#29 European Transformation and World Power

The turmoil of the years covered in this blog can be compared to the turmoil of the period 100 years later from 1914 to 1945. Each war listed in the last Blog,  from the wars for US Independence, the Battle of Plessey through to the Haitian Revolution, and including the Napoleonic wars in Europe, have had their specific historians and written history. My purpose in this blog is to disentangle these individual historical themes and to understand the overall directions of historical travel. After both periods, 1750 to 1815 and 1914 to 1945,  the nexus of world power altered fundamentally, both across the world and within Europe itself.

Here I shall document the altered character of global power from 1750 to 1815. The key expansionary players up to 1815 had been Spain, Portugal, France, Britain, Holland, Russia, and the Ottomans. Only two of all these “great powers” - the Russians and the Ottomans - survived this revolutionary moment relatively unscathed. Spain France and Portugal lost most of their Colonies. Only Britain survived with its Colonial power intact and its world role hugely extended. 1750 to 1815, can usefully be understood as the first global struggle for Colonial dominance.  The second 1914 to 1945 was to come.

The 1815 battle at Waterloo resolved the major question of Europe that all this violence had ultimately been all about: would capital be brought in under the French system of a united Europe under Napoleon, or under the system that was preferred by Britain which included a new free-market system[1]  and under a loose association of states in a balance of power guaranteed by Britain? Britain had fought the battle of Waterloo with Prussian support under Field Marshall Blucher; 64% of the soldiers were Germans, Dutch, and Walloons from Belgium.

The Spanish and Portuguese Colonial Empires

View a map of Spanish and Portuguese empires in 1790 via the Wikimedia Commons website.

Spain and Portugal had until this period forged the largest colonial European empire. From the time of Columbus sailing west in 1492, Spain had conquered a large part of the South Americas, and then Santo Domingo in the West Indies in 1516. In Europe at the same time, Spain had become a part of the Hapsburg Empire. They destroyed the Aztec Empire in 1516 and controlled the entire land of Mexico soon after. By 1537 they were in control of Peru, and in 1571 they colonised the Philippines. By 1740 they had control of Venezuela, Colombia, and Ecuador, and by 1776 they were invading modern-day Argentina. By the time of the French Revolution, Spain had acquired most of today’s Latin America, except for Brazil and large parts of the West Indies.

Like so many invading peoples from Europe, the Spanish were - geographically speaking - grossly over-extended. When ideas from the French Revolution reached the Spanish settlers across Latin America, they rose in rebellion and demanded independence. This was the time when Simon Bolivar published his popular manifesto. In 1816, Argentina proclaimed their independence, as did Peru in 1821 and Mexico in 1822. Spain was severely weakened, and retained only the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Cuba in the West Indies. These later had to be given up to the USA in 1898. In the 19th century, Spain attempted once again to colonise the Sahara, closer to home. The French Revolution had directly led to Spain becoming a weak colonial power.

Portugal was equally weakened by the events of 1795. Portugal had been the earliest of all the European peoples to invade, colonise and enslave down the west African coast. Henry the Navigator is dated travelling down the coast in 1415. During the 15th century, Portugal had established slave bases down to the Congo River and had in 1488 rounded the Cape of Good Hope in southern Africa. By 1500, Petro Cabal had landed in Brazil. By 1549, they had claimed Brazil as a Royal Province. Slaves were then supplied from their west African bases. Portuguese ships had also moved east, and by 1510, they had seized Goa in south-east India. By 1514, they had captured Hormuz in the Gulf of Oman. Finally, the Portuguese established a trading post at Macao off the coast of China in 1557. Portugal had expanded west into the Americas and east to the Indies and China.

World map by Henricus Martellus, created in about 1490. The British Library.

During the French Revolution, the Portuguese court removed itself from Rio de Janeiro. It became the guest of its colony. The revolution in Europe severely weakened Portugal as a colonial global power. Settlers in 1788 rebelled, and by 1822 the Portuguese regents proclaimed Brazil independent. Portugal had not lost all her colonies; she retained control of Macau in China, of Angola and Mozambique in Africa, and Guinea Bissau, Cape Verde and Sao Tome e Principe.

The First French Colonial Empire

This map shows the French colonial empire from the 17th-20th century. The lightest blue shows France, the slightly darker blue shows France’s first colonial empire (after 1534) and the darkest blue shows the second colonial empire (after 1830).

By 1815, France had lost all the overseas territories they had fought for over 200 years. France, like the Russians, had been trading furs from North America, now Canada. The French had taken land in 1605 in Nova Scotia and founded Quebec in 1608. By 1699 they had territorial gains in Louisiana and in the Mississippi basin, which lead to extensive trading networks right up to the Great Lakes. In the West Indies, they took St Kitts in 1625, Guadeloupe in 1635 and Saint Dominguez (modern-day Haiti) in 1664. This latter island had developed a rich sugar plantation economy.

In India, they took Pondicherry in 1673 and were active and clear competitors for the Indian subcontinent against the British. In the Indian Ocean, they took over the islands of Reunion in 1664, Mauritius in 1718 and Seychelles in 1756.

