FOCUS QUESTION How did Western imperialism change after 1880?

The expansion of Western society reached its apex between about 1880 and 1914. In those years, the leading European nations not only continued to send massive streams of migrants, money, and manufactured goods around the world, but also rushed to create or enlarge vast empires. This political empire building, under direct European rule, contrasted sharply with the economic penetration of non-Western territories between 1816 and 1880, which had left a China or a Japan “opened” but politically independent. By contrast, the empires of the late nineteenth century recalled the old European colonial empires of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. Because this renewed imperial push came after a long pause in European expansionism, contemporaries termed it the New Imperialism.

Characterized by a frantic rush to plant the flag over as many people and as much territory as possible, the New Imperialism had momentous consequences. By the early twentieth century almost 84 percent of the globe was dominated by European nations, and Britain alone controlled one-quarter of the earth’s territory and one-third of its population. The New Imperialism created tensions among competing European states and led to wars and threats of war with non-European powers. Aimed primarily at Africa and Asia, the New Imperialism put millions of non-Western peoples directly under European rule.