The French Revolution (1789–1799) had embroiled Europe in military conflict for nearly two decades. At the 1815 Treaty of Vienna, war-weary European monarchies resolved to settle their political differences and suppress further outbreaks of revolutionary violence. After 1815, Europe entered an era of relative peace and prosperity that lasted until World War I. Many historians refer to this period of time from the French Revolution to World War I as the "Long 19th Century".
During the Long 19th Century, England, France, Germany, and other European states used their military and industrial strength to seize territories in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific Ocean and subjugate the indigenous populations living in these territories. European leaders viewed overseas colonies as a signifier of international power and competed with each other to control increasingly larger territories across the globe. The colonies provided natural resources and consumed the manufactured goods of the imperial nations. They presented investment opportunities for the industrialists in each country. The imperialists viewed native people in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific as primitive and uncivilized. They justified their racial and ethnic oppression on the grounds that they were engaged in a "civilizing mission".
In this unit, we examine how European nations staked out claims to colonies worldwide and imposed new technologies and economic systems on colonial possessions. We explore the consequences of colonization for European and colonial populations and evaluate the impact of colonial rebellions and anti-colonial movements during the 19th century.
Completing this unit should take you approximately 3 hours.
For a long time, Britain held the technological edge as the first nation-state to industrialize. Its factories, particularly in the realm of textiles, made it exceptionally wealthy. However, by the middle of the 20th century, these advantages had begun to wane as other states began to catch up. Whereas the First Industrial Revolution was driven by cloth and textiles, the Second Industrial Revolution dealt with iron, steel, railroads, and a host of new goods.
Read this text on the technological innovations during the Second Industrial Revolution. It discusses the challenges and obstacles industrialization brought as it spread beyond central Europe and the United States to Asia, North Africa, and Latin America during the 19th century.
The first phase of European imperialism had largely taken place in the Americas. A notable exception was the growth of the East India Company. However, the Second Industrial Revolution gave European states a decisive advantage over Asian and African states – many had been weakened by conflict or thrown into instability by European trade. By the 1850s, a new era of European imperialism began.
Read this text on how the Second Industrial Revolution fostered imperialism. New industrial technologies, guns, and weaponry allowed Europeans to forcibly conquer and exploit the raw materials, economic development, and political environment in their colonial outposts.
Read this text on how Europeans were able to impose their values on the people they controlled. While their practices varied, European imperialists consistently acted from the position that they were superior and, therefore, had a right to rule.
Read this text to learn how specific technologies made the imposition of imperial rule easier.
Historians continue to debate why Europe embarked on such an intense imperializing mission beginning in the 1870s. Imperialist critics existed, however. In Britain, the economist J.A. Hobson attributed imperialism not to higher motives such as improving people's lives but purely to profit. While later historians have criticized Hobson for ignoring other factors, his critique was nonetheless highly influential, including with Marxists such as Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924).
After 1870, European colonial empires expanded rapidly. At the beginning of that decade, only about 10 percent of Africa was under European control, all of it along the coast. By 1914, there were only two independent areas left on the continent: Liberia and Ethiopia. Asia followed a similar pattern, and even territories that remained independent, such as China, were heavily weakened and under foreign domination.
Read this text on the colonial empires France, Great Britain, Belgium, Germany, and Italy created in Africa. In 1876, Britain's Queen Victoria proclaimed herself Empress of India. Meanwhile, Japan, Russia, and Great Britain competed to dominate Korea and China, while France controlled Indochina (today's Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos).
The imposition of European rule did not happen easily. People resisted, sometimes through military force and other times through diplomacy or nonviolent means. While not all of these resistance movements were successful, they often sowed the seeds for future movements.
Read this text on how the imperial powers treated the people who lived within their colonial domains.
The Boxer Rebellion took place in China. While China was never formally colonized, it was weakened by successive wars with the European powers. Treaties gave the Europeans substantial power within China, including control over its ports. Read this text to learn more about what happened in China and the consequences.
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