Rise of the New Imperialism
Encyclopedia
The "Rise of the New Imperialism" era overlaps with the Pax Britannica
period (1815–1870). The American Revolution
and the collapse of the Spanish empire
in the New World
in the early 1810-20s, following the revolutions in the viceroyalties of New Spain
, New Granada
, Peru
and the Río de la Plata
ended the first era of Europe
an empire. Especially in the United Kingdom
(UK), these revolutions helped show the deficiencies of mercantilism
, the doctrine of economic competition for finite wealth which had supported earlier imperial expansion. The 1846 repeal of the Corn Laws
marked the adoption of free trade
by the UK. As the ‘workshop of the world’, the United Kingdom was supplying a large share of the manufactured goods consumed by such nations as Germany
, France
, Belgium
and the United States
. The Pax Britannica era also saw the enforced opening of key markets to European, particularly British, commerce: Turkey
and Egypt
in 1838, Persia in 1841, China
in 1842 with the First Opium War
, and Japan
in 1858 leading to the Meiji period
.
which established the Concert of Europe
continental order, the British established what was known as the Pax Britannica
, which lasted until the 1870 Franco-Prussian War
. In the UK, the 1846 repeal of the Corn Laws
demonstrated the increasing appeal of Adam Smith
's liberalist theories
.
Richard Cobden
, and other disciples of Smith contended that the military and bureaucratic costs of occupation often exceeded the financial return to the taxpayer: formal empire afforded no reciprocal economic benefit when trade would continue in its absence, as instanced by the United Kingdom's lucrative commerce with the now independent United States
. Official acceptance of the new doctrine was marked by the United Kingdom's adoption of free trade with the 1846 repeal of the Corn Laws
and the subsequent granting of internal self-government to the white settler populations of the Canadian
provinces and the Australasia
n colonies, and governments even considered the sale of some colonial outposts to lesser powers.
after the Franco-Prussian War
was occasioned by changes in the European and world economies and in the Continental balance of power, such as the breakdown of the Concert of Europe
. The establishment of nation-states in Germany
and Italy
resolved two of the great territorial issues which had kept the United Kingdom's prospective rivals enmeshed in Continental affairs. These developments stimulated imperial competition, in spite of the United Kingdom's long-established naval and maritime superiority.
Economically, to the commercial competition of old rivals like France
was now added that of newly industrialising powers such as Germany and the United States
. All sought ways of challenging what they saw as the United Kingdom's undue dominance in world markets—the consequence of her early industrialisation and maritime supremacy.
and the United States
, began to industrialise, the United Kingdom's comparative advantage in trade in finished goods diminished. While it previously had a near monopoly over industrially-produced goods it began to encounter far stiffer competition in overseas markets from the other powers. The United Kingdom
's share of world trade fell from a quarter in 1880 to a sixth in 1913. The United Kingdom
was even beginning to lose its unrivalled dominance in markets such as India
.
To make matters worse, British manufactures in the staple industries of the Industrial Revolution
were beginning to face real competition abroad. The German textile and metal
industries, for example, had by the beginning of the Franco-Prussian War
surpassed those of the United Kingdom in organisation and technical efficiency and usurped British manufactures in the domestic market. A number of changes had made this possible, such as the development of new techniques to remove phosphorus from the massive iron deposits of Lorraine
, which left France
and Germany
with cheap and plentiful sources of iron
. Both Continental powers had also begun large government-supported railway programs, and had passed the United Kingdom in total length of track by the 1880s.
The development of steam shipping had also firmly brought the United States
and Japan
into the European market and greatly lowered transport costs. By the turn of the century, the German metal
and engineering
industries would be producing heavily for the international market as well. More modern technologies such as electricity were often more advanced and widely used in Germany
than in the United Kingdom
, which possessed older, less-productive plants.
of 1929-1939. It had a number of causes and was itself an important factor in the shift toward formal colonialism.
Amalgamation of industry, in the forms of larger corporations and mergers and alliances of separate firms had created inefficiencies and made economies more unstable. Technological advances along with monopolistic mass-production greatly expanded output and lowered production costs. As a result, production often exceeded domestic demand. In agriculture, large-scale imports of cheaper American grain and poor harvests drove down European producer prices and incomes and further constrained overall demand among a population which, outside the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and parts of Germany, remained predominantly rural. International liquidity was constrained by the widespread adoption of gold-based currency at a time when little new gold was being discovered.
The long-term effects of the Depression were particularly evident in the United Kingdom, the forerunner of Europe's industrial states. Practically every industry suffered after 1873 from lengthy periods of low—and falling—profit rates and price deflation. The crisis brought pressure on governments to support British industry and commerce and to protect the overseas investments interests on which the country had come to rely to offset its long-standing merchandise trade deficit and more recent loss of industrial market share.
The Depression also struck the powers of Continental Europe, prompting their abandonment of free trade (by Germany in 1879, by France in 1881). As domestic demand and export opportunities thus became further limited, some business and government leaders concluded that sheltered overseas markets would solve the problems of low prices and demand caused by stagnating and increasingly fragmented Continental markets.
) of consolidation not only in the form of larger corporations but also through mergers and alliances of separate firms. To create and operate such industrial cartels required larger sums than the manufacturer could ordinarily provide, resulting, it is argued, in the displacement of industrial capital by finance capital. By the 1870s, London financial houses thus achieved an unprecedented control of industry.
Close association of industry and banks enabled financiers to exert considerable influence over the British economy and politics. As a more ‘gentlemanly’ pursuit than industry, finance was able to appeal to the United Kingdom's aristocracy, and the influence of London's financial interest began rising precipitously in a government bureaucracy still dominated by those with formal titles. Late Victorian political leaders, most of whom were stockholders, ‘shared a common culture with the financial class,’ according to imperial historian Bernard Porter. Thus, pro-imperialists linked to the financial sector in the 1870s would be in a far better position to influence government than industrialists in the 1850s.
The enhanced power of financiers enabled them to influence policy makers in the direction of government ‘protection’ of overseas investments—particularly those in securities of foreign governments and in foreign-government-backed development activities such as railroads. Although it had been official British policy for years to support such investments, with the large expansion of these investments after about 1860 and with the economic and political instability of many areas of high investment (such as Egypt
), calls upon the government for methodical protection became increasingly pronounced.
This prompted imperial critic J.A. Hobson to conclude that finance was manipulating events to its own profit. For Hobson, Overseas markets, whether in colonial areas or in nominally sovereign, pre-industrial states outside Western Europe, offered a higher return on investments owing to their cheap labour, limited competition, and abundant raw materials. While not downplaying this influence of the City's financial interests, later historians such as Bernard Porter, P.J. Cain and A.G. Hopkins contest Hobson's conspiratorial overtones and ‘reductionisms’. Nevertheless, these financial interests were often the prime movers in the drive for imperial expansion.
