A Short History of the World (21 page)

In 1803, under President Jefferson, America purchased the Louisiana territory – all two million square kilometres of it – from Napoleon, who had required funds to wage his wars in Europe
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and the purchase of land roughly the size of Europe effectively doubled the size of the country at the time. The annexation by the Americans of Texas in 1845 caused a war with the Mexicans, who were forced to concede California, and Alaska was bought from the Russians in 1867 for USD 7.2 million dollars.
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In 1898, after a ten-week war with Spain, the US gained Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines, though they never became states.
 

The growth in its manufacturing industry and the production of cheap steel, a metal that is less expensive to produce and lighter and stronger than iron, allowed America to develop the railroads that were instrumental in opening its territory to trade and settlement. The railroad, the steamship, and the telegraph reduced the cost and time of transportation and communication, and helped create a new market for American goods. By the end of the 19th century, the United States had become the largest and most competitive industrial nation in the world. In Europe, the flood of cheap American food led to falling European death rates and an increase in the population, which subsequently acted as a driving factor for industrialisation on the mainland.

New Nations: Austria-Hungary, Italy, and Germany (1867–1871)

Increased population growth and surging nationalism saw Germany and Italy, long a patchwork of independent states, both become nations in the 19th century.

In 1848 much of Italy was controlled by foreign powers. A movement called the ‘risorgimento’ aimed to unify Italy and take the country back to its former glory. A number of Italian states joined forces to oust Austria from its control of northern Italy, and the remaining states came under Italian control through diplomatic initiatives. Under the inspired leadership of the Italian prime minister Camillo Cavour, Italy was united fully in 1870.

Germany’s first step to unification had occurred in 1806 when 16 states left the Holy Roman Empire to create a new Germanic union – the Confederation of the Rhine – under the protection of Napoleon. A month later Emperor Francis II had dissolved the Holy Roman Empire. At the Congress of Vienna in 1815, no attempt was made to restore the Holy Roman Empire and the Deutsche Bund, or ‘German Confederation’, came into existence. Leadership initially fell to Austria but the country had no intention of unifying the states which, as nationalism gained momentum, looked more and more to the leadership of the Prussian prime minister, Otto von Bismarck.
 

A brilliant diplomat, Bismarck rammed his reforms through the German Reichstag, or parliament. Claiming that ‘the fate of nations is not decided by speeches or votes, but by blood and iron’, Bismarck dealt with any nation that sought to block his plans, notably beating the Austrian army in seven weeks in 1866. After unifying the Protestant northern German states under Prussian leadership, a victorious war against the French in 1871 was all it took for him to unify the remaining southern and Catholic German states in a Second Reich, with King Wilhelm as their Kaiser or Caesar. (The first German Reich was the Holy Roman Empire of Germany. Hitler would try and create the third one.) A rapidly industrialising Germany then became the dominant military land power in Europe – possibly the most important political development on the continent between the revolutions of 1848 and the war of 1914.
 

Ousted from control of northern Italy and expelled from the German Federation following their defeat by Germany in 1866, the Austrians realised that it was in their best interests to strengthen their position by effecting a compromise with the largest national group in their empire, the Hungarians. In 1867, a compromise was reached under which a dual Austro-Hungarian monarchy came into being.
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Franz Joseph was declared king of Hungary and a separate parliament was established at Budapest, but the new empire would have a unified foreign policy, army and monetary system. In theory this prevented the Austrian Empire from further disintegration. In reality, the preponderance of Slavs in the new empire would lead to troubles down the line.

The Scramble for Africa (1880–1914)

Around this time, Europe became increasingly interested in the continent of Africa. Before 1870, inland continental Africa had been largely ignored by the European powers, partly due to a simple lack of interest on their part and partly due to a lack of resistance to tropical diseases, a problem that gave Africa the name ‘White Man’s Grave’. The inroads they had made were predominantly in coastal towns that served as either trading posts or re-fuelling stations, as in the case of Cape Town. The interior was unknown and Africa was also referred to as the ‘Dark Continent’ for that reason.
 

However, as Europe industrialised, the need grew for raw materials to feed its factories and more and more countries began to look to Africa as a new source of supply as well as a market into which they could sell their newly manufactured goods. The discovery of quinine, which gave some protection against malaria, together with the invention of new vaccines, contributed to reducing the high number of European deaths from disease and opened the country to further exploration. The final impetus was a religious one; European Christians saw a whole new continent ready for the word of God.

Almost from the beginning, European nations competed aggressively for land. The French had lost territory (and pride) to the Germans in 1871 and their American empire no longer existed, thanks largely to Britain. They had also obtained a renewed taste for colonial possessions following their invasion of Algeria in 1830. Africa offered them a new opportunity for expansion.

Britain was looking to expand its empire, which had also been reduced since the independence of its American colonies. It was also concerned about a rapidly industrialising Germany which was pursuing an aggressive policy of growth under Kaiser Wilhelm II. Sandwiched among the great powers in the middle of Europe, King Leopold II of Belgium felt that this was his one chance to gain territory in a way that did not involve war; after all, more territories equated to higher prestige. Leopold would go on to seize the Congo as his personal property. Portugal, Italy and a host of other countries also sought to get into the game.
 

