Age of Imperialism (jan 1, 1870 – jan 1, 1914)

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TLDR: As Europe increased its industrialization and nationalism, European powers sought to colonize, influence, and annex other parts of the world. Their often-forceful economic and cultural penetration of non-Western lands increased their trade and profit. The most dramatic was their colonization of Africa and Asia. European nations rushed to colonize Africa and competed over control of Asian lands like India and China. Although they were met with resistance, Europeans' superior military might and authoritarian rule posed a brutal challenge to their colonial subjects.

The British were able to interfere with the self-imposed isolation that China enforced, which required foreign merchants to live in Guangzhou and to stick to Chinese merchants. The British developed an illegal opium market and eventually called for an independent colony there. The Chinese government began to stamp out the crisis, and Lin Zexu punished Chinese who participated and seized opium supplies. The British government wanted unregulated trade with China and the establishment of diplomatic relations on the European model. Britain occupied several coastal cities and in the first of two Opium Wars, China gave in. In the Treaty of Nanking, they gave up Hong Kong and $100 million to Britain and opened up four large cities to unlimited foreign trade. Opium trade flourished until the second war. British and French troops occupied Beijing and burned the emperor’s summer palace. Europeans once again gained greater privileges and protection and forced the Chinese to accept trade and investment on unfavorable terms in several more cities.

Japan also sealed itself off to preserve traditional culture and society. This threatened American interests. After unsuccessful attempts to establish commercial relations, Commodore Matthew Perry invaded Edo (Tokyo) Bay. Relying on gunboat diplomacy by threatening to attack, he demanded and obtained diplomatic negotiations that led to access to two ports and permissible trade.

An Albanian-born, Turkish-speaking general Muhammad Ali became governor of Egypt after a brief French occupation. He built a state based on European models, improving the military, reforming government bureaucracy, cultivating new lands, and improving communication networks. Europeans saw opportunities for work and profit. Egyptian landowners “modernized” agriculture to the detriment of peasant living standards. Ali’s grandson Ismail further westernized Egypt. He promoted large irrigation networks that boosted cotton production and exports to Europe, including the Suez Canal. Arabic became the official language, young Egyptians spread European skills, and Cairo adopted Western infrastructure. This led to debt, and France and Britain forced Ismael to appoint their commissioners to oversee Egyptian finance. Europeans were effectively ruling Egypt. Dissent grew and culminated in the Egyptian Nationalist Party. When the French and British tried to force Ismael to abdicate to his son Mohamed Twefik Pasha, riots broke out and intensified after Europeans were killed and the British bombarded Alexandria. Egyptian Nationalist Party leader Colonel Ahmed Arabi led a revolt that was put down by a British expeditionary force. British controlled the khedive (prince), and Egyptian anticolonial resistance remained.

Western expansion reached its height in a period known as New Imperialism from 1880 and 1914. In contrast to the expansion from 1816 to 1880, European nations built empires under direct rule, similar to past colonialism. By the early twentieth century, almost 84% of the globe was under European rule. Aimed primarily at Africa and Asia, this period had momentous consequences that often led to tensions among competing states that resulted in war.

Prior to 1880, Europeans controlled 10% of Africa. Britain took control of Dutch Settlements under Napoleon. Dutch settlers fought the Zulu and Xhosa for land. Boers/Afrikaners proclaimed independence and defended against the British. Between 1880 and 1900, European nations vigorously scrambled for African possessions, and only Ethiopia and Liberia remained independent.

King Leopold II of Belgium energetically sought expansion. He sent journalist and part-time explorer Henry M. Stanley to the Congo basin to sign unfair treaties with African chiefs and plant the Belgian flag. This alarmed the French, who sent an expedition under Pierre de Brazza, who began to establish a French protectorate on the north bank of the Congo River. By 1882, much of Europe had caught “African fever”.

To lay some ground rules for the spur of competition, French statesman Jules Ferry and Bismarck called the Berlin Conference. They established that European claims had to rest on an effective occupation-a strong presence in that territory. It legitimized British and French claims and Leopold’s rule over a neutral Congo Free State.