As Europe descended into an era of aggressive national rivalry between newly industrializing nation-states, many European statesmen and industrialists wanted to accelerate colonial expansion, securing colonies before they strictly needed them. Their reasoning was that markets might soon become glutted, and a nation's economic survival depend on its being able to offload its surplus products elsewhere.
The United Kingdom was no longer the world's sole modern, industrial nation. Pessimists inferred that unless the United Kingdom acquired secure colonial markets for its industrial products and secure sources of raw materials, the other industrial states would seize them themselves and would precipitate a more rapid decline in the growth of British business, power, and standards of living.
British imperialists thus concluded that formal imperialism was necessary for the United Kingdom because of the relative decline of the British share of the world's export trade and the rise of German, American, and French economic competition and protectionism. Thus it has been argued that formal imperialism for the United Kingdom was a symptom and an effect of its relative decline in the world, and not of strength.
While protectionism spread through the countries of Europe and to the United States, the only power to escape this trend was the United Kingdom, whose essential strength lay precisely in its pre-eminence on a formerly open world market. German, American, and French imperialists, as mentioned, argued that the United Kingdom's world position gave her undue advantages on international markets, thus limiting their economic growth.
Some see the root cause of the United Kingdom's adoption of the New Imperialism as primarily strategic or pre-emptive. The failure in the 1900s of Chamberlain's Tariff Reform campaign for Imperial protection illustrates the United Kingdom's underlying attachment to free trade despite her loss of international market share. The adoption of the ‘New imperialism’ can thus be seen as motivated primarily by the need to protect existing trade links and to prevent the absorption of overseas markets into the increasingly closed imperial trading blocs of rival powers.
's centuries-old southward expansion: in 1878 the United Kingdom took control of Cyprus as a base for action against a Russian attack on the Ottoman Empire
, and invaded Afghanistan
to forestall an increase in Russian influence there. British Conservatives
in particular feared that Russia
would continue to expand southwards into Ottoman Empire
territory and acquire a base on the Mediterranean or even Constantinople
.
As British Viceroy
in India
, Lord Curzon urged a strong hand against the un-subjugated peoples of India's north-west frontier areas to prevent any destabilisation which might weaken India's forward defenses against a possible Russian move. The ‘Great Game’ in Asia ended with the furthest projection of Curzon's policy in a bloody British expedition against Tibet
in 1903-04.
British statesmen long feared that the United Kingdom's colonies remained vulnerable to a land attack by Russia combined with a naval assault by Russia's ally France
, prompting in part Anglo-German consultations (1898 and 1901) and the Anglo-Japanese alliance of 1902, before the Entente Cordiale
(1904) resolved Anglo-French animosities, laying the basis for rapprochement with Russia.
In 1913, only 11 percent of the world's trade took place between primary producers themselves. The United Kingdom ranked as the world's largest trading nation in 1860, but by 1913 it had lost ground to both the United States and Germany: British and German exports in that year each totaled $2.3 billion, and those of the United States exceeded $2.4 billion. More significant was the emigration of their goods and capital.
As foreign trade increased, so in proportion did the amount of it going outside the Continent. In 1840, 7.7 million pounds of her export and 9.2 million pounds of her import trade was done outside Europe; in 1880, the figures were 38.4 million and 73 million. Europe's economic contacts with the wider world were multiplying, much as the United Kingdom's had been doing for years.
. During the era of New Imperialism the territorial claims of the Dutch East India Company VOC
expanded into a fully fledged colony named the Dutch East Indies
. Partly driven by re-newed colonial aspirations of fellow European nation states the Dutch strived to establish unchallenged control of the archipelago
now known as Indonesia
.
was occupied by the French forces of Napoleon. The Dutch government went into exile in England and formally ceded its colonial possessions to Great Britain. The pro-French Governor General Daendels of the Dutch East Indies fought the British in the Anglo-Dutch Java War
before surrendering the colony. He was replaced by the British Governor Raffles
, who the later founded the city of Singapore
. The following 10 years of the British interregnum
(1806–1816) saw an influx of British settlers and also many British companies in the East Indies.
colonial government of the East Indies was ceded back to the Dutch in 1817. To secure unchallenged dominion over its colony in the East Indies the Dutch started to consolidate its power base through extensive military campaigns and elaborate diplomatic alliances with indigenous rulers ensuring the Dutch tricolor was firmly planted in all corners of the Archipelago
. These military campaigns included: the Padri War
(1821–1837), the Java War
(1825–1830) and the Aceh War
(1873–1904). This raised the need for a considerable military build up of the colonial army (KNIL). From all over Europe soldiers were recruited to join the KNIL.
already burdened by substantial reparation payments to the new German Empire
following her defeat in the Franco-Prussian War
. The nation was also divided by the civil war
between socialists and republicans in 1871. The French government ended free trade and began to pursue colonisation as a way to increase their power, aid their economy and restore national prestige.
, so would Germany following its own unification in 1871. Both countries undertook ambitious naval expansion in the 1890s. Just as Germany reacted to depression with the adoption of tariff protection in 1879, so would the United States with the landslide election victory of William McKinley
, who had risen to national prominence six years earlier with the passage of the McKinley Tariff of 1890. Germany, a leading military power after unification, abandoned free trade and embraced expansionism with its adoption of a tariff in 1879, its acquisition of a colonial empire in 1884-1885, and its building of a powerful navy after 1898-1900.
German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck
revised his initial dislike of colonies (which he had seen as burdensome and useless) partly under pressure for colonial expansion to match that of the other European states, but also under the notion that Germany's entry into the colonial scramble could press the United Kingdom into conceding broader German strategic ambitions.
United States expansionism had its roots in domestic concerns and economic conditions, as in other newly industrializing nations where government sought to accelerate internal development. The rapid turn to imperialism in the late nineteenth century can be correlated with the cyclical economic crises that adversely affected many groups.
The Panic of 1893
contributed to the growing mood for expansionism. Like the post-1873 period in Europe (the Long Depression
), the main features of the U.S. depression included deflation
, rural decline, and unemployment, which aggravated the bitter social protests of the ‘Gilded Age
’—the populist movement
, the free-silver crusade, and violent labour disputes such as the Pullman
and Homestead
strikes.
The Panic of 1893 contributed to fierce competition over markets, as the long Depression two decades earlier across the Atlantic. Economic depression led some U.S. businessmen and politicians from the mid-1880s to come to the same conclusion as their European counterparts: that industry and capital had exceeded the capacity of existing markets and needed new outlets.
