The crisis in Egypt was the initiator of, and provided the sustenance for, the new imperialism of the late nineteenth century.’ Do you agree?
...ing Germany's economic growth, and threatening its security. French imperialists argued similarly. That African markets might contribute to economic recovery seems indeed to have been part of the conventional wisdom of the 'educated classes' in the 1880s. Political weaknesses also figured in the process. Where class tensions were high and domestic conflict serious, imperialism was seen as a response to political fragmentation. This was particularly evident in the case of Britain, France and Germany. Commencing with the unstable economic situation of the 1860s and the confused social conditions of the 1870s, the British political system again showed severe signs of fragmentation as neither Victorian political institutions nor Victorian ideology proved capable of creating a support base for decisive political action. The rise of a united Germany, the weakness of Turkey, the lack of firm alliances in Europe, and the international politics of the Bismarckian period had all exposed the myth of British power – leading to widespread criticisms of British foreign policy. Domestically, the Irish problem proved to be a political hot potato. By the 1870s therefore, the old means of political co-operation could no longer be used to create a consensus among enough competing social and economic groups to afford a consistent basis for politics. In such a context, Disraeli unveiled a policy of imperialism in the 1870s in large part as a means of overcoming the political fragmentation that he perceived as a threat to orderly government and to social peace in Britain. On the surface, an ideology and a policy of imperialism seemed the ideal way to link together disparate interests and social groups, create broad public support, and overcome seemingly irreconcilable class and interest differences by emphasizing shared images of national greatness and shared fears of dangers to that greatness. In France and Germany, the causes of fragmentation in the 1870s differed somewhat. France experienced the chaos that followed a lost war, together with the social and political conflicts of a rapidly industrializing country. Germany experienced the latter, in addition to the political effects of imperfect national unification. ln both cases, as in Britain, these conditions led politicians to espouse already existing, and very similar, ideologies of imperialism, around which it was hoped that a degree of consensus could be created In this climate, the process was made more urgent by the competitive climate at that time. From this perspective, competition among the great powers was a vital ingredient in stimulating the new imperialism. Technically, the search for new markets did not, in principle, imply the need or the wish to annex territory. What made it imperative was the protectionist economic environment of the late nineteenth century. From 1877, Governor Briere de I'Isle began to introduce throughout the French possessions the high Senegal duties on foreign cloth. There were heavy duties on leaf tobacco, mainly a French export; and even heavier duties upon cheap spirits which came mainly from Germany and were indeed by far the most important item in German exports to West Africa. Bismarck's experiment, first in informal then in formal imperialism, was certainly influenced by the fear that all the coastal regions of Western Africa would soon be snapped up, and all the doors to a possibly rich interior permanently closed, by the competitive annexations and restrictive customs policies of the British and the French. This point was already being made, with increasing emphasis, by the Chambers of Commerce of the Manse towns. Bismarck's fears could only have been increased when in April 1883 one of his officials misinterpreted an Anglo-French boundary agreement of June 1882 as implying a fiscal partition of the whole West African coast As a conviction in the official mind, economic motives for imperial expansion were even more compelling in the 1890s than a decade earlier due to the intensified rivalry. To a Rosebery, a Chamberlain or an Etienne, and to some elements at least of the German official mind in the 1890s, 'pegging out claims' to African estates was an imperative necessity for a Great Power that wished to remain great. A power that had shown itself unable to exploit the resources of overseas estates would fatally handicap itself in the international struggle for existence during the twentieth century. It was with this consideration in mind that Chamberlain made the remark that imperialism was not only a form of survival. It was to him the sole policy for survival. While such views had been expressed earlier in the 1880s, they were isolated voices. A decade later, the crucial importance of 'pegging out claims' was hardly contested except by the diminishing band of those who opposed colonial expansion in all its forms. Similarly, political competition for prestige further fuelled the imperialist process. A sense of injured national self-esteem was a major, or even the major, motive for annexation in Africa. For instance, both during the partition and long before it, influential sections of the French official mind - above all the ministere de la Marine - deeply resented the British monopoly of 'la police des mers' in African waters and even in the South Pacific. In these circles, coastal and insular annexations were often proposed both as a demonstration that this monopoly was incomplete and as a means of making it less complete by the acquisition of potential naval bases. Again, when the French decided to occupy Tunisia in 1881, the crucial factor the belief that failure to take action would entail the intolerable humiliation of seeing a long-standing unofficial preponderance overthrown by the despised Italians. The French were not of course the only practitioners of the imperialism of prestige. Bismarck's determination to acquire African territories was certainly hardened by his resentment, as an affront to Germany, of the British pretension to exclude other Powers from African territories that they did not themselves possess or even occupy - their 'Monroe doctrine for Africa', as he called it. Italian imperialism in Ethiopia and the Nile Valley seems to have stemmed mainly from the conviction (particularly strong with Francesco Crispi) that because other Powers were acquiring African colonies, Italy would look more like a Great Power if she imitated them. Beyond such calculations, imperialism was rooted in the values Europeans held and in their domestic society and politics. Mass-circulation newspapers gloried in imperialism, writing of adventure and wealth, Christianity and progress in the virile language of-force. To the people of the late nineteenth century, exploration and conquest were high and noble adventure. Press reports made popular heroes of daring men like Henry M Stanley, who followed the rivers of South Africa and penetr...