It was, in fact, a commonplace view and certainly not just one held by Marxists, that industry and colonial expansion were somewhat connected. As Talleyrand put it in his memoirs: ‘Agriculture does not conquer: it settles. Trade conquers: it needs to expand.’57 Max Weber, in one of his last lectures, concurred that early colonization expanded markets and profits: ‘the acquisition of colonies by the European states led to a gigantic acquisition of wealth in Europe for all of them … This accumulation was secured by force, without exception and by all countries.’58 The standard Enlightenment view of international commerce was benign. So wrote Montesquieu in De l’esprit des lois: ‘Commerce is a cure for the most destructive prejudices; for it is almost a general rule that wherever we find agreeable manners, there commerce flourishes; and that wherever there is commerce, there we meet with gentle manners.’59
The two Opium Wars, fought, ostensibly, to open up China to Western trade (1839–42 and 1856–60), were not gentle. Nevertheless there is little doubt that opium was a major source of revenue for British India. The profits were used to sustain the government of India, and to buy American cotton and Chinese tea and silk. All of this made China into one of Britain’s main trading partners in the middle of the nineteenth century.60 The duty levied on Chinese tea was almost alone sufficient to pay for the yearly expenditure of the British Navy.61 The amazingly profitable commerce in opium played a central place in Britain’s global trade ‘from the purchase of US cotton for the Lancashire mills to the remittances of India to the United Kingdom’.62 By the time of the Arrow War (the Second Opium War), opium earnings had grown to about 22 per cent of the gross revenue of the whole of British India. Before British rule, opium cultivation in India was negligible.63 The Treaty of Nanjing reveals Victorian Britain’s astonishing willingness to go to war and impose severe penalties on a foreign country in defence of what were British opium traders.64
Chinese anger, understandably, marked a whole generation of intellectuals and that anger is not forgotten to this day. The progressive scholar and journalist Liang Qichao, in his essay ‘On the New Rules for Destroying Countries’, written after the draconian Western sanctions that followed the Boxer Rebellion (1899–1901), listed sarcastically the ‘rules’ which could be deployed against China by the all-conquering West: sending the country into debt (Egypt), splitting it territorially (Poland), divide and rule (India), and using overwhelming force (Philippines and the Transvaal).65 Late Qing China may not have been a colony but its economy was almost completely dominated by foreigners. Foreign banks, such as the Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC), founded in 1865, monopolized the banking sector and enjoyed extraterritoriality. Shipping was also controlled by foreigners (84 per cent in 1907), and again the largest firms were British. Four major foreign railway companies controlled 41 per cent of the entire railway track. Foreign interests also dominated mining and the postal service. Foreign control increased even after the nationalist revolution of 1911.66 Korea, once a Chinese colony, was now a Japanese one. The Japanese had also conquered Taiwan and had extended their influence into Manchuria. Russia had a zone of influence in the north-east; Britain had one in Shanghai, Nanking, and in much of the Yangtze valley, as well as in Hong Kong and Kowloon in the south and in Tibet; Portugal still controlled Macao; and there was considerable French influence in Kunming and along the border with Indochina (a French colony).
Colonialism was a factor behind early industrialization and may have prevented others from joining the ‘advanced’ club, as dependency theorists claim. But was the significant expansion of overseas possession in the period we are discussing of such importance to economic development? Was the acquisition of colonies, in the ‘Age of Empire’, really functional to industrialization? Were the revenues from the new possessions significant, or was the expenditure excessive? Were post-1880 acquisitions as important as older, pre-industrial-age colonies? And were they acquired as part of a nation-building programme, to create social order and social peace at home?
This latter explanation particularly fits German and Italian colonialism. In 1882, the President of the German Colonial Association (Deutscher Kolonialverein), Prince Hohenlohe-Langenburg, declared that acquiring colonies would help in the struggle against social democracy.67 But then, he would have said that, since lobbyists will use any argument available. Lothar Bucher, a close aide to Bismarck, argued that the real ‘enemy’ was not social democracy but Britain, and that the new German state should expand its economic activities overseas in competition with Great Britain to benefit German industry. Bismarck soon realized that this would add a significant burden to the national budget. He remained an unenthusiastic colonialist.68
There was no obvious pattern or connection between industrial capitalism and colonial acquisition, particularly after 1880. While trade and foreign investments were crucial for some countries, they did not require colonies. There was, after all, plenty of trade with Latin America and China as well as areas, such as Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, which, though not yet independent, were self-governing. Colonization seemed to be reaching a final stage.
