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New Im­pe­ri­al­ism gave rise to new so­cial views of colo­nial­ism. Rud­yard Kipling, for in­stance, urged the United States to "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 this civ­i­liza­tion or not. This part of The White Man's Burdenex­em­pli­fies Britain's per­ceived at­ti­tude to­wards the col­o­niza­tion of other coun­tries: While So­cial Dar­win­ism be­came pop­u­lar through­out West­ern Eu­rope and the United States, the pa­ter­nal­is­tic French and Por­tuguese "civ­i­liz­ing mis­sion" (in French: mis­sion civilisatrice; in Por­tuguese: Missão civilizadora) ap­pealed to many Eu­ro­pean states­men both in and out­side France. De­spite ap­par­ent benev­o­lence ex­ist­ing in the no­tion of the "White Man's Bur­den", the un­in­tended con­se­quences of im­pe­ri­al­ism might have greatly out­weighed the po­ten­tial ben­e­fits. Gov­ern­ments be­came in­creas­ingl...

India

In the 17th cen­tury, the British busi­ness­men ar­rived in India and, after tak­ing a small por­tion of land, formed the East India Com­pany. The British East India Com­pany an­nexed most of the coun­try of India, start­ing with Ben­gal in 1757 and end­ing with Pun­jab in 1849. Many princely states re­mained in­de­pen­dent. This was aided by a power vac­uum formed by the col­lapse of the Mughal Em­pire in India and the death of Mughal Em­peror Au­rangzeb and in­creased British forces in Indi...

Southeast Asia

After tak­ing con­trol of much of India, the British ex­panded fur­ther into Burma, Malaya, Sin­ga­pore and Bor­neo, with these colonies be­com­ing fur­ther sources of trade and raw ma­te­ri­als for British goods.

Indonesia

For­mal coloni­sa­tion of the Dutch East In­dies (now In­done­sia) com­menced at the dawn of the 19th cen­tury when the Dutch state took pos­ses­sion of all Dutch East India Com­pany (VOC) as­sets. Be­fore that time the VOC mer­chants were in prin­ci­ple just an­other trad­ing power among many, es­tab­lish­ing trad­ing posts and set­tle­ments (colonies) in strate­gic places around the arch­i­pel­ago. The Dutch grad­u­ally ex­tended their sov­er­eignty over most of the is­lands in the East In­...

Be­tween 1850 and 1914, Britain brought nearly 30% of Africa's pop­u­la­tion under its con­trol, to 15% for France, 9% for Ger­many, 7% for Bel­gium and 1% for Italy: Nige­ria alone con­tributed 15 mil­lion sub­jects to Britain, more than in the whole of French West Africa, or the en­tire Ger­man colo­nial em­pire. The only re­gions not under Eu­ro­pean con­trol in 1914 were Liberia and Ethiopia.

In Ocea­nia, France got a lead­ing po­si­tion as im­pe­r­ial power after mak­ing Tahiti and New Cale­do­niapro­tec­torates in 1842 and 1853 respectively. Chile's in­ter­est in ex­pand­ing into the is­lands of the Pa­cific Ocean dates to the pres­i­dency of José Joaquín Pri­eto (1831-1841) and the ide­ol­ogy of Diego Por­tales, who con­sid­ered that Chile's ex­pan­sion into Poly­ne­sia was a nat­ural con­se­quence of its mar­itime destiny.[A] Nonethe­less, the first stage of the coun­try's ex­pan­sion­ism into the Pa­cific began only a decade later, in 1851, when—in re­sponse to an Amer­i­can in­cur­sion into the Juan Fernández Is­lands—Chile's gov­ern­ment for­mally or­ga­nized the is­lands into a sub­del­e­ga­tion of Val­paraíso. That same year, Chile's eco­nomic in­ter­est in the Pa­cific were re­newed after its mer­chant fleet briefly suc­ceeded in cre­at­ing an agri­cul­tural goods ex­change mar­ket that con­nected the Cal­i­forn­ian port of San Fran­cisco with Aus­tralia. By 18...

The ex­ten­sion of Eu­ro­pean con­trol over Africa and Asia added a fur­ther di­men­sion to the ri­valry and mu­tual sus­pi­cion which char­ac­ter­ized in­ter­na­tional diplo­macy in the decades pre­ced­ing World War I. France's seizure of Tunisiain 1881 ini­ti­ated fif­teen years of ten­sion with Italy, which had hoped to take the coun­try, re­tal­i­at­ing by al­ly­ing with Ger­many and wag­ing a decade-long tar­iff war with France. Britain's takeover of Egypt a year later caused a marked cool­ing of her re­la­tions with France. The most strik­ing con­flicts of the era were the Span­ish–Amer­i­can War of 1898 and the Russo-Japan­ese War of 1904–05, each sig­nal­ing the ad­vent of a new im­pe­r­ial great power; the United States and Japan, re­spec­tively. The Fashodain­ci­dent of 1898 rep­re­sented the worst An­glo-French cri­sis in decades, but France's buck­ling in the face of British de­mands fore­shad­owed im­proved re­la­tions as the two coun­tries set about re­solv­ing their o...

Humanitarianism

One of the biggest mo­ti­va­tions be­hind New Im­pe­ri­al­ism was the idea of hu­man­i­tar­i­an­ism and "civ­i­liz­ing" the "lower" class peo­ple in Africa and in other un­de­vel­oped places. This was a re­li­gious mo­tive for many Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ar­ies, in an at­tempt to save the souls of the "un­civ­i­lized" peo­ple, and based on the idea that Chris­tians and the peo­ple of the United King­dom were morally su­pe­rior. Most of the mis­sion­ar­ies that sup­ported im­pe­ri­al­ism did so...

Dutch Ethical Policy

The Dutch Eth­i­cal Pol­icy was the dom­i­nant re­formist and lib­eral po­lit­i­cal char­ac­ter of colo­nial pol­icy in the Dutch East In­dies dur­ing the 20th cen­tury. In 1901, the Dutch Queen Wil­helmina an­nounced that the Nether­lands ac­cepted an eth­i­cal re­spon­si­bil­ity for the wel­fare of their colo­nial sub­jects. This an­nounce­ment was a sharp con­trast with the for­mer of­fi­cial doc­trine that In­done­sia was mainly a wingewest (re­gion for mak­ing profit). It marked the star...

The "ac­cu­mu­la­tion the­ory" adopted by Karl Kaut­sky, John A. Hob­son and pop­u­lar­ized by Vladimir Lenin cen­tered on the ac­cu­mu­la­tion of sur­plus cap­i­tal dur­ing and after the In­dus­trial Rev­o­lu­tion: re­stricted op­por­tu­ni­ties at home, the ar­gu­ment goes, drove fi­nan­cial in­ter­ests to seek more prof­itable in­vest­ments in less-de­vel­oped lands with lower labor costs, un­ex­ploited raw ma­te­ri­als and lit­tle com­pe­ti­tion. Hob­son's analy­sis fails to ex­plain colo­nial ex­pan­sion on the part of less in­dus­tri­al­ized na­tions with lit­tle sur­plus cap­i­tal, such as Italy, or the great pow­ers of the next cen­tury—the United States and Rus­sia—which were in fact net bor­row­ers of for­eign cap­i­tal. Also, mil­i­tary and bu­reau­cratic costs of oc­cu­pa­tion fre­quently ex­ceeded fi­nan­cial re­turns. In Africa (ex­clu­sive of what would be­come the Union of South Africain 1909) the amount of cap­i­tal in­vest­ment by Eu­ro­peans was rel­a­tively small...