A Look Back at Our History: Starting with Imperialism (1870-1914)

by Nikhilnair in History, June 20, 2009

Whenever I think about history, first event that comes to my mind is World War II. So, why not make an article about it?!? But even before World War II, it’s important to discuss about World War I, and even before that there are some events that led to World War I. So let’s begin with Imperialism.

Imperialism is simply domination by one country of social, political and economic aspects another of country or region. Over the course of history, there were two major times when imperialism occurred. One from 1500s – 1800s, and next in 1870 – 1914. But the important one related to World War is from 1870 – 1914.

The Scramble for Africa

Africa is the second largest and populated continent in the world. And imperialism affected Africa very harshly. The Scramble for Africa started when the Belgium King, Leopold sent a mission to the interior of Africa to establish trade agreements with the leader in the Congo River Basin. And as soon as one country gets into Africa, it makes other European countries think, “O no! We shall not be left behind!”.

So because of this competition, all the European nations jumped into Africa so they can get a share of land. The British (the world’s largest empire at the time) and French were able to get there before others and hence attained the most resourceful places and made them colonies. Most of the world’s gold comes from Africa, so the ones getting there first got the areas where there are most gold. Countries like Germany and Italy were a little too late and hence got only a bit of their share.

Why Were Europeans Always so Successful?!?

It is definitely irritating to see the European nations to take be able to conquer so many lands around the world. There is only one continent that they haven’t conquered, Antarctica! They didn’t even leave out the island continent of Australia (which was conquered by Britain). They got one big secret behind this – European countries were very modernized and they had the best technological weapons which helped them defeat almost anyone around the world. And around this time, almost no other countries were modernized.

A little Review and Look Ahead

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So we discussed about how Imperialism affected Africa, and the competition between the European countries and how they were successful. So for a look ahead to some reasons why Germany and Italy were together at first in World War I :- Germany and Italy were the ones who were LATE to Africa! (REMEMBER?!) So, since they were able to get only a little portion of land, they were angry! And guess what when two countries got same problems? THEY JOIN HANDS!!

So we will jump to World War I in my next edition.