European dominance and the 19th century
"The World's Sovereigns", 1889.
Historians define the 19th century
historical era as stretching from 1815 (the
Congress of Vienna) to 1914 (the outbreak of the
First World War); alternatively,
Eric Hobsbawm defined the
"Long Nineteenth Century" as spanning the years 1789 to 1914.
Imperialism and empires
Main article:
Imperialism
In the 1800s and early 1900s, once great and powerful Empires such as
Spain, Ottoman Turkey, the Mughal Empire, and the Kingdom of Portugal
began to break apart. Spain, which was at one time unrivaled in Europe,
had been declining for a long time when it was crippled by Napoleon
Bonaparte's invasion. Sensing the time was right, Spain's vast colonies
in South America began a series of rebellions that ended with almost all
of the Spanish territories gaining their independence.
The once mighty Ottoman Empire was wracked with a series of
revolutions, resulting with the Ottoman's only holding a small region
that surrounded the capital, Istanbul.
The Mughal empire, which was descended from the Mongol Khanate, was bested by the upcoming
Maratha Confederacy. All was going well for the
Marathas
until the British took an interest in the riches of India and the
British ended up ruling not just the boundaries of Modern India, but
also Pakistan, Burma, Nepal, Bangladesh and some Southern Regions of
Afghanistan.
The King of Portugal's vast territory of Brazil reformed into the independent Empire of Brazil.
With the defeat of Napoleonic France, Britain became undoubtedly the
most powerful country in the world, and by the end of the First World
War controlled a Quarter of the world's population and a third of its
surface. However, the power of the British Empire did not end on land,
since it had the greatest navy on the planet.
Electricity, steel, and petroleum enabled Germany to become a
great international power that
raced to create empires of its own.
The
Meiji Restoration
was a chain of events that led to enormous changes in Japan's political
and social structure that was taking a firm hold at the beginning of
the
Meiji Era which coincided the opening of Japan by the arrival of the
Black Ships of
Commodore Matthew Perry and made
Imperial Japan a
great power.
Russia and
Qing Dynasty
China failed to keep pace with the other world powers which led to
massive social unrest in both empires. The Qing Dynasty's military power
weakened during the 19th century, and faced with international
pressure, massive
rebellions and defeats in wars, the dynasty declined after the mid-19th century.
European powers controlled parts of Oceania, with French
New Caledonia from 1853 and
French Polynesia from 1889; the Germans established colonies in
New Guinea in 1884, and
Samoa in 1900.
The United States expanded into the Pacific with Hawaii becoming a
U.S. territory from 1898.
Disagreements between the US, Germany and UK over Samoa led to the
Tripartite Convention of 1899.
British Victorian era
National flag of the United Kingdom.
The Victorian era of the United Kingdom was the period of
Queen Victoria's
reign from June 1837 to January 1901. This was a long period of
prosperity for the British people, as profits gained from the overseas
British Empire, as well as from industrial improvements at home, allowed
a large, educated middle class to develop. Some scholars would extend
the beginning of the period—as defined by a variety of sensibilities and
political games that have come to be associated with the
Victorians—back five years to the passage of the Reform Act 1832.
The British Empire in 1897, marked in the traditional colour for imperial British dominions on maps
In Britain's "imperial century",
[62]
victory over Napoleon left Britain without any serious international
rival, other than Russia in central Asia. Unchallenged at sea, Britain
adopted the role of global policeman, a state of affairs later known as
the
Pax Britannica, and a foreign policy of "
splendid isolation".
Alongside the formal control it exerted over its own colonies,
Britain's dominant position in world trade meant that it effectively
controlled the economies of many nominally independent countries, such
as China,
Argentina and
Siam, which has been generally characterized as "
informal empire".
[63] Of note during this time was the
Anglo-Zulu War, which was fought in 1879 between the British Empire and the
Zulu Empire.
British imperial strength was underpinned by the
steamship and the
telegraph,
new technologies invented in the second half of the 19th century,
allowing it to control and defend the Empire. By 1902, the British
Empire was linked together by a network of telegraph cables, the
so-called
All Red Line. Growing until 1922, around 13,000,000 square miles (34,000,000 km
2) of territory and roughly 458 million people were added to the British Empire.
[64][65] The British established colonies in Australia in 1788, New Zealand in 1840 and
Fiji in 1872, with much of
Oceania becoming part of the British Empire.
