Editing Imperialism (section)

==Age of Imperialism==
{{redirect|Imperial Age|the symphonic metal band|Imperial Age (band)}}
{{Main|International relations (1648–1814)|International relations (1814–1919)|New Imperialism}}
The Age of Imperialism, a time period beginning around 1760, saw European industrializing nations, engaging in the process of colonizing, influencing, and annexing other parts of the world.<ref>{{cite web| url = https://archive.org/search.php?query=atlas%20world%20history%20haywood| title = John Haywood, ''Atlas of world history'' (1997)}}</ref> 19th century episodes included the "[[Scramble for Africa]]."<ref>See Stephen Howe, ed., ''The New Imperial Histories Reader'' (2009) [https://h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=32358 online review].</ref>

[[File:Africa map 1914.svg|thumb|upright=1.3|[[Scramble for Africa|Africa]], divided into colonies under multiple European empires, {{Circa|1914}} {{Legend|#ffcc00|Belgium}}{{Legend|#ba8ed9|France}}{{Legend|#0000ff|Germany}}{{Legend|#99ff55|Italy}}{{Legend|#008000|Portugal}}{{Legend|#ffe502|Spain}}{{Legend|#ffb5b7|United Kingdom}}]]
In the 1970s British historians [[John Andrew Gallagher|John Gallagher]] (1919–1980) and [[Ronald Robinson]] (1920–1999) argued that European leaders rejected the notion that "imperialism" required formal, legal control by one government over a colonial region. Much more important was informal control of independent areas.<ref>R.E. Robinson and John Gallagher, '' Africa and the Victorians: The official mind of imperialism'' (1966).</ref> According to Wm. Roger Louis, "In their view, historians have been mesmerized by formal empire and maps of the world with regions colored red. The bulk of British emigration, trade, and capital went to areas outside the formal British Empire. Key to their thinking is the idea of empire 'informally if possible and formally if necessary.'"<ref>Wm. Roger Louis, ''Imperialism'' (1976) p. 4.</ref> Oron Hale says that Gallagher and Robinson looked at the British involvement in Africa where they "found few capitalists, less capital, and not much pressure from the alleged traditional promoters of colonial expansion. Cabinet decisions to annex or not to annex were made, usually on the basis of political or geopolitical considerations."<ref name="Hale">{{Cite book |last=Hale |first=Oron J. |title=The great illusion: 1900–14 |publisher=Harper & Row |year=1971}}</ref>{{Rp|6}}

Looking at the main empires from 1875 to 1914, there was a mixed record in terms of profitability. At first, planners expected that colonies would provide an excellent captive market for manufactured items. Apart from the Indian subcontinent, this was seldom true. By the 1890s, imperialists saw the economic benefit primarily in the production of inexpensive raw materials to feed the domestic manufacturing sector. Overall, Great Britain did very well in terms of profits from India, especially [[Mughal Bengal]], but not from most of the rest of its empire. According to Indian Economist [[Utsa Patnaik]], the scale of the wealth transfer out of India, between 1765 and 1938, was an estimated $45 Trillion.<ref>{{Cite book| edition = 1st| publisher = Columbia University Press| isbn = 9788193732915| others = Utsa Patnaik, Arindam Banerjee, C. P. Chandrasekhar (eds.)| title = Dispossession deprivation and development: essays for Utsa Patnaik| location = New York, NY| date = 2018}}</ref> The Netherlands did very well in the East Indies. Germany and Italy got very little trade or raw materials from their empires. France did slightly better. The Belgian Congo was notoriously profitable when it was a capitalistic rubber plantation owned and operated by King Leopold II as a private enterprise. However, scandal after scandal regarding [[atrocities in the Congo Free State]] led the international community to force the government of Belgium to take it over in 1908, and it became much less profitable. The Philippines cost the United States much more than expected because of military action against rebels.<ref name="Hale"/>{{Rp|7–10}}

Because of the resources made available by imperialism, the world's economy grew significantly and became much more interconnected in the decades before World War I, making the many imperial powers rich and prosperous.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Christopher |first=A.J. |year=1985 |title=Patterns of British Overseas Investment in Land |journal=Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers |series=New Series |volume=10 |issue=4 |pages=452–66 |doi=10.2307/621891 |jstor=621891|issn=0020-2754 }}<!--|access-date= November 14, 2012--></ref>

