Colonialism, Nationalism and the Road to World War I

Colonialism and Nationalism

Several factors led to the confrontations that culminated in the war, and the main causes were:

Rivalry and conflicts between the great imperial powers: Germany and the other colonial empires had their rivals in Morocco. Germany, which had few colonies in the area, sought to challenge France and Great Britain. Tensions grew to the point that the First World War was, in principle, avoidable, but the prevailing militarism contributed to the outbreak and lasted until the start of the World War.

Nationalist exaltation: Nationalism confronted the Germans and the French. The defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian War meant the loss of the Alsace and Lorraine regions to Germany. Germany and Great Britain also maintained a strong rivalry over control of international trade routes and commerce.

The conflict in the Balkans: The Balkans was a flashpoint of European tensions from the middle of the 19th century. Various peoples of the Ottoman Empire rose up in wars and achieved independence: Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, and others.

Austria-Hungary was an enormous multinational empire dominated by Germans and home to many minorities of different nationalities in the region. It accused Serbia of supporting protests by Serbs within the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

In 1908, Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia, a territory whose status was clearly in dispute, and it was prepared to confront an armed conflict with Russia if necessary.

Arms Race and Alliances

The great tensions among the powers gave rise to an arms race, and the great powers invested heavily in armaments. They enlarged their navies and built up their armies and troops.

The powers also organized themselves into complex military alliances, preparing for a possible confrontation. In 1882, Austria-Hungary and Italy signed the Triple Alliance.

The Germans maintained a military alliance with Austria-Hungary, while Russia was allied with Great Britain and France, whose relations had deteriorated because of colonial disputes. The three powers ended their disputes by signing the Triple Entente.

The Outbreak of War

The spark for the war was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary in Sarajevo. The attack was carried out by a young Bosnian Serb nationalist linked to Serbian groups.

Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. Russia intervened to protect the Serbs and, allied with France, declared war on Austria-Hungary. Germany, in turn, declared war on Russia and France.

In accordance with its war plans, the German armies, following the Schlieffen Plan, invaded Belgium, a neutral country, in order to attack France quickly. This led Great Britain, which had guaranteed Belgian neutrality, to declare war on Germany.

The Great War

The Movements of the War

The German armies attacked France, entering through Belgium and Luxembourg, with the hope of defeating France quickly and then directing all their forces against Russia. On the Western Front, the German advance was halted by the French and British armies at the Battle of the Marne.

On the Eastern Front, the German army also advanced against the Russians and reached the borders of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

The War of Trenches

On the Western Front, the war settled into a system of trenches stretching from the North Sea to Switzerland. The war then became a search for new allies: Italy joined the Allies, while Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers, which helped prolong the war without either side achieving victory.

Germany launched a major offensive against France at the Battle of Verdun. The French and their Allies resisted for four months. The balance was about one million dead among the Germans and Allies combined, and 800,000 among the French.

The Crisis of 1917 and the End of the War

In 1917, the Russian Revolution, led by the Bolsheviks, broke out. Facing internal problems, the new government made peace with Germany (Treaty of Brest-Litovsk). Russia's withdrawal from the war was compensated by the intervention of the United States.

The Allied forces, including the British, French, and Italians, defeated Austria-Hungary and its allies, and the German army was defeated.

Fearing revolution, the German high command suggested asking the Kaiser for peace. On 11 November 1918, Kaiser Wilhelm II signed the armistice. The Kaiser fled to the Netherlands, and the Republic was proclaimed in Germany.

The War on the Home Front

The First World War was a conflict of mass mobilization of resources, involving the entire civilian population as well as the armies. Nations conscripted all men of military age.

Technical means of transport and deadly weaponry caused massive destruction and mutilation. The belligerents turned industry into the manufacture of armaments.

Modern technical means were used for propaganda to mobilize public opinion and to organize the struggle against the enemy.

On 18 January 1919, the Paris Peace Conference opened in order to establish peace. Thirty-two countries took part.

Wilson sought to promote his vision of peace and international coordination.