French governments and conflicts
The
Bourbon Restoration
followed the ousting of Napoleon I of France in 1814. The Allies
restored the Bourbon Dynasty to the French throne. The ensuing period is
called the Restoration, following French usage, and is characterized by
a sharp conservative reaction and the re-establishment of the Roman
Catholic Church as a power in French politics. The
July Monarchy
was a period of liberal constitutional monarchy in France under King
Louis-Philippe starting with the July Revolution (or Three Glorious
Days) of 1830 and ending with the Revolution of 1848. The
Second Empire
was the Imperial Bonapartist regime of Napoleon III from 1852 to 1870,
between the Second Republic and the Third Republic, in France.
The
Franco-Prussian War
was a conflict between France and Prussia, while Prussia was backed up
by the North German Confederation, of which it was a member, and the
South German states of Baden, Württemberg and Bavaria. The complete
Prussian and German victory brought about the final unification of
Germany under King Wilhelm I of Prussia. It also marked the downfall of
Napoleon III and the end of the Second French Empire, which was replaced
by the Third Republic. As part of the settlement, almost all of the
territory of Alsace-Lorraine was taken by Prussia to become a part of
Germany, which it would retain until the end of World War I.
The
French Third Republic
was the republican government of France between the end of the Second
French Empire following the defeat of Louis-Napoléon in the
Franco-Prussian war in 1870 and the Vichy Regime after the invasion of
France by the German Third Reich in 1940. The Third Republic endured
seventy years, making it the most long-lasting regime in France since
the collapse of the Ancien Régime in the French Revolution of 1789.
Slavery and abolition
Main article:
Abolitionism
Slavery was greatly reduced around the world in the 19th century. Following a successful
slave revolt in Haiti, Britain forced the
Barbary pirates to halt their practice of kidnapping and enslaving Europeans,
banned slavery throughout its domain, and charged its navy with ending the global
slave trade. Slavery was then abolished in
Russia,
America, and
Brazil.
African colonization
Following the abolition of the slave trade, and propelled by economic exploitation, the
Scramble for Africa was initiated formally at the
Berlin West Africa Conference
in 1884–1885. All the major European powers laid claim to the areas of
Africa where they could exhibit a sphere of influence over the area.
These claims did not have to have any substantial land holdings or
treaties to be legitimate. The French gained major ground in West
Africa, the British in East Africa, and the
Portuguese and Spanish at various points throughout the continent, while
King Leopold was able to retain his personal fiefdom,
Congo.
Meiji Japan
Around the end of the 19th century and into the 20th century, the
Meiji era was marked by the reign of the
Meiji Emperor. During this time, Japan started its modernization and rose to world power status. This
era name
means "Enlightened Rule". In Japan, the Meiji Restoration started in
the 1860s, marking the rapid modernization by the Japanese themselves
along European lines. Much research has focused on the issues of
discontinuity versus continuity with the previous Tokugawa Period.
[66]
In the 1960s younger Japanese scholars led by Irokawa Daikichi, reacted
against the bureaucratic superstate, and began searching for the
historic role of the common people . They avoided the elite, and focused
not on political events but on social forces and attitudes. They
rejected both Marxism and modernization theory as alien and confining.
They stressed the importance of popular energies in the development of
modern Japan. They enlarged history by using the methods of
social history.
[67]
It was not until the beginning of the Meiji Era that the Japanese
government began taking modernization seriously. Japan expanded its
military production base by opening arsenals in various locations. The
hyobusho (war office) was replaced with a War Department and a Naval
Department. The
samurai class suffered great disappointment the following years.
Laws were instituted that required every able-bodied male Japanese
citizen, regardless of class, to serve a mandatory term of three years
with the first reserves and two additional years with the second
reserves. This action, the deathblow for the samurai warriors and their
daimyo
feudal lords, initially met resistance from both the peasant and
warrior alike. The peasant class interpreted the term for military
service, ketsu-eki (blood tax) literally, and attempted to avoid service
by any means necessary. The Japanese government began modelling their
ground forces after the French military. The French government
contributed greatly to the training of Japanese officers. Many were
employed at the military academy in Kyoto, and many more still were
feverishly translating French field manuals for use in the Japanese
ranks.
After the death of the Meiji Emperor, the
Taishō Emperor took the throne, thus beginning the
Taishō period. A key foreign observer of the remarkable and rapid changes in
Japanese society in this period was
Ernest Mason Satow.
Representative Western scholars include George Akita,
[68] William Beasley, James B. Crowley,
John W. Dower, Peter Duus,
Carol Gluck,
Norman Herbert,
John W. Hall, Mikiso Hane,
Akira Iriye,
Marius Jansen,
Edwin O. Reischauer,
George B. Sansom, Bernard Silberman, Richard Storry, Karel van Wolfram, and
Ezra Vogel.
[69][70]