Encyclopedia
The term
"New Imperialism" refers to the policy and ideology of
imperial colonial expansion adopted by
Europe's powers and, later,
Japan and the
United States, during the late 19th and early 20th centuries; approximately from the
Franco-Prussian War to
World War I . The period is distinguished by an unprecedented pursuit of what has been termed "empire for empire's sake," aggressive competition for overseas territorial acquisitions and the emergence in colonizing countries of doctrines of
racial superiority which denied the fitness of subjugated peoples for self-government.
The term
imperialism was used from the third quarter of the
nineteenth century to describe various forms of political control by a greater power over less powerful territories or nationalities, although analytically the phenomena which it denotes may differ greatly from each other and from the "New" imperialism.
A later usage developed in the early 20th century among
Marxists, who saw "imperialism" as the economic and political dominance of "monopolistic finance capital" in the most advanced countries and its acquisition — and enforcement through the state — of control of the means of production in less developed regions.
Elements of both conceptions are present in the "New imperialism" of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But along with the adoption of
ultra-nationalist and racial supremacist ideologies, the period saw a shift to pre-emptive colonial expansion, fueled by the imposition of
tariff barriers aimed at excluding economic rivals from markets.
English writers have sometimes described elements of this period as the "
era of empire for empire's sake," "
the great adventure," and "
the scramble for Africa." During this period, European nations added 20% of the
Earth's land
area to their overseas colonial holdings . As it was mostly unoccupied by the Western powers as late as the 1880s,
Africa became the primary target of the "new" imperialist expansion, although conquest took place also in other areas; notably
Southeast Asia and the
East Asian seaboard, where
Japan and the
United States, joined the European powers' scramble for territory.
Rise of the New Imperialism
The breakdown of Pax Britannica
The expansions of the New Imperialism took place against a background of increasing
competition between the
industrialized nations. This activity followed the erosion of
Pax Britannica, during which
British industrial and naval supremacy underpinned an informal empire of free trade and commercial hegemony.
During this period, between the 1815
Congress of Vienna and the end of the
Franco-Prussian War , Britain reaped the benefits of being the world's sole modern, industrial power. As the "workshop of the world," Britain could produce finished goods so efficiently and cheaply that they could usually undersell comparable, locally manufactured goods in foreign markets.
The erosion of British hegemony after the Franco-Prussian War was occasioned by changes in the European and world economies and in the continental balance of power following the breakdown of the Concert of Europe, the balance of power established by the Congress of Vienna. The establishment of nation-states in
Germany and
Italy resolved territorial issues, which had kept potential rivals embroiled in internal affairs at the heart of Europe .
Economically, adding to the commercial competition of old rivals like
France were now the newly industrializing powers, such as Germany and the
United States. All sought ways of challenging what they saw as Britain's undue dominance in world markets – the consequence of her early industrialization and maritime supremacy.
This competition was sharpened by the Long Depression of 1873-1896, a prolonged period of price deflation punctuated by severe business downturns, which added to pressure on governments to promote home industry, leading to the widespread abandonment of free trade among Europe's powers .
The resulting limitation of both domestic markets and export opportunities led government and business leaders in Europe, and later the U.S., to see the solution in sheltered overseas markets united to the home country behind imperial tariff barriers: new overseas colonies would provide export markets free of foreign competition, while supplying cheap raw materials.
The revival of working-class militancy and emergence of
socialist parties during the Depression decades led conservative governments to view colonialism as a force for national cohesion in support of the domestic
status quo. Also, in Italy, and to a lesser extent in Germany and Britain, tropical empire was seen as an outlet, for what was deemed, a surplus home population.
Britain and the New Imperialism
In Britain, the latter half of the 19th century has been seen as the period of displacement of industrial capitalism by finance capitalism. As the country's relative commercial and industrial lag encouraged the creation of larger corporations and combines, close association of industry and banks added to the influence of financiers over the British economy and politics.
The unprecedented control of industry on the part of London financial houses by the 1870s aided their pursuit of British government "protection" of overseas investments —particularly those in the securities of foreign governments and in foreign-government-backed development activities, such as railroads.
Britain's lag in other fields deepened her reliance on invisible exports to offset a merchandise trade deficit dating from the beginning of commercial liberalization in 1813, and thereby keep her "out of the red."
