A History of Modern Europe - From the Renaissance to the Present

Conclusion 859

with passion. But with British victory in the Boer War, anti-imperialist
voices grew fainter in Britain.
In France, anti-imperialists focused on the financial burden of expansion.
A member of the Chamber of Deputies complained, “We are being drawn
along in an irresistible process, like that of Time, by the mere force of a
colonial expansionism which has got out of control.” In the United States,
the American Anti-Imperialist League joined together groups opposing the
annexation of the Philippines as a territory. But everywhere the strident
imperialist roar drowned out dissident voices. It contributed to the aggres­
sive nationalism that fueled the increasingly bitter rivalries between the
European great powers and further destabilized the continent.

Conclusion

In 1500, the European powers controlled about 7 percent of the globe’s

land; by 1800, they controlled 35 percent; in 1914, they controlled 84 per­

cent. Between 1871 and 1900, the British Empire, which came to include

one-quarter of the world’s land mass and population, expanded to include

66 million people and 4.5 million square miles, the French Empire to 3.5

million square miles, and Germany, Belgium, and Italy to about 1 million

square miles each. In Spain, with little left from its once mighty empire,

the shock of losing the Philippines and Cuba to the United States in 1898

led to an intense period of introspection by intellectuals known as the

“generation of 1898” who wanted to “regenerate” Spain. The Spanish gov­

ernment took new colonies in Morocco and the Western Sahara.

Aggressive nationalism shaped the contours of the new European impe­

rialism from the early 1880s to 1914. Imperialism sharpened the rivalries

of the great powers, while solidifying international alliances. Competing

colonial interests brought France and Britain to the verge of war after the

Fashoda Affair of 1898. Subsequent crises assumed even more dramatic

dimensions. Infused with the same sense of struggle that seemed to engulf

Europe, these crises would defy peaceful resolution.