New Imperialism

The era of the **New Imperialism** lasted from about 1882 AD until 1902 AD. It began with the acquisition of the Congo Free State by King Leopold II of Belgium that began the Scramble for Africa. It then ended after the Boer War in South Africa as Europe and the world edged towards World War I.

The late 19th century saw a new unprecedented pursuit of overseas territorial acquisitions through conquest by the European powers and the United States, soon to be joined by Japan; the New Imperialism. The new wave of imperialism reflected ongoing rivalries among the great powers, and the economic desire for new markets and resources especially cotton, copper, iron and rubber used to fuel their increasingly industrial economies. It was justified by a new social views on colonialism, the "*civilising mission*" ethos. As Rudyard Kipling described it, the West must "*take up the White Man's burden*" of bringing European civilization to the other peoples of the world, regardless of whether these other peoples wanted it or not.

## History

### New Imperialism in Africa and Asia

Europeans had been involved in Africa since the 16th century, but three-centuries later less than ten percent of the great continent was under the direct control of Western nations, limited to a few colonial ventures around the coast: notably French Algeria, British Cape Town, and Portuguese Angola and Mozambique. The 19th century brought an increasing interest in the interior of this last unexplored continent. Among the most famous of the European explorers were the British **David Livingstone** and **Henry Morton Stanley**, and the Portuguese **Serpa Pinto** who charted much of the vast interior. Arduous expeditions in the 1850s and 1860s by Richard Burton, John Speke and James Grant located the great central lakes and the source of the Nile; by the end of the century, the courses of the Niger, Congo and Zambezi Rivers had also been traced. Technological advancement also facilitated colonial expansionism. Steam ships had made the great rivers easily navigable, and medical advances against tropical diseases made the vastness of the tropics more accessible for Europeans, especially quinine, an effective treatment for malaria.

King Leopold II of Belgium was the first European ruler to recognise the opportunity of taking commerce and Christianity into the mineral rich heart of Africa. From 1879 to 1884, Stanley was secretly sent by Léopold to the Congo region, where he made treaties with several African chiefs and by 1882 obtained over 900,000 square miles of territory for the exploitation of its ivory and rubber; the Congo Free State. Given notice by King Leopold, the ultimate catalyst for the sudden and spectacular **Scramble for Africa** (1881-1914) was Otto von Bismarck. In 1884, he appointed Gustav Nachtigal, a distinguished German explorer, the Imperial Consul-General for the west coast of Africa and instructed him to annexe Togo, Cameroon, and Angra Pequena. A mere fifteen years later, the continent was almost entirely shared out between the rival European powers, baring a few territories bordering the Sahara; these too were absorbed by 1912. The earliest moves were again a German initiative, claiming the large territories between the coast and Lake Tanganyika; German East Africa. Meanwhile, Britain established the East Africa Protectorate, Kenya and Uganda, while also expanding northwards from the Cape Town colony into Zimbabwe and Zambia. The final great colonial movement through the continent was that of the French in northwest Africa, establishing a vast contiguous African empire, stretching from the Mediterranean down to the estuary of the Congo. The Africans did not meekly acquiesce to European hegemony, they resisted often violently, but ultimately they were defeated by the superior weapons of the Europeans, especially the new Maxim machine-guns. One of the few successful examples of African resistance to imperialism was Ethiopia, which successfully exploit European rivalries to quickly adapted modern technologies, and defeat the Italians in battle securing her independence. Italy did eventually get in on the game very late, seizing Libya from the enfeebled Ottomans in 1911, though with strenuous opposition from the local tribes, Libya never settled down in her brief period under European rule. Ultimately Europeans wanted colonies in Africa to secure the fuel for their growing industrial economies, especially cotton, copper, iron and rubber. For the most part, the Western nations ruled their colonies with the help of compliant local rulers, who often retained real power while gaining for their own children access to European education; obviously the practical alternative for the native rulers was to resist against an enormously technological advantage.

Meanwhile in Asia, the British expanded from India further into Burma, Malaya, Singapore, North Borneo and Sarawak, and Brunei. Meanwhile, the French annexed Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos between 1880 and 1890, leaving the Kingdom of Siam or Thailand with an uneasy independence as a neutral buffer between the holdings of the rival great powers. The Dutch also formally took possession of Indonesia, controlling the sizable indigenous populations through effective political manipulation supported by military force.