The list of the main European acquisitions between 1880 and the First World War shows that Africa was the focus of late colonization (see Table 13). In 1879 some 90 per cent of Africa was still ruled by Africans. By 1912 very few Africans ruled themselves.69 An anonymous writer for the Fortnightly Review could claim in 1890 that ‘The partition of Europe, of Asia, and even of America, among the dominating races of the world has been the slow work of centuries; the serious scramble for Africa began only six years ago, and is now nearly complete.’70 Where else but in Africa could colonies be established after 1880, since not much was left and the conquest of Africa was relatively cheap? As Joseph Chamberlain declared in 1893, smugly, ‘It is a curious fact … that of all the nations in the world, we are the only one which has been able to carry out this work of civilisation without great cost to ourselves.’71
Colonization could not have taken place in Latin America. There white settlers had already freed themselves from Spain and Portugal – and European expansionism would have had to face the hostility of the United States following the Monroe Doctrine, which declared that any European attempt to colonize any part of South America would be viewed by the USA as an act of aggression (though one it could probably not have enforced). In any case, no European powers had either the intention or the strength to colonize any parts of Latin America. Great Britain, already dominant in some of those regions, especially Argentina, was satisfied with what came to be called ‘an informal empire’, far less costly then direct rule. Indeed, Britain had been an instigator of the Monroe Doctrine to keep other Europeans away.72
No new colonial expansion could have taken place in the Indian subcontinent (present-day India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Burma), since Great Britain was firmly in control. China, though not a colony, was open to Western trade and no single European power would have been able to take the country over without fierce resistance from China and opposition from other European powers. Most of the Middle East was part of the Ottoman Empire, whose dismemberment had started earlier in the century. Much of Asia, by 1900, had been taken over by the West. In 1898 the Philippines had been ceded by Spain to the United States for $20 million. Indonesia was a Dutch colony and Indochina (present-day Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia) a French one. Thailand managed to play the French against the British and thus retain its independence. So, by 1880 there was not much left to colonize outside Africa.
Afghanistan, along with Persia, was being fought over by Russia and Great Britain (the famous ‘Great Game’ that endured for most of the nineteenth century) and, as the British discovered, was not worth the time or the expenditure. The Russians were extending their empire into central Asia, and the British assumed that their target was India. Several proxy wars were fought, mainly in Afghanistan. Britain, fearing Russian intentions, invaded Tibet (technically part of China’s Qing Empire) in December 1903, egged o
n by Lord Curzon, India’s Viceroy, who was now convinced that the Dalai Lama was about to enter an alliance with Russia, for a long time Curzon’s great obsession. The British government itself had initially been reluctant to intervene, but Curzon exploited a bogus incident to sway the British Prime Minister, Arthur Balfour, the Secretary of State for India, and the entire British cabinet. British troops, or, rather, Indian Sikh sepoys and Nepalese Gurkhas, led by British officers under the overall command of Francis Younghusband, met fierce resistance from the Tibetans. Eventually, British military superiority triumphed: at the hot springs of Chumik Shenko, Tibetan forces, outgunned and outnumbered, suffered severe casualties (over 500 killed), compared to very few (twelve) on the British side. This episode became known as ‘the massacre of Chumik Shenko’.73
The rise of German power finally led Russia and Britain to bury their differences and to forget about Tibet and Afghanistan. The Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907 recognized the two countries’ respective spheres of influence, particularly over Iran, Afghanistan, and Tibet. The ‘Great Game’ was over at last, albeit temporarily, a monument to diplomatic incompetence and the obtuse frame of mind that characterized many of those, such as Lord Curzon, who ruled the empire.