The conference agreed to work to stop slavery and the slave trade in Africa, but Leopold’s territory exemplified some of the worst abuses against native peoples by any European imperial power. Africans were forced to labor under terrible conditions so Belgium could benefit from rubber and ivory. News of the atrocities made its way back to Europe, causing a public scandal. Efforts of those like the Congo Reform Association forced Leopold to end his rule, but only after 5 to 10 million Africans had died.

Bismarck changed his mind about the little value of colonies. Germany established protectorates over several African kingdoms. Revolts led to military intervention and full-scale warfare. In German Southwest Africa, around 100,000 Africans were massacred.

The prime minister of Britain’s Cape Colony Cecil Rhodes led the British over the Afrikaner states and established protectorates over Bechuanaland (now Botswana) and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe and Zambia). The development of gold mines led to conflict which erupted in the South African War or Boer War. After initial Afrikaners victories, the British sent around 180,000 troops, which put the Afrikaners on the defensive and led to a guerrilla war. Both sides enlisted help from indigenous African troops. The British resorted to scorched earth policies and forced Afrikaners into concentration camps. The British won, but it provoked liberal outrage at home. The Afrikaner-Boer territories were united in a new Union of South Africa that was largely “self-governing” but still under British control. Afrikaners gradually took political power.

After fighting to enlarge colonies in West Africa (which resulted in a massacre of British troops in Khartoum), the British sought to establish permanent rule in Sudanese territory. General Sir Herbert Kitchener led them up the Nile, and they cut down Sudanese troops at the Battle of Omdurman with the use of the Maxim machine gun. When the British found that France had already occupied the village of Fashoda, a diplomatic crisis of imperial competition known as the Fashoda Incident took place. The two nations were on the brink of war until France backed down.

While the division of Africa was more dramatic, Europeans also sought control over Asia. The Dutch gradually took over the Malay Archipelago, although they shared some spoils with Britain and Germany. In the 1880s, the French took Indochina. Russia reached the border of Afghanistan in 1885 while to the east, they encroached on China’s outlying provinces. The U.S. took the Philippines from Spain in the Spanish-American War. They displayed they had no intention of granting the independence it promised, and revolt ensued.

New Imperialism had many causes. In a new economic climate in which other nations were catching up to Great Britain in industrialization, Britain followed other nations’ seizure of territory to keep up economically. In actuality, new colonies had limited economic gain, but European nations clung to them nonetheless. Also, many saw colonial power as a sign of a powerful nation. German nationalist historian Henrich von Treitschke summed up the harsh idea of colonial expansion inspired by Social Darwinism and pseudoscientific racial doctrines. The West’s technological and military superiority also fostered expansion. The Maxim machine gun was unmatched. Quinine effectively controlled malaria, which previously decimated whites who venture into the tropics. The steamship and the international telegraph permitted Western powers to quickly concentrate their firepower in a given area when it was needed. Conservative leaders, especially in Germany and Russia, manipulated colonial issues to divert popular attention from domestic issues and to create a false sense of national unity. Certain groups like white settlers, missionaries and humanitarians, shipping companies, and the military had their own reasons for expansion.

Many believed that Westerners should civilize more “primitive” nonwhite people. They thought that eventually, these “savages” would benefit from factors of Western life. Rudyard Kipling summarized the idea with his poem “The White Man’s Burden”. Many Europeans and Americans accepted the ideology of the white man’s burden. Proponents of imperial expansion encouraged women to serve in the colonies, believing it would stop “race mixing”-the tendency for European men to establish relationships with indigenous women. European control facilitated the spread of Christianity.

Many Westerners were often fascinated by foreign cultures. The term Orientalism, coined by 20th-century scholar Edward Said, describes the fascination and stereotypical and often racist Western understanding of non-Westerners. Said believed it was impossible for Westerners to view or understand non-westerners without falling into an Orientalist stereotype that often adopted “us versus them” standpoints.

Ethnography and anthropology emerged as academic disciplines. Studies of foreign culture, artifact collecting, and literature support a view of non-Westerners as mysterious and exotic.

