19th-Century Colonial Empires: Britain, France, and Beyond
The British Empire
To assure the conquest of India, the British attempted to protect their neighborhood against all external threats and to control the path to India, the route that connected British ports to Indian ports.
East Africa
The English also established their dominance over Kenya and the Great Lakes region (Uganda).
South Africa
South Africa and the Netherlands had colonized the Cape region in the 17th century, creating a major point of arrival for ships that did the route to their colonies in the East Indies.
West Africa
The English acquired the Gold Coast and Nigeria in this area in 1890.
Asia
The United Kingdom established various spheres of influence: the Chinese empire, Mesopotamia, and Persia.
The French Empire
Algeria & Maghreb
French expansion in North Africa is manifested by the establishment of a protectorate over Tunisia in 1881 in the Treaty of Bardo.
Africa Negra
The conquest of French West Africa was held from previous possessions. France controlled the Sahara Desert, the Gulf of Guinea, and western Sudan.
The French occupied the island of Madagascar in 1896.
Asia
After the occupation of Indochina, which began in the reign of Napoleon III, it continued in the final stage of the century. China forced the French to accept the protectorate in 1885 over the territories of Annam and Tonkin.
Other Imperialist Countries
Russia
Russia’s expansion took place in territories contiguous to Russia: Caucasus, Central Asia, and Siberia. The Caucasus was submitted before 1859. In Central Asia and Turkestan, it handled conflicts of interest with the British. Expansion through Siberia was accentuated with the building of the Trans-Siberian Railroad.
Italy and Germany
Italy and Germany could not establish colonies before 1870. Then, they tried to catch up and met with serious difficulties. Italy could not conquer Abyssinia; troops were repulsed by the locals. They only managed to control the edge of the desert country and Eritrea, Somalia.
Belgium
This small country controlled a vast and rich territory: the Congo. It was established by the initiative of King Leopold II, received in the conference in Berlin, and called its “tropical garden.”
Holland
Holland was a major colonial power in the 17th and 18th centuries. It maintained a rule 60 times larger than their own country.
Portugal
During the 17th and 18th centuries, Portugal was losing large chunks of the colonial rule it had created in the two preceding centuries. In the early 19th century, Brazil was removed in 1822.
Spain
Throughout the 19th century, Spain was deprived of all its empire: Latin America in the first quarter of the century; Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines in 1898 by the war provoked by the U.S.; and in 1899-1900, the islands of Asia and Oceania were sold to Germany and the USA.
United States
In the first half of the 19th century, the U.S. developed what some call “internal imperialism”: the conquest of the West, sometimes buying territories and other times expelling the Indians.
Japan
Since the Meiji Revolution of 1868, Japan had produced rapid industrialization. The emergence of imperial Japan in the current response to a biological need and strong economic expansion heavily deployed Japanese expansionism, provoking victorious wars: the Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895) and the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905).