Advocates of empire also drew upon to a tradition of westward expansion over the course of the previous century. The ‘closing of the Frontier’ identified by the 1890 Census report and publicised by historian
Frederick Jackson Turner
in his 1893 paper The Significance of the Frontier in American History, contributed to fears of constrained natural resource.
Influential politicians such as Henry Cabot Lodge
, William McKinley, and Theodore Roosevelt
advocated a more aggressive foreign policy to pull the United States out of the depression. However, opposition to expansionism was strong and vocal in the United States. The U.S. became involved in the War with Spain only after Cubans convinced the U.S. government that Spain was brutalizing them. Whatever the causes, the result of the war was that the U.S. came into the possession of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. It was, however, only the Philippines that remained, for three decades, as a colonial possession.
While Germany, the United States, Italy
, and other more recently industrialised empires were under relatively less pressure to offload surplus capital than the United Kingdom, the emerging empires resorted to protectionism and formal empire in response to the United Kingdom's advantage on international markets.
Although U.S. capital investments within the Philippines and Puerto Rico were relatively small (figures that would seemingly detract from the broader economic implications on first glance), these colonies were strategic outposts for expanding trade with Asia, particularly China and Latin America, enabling the United States to reap the benefit of the ‘Open Door
’ in China and ‘Dollar Diplomacy
’ in Latin America. The U.S. gradually surpassed the United Kingdom as the leading investor of capital in Latin America and East Asia—a process largely completed by the end of the Great War.
Japan
's development after the Meiji Restoration
of 1868 followed the Western lead in industrialisation and militarism
, enabling the empire to gain control of Korea
in 1894 and a sphere of influence in Manchuria
(1905) following its defeat of Russia
. Japan was responding in part to the actions of more established powers, and her expansionism drew on the harnessing of traditional values to more modern aspirations for great power-status: not until the 1930s was Japan to become a net exporter of capital.
, for instance, urged the United States
to take up the ‘White Man's Burden’ of bringing ‘civilization’ to the other races of the world, whether they wanted such civilization or not. Social Darwinism
also became current throughout Western Europe and the United States, while the paternalistic French-style 'mission of civilization' (mission civilatrice) appealed to many on the Continent.
The notion of rule over tropical lands commanded widespread acceptance among metropolitan populations: even among those who associated imperial colonisation with oppression and exploitation, the 1904 Congress of the Socialist International
concluded that the colonial peoples should be taken in hand by future European socialist governments and led by them to eventual independence.
Observing the rise of trade unionism, socialism
, and other protest movements during an era of mass society in both Europe and later North America, elites sought to whip up imperial sentiment to enlist the support of the masses. The new mass media of the United States and the United Kingdom promoted jingoism
to build their circulation during overseas adventures like the Spanish-American War
of 1898, the Second Boer War
of 1899-1902 and the suppression of the Chinese anti-western Boxer Rebellion
(1900).
Many of Europe's major elites also found some advantages in formal, overseas expansion: mammoth monopolies wanted imperial support to secure overseas investments against competition and domestic political tensions abroad; bureaucrats wanted more offices, military officers desired promotion, and the traditional but waning landed gentry wanted formal titles.
In the colonies themselves, a section of the population came to terms with the new imperial administration and took part in its imposition or maintenance: the imperial rulers everywhere exploited divisions within the territories they sought to rule, enlisting chiefs or communities keen to overturn their pre-colonial status. Both traditional and emerging elites sought a place in the political framework and sent their sons to be educated in metropolitan schools and universities, though many of the professional classes came to resent the limitation of political and government opportunities, contributing to the later growth of modern colonial nationalism
.
Pax Britannica
Pax Britannica was the period of relative peace in Europe when the British Empire controlled most of the key maritime trade routes and enjoyed unchallenged sea power...
period (1815–1870). The American Revolution
American Revolution
The American Revolution was the political upheaval during the last half of the 18th century in which thirteen colonies in North America joined together to break free from the British Empire, combining to become the United States of America...
and the collapse of the Spanish empire
Spanish Empire
The Spanish Empire comprised territories and colonies administered directly by Spain in Europe, in America, Africa, Asia and Oceania. It originated during the Age of Exploration and was therefore one of the first global empires. At the time of Habsburgs, Spain reached the peak of its world power....
in the New World
New World
The New World is one of the names used for the Western Hemisphere, specifically America and sometimes Oceania . The term originated in the late 15th century, when America had been recently discovered by European explorers, expanding the geographical horizon of the people of the European middle...
in the early 1810-20s, following the revolutions in the viceroyalties of New Spain
New Spain
New Spain, formally called the Viceroyalty of New Spain , was a viceroyalty of the Spanish colonial empire, comprising primarily territories in what was known then as 'América Septentrional' or North America. Its capital was Mexico City, formerly Tenochtitlan, capital of the Aztec Empire...
, New Granada
Viceroyalty of New Granada
The Viceroyalty of New Granada was the name given on 27 May 1717, to a Spanish colonial jurisdiction in northern South America, corresponding mainly to modern Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, and Venezuela. The territory corresponding to Panama was incorporated later in 1739...
, Peru
Viceroyalty of Peru
Created in 1542, the Viceroyalty of Peru was a Spanish colonial administrative district that originally contained most of Spanish-ruled South America, governed from the capital of Lima...
and the Río de la Plata
Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata
The Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, , was the last and most short-lived Viceroyalty of the Spanish Empire in America.The Viceroyalty was established in 1776 out of several former Viceroyalty of Perú dependencies that mainly extended over the Río de la Plata basin, roughly the present day...
ended the first era of Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
an empire. Especially in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was the formal name of the United Kingdom during the period when what is now the Republic of Ireland formed a part of it....
(UK), these revolutions helped show the deficiencies of mercantilism
Mercantilism
Mercantilism is the economic doctrine in which government control of foreign trade is of paramount importance for ensuring the prosperity and security of the state. In particular, it demands a positive balance of trade. Mercantilism dominated Western European economic policy and discourse from...
, the doctrine of economic competition for finite wealth which had supported earlier imperial expansion. The 1846 repeal of the Corn Laws
Corn Laws
The Corn Laws were trade barriers designed to protect cereal producers in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland against competition from less expensive foreign imports between 1815 and 1846. The barriers were introduced by the Importation Act 1815 and repealed by the Importation Act 1846...
marked the adoption of free trade
Free trade
Under a free trade policy, prices emerge from supply and demand, and are the sole determinant of resource allocation. 'Free' trade differs from other forms of trade policy where the allocation of goods and services among trading countries are determined by price strategies that may differ from...
by the UK. As the ‘workshop of the world’, the United Kingdom was supplying a large share of the manufactured goods consumed by such nations as Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, Belgium
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
and the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. The Pax Britannica era also saw the enforced opening of key markets to European, particularly British, commerce: Turkey
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
and Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
in 1838, Persia in 1841, China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
in 1842 with the First Opium War
First Opium War
The First Anglo-Chinese War , known popularly as the First Opium War or simply the Opium War, was fought between the United Kingdom and the Qing Dynasty of China over their conflicting viewpoints on diplomatic relations, trade, and the administration of justice...
