery." Protectionism and formal empire were the major tools of "semi-peripheral," newly industrialized states, such as Germany, seeking to usurp Britain's position at the "core" of the global capitalist system.
Echoing Wallerstein's global perspective to an extent, imperial historianBernard Porter views Britain's adoption of formal imperialism as a symptom and an effect of her relative decline in the world, and not of strength: "Stuck with outmoded physical plants and outmoded forms of business organization, [Britain] now felt the less favorable effects of being the first to modernize."[citation needed]
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[...] the concept of the 'new imperialism' espoused by such diverse writers as John A. Hobson, V. I. Lenin, Leonard Woolf, Parker T, Moon, Robert L. Schuyler, and William L. Langer. Those students of imperialism, whatever their purpose in writing, all saw a fundamental difference between the imperialist impulses of the mid- and late-Victorian eras. Langer perhaps best summarized the importance of making the distinction of late-nineteenth-century imperialism when he wrote in 1935: '[...] this period will stand out as the crucial epoch during which the nations of the western world extended their political, economic and cultural influence over Africa and over large parts of Asia ... in the larger sense the story is more than the story of rivalry between European imperialisms; it is the story of European aggression and advance in the non-European parts of the world.'
Commentators have identified three broad waves of European colonial and imperial expansion, connected with specific territories. The first targeted the Americas, North and South, as well as the Caribbean. The second focused on Asia, while the third wave extended European control into Africa.
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