In order to justify this new era of imperialism, the Europeans managed to convince themselves that their conquests of Africa and parts of Asia were a moral enterprise that could bring the blessings of a superior civilisation to those that were considered inferior; to rise up and civilise the savage natives. Charles Darwin published *The Origin of Species* in 1859, and within a decade popularisers had applied, or misapplied, his theories of natural selection and survival of the fittest to contemporary politics and economics. Vulgar anthropology and “scientific” racist rhetoric explained the relative merits of Europeans with Africans and Asians.

### Britain and the Boer War

The British captured Dutch Cape Town in 1806, during the Napoleonic Wars. The descendants of the original Dutch inhabitants, the Boers, soon chaffed under British colonial administration, and once the serious threat from the Zulus under Shaka had diminished, in 1836 a great many of the Dutch-speaking settlers migrated into the interior of modern South Africa, where they established for themselves the territories of Orange Free State and the Transvaal. It was a process viewed with alarm by the British administrators responsible for Cape Town, especially when the fractious Boers declared themselves independent in 1854. The British took over the Transvaal in 1877, due to the renewed threat from the Zulus. At first there was little Boer opposition, as financial mismanagement had brought the state to the verge of bankruptcy. However, when Britain refused to relinquish control once the Anglo-Zulu War (1879) ended, the Boers turned to armed resistance; the **First Boer War** (1880-81). Under the dynamic leadership of Paul Krugar, the Boers made good use of the African terrain to fight a guerilla campaign against the British. Dressed in their earth-tone khaki, they found it easy to snipe the British from a distance dressed in their traditional bright-red uniforms. After a British force was decisively defeated at the Battle of Majuba Hill (1881), the British government gave the Transvaal her independence again, under nominal British oversight.

Tensions inevitably escalated as Britain engaged in the Scramble for Africa with her European rivals, especially when the Boer States began to establish economic links with German South West Africa. Then in 1886, massive gold fields were discovered in the Transvaal, potentially making it a political and economic threat to British supremacy in South Africa. The ensuing gold rush brought a flood of thousands of foreigners into the regions. The Uitlanders as they were called lacked many of the rights of Boer citizens, and were very heavily taxed. In 1895, the British launched the Jameson Raid hoping to trigger an Uitlander rebellion, but the Transvaal authorities surrounded it as soon as it crossed the border and after a brief skirmish they were forced to surrender. Convinced that war is inevitable, now President Kruger began importing arms from Europe. The British pretext for war was a demand that the Uitlanders be granted voting rights. When Kruger refused, in October 1899 the British declared war on the Boer Colonies; the **Second Boer War** (1899-1902). The Boers took the initiative, and besieged three important British bases just beyond the borders; Ladysmith, Kimberley, and Mafeking. The British forces were then decisively defeated in three separate engagements, before thousands of British reinforcements arrived in South Africa in January 1900. The now numerically superior British, relieved the sieges Ladysmith and Kimberley by February, and the following month took Bloemfontein, the capital of the Orange Free State. By June, the British counter-offences had taken Pretoria, the capital of the Transvaal too. However, the Boers refused to surrender, and for the final two years of the war reverting to a guerrilla warfare led by Louis Botha. The British solution was brutal. The entire conquered territory was partitioned and the Boer civilians were relocated into concentration camps; of the 115,000 men, women and children interned, about 26,000 died of illness and disease. Concentration camps had been pioneered by the Spanish governor in Cuba during the Cuban War of Independence (1895–98); unless one counts the Native American reservations. Once the Boer civilians were isolated, the British engaged in a scorched earth policy and used mounted infantry units to systematically track-down the highly mobile Boer guerrillas; the last of the Boers surrendered in May 1902. The Treaty of Vereeniging formally annexed the Transvaal and Orange Free State into British South Africa. Reflective of the discriminatory climate that permeated South Africa during much of the 20th century, the treaty specifically excluded black Africans from having political rights; Apartheid. In 1910, the British government granted South Africa independence within the British Empire, and Boers played a significant role in the administration.

