In the late 1800s, English businessman Cecil Rhodes made a fortune claiming huge tracts of land in South Africa—places rich in gold and diamonds—and brutally exploiting the labor of the local population, who he considered to be members of an inferior race. Thousands died as a result of the labor practices his businesses used in Africa. In his later years, he wrote that “the world is nearly all parceled out, and what there is left of it is being divided up, conquered and colonized. To think of these stars that you see overhead at night, these vast worlds which we can never reach, I would annex the planets if I could; I often think of that. It makes me sad to see them so clear and yet so far.”1 Rhodes was an imperialist, and to an imperialist, “expansion was everything.” Imperialism is the policy of expanding the rule of a nation or empire over foreign countries by force. In the 1800s, European nations acquired great wealth and power from both the natural resources of the lands they conquered and the forced labor of the people from whom they took the land. Imperialists used ideas from eugenics and Social Darwinism to justify their conquests. To imperialists like Rhodes, the idea that there would soon be no opportunity for further expansion was unsettling. The French held similar views. In a speech to the French Chamber of Deputies in 1884, Jules Ferry, who twice served as prime minister of France, said:
A few months later, France took part in an international meeting known as the Congress of Berlin. It was called by Otto von Bismarck, then chancellor of Germany, and was attended by 15 nations. They came to establish rules for dividing up Africa—the only large landmass Europeans had not yet fully colonized. By agreeing to abide by those rules, the group hoped to avoid a war in Europe. They paid little or no attention to the effects of their decisions on Africans or the people of any other continent. The results of their efforts can be seen in the following map. The inset shows Africa just before the Congress of Berlin; the main map shows the continent in 1914. At the Congress of Berlin in 1884, 15 European powers divided Africa among them. By 1914, these imperial powers had fully colonized the continent, exploiting its people and resources. In 1915, W. E. B. Du Bois, an African American scholar and activist, summed up the meeting held some 30 years earlier in an article in the Atlantic Monthly. In it, he revealed that the Congress of Berlin was having an impact on Africa nearly two weeks before the first group of delegates arrived in Germany.
The Industrial Revolution of the 1800’s created a need for natural resources to fuel the newly invented machinery and transportation. Resources like coal, iron, and rubber were in high demand. Some nations did not have an abundance of raw materials and looked to other countries and lands to find them. Expanding outside of its borders also allowed a country to enter foreign markets that they needed to sell their industrial goods. Traditional industries became displaced as the manufacturing and markets moved to foreign countries. One such company, the British East Indian Company, became highly profitable by taking natural resources in India and selling goods in markets throughout the world. Imperialism was also influenced by nationalism, a sense of pride in one’s country. People were proud of their growing countries and their accomplishments. A famous saying from that time was “the sun never sets on the British Empire” meaning that the British empire was so vast that there was always a territory that had sun shining on it. This created a sense of competition among European countries to show off their power and prestige around the world. This competition ignited already heated tensions between European countries and conflicts began to spread. Imperialism is not only political and economic, but also cultural. When European powers took over foreign lands they felt superior to the natives. They looked down on them and felt that they needed to bring western culture and “civilize” and educate the “savage” population. This was often called the “White Man’s Burden”. Religion was an important part of imperialism. Christian missionaries looked to convert the natives to Christianity and also called for an end to slave trade in hopes to liberate Africa so it could become a western civilization. |