Colonial expansion existed before the 19th c., since early examples of Modern empires can be found in Portugal or Spain. Nevertheless, Industrialization and Nationalism constituted the distinctive basis for a new kind of colonialism. Industrialization provided the metropolis with a stimulus for the conquest of new markets. Nationalism added a component of extreme competition between European States.
1. Reasons for Imperialism
a) Economic factors. Colonies were sources of raw materials that supplied European industries and provided them with cheap work force. Colonial territories were also consumers of manufactured products coming from the metropolis. Thus, colonies were dependent on the economy of the imperial power: for example, India was before the 19th c. the world first producer of cotton textiles. English colonial rule reoriented the Indian cotton production to serve the needs of the British textile industry. English powerful factories produced cheap textiles that were exported to India and ruined local manufactures. On the other hand, dominated lands were considered as the natural destination for European migrants. Imperial authorities encouraged migration flows of workers from the metropolis, since national demographic growth was too high for the increasing expansion of industry. Most of them went to the United States, but also to settler colonies in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.
b) Political factors. Even if the conquest of new territories was not economically beneficial, it was justified on the grounds of political needs. The French colonial empire was built as a means to compensate the marginal position of France in political and diplomatic terms since the defeat of Sedan in 1870. National tensions between European States implied new confrontations overseas. For example, France (expanding towards the Indian Ocean from Algeria) and Great Britain (trying to control the river Nile to protect its protectorate on Egypt) collided in Sudan. The conflict almost finished in an open war at Fashoda. In Asia, British progress in India led to the Russian interest to go further towards the South, and to the French expansion in Indochina.
c) Technological factors. Industrialization made possible the massive production of more powerful weapons. European armies easily imposed an imperial control because of their superiority in war technology (rifled guns, iron ships). New communication and transportation tools (telegraph, steamboats, railways) helped to organize efficiently the imperial control and administration.
d) Cultural justifications. Missionaries favoured the introduction of new ideas and the imperial culture. On the other hand, some of the political thinkers of the metropolis developed the idea of a civilizing mission to justify imperial activities. That implied two assumptions: firstly, the superiority of the white race ("We [the British] are the finest race in the world" said Cecil Rhodes in 1877) and secondly the need to bring civilization to backward regions. The consequence was the unavoidable subjection to the imperial rule of these regions and peoples.
2. The scramble for Africa
Before 1875, there were few European colonies in Africa: Portuguese in Angola and Mozambique, French in Northern Algeria (a settler colony), and Dutch and British in South Africa. After 1875, nationalist rivalries gave an impulse to the colonization of the entire continent except Ethiopia and Liberia.
Explorers and missionaries came first and provided reliable geographical information for European merchants about coasts and rivers. Businesses attracted soon the protection of the State and the establishment of a colony or a protectorate. A good example is provided by the Belgian Congo: king Leopold II created the Congo Free State in order to facilitate business and trade from Europe, while he actually amassed a fortune on rubber plantations run by forced labour -one of the most terrible examples of colonial brutality and abuse that resulted in millions deaths.
Wikimedia Commons
These meddlesome American missionaries! These blabbing Belgian-born traitor officials! -those tiresome parrots are always talking, always telling. They have told how for twenty years I have ruled the Congo State, not as a trustee of the Powers, an agent, a subordinate, a foreman, but as a sovereign-sovereign over a fruitful domain four times as large as the German Empire -sovereign absolute, irresponsible, above all law; trampling the Berlin-made Congo charter under foot; barring out all foreign traders but myself; restricting commerce to myself, through concessionaires who are my creatures and confederates; seizing and holding the State as my personal property, the whole of its vast revenues as my private "swag" -mine, solely mine- claiming and holding its millions of people as my private property , my serfs, my slaves; their labor mine, with or without wage; the food they raise not their property but mine; the rubber, the ivory and the other riches of the land mine -mine solely- and gathered for me by the men, the women and the little children under compulsion of lash and bullet, fire, starvation, mutilation and the halter. They have revealed these and yet other details which shame should have kept them silent about, since they were exposures of a king, a sacred personage and immune from reproach, by right of his election and appointment to his great office by God himself.
Mark Twain
King Leopold's Soliloquy
1905
Wikimedia Commons
The establishment of Belgian and British colonies alarmed European States. In order to solve peacefully potential disputes, German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck called them to the Berlin Conference (1884-1885). European States agreed on the principle that colonial occupation was allowed after the effective occupation of a territory and notification to the other countries. Following these rules, in 25 years European modern armies had colonized the continent.
The most important colonial powers were Great Britain and France. Coming from Algeria, France controlled Tunisia and (after a treaty with Spain in 1912) Morocco, and expanded towards the South and East trying to reach the Indian Ocean and the French island of Madagascar, just to be stopped by the British at Faschoda. France consolidated instead French West Africa and French Equatorial Africa, apart from French Somaliland (Djibouti) in the strategic strait of Aden.
Other countries came late or were unable or not interested to expand their imperial sphere of influence: Germany acquired Togo, Cameroon, Southwest Africa and Tanganika. Portugal penetrated further into the continent from its positions in Angola and Mozambique. Italy occupied Libya, Eritrea and part of Somaliland before the Great War, and Spain dominated Equatorial Guinea (Rio Muni), Rio de Oro (Western Sahara and Ifni), and North Morocco.
3. The British Empire. Colonies in Asia
India was considered "the Pearl of the Crown", the objective of imperial ambitions since the 16th c. British direct imperial rule was imposed in 1858, after a period of activity of the East India Company. A viceroy was appointed to represent royal authority and an English bureaucracy administered Indian affairs. As a matter of fact, the peak of the British imperial power was reached when Queen Victoria was proclaimed empress of India in 1876.
Wikimedia Commons
A communication network and a defensive strategy were developed around the most important of British colonies. On the one hand, a direct link to India was secured through a chain of British possessions. In the harbours of Gibraltar, Malta, or Cyprus the British fleet was able to find supplies in its way to India. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 enabled steamships to travel from Britain to India in two weeks; consequently it attracted British attention to Egypt. In 1882 the British army occupied the country to protect the economic interests of the metropolis after a popular rebellion.
The need to protect the source of all Egyptian wealth, the river Nile, led to imperial expansion towards Lake Victoria: Sudan, Uganda and Kenya became territories under the influence of the British. At the same time, an expansive movement tried to connect Cape to Cairo: from Cape Colony, the British absorbed Rhodesia (the name of Zambia and Zimbabwe, coming from Cecil Rhodes, a diamond mining businessman). Other important British possessions in Africa were Nigeria and British Somaliland.