The Treaty of Versailles

The most important treaty concluded after the war was signed at Versailles. It imposed harsh conditions:

• Germany was declared guilty of the conflict and forced to pay reparations, especially to Belgium and France.
• Its army was almost completely dismantled, its navy was reduced, it was prohibited from rearming, and its colonial empire was seized, with large parts going to Great Britain and France.
• It lost its territories of Alsace-Lorraine to France, Schleswig to Denmark, and two cantons to Belgium. Poland was granted access to the Baltic Sea through a corridor eighty kilometres long, the Polish Corridor, which separated East Prussia from the rest of Germany.

Germany considered the Treaty of Versailles to have been an unjust and humiliating imposition, which violated national sentiment.

A New Map of Europe

The Treaty of Versailles and the other treaties that followed reshaped the map of Europe. Following Wilson's principle, each nation was to have the right to its own national independence, and the former empires were dissolved.

Dominant European Powers

In the late nineteenth century, the Second Industrial Revolution transformed the economies of Europe's leading powers. New technical innovations and forms of organization led to rapid economic growth, enabling spectacular increases in production and commerce, and in the major means of transport.

Taking advantage of their superiority in finance, technology and the military, the European powers extended their domination over the world. The European powers occupied territories in Africa and Asia, mostly without consulting the local peoples, and imposed economic structures designed to exploit their resources and secure their political dominance.

The Causes of Colonialism

Colonialism had fundamentally economic motivations, to which other political and social factors were added:

• Economic: European countries needed to sell their surplus production, and so sought new markets. They also wished to buy raw materials in the colonies at the lowest possible price, and to exploit cheap labour in order to obtain greater profits.
• Demographic: European population growth in the nineteenth century gave rise to a surplus population, causing difficulties in finding work and serious social tensions. Colonization meant the possibility of sending millions of Europeans to other lands, where they could migrate and seek better living and working conditions.
• Political: European borders had stabilized by the end of the nineteenth century, so territorial ambitions turned to regions outside Europe. The great powers came to compete for political and military control, economic interests, and strategic locations.
• Ideological: Conservative nationalism held that some nations were superior and had the right to impose their dominion over other peoples. Without racism in its strict sense, many considered white Europeans and other ethnic groups superior, using their intelligence and industry to justify imposing themselves on the rest of humanity.

Some intellectuals, trade unionists and socialist leaders opposed colonialism, denouncing the brutal and inhuman treatment in the colonies and defending the right of peoples to determine their own destiny.

Exploration and Conquest

In the nineteenth century, most of the interior of Africa and large parts of Asia and Oceania were practically unknown to Europeans. The search for territories in these regions gave rise to a series of scientific expeditions, and exploration led to the mapping of unknown geographical areas. British and French expeditions, and some famous explorers such as Livingstone and Stanley, traversed and mapped central Africa.

Once the territory was known, conquest was fast and relatively easy, thanks to the military superiority of the European powers. Local resistance was often weak. Internal rivalries among the ethnic groups and tribes that occupied these territories were also exploited, and local peoples were often recruited to serve in the colonial troops.

Colonial Organization

Once conquered, the territory was organized as a colony, controlled and administered from the metropolis. Three general types of colonies can be distinguished.

Exploitation colonies: These were colonies whose main purpose, from the standpoint of the metropolis, was economic exploitation. They did not have self-government, and the real power was exercised by a governor-general and numerous military officials who maintained order. The local administrative officials were few, and they tended to be poorly trained.

Colonizers appropriated land or obtained large concessions for plantations, or exploited deposits of copper, gold, coal and diamonds. White colonists were owners or company managers with interests in Europe, and they employed the local population as cheap labour for low wages. Trade with other countries was prohibited, and the position of the colony was exclusively that of supplier to the metropolis.

Settlement colonies: In these colonies, the climate and conditions were favourable, or they had special resources, and so white populations migrated there to settle permanently.

These settlement colonies had a special status. Their dependence on the metropolis was in name only, and they were recognized as having internal government autonomy within the empire. Examples of this type of colony were Canada, which became a dominion in 1867, and later Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.

France came to consider Algeria as part of national territory, rather than a colony, and treated it as a province overseas.

Protectorates: These were territories which, after occupation, the European government maintained with their own organization and their own administrative structures. The metropolis imposed its government and controlled foreign affairs and defence, while local government in practice remained in the hands of local rulers.

Great Britain established a protectorate over Egypt, where it took part in the construction of the Suez Canal, a strategic step that allowed access to the Red Sea and India without going around Africa.

