Chapter 5.3 Colonial Empires
Learning Objectives
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
- Identify the places in which the industrialized nations built empires in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
- Describe how the industrialized nations built their empires
- Explain where and why the world’s industrialized nations came into conflict while building their empires
In the later nineteenth century, the industrialized nations regarded their colonies as necessary sources of wealth and strength. Some, like Britain and France, had already established colonies a century or more before. Now they focused on tightening their control over these and acquiring more. The United States, Germany, and Japan lacked overseas colonies and now sought to acquire them.
Africa
The industrialized nations of Europe saw Africa, with its rich natural resources, as the great prize, and they moved quickly to seize it. At the beginning of the Second Industrial Revolution, Europeans controlled about 10 percent of the African continent. By the end of the century, after the “Scramble for Africa”—the competition among European countries to establish African colonies—they controlled 90 percent, with the largest portions ruled by Britain, France, Belgium, and Germany. Portugal and Spain still claimed colonies acquired in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries (Figure 5.16).
European nations aimed to colonize the continent to get access to raw materials and new markets for their goods, to boost international prestige and national pride, and to achieve military dominance over rivals. The “Scramble for Africa” reached its height during the Berlin Conference of 1884–1885 when, without input from Africans, European nations simply allotted different parts of the continent to one another. Some agreements were formal recognitions of existing colonies and territories, while others recognized new claims. Colonization continued throughout the 1880s–1910s.
France
France had been reluctant to claim colonies in Africa. It controlled the island of Gorée off the coast of Senegal and had a few trading posts in the interior. Beyond expanding into the interior of Senegal in the 1850s, however, it did little until the end of the nineteenth century, when the European powers met at the 1878 Congress of Berlin to decide the fate of the defeated Ottoman Empire’s possessions in North Africa. France received Tunisia.
Tunisia had borrowed heavily from European powers to fund development and modernize its army. When it declared bankruptcy in 1869, Britain, France, and Italy established a commission to manage its finances and ensure repayment. At the Congress of Berlin, Italy hoped to gain Tunisia, since a number of its citizens now lived there. Britain, however, did not wish Italy to control both sides of the Strait of Sicily, endangering British access to the eastern Mediterranean, but it did want French support for its claims to the Mediterranean island of Cyprus. Germany wished Fran