Some, like radical English economist J.A. Hobson, were bitter critics of expansion. Hobson, who wrote Imperialism, argued that attempts to colonize was due to the economic needs of unregulated capitalism and that only unscrupulous special-interest groups profited from this, at the expense of European working-class taxpayers and indigenous peoples. It took attention away from domestic problems. Marxist critics like Rosa Luxemburg and Vladimir Lenin argued that imperialism was economically inefficient and that it signaled the decay of capitalism. However, most were convinced imperialism was profitable, but the moral condemnation of whites’ imperious rule of nonwhites had an impact. Joseph Conrad criticized European’s selfishness in Heart of Darkness. Critics pointed out that Europeans were making liberal gains but imposed military dictatorships on their colonies.

Africans and Asians viewed expansion as a profoundly disruptive assault on existing ruling classes, local economies, and long-standing ways of life.

Generally, the initial response was to drive unwelcome foreigners away, but the superior military technology of the industrialized West almost always prevailed. Some thought that the West was superior in some ways, and thought it necessary to adopt some Western ways. Europeans tried to govern smoothly and effectively, and political participation was limited to small elites. Support for European rule among subjugated peoples was shallow and weak. Much of the burden fell on peasants and farmers in the colonies. Everyday forms of evasion and resistance stopped short of defiance but still presented a challenge to Western rule. Nonconformists desired economic emancipation and political independence and often turned to liberalism and nationalism.

India had been ruled practically absolutely by Britain for a long time. Muslim and Hindu mercenaries in the 1857-1858 Great Rebellion led an insurrection that spread through northern and central India before it was put down. Britain then established direct control until Indian independence in 1947. A white elite ruled India from Britain and in India. They were generally competent and sought the well-being of the Indian population, but practiced strict job discrimination and social segregation, and most of its members saw Indians as racially inferior. British women were influential in household management. Some called for improvements in education and general well-being of Indian women.

British imperialists worked to westernize Indian society. Realizing the need for education subordinates, the British established a modern system of secondary education, which allowed some to socially advance. High-caste Hindus emerged as a new elite who were intermediaries between the British and the Indians. They promoted economic, agricultural, and infrastructural improvements, but most of the money went to elites. The British created a unified, powerful state with a well-educated Indian bureaucracy even though the population was deeply divided over religion. Indians were never equal to the British, and the government was based on dictatorship. The predominantly Hindu Indian National congress called for greater equality. A radical faction called for independence. A genuine movement for national independence was created.

Japan was a complex feudal society led by a figurehead emperor, the shogun, and the samurai. Deeply insulted by American intrusion and unequal foreign treaties, a wave of anti-foreign terrorism and anti-government assassinations ensued. In response, American, British, Dutch, and French ships destroyed key forts. A coalition of patriotic samurai staged a relatively-bloodless coup and restored political power in the Meiji Restoration.

Leaders dropped anti-foreign attacks and adapted Western civilization that they thought was superior in military and industry. In 1871, they abolished the old feudal structure of aristocratic, decentralized government and formed a strong unified state. They industrialized, promoted greater equality, and allowed freedom of movement. They created a powerful modern navy and completely reorganized the army along European lines.

By 1890, it had given way to an authoritarian constitution and a rejection of democracy. It copied Western imperialism with its “opening” of Korea, the defeat of China in the Sino-Japanese War, and the taking of modern-day Taiwan. They competed with Western powers, like in the Russo-Japanese War. By 1910, it had become a major imperial power.

In 1860, the Chinese Qing Dynasty appeared on the verge of collapse. However, new and effective leadership and the lessening of destructive foreign aggression that led to European contribution moved China towards domestic reform and limited cooperation with the West. However, defeat in the Sino-Japanese War and the subsequent harsh peace treaty revealed China’s helplessness and led to a rush by foreign powers for concessions and protectorates. This led to a renewed drive for fundamental reforms.

The hundred days of reform was put to rest when empress Tzu Hsi and her supporters imprisoned the emperor. Violent anti-foreign reaction swept the country. A patriotic, secret society known as the Boxers led the bloody and destructive movement against foreigners. The empress declared war on foreign powers. The Boxers attacked the Beijing embassy, and foreign troops quickly defeated the Boxers and occupied and plundered Beijing. China was forced to accept a long list of penalties. In the following years, anarchy and foreign influence spread. The Qing dynasty was ended in 1912, and a Western-style republic was proclaimed.

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