African Colonization

We live in a world today in which the consequences of nineteenth-century Western imperialism are still being felt. By about 1914 Western civilization reached the high point of its long-standing global expansion. This expansion in this period took many forms. There was, first of all, economic expansion. Europeans invested large sums of money abroad, building railroads and ports, mines and plantations, factories and public utilities. Trade between nations grew greatly and a world economy developed. Between 1750 and 1900 the gap in income disparities between industrialized Europe and America and the rest of the world grew at an astounding rate. Part of this was due to a rearrangement of land use that accompanies Western colonialism and to Western success in preventing industrialization in areas Westerners saw as markets for their manufactured goods. European economic penetration was very often peaceful, but Europeans, as the Americans, were also quite willing to force isolationist nations such as China and Japan to throw open their doors to Westerners. Also, millions of Europeans migrated abroad. The pressure of poverty and overpopulation in rural areas encouraged this migration, but once in the United States and Australia, European settlers passed laws to prevent similar mass migration from Asia.