, and Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
in 1858 leading to the Meiji period
Meiji period
The , also known as the Meiji era, is a Japanese era which extended from September 1868 through July 1912. This period represents the first half of the Empire of Japan.- Meiji Restoration and the emperor :...
.
Background: Before New Imperialism
After the 1815 Congress of ViennaCongress of Vienna
The Congress of Vienna was a conference of ambassadors of European states chaired by Klemens Wenzel von Metternich, and held in Vienna from September, 1814 to June, 1815. The objective of the Congress was to settle the many issues arising from the French Revolutionary Wars, the Napoleonic Wars,...
which established the Concert of Europe
Concert of Europe
The Concert of Europe , also known as the Congress System after the Congress of Vienna, was the balance of power that existed in Europe from the end of the Napoleonic Wars to the outbreak of World War I , albeit with major alterations after the revolutions of 1848...
continental order, the British established what was known as the Pax Britannica
Pax Britannica
Pax Britannica was the period of relative peace in Europe when the British Empire controlled most of the key maritime trade routes and enjoyed unchallenged sea power...
, which lasted until the 1870 Franco-Prussian War
Franco-Prussian War
The Franco-Prussian War or Franco-German War, often referred to in France as the 1870 War was a conflict between the Second French Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia. Prussia was aided by the North German Confederation, of which it was a member, and the South German states of Baden, Württemberg and...
. In the UK, the 1846 repeal of the Corn Laws
Corn Laws
The Corn Laws were trade barriers designed to protect cereal producers in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland against competition from less expensive foreign imports between 1815 and 1846. The barriers were introduced by the Importation Act 1815 and repealed by the Importation Act 1846...
demonstrated the increasing appeal of Adam Smith
Adam Smith
Adam Smith was a Scottish social philosopher and a pioneer of political economy. One of the key figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, Smith is the author of The Theory of Moral Sentiments and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations...
's liberalist theories
Classical liberalism
Classical liberalism is the philosophy committed to the ideal of limited government, constitutionalism, rule of law, due process, and liberty of individuals including freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and free markets....
.
Richard Cobden
Richard Cobden
Richard Cobden was a British manufacturer and Radical and Liberal statesman, associated with John Bright in the formation of the Anti-Corn Law League as well as with the Cobden-Chevalier Treaty...
, and other disciples of Smith contended that the military and bureaucratic costs of occupation often exceeded the financial return to the taxpayer: formal empire afforded no reciprocal economic benefit when trade would continue in its absence, as instanced by the United Kingdom's lucrative commerce with the now independent United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. Official acceptance of the new doctrine was marked by the United Kingdom's adoption of free trade with the 1846 repeal of the Corn Laws
Corn Laws
The Corn Laws were trade barriers designed to protect cereal producers in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland against competition from less expensive foreign imports between 1815 and 1846. The barriers were introduced by the Importation Act 1815 and repealed by the Importation Act 1846...
and the subsequent granting of internal self-government to the white settler populations of the Canadian
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
provinces and the Australasia
Australasia
Australasia is a region of Oceania comprising Australia, New Zealand, the island of New Guinea, and neighbouring islands in the Pacific Ocean. The term was coined by Charles de Brosses in Histoire des navigations aux terres australes...
n colonies, and governments even considered the sale of some colonial outposts to lesser powers.
The breakdown of the Concert of Europe
The decline of Pax BritannicaPax Britannica
Pax Britannica was the period of relative peace in Europe when the British Empire controlled most of the key maritime trade routes and enjoyed unchallenged sea power...
after the Franco-Prussian War
Franco-Prussian War
The Franco-Prussian War or Franco-German War, often referred to in France as the 1870 War was a conflict between the Second French Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia. Prussia was aided by the North German Confederation, of which it was a member, and the South German states of Baden, Württemberg and...
was occasioned by changes in the European and world economies and in the Continental balance of power, such as the breakdown of the Concert of Europe
Concert of Europe
The Concert of Europe , also known as the Congress System after the Congress of Vienna, was the balance of power that existed in Europe from the end of the Napoleonic Wars to the outbreak of World War I , albeit with major alterations after the revolutions of 1848...
. The establishment of nation-states in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
and Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
resolved two of the great territorial issues which had kept the United Kingdom's prospective rivals enmeshed in Continental affairs. These developments stimulated imperial competition, in spite of the United Kingdom's long-established naval and maritime superiority.
Economically, to the commercial competition of old rivals like France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
was now added that of newly industrialising powers such as Germany and the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. All sought ways of challenging what they saw as the United Kingdom's undue dominance in world markets—the consequence of her early industrialisation and maritime supremacy.
Loss of British comparative advantage in manufacturing
As the other powers such as GermanyGermany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
and the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, began to industrialise, the United Kingdom's comparative advantage in trade in finished goods diminished. While it previously had a near monopoly over industrially-produced goods it began to encounter far stiffer competition in overseas markets from the other powers. The United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
's share of world trade fell from a quarter in 1880 to a sixth in 1913. The United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
was even beginning to lose its unrivalled dominance in markets such as India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
.
To make matters worse, British manufactures in the staple industries of the Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the social, economic and cultural conditions of the times...
were beginning to face real competition abroad. The German textile and metal
Metal
A metal , is an element, compound, or alloy that is a good conductor of both electricity and heat. Metals are usually malleable and shiny, that is they reflect most of incident light...
industries, for example, had by the beginning of the Franco-Prussian War
Franco-Prussian War
The Franco-Prussian War or Franco-German War, often referred to in France as the 1870 War was a conflict between the Second French Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia. Prussia was aided by the North German Confederation, of which it was a member, and the South German states of Baden, Württemberg and...
surpassed those of the United Kingdom in organisation and technical efficiency and usurped British manufactures in the domestic market. A number of changes had made this possible, such as the development of new techniques to remove phosphorus from the massive iron deposits of Lorraine
Lorraine (province)
The Duchy of Upper Lorraine was an historical duchy roughly corresponding with the present-day northeastern Lorraine region of France, including parts of modern Luxembourg and Germany. The main cities were Metz, Verdun, and the historic capital Nancy....
