Lecture 29 -- Imperialism and World War I
Expansion of European Power and the “New Imperialism”: In the 19th century, European power boomed due to superior technology in many fields from agriculture to industry to the military. The growth of national sentiment facilitated mobilization of resources to exert power. Europeans also had a firm sense of their own superiority. However, by 1850, only England had much of an empire. After 1870, however, Europeans now spread their power over 10 million square miles and 150 million people, a fifth of the land surface and 10% of the Earth’s population.
The New Imperialism: The New Imperialism offered new methods to bring lands under a nation’s thumb. European states would invest heavily in a state, transforming its economy and culture. They would make deals with local governments for special privileges or else set up a government to their liking, ranging from colonies to protectorates to ‘spheres of influence’.
Motives for the New Imperialism—Economic Interpretation: The most common explanation is economic, developed by Marxist historians. Imperialism was a stage of capitalism—a quest for new markets and resources. However, the facts show most investment went to other, better developed arenas and that the new lands made poor markets.
Cultural, Social, and Religious Interpretations: Contemporaries put forward several justifications. Social Darwinism—Crush other nations before they crush you. Missionaries argued for the conversion of the heathen. Some saw a duty to civilize foreign lands. Some called for colonies to settle extra population.
Strategic and Political Interpretation: The Scramble for Africa: The Scramble for Africa seems to have happened for strategic and political reasons. The completion of the Suez Canal in 1869 made it a vital lifeline to India for Britain, who took over Egypt to protect it in the 1880s when instability threatened it. In 1882, France controlled Algeria and Tunis, taken in the 1830s to put down pirates. Soon other nations wanted a piece of the pie. By the 1890s, their arrival forced the British to expand north from the Cape of Good Hope into modern Zimbabwe to protect their South African colony, which dominated the sea route around Africa to Asia and crucially India. Other powers came to see holding colonies as a sign of political power. Bismark seized parts of Africa for Germany in the 1880s as a bargaining chip and sign of power. This started a mad scramble for the rest of Africa; by 1890, almost everything was gone. In Asia, a similar scramble occured to dominate China. In 1898, the US beat up Spain and took Puerto Rico and the Phillipines, made Cuba a protectorate and annexed Hawaii just because it could. Germany seized other Spanish islands in the Pacific. By 1900, the Industrialized West dominated most of the world.
Emergence of the German Empire
Bismark’s Leadership (1873-1890): The unification of Germany radically changed the balance of power in Europe. French defeat weakened it and Austro-Hungary was struggling to control internal nationalisms. France wanted revenge. Bismark, however, wanted to avoid any further wars, asserting Germany sought no more territory in Europe.
War in the Balkans: In 1873, Bismark created the Three Emperor’s League, uniting Russia, Austria, and Germany in a monarchical alliance. However, it collapsed in 1877 when Russia attacked Turkey to support revolts in the Balkan provinces. The Russians wanted Constantinople and to support other slavic peoples (Pan-Slavism). Russian victory in the 1878 treaty of San Stefano panicked other powers. Disraeli, Prime Minister of Britain, was especially determined to stop Russian expansion.
Congress of Berlin: In June and July of 1878, the great powers met in Berlin to review the Treaty of San Stefano. Bulgaria lost 2/3rds of its land, Austro-Hungary took Bosnia-Herzegovina, Britain took Cyprus and France took Tunisia. The Three Emperor’s League was now dead.
German Alliances with Russia and Austria: In 1879, Austria and Germany signed a secret mutual defense treaty. Some feared it would drag Germany into pointless wars. The rumors of it brought the Russians around to ally with Germany again in 1881.
The Triple Alliance: In 1882, Italy now allied with Germany. Bismark felt himself successful in isolating France. However, in 1888, Kaiser Wilhelm II came to the throne; he dismissed Bismark in 1890 because he wanted to follow a policy of glory and expansion for Germany.
Forging the Triple Entente (1890-1907):
Franco-Russian Alliance: In 1891, Prime Minister Leo von Caprivi, Bismark’s replacement, refused to renew the alliance with Russia, which he saw as incompatible with the Kaiser’s ambitions. In 1894, the Russians turned to France for an alliance.
Britain and Germany: Traditional rivalries in Africa and Asia had long pitted Britain against France and Russia. But German ambitions forced the British to turn to its rivals. Germany blocked plans for a Capetown-to-Cairo railroad and favored the Boers in South Africa. The Germans began building a fleet strong enough to fight the British in the late 1890s.
Entente Cordial: Britain now began seeking allies. In 1902, they formed alliance with Japan (against Russia). In 1904, they formed the Entente Cordial with France. It settled all of the remaining colonial disputes between the two countries, such as allowing the French free passage through the Suez Canal, settling border disputes, and resolving old arguments about French rights to use the waters off Newfoundland.
First Moroccan Crisis: The Entente Cordial had also settled ongoing disputes over French influence in Morocco. However, in March 1905, Kaiser Wilhelm challenged French power there in favor of Moroccan independence. The result was a 1906 conference at Algeciras in Spain. Spain, Italy, and the USA all sided with the British and French in the dispute, and as a result, Germany failed to split the British and French or to weaken France’s position. Further, the British and French now made informal plans for future military cooperation under the leadership of British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey (1862-1933).
British Agreement with Russia: Russian weakness in the aftermath of the Russo-Japanese war led to the British approaching the Russians afterwards. In 1907, the two powers settled their old disputes. The Triple Entente which followed was an informal alliance, but nevertheless was exactly what Bismark had tried to avoid. And further, the alliance with Austria was likely to lead, in the end, to a giant war for Germany with Austria as its only reliable ally.