There was, though, a newcomer in the colonial race: Japan. The only non-European industrial power apart from the United States, it had managed to put itself beyond the reach of Western greed thanks to its largely military-led process of industrialization. Previously, Japanese forays abroad were rare (the failed invasions of Korea between 1592 and 1598 by Toyotomi Hideyoshi and the informal annexation of the Ryukyu Islands in the seventeenth century being the most significant). But in the decades following the Meiji Restoration (1868) Japan entered the race in Asia, which it regarded as its ‘natural’ sphere of influence. Japan’s 1895 war with China resulted in the capture of Port Arthur (Lüshun-kou), where the Japanese army was responsible for the massacre of over a thousand civilians and the virtual annexation of Korea (formalized in 1910). The Treaty of Shimonoseki that ensued was extremely damaging for China: it had to cede Taiwan, pay a large indemnity, and open its borders to Japanese trade.74 Ten years later, in 1905, Japan waged another war, this time against Russia. Its victory astounded the world, unused as it was to the spectacle of non-Europeans defeating a ‘great’ European power. Yukichi Fukuzawa, one of Japan’s foremost writers, declared that this was ‘the victory of a united government and people. There are no words that can express my pleasure …’75
In the 1870s the term ‘Yellow Peril’ had been used in the United States to denote the ‘threat’ represented by the immigration of Chinese workers (leading to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882). Now Japan, thanks to its newly acquired military might, had become, in the eyes of Westerners, a new colour-tinted race ‘peril’. In retaliation, the poet Mori Ōgai coined the term hakka (white peril) in 1904:
Yellow Peril in victory, barbarian in defeat;
The White race makes a mockery of criticism.
But who rejoices in the praise
And who laments the slander?76
In Japan there was widespread optimism. The diplomat and scholar Manjirō Inagaki, writing in 1890, was looking forward to a world which, after the opening of the Panama Canal, would see Japan ‘practically in the centre of the three large markets – Europe, Asia and America – and its commercial prosperity would be ensured’.77 And he added, ‘Japan has not only a splendid future before her with regard to commercial greatness, but has every chance of rising to the head of manufacturing nations.’78 For many Japanese, acquiring an empire was part and parcel of being a modern power in the modern world.79 The making of Japan as a nation state ‘entailed the creation of new peripheries on the home islands as well as overseas’.80 Inoue Kaoru, Japan’s Foreign Minister, wrote in a memorandum (1887), ‘what we must do is to transform our empire and our people, make the empire like the countries of Europe and our people like the peoples of Europe. To put it differently we have to establish a new European-style empire on the edge of Asia.’81 Thus the occupation of Korea was part of the Japanese reframing of the European ‘civilizing mission’ in Japanese terms.82
Japanese imperialism, like other imperialisms, had been motivated by the desire to exclude other powers from Korea and to secure its trade. In Hirobumi Itō’s narrative (Itō had several times been Prime Minister of Japan and then Governor of Korea), Japan occupied Korea to prevent Russia or China from conquering it – a kind of humanitarian intervention that did not convince most Koreans and obviously not An Jung-geun, a nationalist convert to Catholicism and now a Korean national hero, who assassinated Itō in 1909.83 The justification by Japan for the take-over of Korea was similar in kind to that of Europeans: Koreans were barbarians who dealt with their criminals in an inhumane way by burying them up to their necks and letting them be devoured by insects.84 Similarly, the inhabitants of Taiwan, ceded under duress by China to Japan in 1895, were routinely referred to as ferocious savages.85 To colonize Taiwan, Japan had to fight a colonial war that lasted two decades, claimed more Japanese lives (not to mention Taiwanese lives) than the Sino-Japanese War, and consumed 7 per cent of Japanese national product. Eventually, after a lengthy campaign of terror and sheer brute force, superior Japanese technology prevailed.86 Japan had joined the West in every sense.