, which left France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
and Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
with cheap and plentiful sources of iron
Iron
Iron is a chemical element with the symbol Fe and atomic number 26. It is a metal in the first transition series. It is the most common element forming the planet Earth as a whole, forming much of Earth's outer and inner core. It is the fourth most common element in the Earth's crust...
. Both Continental powers had also begun large government-supported railway programs, and had passed the United Kingdom in total length of track by the 1880s.
The development of steam shipping had also firmly brought the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
into the European market and greatly lowered transport costs. By the turn of the century, the German metal
Metal
A metal , is an element, compound, or alloy that is a good conductor of both electricity and heat. Metals are usually malleable and shiny, that is they reflect most of incident light...
and engineering
Engineering
Engineering is the discipline, art, skill and profession of acquiring and applying scientific, mathematical, economic, social, and practical knowledge, in order to design and build structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes that safely realize improvements to the lives of...
industries would be producing heavily for the international market as well. More modern technologies such as electricity were often more advanced and widely used in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
than in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, which possessed older, less-productive plants.
The Long Depression
The prolonged period of price deflation and intermittent business crisis between 1873 and 1896 has been described as the ‘Long Depression’, and is sometimes considered to be economically more devastating than the Great DepressionGreat Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
of 1929-1939. It had a number of causes and was itself an important factor in the shift toward formal colonialism.
Amalgamation of industry, in the forms of larger corporations and mergers and alliances of separate firms had created inefficiencies and made economies more unstable. Technological advances along with monopolistic mass-production greatly expanded output and lowered production costs. As a result, production often exceeded domestic demand. In agriculture, large-scale imports of cheaper American grain and poor harvests drove down European producer prices and incomes and further constrained overall demand among a population which, outside the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and parts of Germany, remained predominantly rural. International liquidity was constrained by the widespread adoption of gold-based currency at a time when little new gold was being discovered.
The long-term effects of the Depression were particularly evident in the United Kingdom, the forerunner of Europe's industrial states. Practically every industry suffered after 1873 from lengthy periods of low—and falling—profit rates and price deflation. The crisis brought pressure on governments to support British industry and commerce and to protect the overseas investments interests on which the country had come to rely to offset its long-standing merchandise trade deficit and more recent loss of industrial market share.
The Depression also struck the powers of Continental Europe, prompting their abandonment of free trade (by Germany in 1879, by France in 1881). As domestic demand and export opportunities thus became further limited, some business and government leaders concluded that sheltered overseas markets would solve the problems of low prices and demand caused by stagnating and increasingly fragmented Continental markets.
United Kingdom and the New Imperialism
The United Kingdom in the 1870s remained the world's foremost industrial power, but her share of world manufacturing output was already falling before the impact of international recession. Like the Dutch a century and a half earlier, the British coped with relative commercial and industrial decline in the latter half of the 19th century by becoming the world's preeminent bankers, and invisible exports of financial and shipping services alone kept the United Kingdom ‘out of the red.’Amalgamation of Industry
During the period of ‘cut-throat’ competition of the mid-Victorian era, producers became aware of the advantages (in mass production, lobbying power, and efficient union bustingUnion busting
Union busting is a wide range of activities undertaken by employers, their proxies, and governments, which attempt to prevent the formation or expansion of trade unions...
) of consolidation not only in the form of larger corporations but also through mergers and alliances of separate firms. To create and operate such industrial cartels required larger sums than the manufacturer could ordinarily provide, resulting, it is argued, in the displacement of industrial capital by finance capital. By the 1870s, London financial houses thus achieved an unprecedented control of industry.
Close association of industry and banks enabled financiers to exert considerable influence over the British economy and politics. As a more ‘gentlemanly’ pursuit than industry, finance was able to appeal to the United Kingdom's aristocracy, and the influence of London's financial interest began rising precipitously in a government bureaucracy still dominated by those with formal titles. Late Victorian political leaders, most of whom were stockholders, ‘shared a common culture with the financial class,’ according to imperial historian Bernard Porter. Thus, pro-imperialists linked to the financial sector in the 1870s would be in a far better position to influence government than industrialists in the 1850s.
The enhanced power of financiers enabled them to influence policy makers in the direction of government ‘protection’ of overseas investments—particularly those in securities of foreign governments and in foreign-government-backed development activities such as railroads. Although it had been official British policy for years to support such investments, with the large expansion of these investments after about 1860 and with the economic and political instability of many areas of high investment (such as Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
), calls upon the government for methodical protection became increasingly pronounced.
This prompted imperial critic J.A. Hobson to conclude that finance was manipulating events to its own profit. For Hobson, Overseas markets, whether in colonial areas or in nominally sovereign, pre-industrial states outside Western Europe, offered a higher return on investments owing to their cheap labour, limited competition, and abundant raw materials. While not downplaying this influence of the City's financial interests, later historians such as Bernard Porter, P.J. Cain and A.G. Hopkins contest Hobson's conspiratorial overtones and ‘reductionisms’. Nevertheless, these financial interests were often the prime movers in the drive for imperial expansion.
The UK's increased competition
The new interest of the emergent industrial powers in colonial expansion brought them into direct competition with the United Kingdom.As Europe descended into an era of aggressive national rivalry between newly industrializing nation-states, many European statesmen and industrialists wanted to accelerate colonial expansion, securing colonies before they strictly needed them. Their reasoning was that markets might soon become glutted, and a nation's economic survival depend on its being able to offload its surplus products elsewhere.
The United Kingdom was no longer the world's sole modern, industrial nation. Pessimists inferred that unless the United Kingdom acquired secure colonial markets for its industrial products and secure sources of raw materials, the other industrial states would seize them themselves and would precipitate a more rapid decline in the growth of British business, power, and standards of living.
British imperialists thus concluded that formal imperialism was necessary for the United Kingdom because of the relative decline of the British share of the world's export trade and the rise of German, American, and French economic competition and protectionism. Thus it has been argued that formal imperialism for the United Kingdom was a symptom and an effect of its relative decline in the world, and not of strength.
While protectionism spread through the countries of Europe and to the United States, the only power to escape this trend was the United Kingdom, whose essential strength lay precisely in its pre-eminence on a formerly open world market. German, American, and French imperialists, as mentioned, argued that the United Kingdom's world position gave her undue advantages on international markets, thus limiting their economic growth.
Some see the root cause of the United Kingdom's adoption of the New Imperialism as primarily strategic or pre-emptive. The failure in the 1900s of Chamberlain's Tariff Reform campaign for Imperial protection illustrates the United Kingdom's underlying attachment to free trade despite her loss of international market share. The adoption of the ‘New imperialism’ can thus be seen as motivated primarily by the need to protect existing trade links and to prevent the absorption of overseas markets into the increasingly closed imperial trading blocs of rival powers.