France’s first global empire was destroyed first by wars against the British 1774-48 (the so-called wars of the Austrian Succession), 1756-62 the Seven Years Wars, 1765-83, the American Revolution, the revolution in Haiti 1795, and finally the Napoleonic Wars 1803-15.

Until then, the French had been competing on more or less equal terms in a global sense, with the British and the Dutch. They then lost all influence in India to the British East Indian Company, in North America to the settlers. Louisiana was sold by Napoleon to the new settler state of the USA. In 1803, Haiti was lost by revolution. Finally, the British annexed Florida, Grenada, and St Lucia.

Russian Expansion

The Russians were the sole power left unscathed, with no colonial losses. But then the other colonial powers did not want to occupy Siberia or the Caucasus at that time. Interest in the Caucasus would come later. During the 17th century European wars, Russia had sided first with one power and then another. The Russian emperor saw Napoleon as a dire threat and had joined in a coalition with Britain. In 1805, Russia joined with Austria in the Battle of Austerlitz and was defeated. Two years later, they joined Napoleonic forces and the continental system which boycotted Britain. In 1812, when Napoleon invaded Russia, the French were pushed back to Paris, forcing Napoleon to abdicate in 1814.

The Russians were fully involved in the Congress of Vienna in 1814-15, which had been convened to determine how to divide Europe; it heralded the end of one era and the beginning of the next. Territorially, Russia gained; the Tsar became the king of Poland; Napoleon had made Poland an independent state.

The Dutch Empire

Anachronous map of the Dutch colonial Empire.

Light green: territories administered by or originating from territories administered by the Dutch East India Company
Dark green: territories administered by or originating from territories administered by the Dutch West India Company
Orange squares indicate smaller trading posts, the so-called handelsposten.

Finally, Holland: the Dutch had been colonising roughly over the same periods as the French and the British. They too were a global force roughly on a par with the other major states of Europe.

The Netherlands had become a Protestant republic in 1609; the European centre for Amsterdam had become the shipping, banking, and insurance centre of Europe. The Dutch had been at war with the Portuguese around the West Coast of Africa, in Brazil and throughout the Indian ocean. Like Britain, the Dutch had created two powerful chartered monopoly companies: the Dutch East Indian and Dutch West Indian Companies. Like the British Companies, these had the authority to establish fortresses, to sign treaties, to carry armed forces, and to wage defensive war. They were private companies in the name of the Dutch state.

Competitive colonialism had affected the Dutch empire for over 200 years, since the early 1600s. They were constantly at war with Spain, Portugal, and Britain across the world. The Dutch established settlements, captured from the Portuguese in India at Goa and Cochin, at Colombo in today’s Sri Lanka, at Jakarta and Malacca in Indonesia, in Macau in China, and Dejima in Japan. Over these 200 years, the Dutch had sent over a million Europeans to work in Asia.

Wherever they went they acted aggressively, fighting the British in three wars in 1651, 1664 and 1673. Only when William of Orange ascended the Dutch and English throne, did 80 years of global rivalry come to an end. But by the time of the American Revolutionary Wars in 1776, England fought Holland over Ceylon. Then Napoleon’s revolutionary armies invaded the Dutch Republic and turned the then Batavian Republic (Holland) into a French satellite. Britain then occupied the Dutch colonies in Asia, South Africa, and the Caribbean. By agreements in 1814, Britain retained Cape Colony, Guyana, and Sri Lanka.

The Dutch had settlements of Dutch citizens in South Africa and Indonesia and created strong trading posts. They were a small but aggressive trading people over these 200 years.

By 1815, they had lost most but not all their colonial possessions. They retained Indonesia and Suriname and their toe-hold port in Japan, which turned out to be important to the Japanese industrialisation after the Meiji Revolution (see later blogs).

The British took control from the Dutch over Cape Colony in southern Africa.

Britain the First Global Power in 1815

The territories that were at one time or another part of the British Empire. The United Kingdom and its accompanying British Overseas Territories are underlined in red. By The Red Hat of Pat Ferrick via Wikimedia Commons.

To conclude, by 1815, Britain was by far the strongest of the old European colonising powers left standing. There was no State left to dispute her claims to the entire Indian continent. Within the next 15 years, South American settlers would take colonial power from the Spanish and Portuguese.  The entire southern continent of the Americas was taken over by the settlers. The white settlers in the north had initially taken the 13 colonies on the East Coast; the rest of what is today the USA would soon be theirs too. Only the land north of the Great Lakes was left to the British. The West Indian islands lost much of their colonial attractions, as attentions were turned east to India where fortunes were to be made, and a new social class of traders and nouveau riche were established within Britain. In brief, the revolutions and wars at the end of the 18th and early 19th century fundamentally altered the ownership structure of the colonial world, with Britain emerging as the major player with a substantial colonial hand.

Although, what had not altered among all the European powers was the pursuit of colonies  a fundamental element of foreign policy. The colonisation of other peoples' lands would start again after 1815 as each territory regained their lost momentum and as the 19th century progressed, colonisation would begin again with a vengeance in the last 25 years of the century.

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[1] Britain's new revolutionary ( for that period of time) “market system” is developed in the blogs 31 to 33.

Thumbnail image: “The Commissioners” by Matthew Darly.

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