822 Ch. 21 • The Age of European Imperialism
Bengal, a full-fledged tax apparatus and local client armies to make possi
ble conquest and absorption. With India as a base, Britain greatly increased
its influence in the Persian Gulf, Arabia, and East Africa, after having
forced China to open its ports following a quick military victory of 1842.
During the early nineteenth century, many of the original colonies of
Spain and Portugal became independent. The Spanish Empire based on
conquest, religious conversion, and the extraction of silver in the New World
had largely disappeared by 1850. But Spain still held Cuba, Puerto Rico,
and the Philippines. After Brazil, many times the size of Portugal, pro
claimed its independence in 1822, Portugal was left with only toeholds in
Africa, India, and East Asia.
The Dutch had established bases on the coast of West Africa (abandoned
in 1872) and small island colonies scattered in the Caribbean, the Indian
Ocean, and the Pacific. Dutch traders ended Portuguese control of Java, one
of Indonesia’s islands, and extended their own influence over the island in
- The Dutch gradually extended control over the rest of Indonesia.
Britain and France had established bases on the west coast of Africa, despite
its lack of natural harbors and estuaries. Both powers began to penetrate the
giant continent during the nineteenth century—the British from the tip of
South Africa, the French from Algeria and the coast of West Africa.
Yet only Britain, despite being only about the size of the island of Mada
gascar, still had a large empire by the middle of the nineteenth century.
Despite the loss of thirteen of its American colonies, the British Empire
still extended into so many corners of the world that it was tediously
repeated that “the sun never sets on the British Empire.” British imperial
ism rested in part on free trade, with the empire contributing to economic