Europe's expansion into territorial imperialism was largely focused on economic growth by collecting resources from colonies, in combination with assuming political control by military and political means. The colonization of India in the mid-18th century offers an example of this focus: there, the "British exploited the political weakness of the [[Mughal Empire|Mughal]] state, and, while military activity was important at various times, the economic and administrative incorporation of local elites was also of crucial significance" for the establishment of control over the subcontinent's resources, markets, and manpower.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Joe Painter |url=https://archive.org/details/politicsgeograph00pain |title=Politics, Geography and Political Geography: A Critical Perspective |year=1995 |isbn=978-0-470-23544-7 |page=[https://archive.org/details/politicsgeograph00pain/page/114 114] |publisher=E. Arnold |url-access=registration}}</ref> Although a substantial number of colonies had been designed to provide economic profit and to ship resources to home ports in the 17th and 18th centuries, D. K. Fieldhouse suggests that in the 19th and 20th centuries in places such as Africa and Asia, this idea is not necessarily valid:<ref>D. K. Fieldhouse, “'Imperialism': An Historiographical Revision.” ''Economic History Review'' 14#2 1961, pp. 187–209 [https://www.jstor.org/stable/2593218 online]</ref>

{{Blockquote|
Modern empires were not artificially constructed economic machines. The second expansion of Europe was a complex historical process in which political, social and emotional forces in Europe and on the periphery were more influential than calculated imperialism. Individual colonies might serve an economic purpose; collectively no empire had any definable function, economic or otherwise. Empires represented only a particular phase in the ever-changing relationship of Europe with the rest of the world: analogies with industrial systems or investment in real estate were simply misleading.<ref name="Painter & Jeffrey"/>{{Rp|184}}
}}

During this time, European merchants had the ability to "roam the high seas and appropriate surpluses from around the world (sometimes peaceably, sometimes violently) and to concentrate them in Europe".<ref>David Harvey, ''Spaces of Global Capitalism: A Theory of Uneven Geographical Development'' (Verso, 2006) p. 91</ref>

[[File: British ships in Canton.jpg|thumb|British assault on [[Guangzhou|Canton]] during the [[First Opium War]], May 1841]]

European expansion greatly accelerated in the 19th century. To obtain raw materials, Europe expanded imports from other countries and from the colonies. European industrialists sought raw materials such as dyes, cotton, vegetable oils, and metal ores from overseas. Concurrently, industrialization was quickly making Europe the centre of manufacturing and economic growth, driving resource needs.<ref name="Adas 2008 54-58">{{Cite book |last1=Adas |first1=Michael |title=Turbulent Passage A Global History of the Twentieth Century |first2=Peter N. |last2=Stearns |year=2008 |isbn=978-0-205-64571-8 |edition=4th |pages=54–58|publisher=Pearson/Longman }}</ref>

Communication became much more advanced during European expansion. With the invention of railroads and telegraphs, it became easier to communicate with other countries and to extend the administrative control of a home nation over its colonies. Steam railroads and steam-driven ocean shipping made possible the fast, cheap transport of massive amounts of goods to and from colonies.<ref name="Adas 2008 54-58"/>

Along with advancements in communication, Europe also continued to advance in military technology. European chemists made new explosives that made artillery much more deadly. By the 1880s, the machine gun had become a reliable battlefield weapon. This technology gave European armies an advantage over their opponents, as armies in less-developed countries were still fighting with arrows, swords, and leather shields (e.g. the Zulus in Southern Africa during the [[Anglo-Zulu War]] of 1879).<ref name="Adas 2008 54-58"/> Some exceptions of armies that managed to get nearly on par with the European expeditions and standards include the Ethiopian armies at the [[Battle of Adwa]], and the Japanese [[Imperial Army of Japan]], but these still relied heavily on weapons imported from Europe and often on European military advisors.

[[File:Victor Gillam A Thing Well Begun Is Half Done 1899 Cornell CUL PJM 1136 01.jpg|upright=1|thumb|This cartoon reflects the view of [[Judge (magazine)|Judge magazine]] regarding [[American imperialism|America's imperial ambitions]] following McKinley's quick victory in the [[Spanish–American War]] of 1898.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://digital.library.cornell.edu/catalog/ss:3293822|title=A Thing Well Begun Is Half Done|work=Persuasive Maps: PJ Mode Collection|publisher=Cornell University}}</ref>]]