Eu rope in the Nineteenth Century 33teenth century, British merchants began to trade with China for tea, silk, and porcelain,
often paying for these products with smuggled opium. In 1842, the British defeated
China in the Opium War, forcing China to cede vari ous po liti cal and territorial rights
to foreigners through a series of unequal treaties. Eu ro pean states and Japan were able
to occupy large portions of Chinese territory, claiming to have exclusive trading rights in
par tic u lar regions. Foreign powers exercised separate “spheres of influence” in China. By
1914, Eu ro pe ans had colonized four- fifths of the world, and still controlled much of it.
The United States eventually became an imperial power as well. Having won the
1898 Spanish- American War, pushing the Spanish out of the Philippines, Puerto Rico,
Cuba, and other small islands, the United States acquired its own small empire.
The strug gle for economic power led to heedless exploitation of colonial areas, par-
ticularly in Africa and Asia. One striking aspect of the contest between the Eu ro pe ans
and the peoples they encountered in Africa and Asia is that Eu ro pean weapons and
communications technology proved very difficult for indigenous peoples to resist. Eu ro-
pean states and their militaries became accustomed to winning battles against vastly
more numerous adversaries, and often attributed their ability to do so to their militaryEurope
Partial European control or influence Never colonized by EuropeColonized or controlled by Europe European sphere of influenceThis map shows every country that has been under European control at any point from
the 1500s to the 1960s. The United States, Mexico, and most of Latin Ame rica became
in de pen dent of Eu rope in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, respectively, but
much of the rest of the world remained under colonial control until after World War II.ESSIR7_CH02_020_069_11P.indd 33 6/14/16 10:01 AM