Unit 5: Imperialism

1. Imperialism

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1.1. Causes

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A country that wants to expand its borders is nothing new. If we review history, we see that imperialism has been a constant: from Antiquity the Roman Empire comes to mind, from the Middle Ages, the Byzantine Empire, the Carolingian or the Islamic; of the Modern Age, the Spanish or Portuguese Empire, etc.

Now, in the last third of the 19th century, imperialism is determined by economic as well as political and paternalistic causes.

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• Economic: industrialized countries look for new places to obtain raw materials, invest surplus capital and open markets where they can sell their manufactured products.

• Politics: Possessing a great empire gives a country prestige, hence so many countries are suddenly launched to conquer.

• Paternalistic: There were certain currents that assumed a civilizing role for non-Western peoples. It was "The white man's burden", as Rudyard Kipling's poem put it. This paternalism had a strong dose of racism.​

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On a more specific level, several countries wanted to acquire or regain lost prestige: France wanted to recover from the humiliation suffered by Prussia in 1870-1871; Spain, after 1898's disaster, wants to focus on North Africa; England, maintain its maritime and land lines, so it will be very attentive to the distribution of Africa and Asia. In this last continent it maintains a tense rivalry with the Russian Empire that was baptized as "The Great Game".

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1.2 Administration

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The administration of a conquered territory is a complex matter, and responds to a double classification: according to its form of government and according to its economic importance.

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• According to its form of government:

  • Colony: It depends completely on the government of the metropolis.

  • Protectorate: The territory is allowed to have its own government, but is controlled by the metropolis in matters of foreign policy, defense and internal order.

  • Metropolitan territory: They are legally equal to any territory of the conquering country.

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• According to its economic importance:

  • Settlement colony: majority of the population of European origin, which settles there permanently.

  • Exploitation colony: indigenous majority, but under the control of European administrators. Normally, it is only intended to have this colony to exploit raw materials or for pure prestige.

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1.3 The partitions

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• North Africa:

  • Under the guise of combating Mediterranean piracy, France occupied Algeria in 1830, then established a protectorate in Tunisia in 1881.

  • Egypt, which was helped in its modernization by England and France (construction of the Suez Canal in 1859), saw how these two countries competed to occupy it. Finally it was England who got it in 1882.

  • Libya, belonging to the Ottoman Empire, was invaded by Italy in 1911.

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• Sub-Saharan Africa: Until the middle of the 19th century, Europeans had not entered this area beyond the coastal lands, where they had commercial ports.

  • Germany controls some territories in the west (Togo and Cameroon), in the east (Tanzania) and in the southwest (Namibia). There, Bismarck gives free rein to German businessmen to set up industries and businesses, but he does not want to fight for more territories. Now that Germany is unified, Bismarck is interested in maintaining the balance of power in Europe so that the new empire does not have problems, which is why he will seek peace between the European powers in the midst of so much colonial conflict.

  • Italy controls Somalia and Eritrea, and wants to enter Ethiopia as well to unite its territories by land, but suffers a resounding defeat at Adua (1896). This great humiliation prompted them to conquer Libya in 1911, to compensate. Later, during Mussolini's fascism, they will fight again for Ethiopia.

  • England's intention was to create a great African empire from north to south. And they did it, because it was one of the strongest powers of the time.

  • France and England also showed interest in the Niger Valley and had conflicts over it, as they also had in Egypt.

  • King Leopold II of Belgium was among the first to enter sub-Saharan Africa, exploring and conquering the Congo Valley. There he founded, in 1885, the Congo Free State, a private company of the king for his own benefit. He enslaved the Congolese to extract rubber and precious stones, and millions of natives died as a result.

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• South Africa:

  • England began to occupy the area after the Congress of Vienna, and in South Africa it collided with the Boers, Dutch farmers who had been there since the 17th century and who had founded their little republics. Between 1880 and 1902, there were two wars between England and the Boers, with final victory for England.

  • Portugal owned the colonies of Portuguese West Africa (today, Angola) and Portuguese East Africa (today, Mozambique) and wanted to establish a link between them (the so-called 'Pink Map'), but to do so it would have to occupy English territory. Some troops entered these territories, but withdrew after an English ultimatum in 1890.

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• The Berlin Conference (1884-1885):​

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All these problems crystallized at the Berlin Conference. It was precisely Portugal that called the rest of the colonial powers to meet (let us remember the congressional appeasement policy of The Restoration) and the conference took place in Berlin at the offer of Chancellor Bismarck, who had recently founded the German Empire and wanted peace and European balance more than anything. Fourteen countries participated and the most relevant agreements were:

• Recognition of the right of occupation: if a country owned a section of the coast, it could conquer inland.

• Setting boundaries between empires.

• Recognition of the Congo Free State of Leopold II, in exchange for the rest of the powers being able to navigate and transport merchandise on the Congo River.

• Freedom to trade in Central Africa.

• Some of the conflicts were resolved peacefully, but others continued.

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• The partition of ​Asia:

  • United Kingdom: its interests are focused on containing Russia (the Great Game), as it advances south and the English control India. To avoid confrontation, UK made Afghanistan a buffer state by making it its protectorate in 1842. 

But what interested UK above all was the Chinese market. China was a huge country that lived practically isolated, only allowing foreign trade through the port of Canton. England, for its part, controlled large areas (India, Afghanistan, etc.) where opium was grown and decided to introduce this drug into China surreptitiously. Within a few years, a good part of the Chinese had become addicted and the country's economy was reeling. The emperor wanted to eradicate opium from there, but the British declared war on him, since the trade in this drug was highly profitable. There were two Opium Wars (1839 to 1842 and 1856 to 1860) and both were won by England. China was forced to admit the English opium trade and many other foreign products in its territory, as well as to open more than ten ports to international trade and to cede Hong Kong to England. China's vulnerability was taken advantage of by England, Germany, France, Russia and Japan, which, although they did not conquer it, distributed it to each other in areas of political influence, through the "unequal treaties" that China was forced to sign. This humiliation produced, in 1899, the Boxer Uprising, a Chinese nationalist rebellion against foreign control. The foreign powers allied themselves and defeated the Boxers in no time.

In Southeast Asia, United Kingdom collided with France, thus establishing Siam (now Thailand) as a buffer state.​

 

• France: after a war against China, it obtained, in 1885, the region of Indochina, in Southeast Asia. It corresponds to the area occupied today by Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. To the west, it collided with British interests as has just been said.

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• Russia: after annihilating most of the population, the empire extends through the Caucasus and Siberia. They also penetrate Turkestan, Mongolia and Manchuria. To the south, they come into conflict with England, hence the establishment of Afghanistan as a buffer state, and to the east, with Japan, which controls the Korean peninsula. This tension leads to the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05 in which the Japanese inflict a humiliating defeat on the Russians. This fact is one of the keys to later understand the Russian revolution.