A second imperial wave raced after older empires cracked
New Imperialism names the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century land grab by industrial great powers plus Japan, set apart from ancient conquests and Europe's first oceanic colonies. Steam, rifles, and finance let capitals paint continents faster than trading-post empires ever had.
Britain and France remained central players, yet Japan, the United States, Russia, Portugal, Belgium, the Netherlands and newly unified Germany and Italy all joined the carve-up. Between them they conquered nearly all of Africa and swathes of Asia, driven by great-power rivalry, hunger for raw materials and markets, and a self-flattering belief in a civilizing mission.
An earlier chapter had closed with the American Revolutionary War of 1775–1783 and Spain's loss of Latin America in the 1820s, setbacks that exposed the weaknesses of mercantilism in British eyes. Britain repealed its Corn Laws in 1846 and embraced free trade, and from the Congress of Vienna in 1815 to 1871 it prospered as the workshop of the world, underselling local manufacturers even in the German states, France, Belgium and the United States.
That dominance eroded after Prussia's coalition crushed the Second French Empire in 1871. Unified Germany and Italy were no longer absorbed by internal quarrels, France burned to recover Alsace-Lorraine, and the decades to 1914 formed a brittle peace. The Long Depression of 1873–1896, with its falling prices and sharp slumps, pushed governments back towards protecting home industry: Germany abandoned free trade from 1879 and France from 1881.
The Berlin Conference of 1884–1885 tried to referee the scramble by making effective occupation the test of a valid claim in Africa. Fifteen nations attended and not one was African; France, Germany, Britain and Portugal led the redrawing, ignoring existing cultural and linguistic lines and leaving roughly 50 colonies. Enforcing occupation meant routine force, and revolts were crushed without mercy, most brutally in the Herero Wars of 1904–1907 in German South-West Africa and the Maji Maji Rebellion of 1905–1907 in German East Africa. Many of these colonies later won independence during decolonization.
Source: New Imperialism