Russian expansionism
British colonial activity was motivated in part by fear of RussiaRussia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
's centuries-old southward expansion: in 1878 the United Kingdom took control of Cyprus as a base for action against a Russian attack on the Ottoman Empire
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
, and invaded Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
to forestall an increase in Russian influence there. British Conservatives
Conservative Party (UK)
The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...
in particular feared that Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
would continue to expand southwards into Ottoman Empire
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
territory and acquire a base on the Mediterranean or even Constantinople
Constantinople
Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...
.
As British Viceroy
Viceroy
A viceroy is a royal official who runs a country, colony, or province in the name of and as representative of the monarch. The term derives from the Latin prefix vice-, meaning "in the place of" and the French word roi, meaning king. A viceroy's province or larger territory is called a viceroyalty...
in India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
, Lord Curzon urged a strong hand against the un-subjugated peoples of India's north-west frontier areas to prevent any destabilisation which might weaken India's forward defenses against a possible Russian move. The ‘Great Game’ in Asia ended with the furthest projection of Curzon's policy in a bloody British expedition against Tibet
British expedition to Tibet
The British expedition to Tibet during 1903 and 1904 was an invasion of Tibet by British Indian forces, whose mission was to establish diplomatic relations and trade between the British Raj and Tibet...
in 1903-04.
British statesmen long feared that the United Kingdom's colonies remained vulnerable to a land attack by Russia combined with a naval assault by Russia's ally France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, prompting in part Anglo-German consultations (1898 and 1901) and the Anglo-Japanese alliance of 1902, before the Entente Cordiale
Entente Cordiale
The Entente Cordiale was a series of agreements signed on 8 April 1904 between the United Kingdom and the French Republic. Beyond the immediate concerns of colonial expansion addressed by the agreement, the signing of the Entente Cordiale marked the end of almost a millennium of intermittent...
(1904) resolved Anglo-French animosities, laying the basis for rapprochement with Russia.
Securing foreign trade
New Imperialism, economic and strategic in its inception and political in its expression, had a complex relationship with the development of capitalism on a world scale. Foreign trade tripled in volume between 1870 and 1914, although (again) most of the activity occurred among the industrialised countries, or between them and their suppliers of primary goods or their new markets.In 1913, only 11 percent of the world's trade took place between primary producers themselves. The United Kingdom ranked as the world's largest trading nation in 1860, but by 1913 it had lost ground to both the United States and Germany: British and German exports in that year each totaled $2.3 billion, and those of the United States exceeded $2.4 billion. More significant was the emigration of their goods and capital.
As foreign trade increased, so in proportion did the amount of it going outside the Continent. In 1840, 7.7 million pounds of her export and 9.2 million pounds of her import trade was done outside Europe; in 1880, the figures were 38.4 million and 73 million. Europe's economic contacts with the wider world were multiplying, much as the United Kingdom's had been doing for years.
Netherlands and the New Imperialism
At the break of the 19th century the Netherlands commenced official colonisation of the East IndiesEast Indies
East Indies is a term used by Europeans from the 16th century onwards to identify what is now known as Indian subcontinent or South Asia, Southeastern Asia, and the islands of Oceania, including the Malay Archipelago and the Philippines...
. During the era of New Imperialism the territorial claims of the Dutch East India Company VOC
Dutch East India Company
The Dutch East India Company was a chartered company established in 1602, when the States-General of the Netherlands granted it a 21-year monopoly to carry out colonial activities in Asia...
expanded into a fully fledged colony named the Dutch East Indies
Dutch East Indies
The Dutch East Indies was a Dutch colony that became modern Indonesia following World War II. It was formed from the nationalised colonies of the Dutch East India Company, which came under the administration of the Netherlands government in 1800....
. Partly driven by re-newed colonial aspirations of fellow European nation states the Dutch strived to establish unchallenged control of the archipelago
Archipelago
An archipelago , sometimes called an island group, is a chain or cluster of islands. The word archipelago is derived from the Greek ἄρχι- – arkhi- and πέλαγος – pélagos through the Italian arcipelago...
now known as Indonesia
Indonesia
Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...
.
Interregnum
A few years into formal colonisation of the East Indies, in Europe the Dutch RepublicDutch Republic
The Dutch Republic — officially known as the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands , the Republic of the United Netherlands, or the Republic of the Seven United Provinces — was a republic in Europe existing from 1581 to 1795, preceding the Batavian Republic and ultimately...
was occupied by the French forces of Napoleon. The Dutch government went into exile in England and formally ceded its colonial possessions to Great Britain. The pro-French Governor General Daendels of the Dutch East Indies fought the British in the Anglo-Dutch Java War
Anglo-Dutch Java War
The Anglo-Dutch Java War in 1810–1811 was a war between Britain and the Netherlands , fought entirely on the Island of Java in colonial Indonesia.-Background:...
before surrendering the colony. He was replaced by the British Governor Raffles
Stamford Raffles
Sir Thomas Stamford Bingley Raffles, FRS was a British statesman, best known for his founding of the city of Singapore . He is often described as the "Father of Singapore"...
, who the later founded the city of Singapore
Singapore
Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...
. The following 10 years of the British interregnum
Interregnum
An interregnum is a period of discontinuity or "gap" in a government, organization, or social order...
(1806–1816) saw an influx of British settlers and also many British companies in the East Indies.
Hegemony
After the defeat of Napoleon and the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814
The Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814 was a treaty signed between Great Britain and the Netherlands in London on August 13, 1814...
colonial government of the East Indies was ceded back to the Dutch in 1817. To secure unchallenged dominion over its colony in the East Indies the Dutch started to consolidate its power base through extensive military campaigns and elaborate diplomatic alliances with indigenous rulers ensuring the Dutch tricolor was firmly planted in all corners of the Archipelago
Archipelago
An archipelago , sometimes called an island group, is a chain or cluster of islands. The word archipelago is derived from the Greek ἄρχι- – arkhi- and πέλαγος – pélagos through the Italian arcipelago...
. These military campaigns included: the Padri War
Padri War
The Padri War was fought from 1803 until 1837 in West Sumatra between two rival muslim factions. The Dutch intervened from 1821 and helped the Adats defeat the Padri faction.-Background:...
(1821–1837), the Java War
Java War
The Java War or Diponegoro War was fought in Java between 1825 and 1830. It started as a rebellion led by Prince Diponegoro. The proximate cause was the Dutch decision to build a road across a piece of his property that contained his parents' tomb...
