The period in the world’s history from the end of the Napoleonic Wars (1815) to the beginning of the Great War (1914) is usually labeled as the “golden age” of the European imperialistic expansion and the making of the greater national states and overseas colonial empires in Africa and Asia. Nevertheless, in 1815 huge territories of the world were still unknown to Europeans, and millions of people in Africa and Asia were living their lives not influenced by European civilization.

Europeans were not very familiar with China, one of the oldest and richest civilizations globally. However, only a century later, European explorers, colonists, missionaries, merchants, bankers, adventurists, soldiers, and administrators, penetrated almost all corners of the globe. As a matter of fact, the people of Asia and especially Africa mainly were unable to resist colonists and to repulse the superior European technology, especially of armed forces. In Africa, on the eve of the Great War, there were only two territories free of European colonization: Liberia on the western African seacoast and Abyssinia in East Africa.   

As a historical-political phenomenon, imperialism is understood as domination or control by one state or a group of people over others. The new phase of imperialism started in the first half of the 19th century when occupational-colonial authorities were imposed by (West) European industrial states in their competition for the colonial partition of Asia and especially Africa.

At least from the Marxist viewpoint (V.I. Lenin), imperialism was an economic necessity of the industrialized capitalist economies that had the aim to offset the declining tendency of the rate of profit by exporting capital investments. The others did not understand imperialism as necessary in economic terms as it was, for instance, the case with J. A. Schumpeter who defined this phenomenon as the non-rational tendency of the state to expend as much as its power and territory.

From the psychological point of view, imperialism was rooted in the minds of rulers and ruling aristocracy for the grabbing of land to become richer and politically influential. Alternative views of imperialistic policies stress the outgrowth of popular nationalism or a method to underwrite the welfare state in order to pacify the working class, personal adventurism, civilizing mission, or finally as a consequence of international rivalry for political power and prestige. Nevertheless, the 19th-century neo-imperialism had clearly a Eurocentric focus.  

Actually, the process of making new imperialistic colonial empires, especially by the West European countries regarding Africa and South-East Asia including the Pacific aquatorium, occupied 1871 to 1914. As a matter of comparison, Africa was only under minimal (sea coast) West European colonial penetration in the years 1815-1870 as the immense portion of the continent was even not discovered by European explorers.

The German unification in 1871 gave a new impetus to the colonization of Africa and Asia followed by the Italian desire (unified in 1861/1866) to take a part of the African colonial cake. Thus, up to 1871, European possessions in Africa and Asia were mainly confined to trading posts and military strategic stations with the exception of British possessions in (British) India, Australia, New Zealand, and Cape Colony in South Africa followed by those of Russia in Siberia, Portuguese in littoral Angola and Mozambique and of France in littoral Algeria, Senegal, and Indo-China.

The competition for colonial possessions by the Great European Powers had a significant influence on international relations and global politics from the 16th to the 18th centuries, but up to the mid-19th century overseas empire building lost its previous attraction. Several economic philosophers, like Adam Smith and those around the Manchester School, criticized the overseas empire building based on mercantilist justification, as British successful trade with the USA or South America did not depend on political control and colonial politics as they were not necessary for commercial success.

Further, in 1852, Benjamin Disraeli (later twice British PM) thought that colonies had been millstones around the British neck. However, no great European power after the Napoleonic Wars wanted to abandon any of their colonial possessions. However, the First French Empire ceased to exist as the majority of French pre-Napoleonic colonies were transferred to others, especially Britain.

Both Spain and Portugal lost their American possessions due to the wars of independence following their weakness at home. The Spanish and Portuguese colonies in the Western hemisphere became formally independent and only Cuba remained under Spanish rule till 1898. In 1867, Russia sold to the USA its North American territory of Alaska.

However, in the 1830s, France, which up to 1815 had lost most of her first colonial empire started to gradually build a new one with the occupation of the littoral of Algeria (the rest of Algeria was occupied in the 1840s). This was followed by expanding her colony of Senegal in the 1850s, taking several Pacific islands and annexing Saigon in 1859. French Indo-China was finally formed in 1893, French West Africa in 1876-1898, French Congo in 1875-1892 (part of French Equatorial Africa), Madagascar in 1895-1896, and Morocco in 1912. French Guiana was the only French colony in South America.

Simultaneously, Great Britain acquired new colonies and up to 1914 became the greatest Western colonial empire and biggest in world history, having territorial acquisitions from Canada to New Zealand – 35 mil. sq. km. compared to the Mongol Empire (20 mil. sq. km.) and the Roman Empire (13 mil. sq. km). Having lost political-colonial dominance in America since 1783 (American Revolution and War of Independence, 1776-1783), the British turned their colonial intent to Asia and Africa.

After the Napoleonic Wars and the defeat of imperial France, the United Kingdom (Great Britain and Ireland) retained Cape Colony (Cape of Good Hope) and the maritime provinces of Ceylon from the Netherlands (Holland), Malta from the Knights of St. John, Seychelles and Mauritius from France (France retained neighboring Réunion), and some West Indian islands from France and Spain.

The UK in the 1830s extended its claim to sovereignty over Australia and in the 1840s over New Zealand. The Indian subcontinent and surrounding lands were the most significant British colonial possessions. By 1858, the frontiers of British India had been formed, and lasted until the proclamation of India’s independence in 1947.