Although it had been official British policy for years to support such investments, the large expansion of these investments after about 1860 and economic and political instability in many areas of high investment, , brought increased pressure for their systematic protection.
Britain's entry into the new imperial age is often dated to 1875, when the government of
Benjamin Disraeli bought the indebted Egyptian ruler Ismail's shareholding in the
Suez Canal to secure control of this strategic waterway, since its opening six years earlier as a channel for shipping between Britain and India. Joint Anglo-French financial control over Egypt ended in outright British occupation in 1882.
Fear of
Russia's centuries-old southward expansion was a further factor in British policy: in 1878, Britain 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.
The Great Game in Inner Asia ended with a bloody and wholly unnecessary British expedition against
Tibet in 1903-1904.
At the same time, some powerful industrial lobbies and government leaders in Britain, exemplified by
Joseph Chamberlain, came to view formal empire as necessary to arrest Britain's relative decline in world markets. During the 1890s, Britain adopted the new policy wholeheartedly, quickly emerging as the front-runner in the scramble for tropical African territories.
Britain's adoption of the New Imperialism may be seen as a quest for captive markets or fields for investment of surplus capital, or as a primarily strategic or pre-emptive attempt to protect existing trade links and to prevent the absorption of overseas markets into the increasingly closed imperial trading blocs of rival powers. The failure in the 1900s of Chamberlain's campaign for Imperial tariffs illustrates the strength of free trade feeling even in the face of loss of international market share.
France and the New Imperialism
Government leaders, such as
Jules Ferry of France, concluded that sheltered overseas markets would solve the problems of low prices and over-accumulation of surplus capital caused by shrinking continental markets.
The expansion of the French colonial empire was also seen as a method of 'rejuvenating' the country after its humiliating defeat in the
Franco-Prussian War of 1870; the military actions needed to secure empire were seen by colonial enthusiasts as 'the first, faltering steps of convalescence'. This plan, however, did meet with some popular resistance in the 1870s and 1880s, wherein people protested that the first priority of France should be with the lost provinces of
Alsace-Lorraine. Indeed public opinion in France was often highly erratic with regards to colonialism, and Ferry himself was removed from office twice over colonial disputes.
The New Imperialism and the newly-industrializing countries
Just as the U.S. emerged as one of the world's leading industrial, military and political powers after the
Civil War, so would
Germany following its own unification in 1871. Both countries undertook ambitious naval expansion in the 1890s. And just as Germany reacted to depression with the adoption of tariff protection in 1879 and colonial expansion in 1884-85, so would the U.S., following the landslide election of
William McKinley, be associated with the high McKinley Tariff of 1890.
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. Advocates of empire also drew upon a tradition of westward expansion over the course of the previous century.
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. The "closing of the Frontier" identified by the 1890 Census report and publicized by historian
Frederick Jackson Turner in his 1893 paper
The Significance of the Frontier in American History, contributed to fears of constrained natural resource.
Like the Long Depression in
Europe, 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 labor disputes such as the
Pullman and
Homestead strikes.
The Panic of 1893 contributed to the growing mood for expansionism. 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.
Although U.S. capital investments within the
Philippines and
Puerto Rico were relatively small , "imperialism" for the United States, formalized in 1904 by the
Roosevelt Corollary to the
Monroe Doctrine, would also spur on her displacement of Britain as the predominant investor in Latin America — a process largely completed by the end of the Great War.
In
Germany, Imperial Chancellor
Otto von Bismarck revised his initial dislike of colonies , partly under pressure for colonial expansion to match that of the other European states, but also under the mistaken notion that Germany's entry into the colonial scramble could press Britain into conceding to broader German strategic ambitions.
Japan's development after the Meiji Restoration of 1868 followed the Western lead in industrialization and
militarism, enabling her to gain control of
Korea in 1894 and a sphere of influence in
Manchuria , following her defeat of Russia in the
Russo-Japanese War. Japan was responding in part to the actions of more established powers, and her expansionism drew on the harnessing of traditional Japanese 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 the New Imperialism
The New Imperialism gave rise to new social views of colonialism.
Rudyard Kipling, for instance, urged the
United States to
"Take up the White Man's burden" of bringing the European version of civilization to the other peoples of the world, regardless of whether they wanted this form of civilization. While
Social Darwinism became current throughout western Europe and the United States, the paternalistic French-style "civilizing mission" appealed to many European statesmen.