World War I
The Road to War (1908-14): In 1908, the Balkan situation was complex, a mixture of independent states (Greece, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia), Ottoman territories and dependent states (Bulgaria was technically part of the empire, Ottomans held a belt across the middle of the territory), and colonial provinces (Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, and Slovenia, held by the Austrians). Most of the inhabitants were Slavs and Serbia had ambitions to unite the Slavs under its rule. The Slavs looked to Russia for help as well.
The Bosnian Crisis: In 1908, the Young Turks, a group of reformers, took over the Ottoman Empire, hoping to modernize it. The Austrians and Russians decided to call an international conference to try and cripple the revival. However, the Austrians didn’t wait for the conference to declare the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The British rejected Russian demands for the opening of the Dardanelles to Russian warships. The Russians and Serbs were enraged, and Germany reluctantly backed Austria. The failure of Britain and France to back Russia now made it more urgent not to leave the Russians out to dry in the future.
Second Moroccan Crisis (1911): When France sent men to fight rebels, the Germans put pressure on France to make concessions in the French Congo and sent a gunboat to the port of Agadir. But this panicked the British. The crisis ended with the ship’s withdrawal and France making minor concessions to the Germans. The British drew tighter defensive preparations with France.
The Balkan Wars: In 1911, the Italians attacked the Ottomans and seized Libya and the Dodecanese Islands. In 1912, Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro, and Serbia attacked the Ottomans in the First Balkan War and took most of what was left of their land in Europe, only to fight each other in the 1913 Second Balkan War in which Turkey, Romania, Greece and Serbia mugged the Bulgarians. Serbia was now much stronger, and Austria, fearing their power, now turned up the pressure on them. This led to the creation of the Kingdom of Albania to block Serbian access to the Aegean.
Sarajevo and the Ooutbreak of War (June-August 1914)
The Assassination: On June 28, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand (1863-1914), heir to the Austrian throne, was assassinated in Sarajevo in Bosnia-Herzegovina during a tour of the provinces. He was slain by Gavarillo Princip, a member of the Black Hand, a nationalist Serbian revolutionary society backed by the Serbian government. Serbia was considered responsible (and indeed had helped to plan it.)
Germany and Austria’s Response: Backed by German support, the Austrians issued an ultimatum of demands to Serbia which would have crippled it on July 24. Serbia made a very conciliatory reply, but Austria now attacked on July 28.
The Triple Entente’s Response: Russia recognized it had to act, though Russian conservatives feared another 1905. They began to mobilize against Austria. This alarmed General Helmuth von Moltke (1848-1916), head of the German general staff, because it threatened to throw off the Schlieffen Plan, a war plan designed to exploit an initial attack by France. He thus pressed for Germany to mobilize. Meanwhile, the Chancellor of Germany, Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, tried to get the Austrians to back down, wanting to avoid war. On July 30, Austria now began to mobilize against Russia as well. Once Russia mobilized against Germany, the left wing of German politics, the Social Democrats, were willing to back all-out war and the Schlieffen Plan now went into effect, with Germany invading Luxembourg on August 1 and Belgium on August 3. Germany now attacked France and due to this and the violation of Belgium neutrality, Britain declared war on August 4, 1914. World War I had begun.
Strategies and Stalemate (1914-7): The nations of Europe did not understand what was coming; there had been no general war since 1815, and everyone expected the war to be like the 1870 war of Prussia vs. France or the 1866 Austro-Prussian war, a war of mobility and low casualties.
The Problem of Mobilization: Early 20th century European armies relied heavily upon having a large reserve of men with past military experience, reserves who would be called to active duty when war broke out. (The US was an exception to this, as it basically relied on a combination of the navy and the difficulty of shipping troops across an ocean for self defense. The US army was pitifully small in 1914 and we had little in the way of 'reserves' ready to be called forward.)
Whichever army mobilized first would be in a position to deliver crushing blows to its foes before they had enough men under arms and organized to fight. The result of this was that if your foes started to mobilize, you had to begin mobilizing immediately or you would be crushed. This made everyone rather trigger-happy. Further, once you began to mobilize, it was hard to stop without a huge waste of money and supplies. This meant that the act of mobilization would trigger a cascade of panic mobilizations and vastly increase the chance of war.
The Schlieffen Plan: The German Schlieffen Plan (1905) relied on speed and mobility to surround and trap the French army. German forces would flank French defenses during the expected French offensive into Alsace-Lorraine by striking through Belgium. They would envelop Paris and the French army, cutting off the French from the Channel Ports, then engulf and destroy the French army east of Paris. Once France collapsed, the Germany army would reinforce the Russian front and crush Russia. However, von Moltke had weakened the plan by re-directing some divisions to help defend Germany instead of being part of the arcing sweep.
The War in the West: The French also relied on the offensive, deluding themselves that elan (fighting spirit) would somehow magically enable them to crush the Germans. This proved no more effective than the Ghost Dance, the rituals of the Righteous Fists, or the World War II Japanese belief in fighting spirit at defeating superior defensive fire power. In 1914, the introduction of the machine gun had made the offensive extremely bloody at best whenever troops could fight from behind fortifications. The French attack failed, though this would free up men to save France from the German offensive, ironically. With the German offensive weakened from the original plan, the British and French stopped the Germans in the Battle of the Marne (September 1914), which would lead to four years of trench warfare in the West, a period of paralysis from 1914 to 1917, followed by the successful offensives of 1918.
Defense over Offense: Europeans had not fought a major war against equal opponents since the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. This meant no one fully realized how much stronger the defense had grown than offense. The machine gun made it possible for one man to mow down many times his numbers. Combined with the use of defensive fortifications, attacks now became suicidal, especially since most Europeans with military experience were used to beating up poorly armed native forces in Africa or Asia who had no fortifications. Thus, many died at first in totally suicidal charges.