### United States

From the mid-19th century, the population of the United States had been increased by unprecedented numbers of immigrants from across the Atlantic. The Irish escaping the devastation of the Great Famine and Germans fleeing the turmoil of 1848, were some of the first. Once the first wave of immigrants was established, their success encouraged others; by 1900 some 1.7 million residents in America were born in Ireland, and 2.7 million in Germany. Arriving in New York, immigrants were greeted by the 150 feet high Statue of Liberty; a gift from the French honouring the abolition of slavery after victory for the north in the Civil War, first assembled in Paris in 1885, then shipped across the Atlantic in 1886. In 1882 mounting clamour from settlers of European origin against Chinese immigration into California prompted the first retreat from America’s policy of extending a warm welcome to all; the Chinese Exclusion Act banned any further Chinese immigration. Meanwhile, between 1863 and 1869 the 1,912-mile First Transcontinental Railroad was constructed. About 12,000 labourers, mainly Irish and Chinese, worked steadily on two great railway ventures, one westward and another east, towards the meeting point in Utah. With this transcontinental link, America was in a real sense now a single nation from coast to coast. Meanwhile, railway building elsewhere continued apace; in 1882 alone, more than 11,000 miles of track were laid.

To feed the railway-workers, cowboys virtually cleared the great plains of buffalo more efficiently and ruthlessly than any Indians. The last indigenous Americans, deprived of their buffalo prey, were meanwhile being steadily pushed off the plains often through indiscriminate massacres. The threat brought the Indian tribes into an unprecedented degree of alliance under the Sioux and Lakota chieftains **Crazy Horse** and **Sitting Bull**; the Great Sioux War (1876). At Little Bighorn, the Indians wipe-out the 263-man US 7th cavalry, thanks to George Custer reckless charge. Yet, it was impossible for the tribes to maintain this level of success against the might of the United States. Gradually they surrendered and moved into reservations; Crazy Horse gave himself up in 1877, and Sitting Bull remained free until 1881. Even though it took years to subdue Geronimo's War (1881–1886) in the south-west, the Native Americans were all defeated by 1890 with the majority moved into reservations. That year also saw the final shameful massacre of Indians by American troops at Wounded Knee in South Dakota, where hundreds of Sioux men, women and children died under a hail of machine-gun fire when they had already surrounded and were being relieved of their arms; an unexpected rifle shot began the panic and the slaughter. In the reservations, the Bureau of Indian Affairs instituted an assimilation policy of removing Indian children from their families to be educated and civilised, which has been described as cultural genocide. Estimates of the Pre-Columbian native american vary wildly but the general consensus is around 50 million; by 1890, census counted 248,000 Indians. Meanwhile, the cowboys themselves soon found their own way of life under threat from settlers fencing in the plains for their cattle and vast crops of wheat.

In the late 19th-century, the United States suffered from a recurring pattern of **boom and bust**, that has since been seen as an endemic aspect of unrestrained capitalism. One example was that of the Midwest, where the plains had seen an unusually high level of rainfall in the decade from 1877, making farming seem easy. In the following decade a double disaster struck the region: blizzards swept the plains in winter killing cattle in their thousands, followed by a summer of drought leading to harvests a fraction of their usual. For the first time convoys of wagons began heading eastwards, many bearing slogans such as “*In God We Trusted, In Kansas We Busted*”. Meanwhile, a general consensus had developed on Wall Street that the government must hold a minimum reserve of $100 million in gold. When the reserve fell below this symbolic figure in 1893, it provoked a banking crash; the Panic of 1893. Investors rushed to turn their assets into gold, panic fed on panic, and by the end of the years the shutters had come down on 600 banks and 15,000 companies, bringing widespread unemployment and hardship.

With America's *Manifest Destiny* now assured, the United States began its own part in the New Imperialism, acquiring Alaska from Russia in 1867 for $7.2 million, far removed from their central slice of the continent. Then in 1896, gold was found in the Klondike. Although precious grains of dust were nearly all in Canada, the easiest route to this inaccessible region was from the Alaska; the majority of those involved in the gold-rush were American, and much of the $100 million panned between 1897-1904 returned there with them. Meanwhile, the United States, undoubtedly the great power in the western hemisphere, had for decades wanted to take-over Spanish Cuba where they were already heavily invested; an attempt to buy the island before the Civil War had failed. However in 1898, using the pretext of Spanish atrocities perpetrated during the Cuban struggle for independence which had been ongoing since 1895, America declared war. The **Spanish-American War** (April-August 1898) lasted less than 4 months. The Americans invaded Cuba in June 1898, and the next month defeated the Spanish at the San Juan Hill. Meanwhile, warships were dispatched to the Spain Philippines where they defeated the Spanish navy at the Battle of Manila (August 1898), and successfully incited the Philippines to declare independence. The Americans also started the invasion of Puerto Rico, but the Spain sued for peace before it was complete. In the aftermath, the Spanish ceded Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines to the United State; Hawaii had also been annexed during the war. Meanwhile, Cuba gained her independence, within the U.S. sphere of influence. With these new territories, as well as a navy which had excelled in the war, America was now clearly a world power.

