856 Ch. 2 1 • The Age of European Imperialism

Ivory from Africa became a valuable item

on the European markets.

to its colonies, above all India,
which imported cotton cloth and
other textiles, iron, hardware, and
shoes from Britain. Yet British cap­
ital investment abroad was still
principally directed toward its lost
colony, the United States, as well
as toward other independent
states such as Ottoman Turkey.
British subjects also invested
in the settlement colonies—
Australia, New Zealand, and
Canada, as well as India. The
African colonies attracted very lit­
tle British investment. There was
more British trade with Belgium in
the 1890s than with all of Africa.
Because colonial investments
were risky, only a very small per­
centage of French and German
investment was directed into their
respective colonies. French invest­
ment abroad was overwhelmingly directed toward other parts of Europe,
particularly Russia. Only about 5 percent of French investment reached its
colonies in 1900; in 1914, France bought more goods from its colonies
than it sold them in return. Less than 1 percent of German trade was with
its colonies. By 1907, German investment in all German colonies fell
slightly below the value of investments in a single large bank at home.
Imperial governments, which had to foot the bill for troops, supplies,
guns, and administrative and other expenses, therefore became increas­
ingly suspicious of the Confident assurances of adventurers that incredible
riches lay just a little farther up a barely explored African river or beyond
the next oasis. In 1899, a French politician whose ardor for imperialism
had waned defined the two stages of colonization as “the joy of conquest,”
followed inevitably, as after a fine restaurant meal, by “the arrival of the
bill.” The French colonial lobby, including provincial chambers of com­
merce in manufacturing cities and ports and geographic societies, pictured
western Sudan as teeming with lucrative commercial opportunities. It
turned out that this vast region of desert offered merchants little more
than rubber, a little gold, some peanuts, and an occasional elephant tusk.
The French government spent vast sums to administer and police an
increasingly unwieldy empire. In the meantime, the exploitation of natural
resources by the imperialists contributed to the economic and political
underdevelopment of these regions once they became independent nations
in the twentieth century.