Why, And With What Effects, Did Nations Gain And Expand Their Overseas Empires In The Nineteenth Century?

In 1870 most of Africa was still ruled by Africans. Within thirty years almost the entire continent had been carved up among a handful of European powers, its borders drawn by diplomats around a table in Berlin who had never set foot on the land they were dividing. This 'Scramble for Africa', and the wider rush for empire in Asia and the Pacific, transformed the lives of millions. Why did industrial nations suddenly want overseas colonies so badly, and what did their rule mean for the peoples they conquered?

This lesson sets out the mixed motives behind nineteenth-century imperialism, economic, strategic, political and cultural, and then examines its very different effects: the French in Senegal, the British in Nigeria, the horrors of Leopold II's Congo, the 1857 uprising in India, and the United States' acquisition of former Spanish colonies after 1898. By the end you will be able to weigh the motives against one another and judge how varied the impact of empire really was.