In Spain, the humiliation of the Spanish-American War and the loss of her overseas colonies, caused a moral, political and social crisis, and created the so called Generation of 1898, a group of statesmen and intellectuals who demanded liberal reform. However both Anarchism on the left and Fascism on the right also grew rapidly in the early 20th century, and eventually erupted in the Spanish Civil War.

### France

Defeat at the hands of Germany in the Franco-Prussian War had produced a deep sense of national humiliation and anti-German nationalism that affected French attitudes towards all kinds of issues. However, its economy recovered remarkably swiftly. By the late 19th century, industrialisation was well underway and the nation entered what the French call the *Belle Epoque*, with its people began to enjoy the benefits of modernisation: cheap resources, readily available consumer goods, and new inventions like the telegraph and automobile. Living standards improved generally, accompanied by a cultural boom, with new entertainments like cinema, cabaret and the infamous can-can. As elsewhere in Europe, the working classes were often the last to benefit, with grievances about working conditions and demands for political representation. French workplaces were fertile ground for socialists and other radicals, and by the early 1900s France had one of the most left-wing governments in Europe. Meanwhile, the government introduced compulsory education for all French children, both boys and girls, and a progressive income tax, with higher rates for higher earners; radical innovations for its time.

### Japan

By the early nineteenth centuries, the Tokugawa Shogunate was beset by both domestic and foreign crises. In the aftermath of the devastating Tenpō Famines (1833-37) there was a growth in peasant unrest, and a fall in government revenue leading many financially distressed samurai to work side jobs to make a living. Meanwhile the isolationist policy whereby the Dutch were the only European power trading with Japan, that had been in place since the early 17th century, came under increasing pressure. From 1844 British and French warships visited Japan to request commercial relations and were refused, but the Shogunate had no defence when a fleet of American ships commanded by Commodore Matthew C. Perry arrived in 1853 and had to agree to his demands. The US, Great Britain, Russia, and other Western powers imposed humiliating trade treaties on Japan; not dissimilar to "*unequal treaties*" imposed on China after losing the Opium Wars.

With the failure to oppose the Western powers, the Shogunate soon faced internal hostility. The ensuing Boshin Civil War (1868-69) between the ruling Tokugawa Shogunate and disgruntled samurai who wanted to reconstitute their country as a modern nation state, eventually led to the end of the Shogunate. In 1868, the rebels got newly-enthroned **Emperor Meiji** (1867-1912) to proclaim a restoration of the Emperor as the ruler of Japan. The true power rested in Meiji’s cabinet, a group of young samurai bureaucrats who were convinced that isolationism had both limited the country’s participation in technological advances and handicapped the economy. The Meiji government dismantled the feudal system of the past, and promoted widespread Westernisation.  Hundreds of advisers were hired from Western nations with expertise in such fields as education, mining, banking, law, military affairs, and transportation to remodel Japan's institutions. The government made heavy investments in industries, the money for which was raised through heavy taxation and exploitation of the peasantry; peasant uprisings were frequent. The Japanese military went through a program of reform as well, with the introduction of national conscription for three years for all men over twenty. The modernisation of the army and declining status of the samurai led to the **Satsuma Rebellion** (1877) which the new conscript army was able to crush. Meanwhile, Japan emerged from its astonishing industrial revolution as a power on the world stage, assimilating what it had borrowed into a distinctly Japanese modern state. Both the cabinet of Japan and the Japanese military were directly responsible to the Emperor, who was declared a living God. Schools nationwide instilled patriotic values and loyalty to the Emperor. Japan remains one of the biggest success stories of resistance to Western imperialism.