(1825–1830) and the Aceh War
Aceh War
The Aceh War, also known as the Dutch War or the Infidel War , was an armed military conflict between the Sultanate of Aceh and the Netherlands which was triggered by discussions between representatives of Aceh and the U.S. in Singapore during early 1873...
(1873–1904). This raised the need for a considerable military build up of the colonial army (KNIL). From all over Europe soldiers were recruited to join the KNIL.
France and the New Imperialism
The Long Depression hit FranceFrance
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
already burdened by substantial reparation payments to the new German Empire
German Empire
The German Empire refers to Germany during the "Second Reich" period from the unification of Germany and proclamation of Wilhelm I as German Emperor on 18 January 1871, to 1918, when it became a federal republic after defeat in World War I and the abdication of the Emperor, Wilhelm II.The German...
following her defeat in the Franco-Prussian War
Franco-Prussian War
The Franco-Prussian War or Franco-German War, often referred to in France as the 1870 War was a conflict between the Second French Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia. Prussia was aided by the North German Confederation, of which it was a member, and the South German states of Baden, Württemberg and...
. The nation was also divided by the civil war
Paris Commune
The Paris Commune was a government that briefly ruled Paris from March 18 to May 28, 1871. It existed before the split between anarchists and Marxists had taken place, and it is hailed by both groups as the first assumption of power by the working class during the Industrial Revolution...
between socialists and republicans in 1871. The French government ended free trade and began to pursue colonisation as a way to increase their power, aid their economy and restore national prestige.
New Imperialism and the emerging empires
Just as the United States emerged as a great industrial, military and political power after the American Civil WarAmerican Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
, so would Germany following its own unification in 1871. Both countries undertook ambitious naval expansion in the 1890s. Just as Germany reacted to depression with the adoption of tariff protection in 1879, so would the United States with the landslide election victory of William McKinley
William McKinley
William McKinley, Jr. was the 25th President of the United States . He is best known for winning fiercely fought elections, while supporting the gold standard and high tariffs; he succeeded in forging a Republican coalition that for the most part dominated national politics until the 1930s...
, who had risen to national prominence six years earlier with the passage of the McKinley Tariff of 1890. Germany, a leading military power after unification, abandoned free trade and embraced expansionism with its adoption of a tariff in 1879, its acquisition of a colonial empire in 1884-1885, and its building of a powerful navy after 1898-1900.
German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck
Otto von Bismarck
Otto Eduard Leopold, Prince of Bismarck, Duke of Lauenburg , simply known as Otto von Bismarck, was a Prussian-German statesman whose actions unified Germany, made it a major player in world affairs, and created a balance of power that kept Europe at peace after 1871.As Minister President of...
revised his initial dislike of colonies (which he had seen as burdensome and useless) partly under pressure for colonial expansion to match that of the other European states, but also under the notion that Germany's entry into the colonial scramble could press the United Kingdom into conceding broader German strategic ambitions.
United States expansionism had its roots in domestic concerns and economic conditions, as in other newly industrializing nations where government sought to accelerate internal development. The rapid turn to imperialism in the late nineteenth century can be correlated with the cyclical economic crises that adversely affected many groups.
The Panic of 1893
Panic of 1893
The Panic of 1893 was a serious economic depression in the United States that began in 1893. Similar to the Panic of 1873, this panic was marked by the collapse of railroad overbuilding and shaky railroad financing which set off a series of bank failures...
contributed to the growing mood for expansionism. Like the post-1873 period in Europe (the Long Depression
Long Depression
The Long Depression was a worldwide economic crisis, felt most heavily in Europe and the United States, which had been experiencing strong economic growth fueled by the Second Industrial Revolution in the decade following the American Civil War. At the time, the episode was labeled the Great...
), the main features of the U.S. depression included deflation
Deflation (economics)
In economics, deflation is a decrease in the general price level of goods and services. Deflation occurs when the inflation rate falls below 0% . This should not be confused with disinflation, a slow-down in the inflation rate...
, rural decline, and unemployment, which aggravated the bitter social protests of the ‘Gilded Age
Gilded Age
In United States history, the Gilded Age refers to the era of rapid economic and population growth in the United States during the post–Civil War and post-Reconstruction eras of the late 19th century. The term "Gilded Age" was coined by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner in their book The Gilded...
’—the populist movement
Populism
Populism can be defined as an ideology, political philosophy, or type of discourse. Generally, a common theme compares "the people" against "the elite", and urges social and political system changes. It can also be defined as a rhetorical style employed by members of various political or social...
, the free-silver crusade, and violent labour disputes such as the Pullman
Pullman Strike
The Pullman Strike was a nationwide conflict between labor unions and railroads that occurred in the United States in 1894. The conflict began in the town of Pullman, Illinois on May 11 when approximately 3,000 employees of the Pullman Palace Car Company began a wildcat strike in response to recent...
and Homestead
Homestead Strike
The Homestead Strike was an industrial lockout and strike which began on June 30, 1892, culminating in a battle between strikers and private security agents on July 6, 1892. It was one of the most serious disputes in U.S. labor history...
strikes.
The Panic of 1893 contributed to fierce competition over markets, as the long Depression two decades earlier across the Atlantic. Economic depression led some U.S. businessmen and politicians from the mid-1880s to come to the same conclusion as their European counterparts: that industry and capital had exceeded the capacity of existing markets and needed new outlets.
Advocates of empire also drew upon to a tradition of westward expansion over the course of the previous century. The ‘closing of the Frontier’ identified by the 1890 Census report and publicised by historian
Historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...
Frederick Jackson Turner
Frederick Jackson Turner
Frederick Jackson Turner was an American historian in the early 20th century. He is best known for his essay "The Significance of the Frontier in American History", whose ideas are referred to as the Frontier Thesis. He is also known for his theories of geographical sectionalism...
in his 1893 paper The Significance of the Frontier in American History, contributed to fears of constrained natural resource.
Influential politicians such as Henry Cabot Lodge
Henry Cabot Lodge
Henry Cabot "Slim" Lodge was an American Republican Senator and historian from Massachusetts. He had the role of Senate Majority leader. He is best known for his positions on Meek policy, especially his battle with President Woodrow Wilson in 1919 over the Treaty of Versailles...
, William McKinley, and Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States . He is noted for his exuberant personality, range of interests and achievements, and his leadership of the Progressive Movement, as well as his "cowboy" persona and robust masculinity...
advocated a more aggressive foreign policy to pull the United States out of the depression. However, opposition to expansionism was strong and vocal in the United States. The U.S. became involved in the War with Spain only after Cubans convinced the U.S. government that Spain was brutalizing them. Whatever the causes, the result of the war was that the U.S. came into the possession of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. It was, however, only the Philippines that remained, for three decades, as a colonial possession.
