Alliances
Before his retirement,Otto von Bismarck of Germany recognized the German state faced many enemies, namely the French. Bismarck knew the French would eventually seek revenge for their humiliation in 1871. Therefore, Bismarck began a period of diplomacy aimed at isolating France and strengthening Germany’s position through alliances with other European powers.
First, Bismarck arranged the Three Emperors’ League in 1873 with Wilhelm I of Germany, Alexander II of Russia, and Franz Joseph of Austria-Hungary. The three monarchs agreed with Bismarck that Republican France was a threat to their monarchies. The king of Italy, Victor Immanuel II, later joined the league. Great Britain chose not to involve itself with European affairs, preferring a policy of “splendid isolation.”
In 1875, the Turkish provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina rebelled. The Serbs supported them. The Bulgarians also revolted, leading to a crisis involving the Ottoman Empire. Bismarck called for the Congress of Berlin in 1878 to solve the crisis. The Turks received some territory, but so did Russia and Austria-Hungary (including Bosnia-Herzegovina). The Serbs and Bulgarians won independence, but the Bulgarians also lost territory.
Bismarck recognized the danger posed in the Balkans and proposed the military alliance called the Dual Alliance with Austria-Hungary in 1879. Each country promised military assistance if the other were attacked. Italy joined the Alliance in 1882, creating the Triple Alliance.
Bismarck also recognized Russia’s importance in German security. In 1887, Bismarck negotiated the Reinsurance Treaty with Russia. This treaty promised that Germany would not support Austria against Russia; also, Germany supported Russian industrialization.
Bismarck’s diplomacy held for the rest of the 19th century but fell apart after Wilhelm II forced him into retirement. In one of the worst diplomatic blunders in history, Wilhelm II allowed the Reinsurance Treaty with Russia to lapse 3 months after Bismarck’s retirement.
After the lapse of the Reinsurance Treaty, France sent a fleet to pay a visit to St. Petersburg with the promise of loans for industrialization. In 1891, the French and Russians signed an agreement of cooperation. In 1894, this agreement was expanded into the Franco-Russian Alliance, a full military treaty where each promised military aid to the other in the event of a German attack. The two nations also agreed to begin instant mobilization of their forces if any Triple Alliance member mobilized its forces.
Meanwhile, Britain was realizing the failure of splendid isolation. Germany was a rising military power, and the German navy was on the verge of threatening British domination of the seas. Also, when Britain and France almost went to war over a meaningless chunk of Africa in 1898, the two nations recognized the necessity of closer diplomatic relations. British statesman Joseph Chamberlain attempted to broker a treaty with the Germans in 1898, but the kaiser flatly rejected closer relations with Britain (although his grandmother Victoria was Queen of Great Britain). The French then approached Britain with the potential of settling their colonial differences peacefully. The result was the Entente Cordiale of 1904, an agreement between Britain and France that recognized British domination of Egypt and French control in Morocco. When the Germans started a crisis in Morocco in 1905, the Entente Cordial began to expand with military talks between France and Britain.
In 1906, the Germans began another expansion of their navy. The British decided to settle Asian issues with Russia in 1907, resulting in the Anglo-Russian Entente. combined with the Entente Cordiale, the three powers formed the Triple Entente against Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy.
Social Darwinism and Imperialism
The diplomatic struggles did not occur in a total vacuum. Intertwined with all the diplomacy was a race for colonies in Africa and Asia. The colonial contest resulted from a doctrine called Social Darwinism, and from nationalism that spilled over from the first part of the 19th century.
In 1859, a biologist named Charles Darwin published a careful study of biological change called The Origin of Species. Darwin had noticed in his studies on the Galapagos Islands that some species seemed to change over long periods of time based on mutations and environmental influences. Darwin proposed that species evolved from lower species over time. Darwin admitted that his theories — which he called evolution — may contain difficulties and face modification.
Darwin’s observations created a firestorm in Europe, especially in the religious realm. Some of Darwin’s readers inferred that his book contradicted the Creation account of Genesis; Darwin himself recognized this fact. Nonetheless, Darwin never proposed that humans descended from apes.
