19th Century Used

The Second European colonization wave is so-called because it succeeded to the First European colonization wave which started in the 15th century. The Second wave started in the second half of the 19th century with the New Imperialism period, which notably included the Scramble for Africa. more...

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It lasted until the beginning of the decolonization, which didn't start at the same time in all places. For example, the Indian National Congress was created as soon as 1885, but effective decolonization only began after World War II, and especially during the 1950s-60s (Indochina War, Algerian War of Independence, etc.)

The New Imperialism

The latter half of 19th century saw the transition from an "informal" empire of control through military and economic dominance to direct control, marked from the 1870s on by the scramble for territory in areas previously regarded as merely under Western influence. Colonialism would take its full extent only during the period known as New Imperialism, starting in the 1860s with the Scramble for Africa: British, French, and German imperialisms opposed themselves to conquer the most territories possible as quickly as possible.

The Berlin Conference (1884 - 1885) mediated the imperial competition among the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (UK), the French Third Republic and the German Empire, defining "effective occupation" as the criterion for international recognition of colonial claims and codifying the imposition of direct rule, accomplished usually through armed force.

A decade later, rival imperialisms would collide in the 1898 Fashoda Incident, during which war between France and the UK was barely avoided. This fear led to new alliances, and in 1904 the Entente Cordiale was signed between both powers. Imperialistic rivalry between the European powers would a main cause of the triggering of World War I in 1914.

In Germany, rising pan-germanism was coupled to imperialism in the Alldeutsche Verband ("Pangermanic League"), which argued that Britain's world power position gave the British unfair advantages on international markets, thus limiting Germany's economic growth and threatening its security. Pan-slavism and pan-germanism were considered by Hannah Arendt (1951) as the continental version of imperialism.

North America in the 19th century

After the American Revolution and the 1776 independence of the United States, the colonization was not quite finished. As in South America, the frontier and the Wild West had to be conquered. For the next century, the expansion of the nation into these areas, as well as the subsequently acquired Louisiana Purchase (1803), Oregon Country (1846) and Mexican Cession (1848, after the Mexican-American War), would absorb much of the energy of the nation and largely define its politics and character, in particular its relations with Native Americans. The question of whether the American frontier would become "slave" or "free" was a spark of the American Civil War (1861-1865).

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