7.7 Imperialism's Global Effects

The scramble for Africa could have started a European war. To manage it, Bismarck hosted the Berlin Conference (1884–1885), where 14 states, with no Africans present, agreed that a power had to effectively occupy territory before claiming it, recognized Leopold II's control of the Congo basin, and guaranteed free trade on the Congo and Niger rivers. The conference sped up the scramble rather than slowing it.

The crises in the table show a pattern. Instead of releasing tension safely overseas, colonial rivalry pushed Britain and France together and convinced German leaders that they were being encircled, which hardened the alliance blocs before 1914 (7.3).

Not all Europeans supported empire. The British economist J. A. Hobson argued in Imperialism: A Study (1902) that empire benefited a small group of investors and arms makers while costing ordinary taxpayers, and that the real cause was underconsumption at home. Vladimir Lenin built on this in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916), arguing that imperialism was capitalism's final stage and caused wars among capitalist states. Joseph Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness (1899) exposed the brutality behind the civilizing mission, and E. D. Morel's Congo Reform Association (1904) publicized atrocities in the Congo. On the other side, pressure groups such as the Pan-German League (1891) demanded more colonies and a bigger navy. Britain's harsh tactics in the South African War against the Boers (1899–1902), including concentration camps where tens of thousands of civilians died, also turned many Britons against imperial adventures. Empire changed European culture too: artists and writers took new styles and subjects from colonial encounters, from Japanese prints that influenced the Impressionists to African sculpture that inspired Picasso (7.8).

• India: in the rebellion of 1857, Indian soldiers (sepoys) of the British East India Company revolted, joined by some rulers and civilians. After crushing it, Britain abolished company rule and governed India directly under the Crown from 1858. Western-educated Indians founded the Indian National Congress in 1885, which grew into the main movement for self-rule.
• China: after defeats in the Opium Wars and the carving of China into spheres of influence, the Boxer Rebellion (1899–1901) attacked foreigners and Chinese Christians. An eight-nation force crushed it and imposed a large indemnity on China.
• Africa: Ethiopia defeated an Italian invasion at Adwa (1896) and kept its independence. Zulu forces defeated a British army at Isandlwana (1879) before being conquered. In German South West Africa, the Herero and Nama uprising (1904–1908) was answered with mass killing that historians widely describe as the first genocide of the 20th century.

After U.S. warships forced Japan to open its ports in 1853–1854, a group of reformers overthrew the shogun and restored the emperor's authority in the Meiji Restoration (1868). They deliberately copied Western models: a constitution modeled partly on Germany's, a conscript army, a modern navy, railroads, factories and universal schooling. Japan defeated China (1894–1895) and then Russia (1904–1905), the first victory of an Asian power over a European great power in modern times, and took colonies of its own in Taiwan and Korea. Russia's defeat helped trigger the Revolution of 1905 (6.6).