Japan too had its anti-colonialists: Kōtoku Shūsui, a socialist, wrote Imperialism, the Spectre of the Twentieth Century (1901). However, far from being an economic analysis of imperialism (like J. A. Hobson’s Imperialism, 1902, Rudolf Hilferding’s Finance Capital, 1910, and Lenin’s Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, 1916), the text was imbued with a strong anti-militaristic and anti-nationalistic message: a people that allows itself to be manipulated by patriotism is narrow-minded and cannot claim to be civilized. Those who sacrifice education, the economy, and politics at the altar of patriotism should be regarded as criminals against humanity.87 Kōtoku Shūsui contended that imperialism retarded economic progress and that Japan should renounce imperialism and, instead, expand trade and spread civilization.88 Accused, almost certainly unjustly, of plotting to assassinate the Emperor (known in Japan as the ‘High Treason Incident’), Kōtoku Shūsui was executed in 1911 along with many others, including his wife Kanno Sugako. A campaign of repression against left-wing organizations ensued, even though they did not pose any threat to the stability of the country since the influence of socialism in Japan was derisory: Japan’s Interior Ministry estimated the total number of socialists in Japan to be 532.89
The Japanese ‘empire’ was tiny compared to the vast territories accumulated by Britain and France. Table 13 shows the remarkable list of acquisitions by Western countries between 1880 and 1914.
Table 13 Western Countries’ Colonial Acquisitions, 1880–1914*
Acquired by Great Britain
Middle East and North Africa Bahrain; Kuwait; Egypt
Asia Brunei; Hong Kong new territories
Sub-Saharan Africa Botswana; Ghana; Kenya; Lesotho; Malawi; Uganda; British Somalia; Sudan; Swaziland; Zanzibar; Rhodesia (now Zambia and Zimbabwe)
Oceania Papua New Guinea; Fiji (in 1874); New Hebrides (with France – now Vanuatu)
Acquired by France
Middle East and North Africa Tunisia; Morocco
Asia Indochina
Sub-Saharan Africa Mauritania; Mali; Ivory Coast; Niger; Haute-Volta (Burkina Faso); Dahomey (Benin); Madagascar; Tunisia; Senegal; French Congo (Congo-Brazzaville); Djibouti; French Guinea; Chad
Oceania New Hebrides (with Great Britain – now Vanuatu); German New Guinea (acquired in 1914); Marshall Islands
Acquired by Germany (all lost after the First World War)
Africa Cameroon; Togoland; Ruanda-Burundi; Tanganyika (Tanzania); German South-West Africa (Namibia); German New Guinea (lost in 1914)
Acquired by other European countries
Belgium Congo Free State (private possession of King Leopold II until 1908 when it became a Belgian colony)
Italy Eritrea; Somalia; Libya
*After the First World War the British and French Empires expanded further with the acquisition of territories such as Iraq, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Tanzania, and Cameroon, hitherto under the control of the defeated powers (Turkey and Germany). Australia acquired German New Guinea.
European imperialism was the business of a few nations and, among these, the lion’s share, by far, was in the hands of the British. Taking size as a measure of empire (rather than population) it is evident (see Table 14) that by 1913 European empires were in practice a British-French condominium in which the British were the dominant force:90
Table 14 Extra-European Territory Held by European Powers (in millions of sq. km)
1878 1913
Great Britain 24.9 29.5
France 4.9 11.5
Portugal 2.2 2.2
Netherlands 2.1 2.1
Spain 1.0 0.8
Germany 0.5 3.5
Italy 0.0 2.5
Colonialism encountered some resistance: in southern India by Tipu Sultan at the close of the eighteenth century; in Haiti by Toussaint Louverture, who fought the French in 1801–2, believing in the values of the French Revolution only to be defeated by Napoleon and deported to France; in what is Ghana today by the Ashanti Empire against the British and their African allies in a succession of wars between 1824 and 1901; and by the Xhosa tribes in nine wars for most of the nineteenth century in the Dutch Cape Colony.91 In 1879 the Zulu fought the British in South Africa at the Battle of Isandlwana, thoroughly defeating them before being subjugated. On 27 July 1880 the British were defeated at the Battle of Maiwand by the Afghan army led by Ayub Khan (now Afghanistan’s national hero). In 1887 the Italians were defeated by the Ethiopians and then again in 1896 (see below). In 1906, in their colony in Natal, the British crushed a Zulu rebellion against taxation in which between 3,000 and 4,000 were killed.92
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