Other British colonies in Asia acquired in the 19th century include Singapore (1819), Malacca (1824), Hong Kong (1842), Natal (1843), Labuan (1846), Lower Burma (1852), Lagos (1861), and Sarawak (1888). All were strategic points on the sea routes important for British trade, especially regarding the route to British India which was the most valuable colonial possession. Such colonial policy was grounded in the British attitude that their national prosperity depended primarily on trade within the global framework.

There were two methods that London used to safeguard British maritime trade lines: either by influence or by direct political /military intervention /occupation. In fact, up to World War II, the British transformed the Indian Ocean into the British Indian Ocean Empire controlling all the trade routes of the Indian Ocean from South Africa to Hong Kong and from Aden to West Australia. 

Global history from 1871 to 1914 experienced European neo-imperialistic competition in Asia and Africa for grabbing land, natural resources, markets, and outlets to invest financial capital. Thus, a huge portion of the globe passed under European control. However, many possible areas for colonization were already pre-empted. Moreover, the 1823 Monroe Doctrine of “Americas to Americans” discouraged further (West) European military-political involvement within the Western hemisphere (from Canada to Patagonia including the islands from the Caribbean to North Brazil).

Latecomers (Italy and Germany) had to build their colonial empires in Africa, the Pacific, or China. Also present there were old imperialists like Great Britain, France, and Portugal, while the USA became one of the latest latecomers by taking Spanish colonies (Cuba, Philippines) or the Hawaiian Islands as a consequence of the 1898 Spanish-American War.

Japan, a newly great Pacific power, took Formosa (Taiwan) in 1895 and Korea in 1910 but entered the Chinese mainland as well. The southern portion of Central Europe (Mittel Europa) together with the Balkans experienced the creation of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Thus, Austria-Hungary and Russia were the only European empires which did not have any overseas colonies. 

Amongst the old great trading countries, the Netherlands remained content with its very prosperous and existing colonial empire in the East Indies (Indonesia). France, after the unification of Germany in 1871 up to the beginning of the Great War in 1914, built its overseas colonial empire of around 6,5 million sq. km. with nearly 47 million inhabitants, chiefly in North and West Africa and Indo-China, where Laos and Tongking were added to Cambodia and Cochinchina (part of Vietnam). France also occupied Madagascar and several Pacific islands.

Among colonial latecomers, united Germany was the most successful in building an overseas colonial empire (followed by the USA, Japan, Belgium, and Italy). Germany acquired an empire of 1,6 million sq. km. of territory with around 14 million colonial inhabitants in German Southwest Africa (1884), Togoland (1884), the Cameroons (1884), German East Africa (1886), and the Pacific islands (1882-1899).

Italy took Eritrea (1889), Italian Somaliland (1893), and Libya (1912), but failed to take Abyssinia (First Italo-Ethiopian War in 1895-1896). Italian colonies existed only in Africa. The Belgian king Leopold II (1865-1909) received international recognition for his private colony named Congo Free State in 1885 (2,600,000 sq. km.) that in 1908 became Belgian Congo where Belgian authorities committed terrible atrocities connected with forced labor and brutal administration during the barbaric exploitation of natural resources.

Portugal extended her African possessions in Angola and Mozambique, but did not succeed in including the land between them due to British penetration from South Africa. Great Britain, together with France, made the greatest territorial acquisitions in Africa controlling Lower and Upper Nigeria (1884), British East Africa (Kenya, 1886), South Rhodesia (1890), North Rhodesia (1891), Egypt (1882), and Anglo-Egyptian Sudan (1898). In the Pacific, Great Britain took Fiji (1874), parts of Borneo (Brunei, 1881 and Sarawak, 1888), Papua New Guinea (1906), and some islands. The British Empire added 88 million people and in 1914 exercised authority over one-fifth of the globe and one-fourth of its inhabitants.  

While Africa was almost completely colonized and partitioned, China succeeded in avoiding classical colonization and partition while being under strong Western political, economic, and financial influence and even control. Russia joined the other (West) European great powers in competing for influence in Asia. The Russian land empire in Central Asia and Siberia grew enormously since the 1860s. Over seven million Russian citizens emigrated from the European parts of Russia across the Ural Mt. to Asiatic Russian possessions in the 19th century and up to WWI.  

China during the last quarter of the 19th century up to 1914 experienced “soft imperialism” by Western colonial powers in the form of the “battle of the concessions” (similar to the Ottoman Empire) when leading neo-imperialistic countries fought for commercial advantage followed by financial and railway concessions. There was a proposal to divide the territory of China into three influential zones: northern (including Outer Mongolia) under Russian influence, central as neutral (buffer zone), and southern (including Tibet) under British influence. The same was done to Persia in 1907. However, China was stronger, having more centralized political-administrative power compared to Africa, and Chinese central authorities succeeded in keeping Western direct colonial influence at the seacoast, at least up to the Great War.

In the early 1890s in Great Britain, an idea of “imperial preference” was born, rooted in a geopolitical vision of an overseas colonial empire. It was proposed that the UK and its colonial possessions should create a single autarkic economy imposing tariffs against the rest of the world while extending preferential rates to one another. This “imperial preference” system was partially applied to the self-governing dominions following the Ottawa Conference of 1932. However, the system gradually declined after WWII as changing trade patterns reduced the significance of intra-Commonwealth commerce and British membership of the European Free Trade Association.

After the Great War, regardless of the fact that the overseas empire of the UK grew in size and number of inhabitants due to the addition of the pre-war African and Pacific colonies of the German Second Empire, imperialistic land-grabbing was in principle no longer acceptable politics in international relations as global politics was at least supposed to be conducted within the security framework of the League of Nations, which the United States which mooted the idea, did not join.