Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
Factors leading to imperial expansion 1870-1900 - Coggle Diagram
Factors leading to imperial expansion 1870-1900
Scientific and technological advances
Railways and steamships made long journeys more feasible
Spread of the electric telegraph made contact over larger distances possible
Accounts of earlier travellers such as Livingstone and Stanley motivated pioneers such as Cecil Rhodes and German Karl Peters who were looking for economic and mineral wealth in south and east Africa.
Medical breakthroughs:
Use of Quinine to treat Malaria which enables explorers to endure the tropical African climate.
The Slave trade: - More missionaries came to Africa in hopes of stopping the slave trade
Social Darwinist beliefs
Belief that Europeans were the most advanced and civilised in the world.
Believed they had a duty to civilise and educate the non-European natives
The laws of evolution applied to races, nations and plants and animals.
notion of 'survival of the fittest' was that white races had evolved to a higher degree than any other race.
Europeans felt they had a 'calling' a calling to help the less fortunate people of the world.
reasons for spreading christianity and European skills however some individuals wanted political and economic power.
1885 - French political leader, Jules Ferry warned that unless France expanded their colonial possessions they shall 'take the broad road leading to decadence.'
1898- Lord Salisbury speech distinguishing living nations from the dead.
Conservative colleague, Lord Curzon believed that as long as the British rules India, the would be the 'greatest power in the world,'
Political factors
Prestige and national pride:
French government occupied Tunis in 1882, PM Gambetta declared that France was recovering her position as a great power
France's defeat by Germany in the Franco - Prussian war in 1871, the formation of a united Germany and an Italy with Rome as its new capital left nations with the desire to recover national prestige.
France sought for European loss in overseas gain
Britain enlarged and glorifies the British empire
The challenge of Germany:
Germany entering the colonial arena between 1884-5 intensified rivalry and the scramble to claim possessions and territory
Prompted by Bismark's change of heart and subsequent decision to launch a bid for colonies in 1884 and historians claim that this could have been due to domestic pressures i.e Riechstag elections taking place and that colonial spoils in Africa were more popular.
Policy of social Imperialismand response to stagnation in German economic life were also some of Bismarck's motivations
Popular nationalism
With the spread of mass literacy came the rise of a popular press and growth in markets for adventure stories and travel books.
tales of African adventure became an escape for people in oppressive working lives.
Colonial expansion was advocated by colonial organisations of Germany, France and Britain
The colonial league - Germany
The Union Coloniale and comité de l´Afrique - France
The British Empire League
The popular press dramatised rivalries and incidents
Historians claim that imperial expansion had become 'a projection of nationalism beyond the boundaries of Europe' and even the 'product of national mass hysteria'
This popular support placed pressure and influence on governments and shaped their expansionist and trade policies.
The decline of British Imperial Power
Britain's inability to protect economic relationships
used naval and military strength to open up commercial opportunities
1880s - Britain's supremacy was challenged by rival claims to African territory
Strategical motives
the security of routes to India via Suez and the Cape - 1882 construction of the suez canal increased British interest in Egypt and annexation of territories in East Africa was also as a result economic reasons
The search for new markets and for raw materials:
The attraction of China for its vast population and potential for European manufacturers.
increased levels of industrialisation of European nations increased interest in commercial potential for parts of the world in 1870s
French PM Jules Ferry claimed that "Europe's consumption is saturated. it is essential to discover new consumers in other parts of the world"
Raw Materials:
Cotton factories in Lancashire used raw cotton from India and Egypt
tyres and later for cars needed rubber taken from the Congo and the Amazon
coffee, tea and cocoa led companies to negotiate with natives to stake claims for concessions which would allow for the build up of territories later on.
Gold was another raw material that drew European's to the African lands
Surplus capital, and imperialism as the highest form of capitalism:
profits generated from 19th century industrialisation could produce higher profits if reinvested into overseas