New Imperialism | History, Summary, & Causes | Britannica

Background and characteristics

After years of rapid growth under free trade policy regimes, an international financial crisis hit much of the industrialized world in 1873. In response to the economic and social fallout of the crisis, states began taking a more proactive approach in managing their economic affairs. In the 1870s and 1880s, the great powers of Europe suddenly shook off almost a century of apathy toward overseas colonies and, in the space of 20 years, partitioned almost the entire uncolonized portion of the globe. Once the scramble for colonies was complete, pressure groups formed in the various countries to argue the economic promise of imperialism, but just as often governments had to foster colonial development. In most cases, trade did not lead but followed the flag.

One necessary condition that characterized this New Imperialism, often overlooked, is technological. Prior to the 1870s Europeans could overawe native peoples along the coasts of Africa and Asia but lacked the firepower, mobility, and communications that would have been needed to pacify the interior. (India was the exception, where the British East India Company exploited an anarchic situation and allied itself with selected native rulers against others.) The tsetse fly and the Anopheles mosquito—bearers of sleeping sickness and malaria—were the ultimate defenders of African and Asian jungles. The correlation of forces between Europe and the colonizable world shifted, however, with the invention of shallow-draft riverboats, the steamship and telegraph, the repeater rifle and Maxim gun, and the discovery (in India) that quinine is an effective prophylactic against malaria. By 1880 small groups of European regulars, armed with modern weapons and exercising fire discipline, could overwhelm many times their number of native troops.

More From Britannica Western colonialism: The new imperialism (c. 1875–1914)

Apart from the ability to now expand into uncolonized regions, technological advances from the co-occuring second Industrial Revolution also enabled newcomers to the imperialist drive to compete with the old powers. Mass-produced steel, electric power and oil as sources of energy, industrial chemistry, and the internal-combustion engine helped additional states, including Germany, the United States, and, eventually, Japan, to join the colonial scramble on roughly equal footing. Both the new technology and the added competition also contributed to the rapid speed of the New Imperialism.

To operate efficiently, the new industries of the second Industrial Revolution required heavy capital investment in large-scale units. Accordingly, they encouraged the development of capital markets and banking institutions that were large and flexible enough to finance the new enterprises. The larger capital markets and industrial enterprises, in turn, helped push forward the geographic scale of operations of the industrialized nations: more capital could now be mobilized for foreign loans and investment, and the bigger businesses had the resources for the worldwide search for and development of the raw materials essential to the success and security of their investments. Not only did the new industrialism generate a voracious appetite for raw materials, but food for the swelling urban populations was now also sought in the far corners of the world. Advances in ship construction (steamships using steel hulls, twin screws, and compound engines) made feasible the inexpensive movement of bulk raw materials and food over long ocean distances. Under the pressures and opportunities of the later decades of the 19th century, more and more of the world was drawn upon as primary producers for the industrialized nations. Self-contained economic regions dissolved into a world economy, involving an international division of labour whereby the leading industrial nations made and sold manufactured products and the rest of the world supplied them with raw materials and food.

Ship construction was also of special importance to the revival of militarism in this period. Although Great Britain had long enjoyed naval supremacy, it now had to build a completely new navy, comprising steam-powered armour-plated warships, while the other industrialized nations were doing the same.

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Renewed colonial rivalry, moreover, brought an end to the relatively peaceful conditions of the mid-19th century, with the South African War (the Boer War), the First Sino-Japanese War, the Spanish-American War, and the Russo-Japanese War among those that ushered in this new era. Much of the conflict arose from the intensification of tendencies that originated in earlier periods. The decision by the United States to go to war with Spain, for example, cannot be isolated from the long-standing interest of the United States in the Caribbean and the Pacific. Dominance of the Caribbean after Spain’s defeat was consistent with the Monroe Doctrine, which set up the United States as a guarantor of a Latin America free of European domination; possession of the Philippines was consistent with the historic interest of the United States in the commerce of the Pacific, as it had already manifested by its long interest in Hawaii (annexed in 1898).

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The annexations during this new phase of imperial growth differed significantly from the expansionism earlier in the 19th century. While the latter was substantial in magnitude, it was primarily devoted to the consolidation of claimed territory (by penetration of continental interiors and more effective rule over indigenous populations) and only secondarily to new acquisitions. On the other hand, the New Imperialism was characterized by a burst of activity in carving up as yet independent areas: taking over almost all Africa, a good part of Asia, and many Pacific islands. This new vigour in the pursuit of colonies is reflected in the fact that the rate of new territorial acquisitions of the New Imperialism was almost three times that of the earlier period. Thus, the increase in new territories claimed in the first 75 years of the 19th century averaged about 83,000 square miles (215,000 square kilometres) a year. As against this, the colonial powers added an average of about 240,000 square miles (620,000 square kilometres) a year between the late 1870s and World War I (1914–18). By the beginning of that war, the new territory claimed was for the most part fully conquered, and the main military resistance of the indigenous populations had been suppressed. Hence, in 1914, as a consequence of this new expansion and conquest on top of that of preceding centuries, the colonial powers, their colonies, and their former colonies extended over approximately 85 percent of Earth’s surface. Economic and political control by leading powers reached almost the entire globe, for, in addition to colonial rule, other means of domination were exercised in the form of spheres of influence, special commercial treaties, and the subordination that lenders often impose on debtor nations.