BUILDERS OF EMPIRE: OLD ACTORS AND NEW

The number of expansionist states was greater and the territorial spread of empire builders wider now than in phase i. The five states active earlier remained so in the nineteenth century.

Great Britain began phase 3 with the largest empire retained from phase 1— notably Canada, numerous Caribbean islands, and parts of India—supplemented by territories acquired in the wars of phase 2. It proceeded to build on this formidable foundation by gaining direct or indirect control of all South Asia, acquiring portions of mainland and insular Southeast Asia, an almost uninterrupted line of territory from Egypt south to the Cape of Good Hope, four colonies in West Africa, and numerous Pacific Islands. Extensive emigration from the British Isles transformed Australia and New Zealand into virtually pure settlement colonies. First in Canada, then in Australia and New Zealand, control over domestic affairs was transferred to locally elected officials from the numerically dominant setder community, while London retained control of monetary and foreign policy. Britain called these quasi colonies dominions. As of 1912 its empire, including the so-called white dominions, covered almost a quarter of the earth’s land surface.⁶

To the five old imperial powers were added three west European countries which, as a result of the merger of many small, previously autonomous political entities, became new states during phase 3.

The most noteworthy new European candidate for great-power status was Germany, after it became unified politically under Prussian leadership and demon­strated its military prowess by defeating Denmark (1864), Austria (1866), and France (1870-71). To its size and strategic location in Europe should be added the crucial asset of skilled diplomatic leadership, at least during the chancellorship of Otto von Bismarck (1871-90). By the late nineteenth century, moreover, Germany took the lead in what Geoffrey Barraclough terms the Second Industrial Revolution, based on steel, electricity, and chemicals.⁸ It was thus in a position to challenge British preemi­nence on several fronts. The empire Germany acquired in the 1880s and 1890s con­sisted of widely dispersed territories in west, southern, and east Africa and minor island chains in the Pacific.

To five old and three new west European empire builders should be added two countries outside the region but in many respects intimately linked with it. The United States, a new state derivatively European by virtue of former colonial status and emigration, and Russia, an old state peripherally and ambiguously European by virtue of location, both accelerated the pace of territorial growth. This was an over­land process, each country advancing rapidly along a frontier of thinly populated territory. In both cases non-European peoples were subdued.

The American and Russian pattern of overland expansion resembles the usual manner of constructing large multicultural empires. The two rising world powers may thus be distinguished from west European states, which deviated from the norm by establishing empires overseas. The United States and Russia, however, sanctioned the European scramble for territory by attending the Conference of Berlin in 1884-85 and signing the Berlin Act. This act codified procedures for acquiring territory with minimal risk that contestants would fight over the spoils. More significant, the United States temporarily abandoned its anticolonial heritage to construct an over­seas empire of its own, wresting the island remnants of Spain’s empire in the Pacific and Caribbean. The country that had proclaimed the Monroe Doctrine to protect the independence of Spanish-speaking countries on the New World mainland now found itself in the anomalous position of replacing Spain as a colonial ruler and repressing national independence movements.⁹ The United States also took the Ha­waiian islands, which until the 1890s were nominally ruled by indigenous monarchs. The Russians were not comparably aggressive overseas. Indeed, with the sale of Alaska to the United States in 1867 they ended an earlier experiment in saltwater colonialism. But their expansion on the Asian mainland markedly affected the for­eign policies of other major actors, notably Great Britain and Japan.

Japan was the first non-European state to create a saltwater empire through the use of Industrial Revolution technologies. Having insulated itself from non-Asian influences since the early seventeenth century, Japan made an abrupt about-face in the latter half of the nineteenth when its rulers realized that insulation was no longer viable. In 1853 four U.S. warships commanded by Comdr. Matthew Perry sailed into Edo (Tokyo) Bay. Perry demanded permission for American ships to enter Japanese ports for coal and supplies. More generally, he wanted Japan to establish regular trade relations with the United States. The Treaty of Kanagawa, signed the next year after Perry returned with a larger contingent of warships, imposed humiliating conces­sions on the shogun’s government, the Bakufu. Similar concessions to European countries followed. Reacting against these moves, a revolution-from-above in 1868 known as the Meiji Restoration destroyed the shogun’s power, enhanced the em­peror’s symbolic status, and launched Japan on an extremely rapid course of what C. E. Black has called “defensive modernization.” The latest technology and bureau­cratic institutions were borrowed from the West to enable Japan to resist the power of the West.¹⁰ The change of direction was strikingly demonstrated in the military arena. Whereas in phase 1 Japan’s rulers abandoned domestic production and impor­tation of guns in order to rely upon the samurai sword, Meiji Restoration elites aban­doned the sword to mass-produce the most advanced weapons available anywhere.

Literally armed with the latest technology, Japan set about creating an empire. Initially the island state claimed and occupied other islands: the Ryukyus in the 1870s, Taiwan (Formosa) and the Pescadores following victory over China in 1894-95. But it was Asian mainland territory Japan most fervently desired. By defeating Russian land and naval forces in 1904-05 the Japanese took over rights and privileges Russia had recently acquired in southern Manchuria.

How large were the saltwater empires when phase 3 ended? In his study The Balance Sheets of Empire (1936) Grover Clark gave the following figures for 1913 in thousands of square kilometers:¹²

West European countries on the list occupied only 1.6 percent of the world’s land area but controlled an additional 41.3 percent. Roughly nine-tenths of the latter was territory acquired or effectively occupied by Europeans since the start of phase 3.