The Partition of Africa

From 1870 onward, the colonization of Africa was rapid and brutal, and by the end of the century almost the entire continent was under European control, with the exception of Liberia and Abyssinia.

Britain had the advantage, as France had gained a foothold in Africa. In the eighteenth century, both empires dreamed of continuous territories, with the British aiming north to south and the French aiming east to west. The Belgian king Leopold II acquired his private property, a vast colony along the Congo River. Italy and Germany arrived late at the partition, and their actions led to conflicts.

In order to avoid conflicts among the rival powers, a conference was called in Berlin, which regulated the partition of Africa among the imperialist powers.

The Occupation of Asia

Asia was occupied by both Western European powers and other countries that also wished to expand. The British Indian Empire, with its main colony in India, also confronted Russia over control of Afghanistan. Later, the British controlled Singapore and Malaysia, while the French occupied Indochina.

The Chinese Empire was, in the mid-nineteenth century, the main target of the colonial powers in the Asian market. Through the Opium Wars, the Western powers forced the opening of trade and the entry of Western interests into Chinese riches. The foreign interference provoked popular revolts, such as the Boxer Rebellion.

The British Empire

From the nineteenth century to the early twentieth century, Britain possessed the largest colonial empire in the world. Its objective was to control key trade routes in the Atlantic, Indian, Pacific and Mediterranean oceans.

The main colony of Great Britain was India, the jewel of the British Crown. Its conquest had begun in the eighteenth century as part of a private company, the British East India Company, which governed the territory until the British Crown assumed control. In 1877, Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India. With its large population, India became a major market for British products and a source of cheap raw materials for the motherland.

The French and Other Empires

The French Second Empire was the second largest colonial empire, which was established in various parts of Africa and, especially, in Southeast Asia. Its power rivalled the British, especially in Africa.

Other important colonial powers included Russia, the Netherlands and others.

The United States and Japan

Both the United States and Japan were non-European powers that also began to expand in the late nineteenth century.

The United States expanded in two directions: across the Pacific and into the Caribbean. In the war against Spain, it seized the Philippines, Cuba and Puerto Rico. It also took control of a strip of land in Panama, where it built the transoceanic canal.

Japan, supported by Britain, intervened in the struggle over China. It sought to counter Russian advances in the region, occupying Manchuria, Korea, the Kuril Islands and Formosa.

The Introduction of European Advances in the Colonies

The colonizing powers introduced some advances into the colonial territories. They built ports, roads, railways, bridges, telephone lines and more, which facilitated the development of infrastructure.

They also brought new land under cultivation and established industries, though these were largely aimed at benefiting the colonizers themselves.

The introduction of hygiene measures, new hospitals and vaccination programmes led to a considerable reduction in epidemics.

As a consequence, mortality fell and the population grew considerably, especially in the colonies of the African continent. This increase upset the balance between inhabitants and resources, and led to chronic malnutrition.

European schools were established which reduced illiteracy. However, in most schools, the language, culture and customs of the metropolis were taught, in an attempt at acculturation.

Missionaries founded missions and schools and helped in these efforts, trying to impose Western Christianity, beliefs and values on the native peoples.

Economic Transformations

In the colonies, economic interests of the colonizers were imposed, supported by local aristocratic groups and a Westernized bourgeoisie who enjoyed privileges. In this way, the colonizers kept the local population in the most unfavourable conditions, and their living conditions worsened in many areas.

Lands passed into the hands of colonizers and the traditional crops that sustained the subsistence of families were left aside. Plantations grew significantly, producing goods for the metropolis, such as coffee, cotton and others. Local people worked on the plantations to survive, and so they had to buy food that was previously unknown in the local market.

Local handicrafts were also ruined by industrial products from the metropolis, which were sold at cheap prices and in large quantities.

Social and Cultural Changes

The social structure also changed as a result of the imposition of colonial models. New urban rhythms of life and work, among other things, transformed everyday life.

Colonial societies were deeply segregated. Officials and settlers from the metropolis lived in luxurious residences in contrast to the poverty of the native population. They ate, dressed and entertained themselves differently from the natives. In some places, such as South Africa, racial segregation was legally enforced against members of ethnic groups.

The Western cultural impact caused the loss of traditional identities in many cultures. This acculturation was a phenomenon that occurred in Asia, in Africa and elsewhere.