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 use imperial
jingoism to co-opt the support of part of the industrial working class. The new mass media promoted jingoism in the
Spanish-American War , the
Second Boer War , and the
Boxer Rebellion .
Many of Europe's major elites also found advantages in formal, overseas expansion: large financial and industrial monopolies wanted imperial support to protect their overseas investments against competition and domestic political tensions abroad; bureaucrats wanted and sought government offices; military officers desired promotion; and the traditional but waning landed gentries sought increased profits for their investments, formal titles, and high office.
The notion of rule over tropical lands commanded widespread acceptance among metropolitan populations: even among those who associated imperial colonization with oppression and exploitation. For example, 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.
Imperialism in Asia
For details see the main article Imperialism in Asia.The transition to formal imperialism in
India was effectively accomplished with the transfer of administrative functions from the chartered
British East India Company to the British government in 1858, following the
Indian Mutiny of the previous year. Acts in 1773 and 1784 had already empowered the government to control Company policies and to appoint the Governor-General, the highest Company official in India.
The new administrative arrangement, crowned with
Queen Victoria's proclamation as Empress of India in 1876, replaced the rule of a monopolistic enterprise with that of a trained civil service headed by graduates of Britain's top universities. India's princely states retained their quasi-autonomous status, subject to British overlordship and official "advice."
In
South-East Asia, the 1880s saw the completion of Britain's conquest of
Burma and France's takeover of
Vietnam and
Cambodia; during the following decade France completed her
Indochinese empire with the annexation of
Laos, leaving the kingdom of Siam with an uneasy independence as a neutral buffer between British and French-ruled lands.
Imperialist ambitions and rivalries in
East Asia inevitably came to focus on the vast empire of
China, with more than a quarter of the world's population. China survived as a more-or-less independent state due to the resilience of her social and administrative structures, but can also be seen as a reflection of the limitations to which imperialist governments were willing to press their ambitions in the face of similar competing claims.
On the one hand, it is suggested that rather than being a backward country unable to secure the prerequisite stability and security for western-style commerce, China's institutions and level of economic development rendered her capable of providing a secure market in the absence of direct rule by the developed powers, despite her past unwillingness to admit western commerce .
This may explain the West's contentment with informal "spheres of influence". Western powers did intervene militarily to quell domestic chaos, such as the epic
Taiping Rebellion of 1850-1864, against which
General Gordon is often credited with having saved the
Qing Dynasty.
But China's size and cohesion compared to pre-colonial societies of Africa also made formal subjugation too difficult for any but the broadest coalition of colonialist powers, whose own rivalries would preclude such an outcome. When such a coalition did materialize in 1900, its objective was limited to suppression of the anti-imperialist
Boxer Rebellion because of the irreconcilability of Anglo-American and Russo-German aims.
The scramble for Africa
For details see the main article Scramble for Africa.In 1875, the two most important European holdings in Africa were French
Algeria and the British
Cape Colony. By 1914, only
Ethiopia and the republic of
Liberia remained outside formal European control. The transition from an "informal empire" of control through economic dominance to direct control took the form of a "scramble" for territory in areas previously regarded as open to British trade and influence.
David Livingstone's explorations, continued from the 1870s by
H.M. Stanley, opened tropical Africa's interior to European penetration. In 1876, King
Léopold II of Belgium organized the International African Association, which, by 1882, obtained over 900,000 square miles of territory in the
Congo basin through treaties with African chiefs.
France and Germany quickly followed, sending political agents and military expeditions to establish their own claims to sovereignty. The
Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 sought to regulate the competition between the powers by defining "effective occupation" as the criterion for international recognition of territorial claims.
Léopold was allocated, the misnamed, "
Congo Free State," where the activities of his agents and European concessionary companies led to international scandal over atrocities committed by Léopold's agents and concession-holders, forcing him to submit the territory to formal Belgian colonial rule .
The codification of the imposition of direct rule in terms of "effective occupation" necessitated routine recourse to armed force against indigenous states and peoples. Uprisings against imperial rule were put down ruthlessly, most spectacularly in German
South-West Africa and
German East Africa in the years 1904-1907.