In 1882 the British invaded and occupied Egypt, concerned that instability there would affect the operation of the Suez Canal – built in 1869 – which significantly reduced the time and cost of travel to India. In an attempt to protect Egypt from invasion, Britain also conquered the Sudan to Egypt’s south. With the strategic port of Cape Town in its hands since the beginning of the century, its route to India was now secure; however, the inevitable response to these actions was a rush by other European powers to gain territory in Africa. The speed at which they rushed into the continent encouraged Bismarck to call an international conference in Berlin to set the rules for dividing it up. No Africans were invited.
 

 
Within 20 years, most of the continent was under the control of one European power or another. Of all the African countries, only Abyssinia (later Ethiopia) and Liberia were never conquered by Europeans. As with other European conquests, the locals were not given much consideration, with large numbers enslaved and killed in an effort to exploit the territory and its resources. The newly developed machine gun made up for the lack of manpower allocated by European governments in their attempt to tame what they considered an uncivilised land.

One of the overriding and lasting effects of European colonisation was the imposition of borders that cut across tribal boundaries and caused conflicts that continue to this day. In their haste to delineate their new colonies, the powers arbitrarily drew straight lines on a map, ignoring any linguistic groups or existing tribal loyalties. It would take half a century or so before the African countries felt confident enough to rise up against their colonial masters and demand their independence.

The Technological Revolution

The westward growth of the United States took place in unison with a technological revolution whose impact was so large that it is sometimes called the Second Industrial Revolution.
 

In 1831 an English scientist, Michael Faraday, realised that an electric current could be produced by passing a magnet through a copper wire, thereby creating a potent new power source. He had invented the electric dynamo, upon which both the electric generator and electric motor are based.
 

Almost 40 years passed before a practical electric generator was built by the American serial inventor, Thomas Edison. For the first time in its history, humanity had found cheap and reliable power that could be generated almost anywhere. By 1879, Edison had developed a practical and long-lasting light bulb that changed the way in which people lived. Electricity was rapidly adopted all over the world in every imaginable field, from transportation and communications to the home.
 

A whole flurry of inventions took place around the turn of the century: Alexander Bell invented the telephone in 1876, in 1885 Karl Benz produced the first gasoline-powered automobile, and in 1903 the Wright brothers took off in the first airplane. Advances in electricity were accompanied by huge advances in science that helped unlock the secrets of physics and chemistry. Fertiliser, pharmaceuticals and antiseptics were just some of the outcomes.
 

The Rise of Japan (1895–1945)

By the turn of the 20th century, the USA and Germany were challenging Britain in the world market for industrial goods. Over in the East, a new power was emerging that was destined to take its place on the international stage: Japan.
 

Much like China, Japan had been closed to foreigners for many years but the country was beginning to awaken and with this awakening came growing imperial ambitions. The Tokugawa shogunate had brought a relatively peaceful time to the country, but a growth in population and a number of natural disasters in the 19th century led to increasing unrest. Having witnessed China’s treatment by the West, the Japanese had sought to protect themselves against the foreign threat by isolating themselves. Nevertheless, as had happened with China, trade was forced upon them, in this case by the Americans.
 

In 1853 a heavily armed American fleet sailed into Tokyo Bay and forced the country to abide by the trade terms it stipulated. The ignominy of these trade terms led directly to the collapse of 700 years of shoguns and to the restoration of the emperor to the Japanese throne in 1868. The period came to be known as ‘the Meiji restoration’, or period of enlightened government. Despite attempts by traditional isolationists to prevent any change to the status quo, huge efforts were made to modernise and industrialise the country so that it could regain its independence from the Europeans and the Americans.
 

Where China failed, Japan succeeded: universal conscription was introduced, with the Samurai replaced by a regular conscript army modelled on the Prussian army, and the navy modelled on the British navy. Japanese scholars were sent abroad to study Western science, railways were built, and a European-style parliament was introduced. Class distinctions were abolished, education was improved and Western dress was adopted. Within a few decades the country succeeded in turning itself from an agrarian and feudal society into a powerful industrialised nation – a nation which to everybody’s surprise succeeded in defeating both China and Russia in two wars at the turn of the century.

In 1894, Meiji Japan defeated Qing China in a conflict of interests over Korea, which served as a buffer between the two nations. Following a battle that displayed the backwardness of China’s much larger army, Japan gained control of Taiwan and southern Manchuria in north-eastern China. China was also forced to recognise an independent Korea, which Japan would annex in 1910 and rule until 1945. Through China’s defeat, Japan gained recognition as a rising world power.
 

Rebellion in China and the End of the Qing (1900–1911)

Increasing foreign intrusion into China by Western European powers which had been accompanied by missionary activity, the forced importation of opium and the acceptance of unequal treaties under which foreigners were accorded immunities from Chinese law, all led to a violent xenophobic and anti-Christian confrontation. The rebels were referred to as Boxers by Western observers, from the closed fist that appeared on their banners. When the uprising was finally supported by the Qing in 1900, it was suppressed by a 40,000-strong foreign army consisting of troops from Britain, the US, Germany, France, Russia, Italy and Austria, all led by Japan. Tens of thousands of Boxers, Qing soldiers and civilians were massacred and the last Qing emperor eventually abdicated in 1911. To China’s great misfortune, this would not be the end of war for its population in the 20th century, just the beginning.