While Germany, the United States, Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, and other more recently industrialised empires were under relatively less pressure to offload surplus capital than the United Kingdom, the emerging empires resorted to protectionism and formal empire in response to the United Kingdom's advantage on international markets.
Although U.S. capital investments within the Philippines and Puerto Rico were relatively small (figures that would seemingly detract from the broader economic implications on first glance), these colonies were strategic outposts for expanding trade with Asia, particularly China and Latin America, enabling the United States to reap the benefit of the ‘Open Door
Open Door Policy
The Open Door Policy is a concept in foreign affairs, which usually refers to the policy in 1899 allowing multiple Imperial powers access to China, with none of them in control of that country. As a theory, the Open Door Policy originates with British commercial practice, as was reflected in...
’ in China and ‘Dollar Diplomacy
Dollar Diplomacy
Dollar Diplomacy is a term used to describe the effort of the United States—particularly under President William Howard Taft—to further its aims in Latin America and East Asia through use of its economic power by guaranteeing loans made to foreign countries. The term was originally coined by...
’ in Latin America. The U.S. gradually surpassed the United Kingdom as the leading investor of capital in Latin America and East Asia—a process largely completed by the end of the Great War.
Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
's development after the Meiji Restoration
Meiji Restoration
The , also known as the Meiji Ishin, Revolution, Reform or Renewal, was a chain of events that restored imperial rule to Japan in 1868...
of 1868 followed the Western lead in industrialisation and militarism
Militarism
Militarism is defined as: the belief or desire of a government or people that a country should maintain a strong military capability and be prepared to use it aggressively to defend or promote national interests....
, enabling the empire to gain control of Korea
Korea
Korea ) is an East Asian geographic region that is currently divided into two separate sovereign states — North Korea and South Korea. Located on the Korean Peninsula, Korea is bordered by the People's Republic of China to the northwest, Russia to the northeast, and is separated from Japan to the...
in 1894 and a sphere of influence in Manchuria
Manchuria
Manchuria is a historical name given to a large geographic region in northeast Asia. Depending on the definition of its extent, Manchuria usually falls entirely within the People's Republic of China, or is sometimes divided between China and Russia. The region is commonly referred to as Northeast...
(1905) following its defeat of Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
. Japan was responding in part to the actions of more established powers, and her expansionism drew on the harnessing of traditional values to more modern aspirations for great power-status: not until the 1930s was Japan to become a net exporter of capital.
Social implications of New Imperialism
New social views of colonialism also arose. Rudyard KiplingRudyard Kipling
Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature...
, for instance, urged the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
to take up the ‘White Man's Burden’ of bringing ‘civilization’ to the other races of the world, whether they wanted such civilization or not. Social Darwinism
Social Darwinism
Social Darwinism is a term commonly used for theories of society that emerged in England and the United States in the 1870s, seeking to apply the principles of Darwinian evolution to sociology and politics...
also became current throughout Western Europe and the United States, while the paternalistic French-style 'mission of civilization' (mission civilatrice) appealed to many on the Continent.
The notion of rule over tropical lands commanded widespread acceptance among metropolitan populations: even among those who associated imperial colonisation with oppression and exploitation, the 1904 Congress of the Socialist International
Socialist International
The Socialist International is a worldwide organization of democratic socialist, social democratic and labour political parties. It was formed in 1951.- History :...
concluded that the colonial peoples should be taken in hand by future European socialist governments and led by them to eventual independence.
Observing the rise of trade unionism, socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
, and other protest movements during an era of mass society in both Europe and later North America, elites sought to whip up imperial sentiment to enlist the support of the masses. The new mass media of the United States and the United Kingdom promoted jingoism
Jingoism
Jingoism is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as extreme patriotism in the form of aggressive foreign policy. In practice, it is a country's advocation of the use of threats or actual force against other countries in order to safeguard what it perceives as its national interests...
to build their circulation during overseas adventures like the Spanish-American War
Spanish-American War
The Spanish–American War was a conflict in 1898 between Spain and the United States, effectively the result of American intervention in the ongoing Cuban War of Independence...
of 1898, the Second Boer War
Second Boer War
The Second Boer War was fought from 11 October 1899 until 31 May 1902 between the British Empire and the Afrikaans-speaking Dutch settlers of two independent Boer republics, the South African Republic and the Orange Free State...
of 1899-1902 and the suppression of the Chinese anti-western Boxer Rebellion
Boxer Rebellion
The Boxer Rebellion, also called the Boxer Uprising by some historians or the Righteous Harmony Society Movement in northern China, was a proto-nationalist movement by the "Righteous Harmony Society" , or "Righteous Fists of Harmony" or "Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists" , in China between...
(1900).
Many of Europe's major elites also found some advantages in formal, overseas expansion: mammoth monopolies wanted imperial support to secure overseas investments against competition and domestic political tensions abroad; bureaucrats wanted more offices, military officers desired promotion, and the traditional but waning landed gentry wanted formal titles.
In the colonies themselves, a section of the population came to terms with the new imperial administration and took part in its imposition or maintenance: the imperial rulers everywhere exploited divisions within the territories they sought to rule, enlisting chiefs or communities keen to overturn their pre-colonial status. Both traditional and emerging elites sought a place in the political framework and sent their sons to be educated in metropolitan schools and universities, though many of the professional classes came to resent the limitation of political and government opportunities, contributing to the later growth of modern colonial nationalism
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
.
Further reading
- Maria Petringa. Brazza, A Life for Africa. AuthorHouse, 2006 ISBN 9781-4259-11980
External links
- Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism by V.I. Lenin
- J.A. Hobson's Imperialism: A Study: A Centennial Retrospective by Professor Peter Cain
- Empire? What Empire? Imperialism and British national identity c. 1815-1914 by Professor Bernard Porter
- Extensive information on the British Empire
- British Empire
- The Empire Strikes Out: The ‘New Imperialism’ and Its Fatal Flaws by Ivan Eland, director of defense policy studies at the Cato Institute., an article comparing contemporary defense policy with those of New Imperialism (1870–1914)
- The New Imperialism
- The Martian Chronicles: History Behind the Chronicles New Imperialism 1871-1914
- http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/modsbook34.html
- http://www.columbia.edu/~lt95/altlect14.htm (a course syllabus)
- NEW IMPERIALISM: 1860-1914 The ‘partition of the world’ (Rathenau)
- The 19th century: The New Imperialism
- Marxism and The New Imperialism by Alex Callinicos, John Rees, Chris Harman, and Mike Haynes
- Historical Studies 205-L02 - Lecture Notes/Dr. Peers - April 5, 2001 The Scramble for Africa and the New Imperialism