B. Adventurers and Missionaries
Besides the direct political motives of imperialism-the desire to strengthen national security by strategic naval bases such as Cyprus and the Cape, or to secure additional sources of manpower as the French sought in Africa, or to enhance national prestige as the Italians did in Libya there was a medley of other considerations which, in varying proportions, entered into the desire for colonies.

One was the activities of explorers and adventurers, men like the Frenchmen, Du Chaillu and De Brazza, in equatorial Africa. Prompted by a genuine devotion to scientific discovery, or a taste for adventure, or love of money and power as was Cecil Rhodes in South Africa-men of initiative and energetic enterprise played an important personal part in the whole story.

Christian missionaries played their part too in the spread of colonialism. The most famous was the Scot, David Livingstone. A medical missionary originally sent to Africa by the London Missionary Society, he later returned under government auspices as an explorer "to open a path for commerce and Christianity." But Livingstone was only one among many, and France, even more than Britain, sent organized missions into Africa to convert the heathen to Christianity.

C. Administrators and Soldiers
Yet another element in the growth of imperialism was the administrator and soldier the man with a mission, who was not a missionary but who welcomed an opportunity to bring order and efficient administration out of muddle. Without such men the extent and the consolidation of European control over Africa would have been impossible. It was not just that trade followed the flag, but that the flag accompanied the botanist and buccaneer, the Bible and the bureaucrat, along with the banker and the businessman. The unexplored and unexploited parts of the earth offered a host of possible advantages which, in the competitive world of the later century, few could resist seizing; they were seized, amid the enthusiastic approval of the newly literate nationalist-minded masses in Britain and Germany, or amid the sullen resentments of the French and Belgians. In 1875 less than one tenth of Africa had been turned into European colonies; by 1895, only one tenth remained unappropriated. It was a historical novelty that most of the world should now belong to a handful of great European powers. These immense acquisitions had no close correlation with the ascendancy of one political party.

In Belgium they were originally an almost personal achievement of the king; in Britain and Germany they were mainly the work of conservative governments which had turned empire-minded, though in Britain former radicals like Joseph Chamberlain and liberals like Lord Rosebery supported them; in France they were the work of radical republicans like Jules Ferry and Leon Gambetta, and in Italy, of liberals like Depretis; in Russia they were mainly the work of the official military class and bureaucracy. The beneficiaries of imperialism were not always the initiators of it; and although King Leopold, Cecil Rhodes, and many of the other empire builders amassed great personal fortunes and powers, so too did many who merely stepped in later to reap the rewards of high administrative offices and rich concessions for trading and investment.
D. Popular Support
On the other hand some of the initiators; such as Ferry in France and Crispi in Italy, earned only disrepute and violent hatreds for their achievements. Wherever there was any considerable section of public opinion generally in support of imperialism, it tended to be canalized into active propagandist associations and pressure groups, often distinct from any one political party. In Britain, Disraeli committed the Conservative party to a general policy of imperialism in 1872, backed by the purchase of shares in the Suez Canal in 1875 and by the conferring of the title "Empress of India" upon Queen victoria in 1877. In 1882 a Colonial Society was formed in Germany, and in 1883, a Society for German Colonization. In the same year the British conservative imperialists founded the Primrose League, and the liberals soon followed suit with the Imperial Federation League.The British Navy League of 1894 was followed in 1898 by the corresponding German Flottenverein-incidents in the naval rivalry of the two powers. They championed the rapidly increasing naval expenditures of their respective governments. The more explicit arguments for colonialism, and for the sea power which it necessitated, were as much expressions as causes of the expansion.
III. The Scramble for Colonies
By no means all the acquisitions of colonies caused disputes among the powers. Some of the earliest, like the. French conquest of Algeria in the earlier years of the century or of Annam in 1874, and even some later acquisitions, like the British conquests of Nigeria and Ashanti in the 1890's, aroused little or no opposition from other European powers.

May 07, 2008