Darwin’s theories would have remained less controversial had the conversations regarding them remained only in the scientific realm, but eventually (inevitably?) someone began applying them to human societies. The phrase “survival of the fittest” came into vogue in the late 19th century and used to justify class structures and imperialism.
We shouldn’t be surprised that someone in Europe developed the idea that if humanity had descended from lower animals, the process was continuing — with the white Indo-Europeans as the most developed of the human race. Tsar Nicholas II of Russia was said to have referred to the Japanese as “little yellow monkeys” before the Japanese defeated the empire’s best military forces in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05.
Social Darwinism played a major role in the colonialist policies of Europe in the late 19th century. European soldiers confidently fought African tribes and the Chinese, convinced their superiority would give them victory. Missionaries sought to spread Christianity among the “lesser races,” but often the missionaries first attempted to “civilize” the converts. (Someone forgot to tell the Europeans that the Chinese had been “civilized” before the Roman Empire.) British poet Rudyard Kipling talked of the “white man’s burden” in colonized areas.
Social Darwinism coincided with a massive race to colonize Africa and Asia. Colonization wasn’t new, of course; European countries had been colonizing parts of the globe since the 1500’s when the Spanish conquered most of Central and South America. This time, instead of expecting raw materials from the colonies while the colonies served as markets for European goods, colonies were seen as building the prestige of the colonizing country. A country without colonies was a second-tier power.
Great Britain already held colonies in Canada, India, Egypt, Burma, and South Africa. The British government had used Australia as a prison colony since the 18th century. Britain added Sudan in the 1890’s.
France, meanwhile, was looking for something to soothe its pride after 1871. Fighting Germany again was out of the question, so the French looked abroad. The French took Tunis in north Africa in 1881 and added it to the colony of Algeria.
Bismarck’s retirement set off what is called the “scramble for Africa.” Africa is a huge continent: it is second only to Asia in land mass, covering roughly 11,657,000 square miles. (The U.S. totals 3,615,276 square miles.) Between 1882 and 1914, practically the entire continent was claimed by the various European powers. In 1885, King Leopold of Belgium took control of the 1 million miles known as the Congo as his personal possession. Bismarck had kept Germany out of the madness, but Wilhelm II was determined that Germany earn her “place in the sun.” Germany took nearly 900,000 square miles of Africa between 1890 and 1914. The Italians tried to take Ethiopia, but in a harbinger of Italian military might in the 20th century, the Ethiopians destroyed the Italian army sent to occupy their country.
The Europeans succeeded with superior medicine and technology — namely weapons. The Maxim machine gun enabled the British to defeat Sudanese armies while artillery provided devastating power against massed groups of soldiers. European doctors managed to synthesize quinine to defeat malaria. As in the Americas, European diseases wiped out large numbers of Africans.
In Asia, the picture wasn’t quite as grim. China proved a more formidable challenge than the African tribes. The Chinese problem wasn’t lack of coordination or civilization; it was hubris. China had controlled Asia (except for Japan) for centuries before the Europeans came.
The Sino-Japanese war of 1894 exposed Chinese weakness even more than the British Opium War of the 1840’s. China was forced to grant independence to Korea (Japan would annex Korea in 1910), and Japan received a Chinese province (Kwantung) and Formosa (Taiwan). The Japanese were later forced to return Kwantung to China.
In 1896, the Russians forced China to allow them to build the Trans-Siberian Railway across Manchuria; Russia then occupied Manchuria. In 1897, the Germans occupied Kaiochow, the Russians took Port Arthur (only to lose it to the Japanese), and the British took Hong Kong. Rather than outright colonize these areas, the European governments forced China to sign 99-year leases for the areas.
The Chinese revolted in 1900 with the Boxer Rebellion. The Boxers, a group of Chinese nationalists who believed their magic made them impervious to Western bullets, learned otherwise when the Western powers (European, Japanese, and American) sent a combined army into Beijing to relieve the besieged diplomatic compound. The Europeans wanted to carve China into outright colonies, but the Americans opposed this, saying that every power should have equal access to trade with China (the Open Door Policy).
The French had taken Indochina (Vietnam) in 1858, while the Dutch held the East Indies (Indonesia).
The Americans, meanwhile, held Hawaii and the Philippines as colonies in Asia.
Therefore:
Anyone have a match?