Britain's 1882 formal occupation of Egypt contributed to a preoccupation over securing control of Nile valley, leading to the conquest of the neighboring
Sudan in 1896-1898 and confrontation with a French military expedition at
Fashoda .
In 1899, Britain set out to complete her takeover of
South Africa, begun with the annexation of the Cape, by invading the
Afrikaner republics of the gold-rich
Transvaal and the neighboring
Orange Free State. The chartered
British South Africa Company had already seized the land to the north, renamed
Rhodesia after its head, the Cape tycoon
Cecil Rhodes.
British gains in southern and
East Africa prompted Rhodes and
Alfred Milner, Britain's High Commissioner in South Africa, to urge a "Cape to Cairo" empire linking by rail the strategically important Canal to the mineral-rich South, though German occupation of German East Africa prevented such an outcome until the end of
World War I.
Paradoxically Britain, the staunch advocate of free trade, emerged in 1914 with, not only the largest overseas empire, thanks to her long-standing presence in India, but also the greatest gains in the "scramble for Africa," reflecting her advantageous position at its inception. Between 1885 and 1914, Britain took nearly 30% of Africa's population under her control, to 15% for France, 9% for Germany, 7% for Belgium and only 1% for Italy:
Nigeria alone contributed 15 million subjects to Britain, more than in the whole of
French West Africa or the entire German colonial empire.
Imperial rivalry
The extension of European control over Africa and Asia added a further dimension to the rivalry and mutual suspicion which characterized international diplomacy in the decades preceding World War I. France's seizure of
Tunisia initiated fifteen years of tension with Italy, which had hoped to take the country and which retaliated by allying with Germany and waging a decade-long tariff war with France. Britain's takeover of Egypt a year later caused a marked cooling of her relations with France.
The most striking conflicts of the era were the
Spanish American War of 1898 and the
Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05, each signaling the advent of a new imperial
great power, the United States and Japan, respectively. The
Fashoda incident of 1898 represented the worst Anglo-French crisis in decades, but France's climbdown in the face of British demands foreshadowed improved relations as the two countries set about resolving their overseas claims.
British policy in
South Africa and German actions in the
Far East contributed to the dramatic policy shift, which in the 1900s, aligned hitherto isolationist Britain first with
Japan as an ally, and then with France and Russia in the looser
Entente. German efforts to break the Entente by challenging French hegemony in
Morocco resulted in the Tangier Crisis of 1905 and the Agadir Crisis of 1911, adding to tension in the years preceding
World War I.
Theories of the New Imperialism
For details see the main article Theories of New ImperialismThe
accumulation theory adopted by J.A. Hobson and later
Lenin centered on the accumulation of surplus capital during and after the Industrial Revolution: restricted opportunities at home, the argument goes, drove financial interests to seek more profitable investments in less-developed lands with lower labor costs, unexploited raw materials and little competition.
Some have criticized Hobson's analysis, arguing that it fails to explain colonial expansion on the part of less industrialized nations with little surplus capital, such as Italy, or the great powers of the next century — the United States and Russia — which were in fact net borrowers of foreign capital.
Opponents of Hobson's accumulation theory often point to frequent cases when military and bureaucratic costs of occupation exceeded financial returns. In Africa the amount of capital investment by Europeans was relatively small before and after the 1880s, and the companies involved in tropical African commerce exerted limited political influence.
The
World-Systems theory approach of
Immanuel Wallerstein sees imperialism as part of a general, gradual extension of capital investment from the "core" of the industrial countries to a less developed "periphery." Protectionism and formal empire were the major tools of "semi-peripheral," newly industrialized states, such as Germany, seeking to usurp Britain's position at the "core" of the global capitalist system.
Echoing Wallerstein's global perspective to an extent, imperial historian Bernard Porter views Britain's adoption of formal imperialism as a symptom and an effect of her relative decline in the world, and not of strength: "Stuck with outmoded physical plants and outmoded forms of business organization, [Britain] now felt the less favorable effects of being the first to modernize."
Recent imperial historians Porter, P.J. Cain and A.G Hopkins contest Hobson's conspiratorial overtones and "reductionisms," but do not reject the influence of "the City's" financial interests.
See also
Important concepts often associated with this era
Biographies that may help shed more light on this era
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External links
