Imperialism
...social order was its outward movement into a dominant position on several continents and among many islands cast about the earth. Of course, empire was hardly a new institution. It has been a rather constant characteristic of the Western world since well before the days when Roman legions sallied forth to make alien peoples bow beneath standards surmounted by bronze eagles. And even the first years of the nineteenth century were witnesses to Napoleon's effort at surpassing imperial Rome. But never before the end of the century were there so many expressions of imperialism, with rival colonial systems competing in so many areas of the world. Great Britain, France, Holland, Belgium, Italy, Germany, Spain, Portugal, even Russia (not to mention the United States and Japan outside of Europe) intruded forcefully into Africa, or Asia, the Middle East, or the South Pacific--and finally sought the North and South Poles in the early years of this century. As an American senator of the time remarked, the Western world had an acute case of land hunger.
The intensity of this activity has led it to be called a "scramble," more specifically a scramble for Africa and Oceania (the islands of the South Pacific). Because it appeared to be so sudden and so competitive, and yet so much a part of late nineteenth-century political and economic power, this particular phase of overseas expansion has been labeled the "New Imperialism"in order to distinguish it from the "Old Colonialism" that supposedly ended in the late eighteenth century. Between the two, according to an older school of historians, existed a hiatus, a lull, during which Europe remained at home.
Today there is rather common agreement that European overseas expansion was a constant factor of the nineteenth century, with British commercial activities the most obvious aspect, but with both Great Britain and France...
View Full Essay
