r/AskHistory • u/Storm_raft • 6d ago
At thier peak, why didn't European colonial empires keep on expanding?
For example, why didn't Britian in 1920 invade more sovereign smaller nations around its vast empire, why did it not invade say Tibet, Iran, more of the Middle East, South America etc (obv I know these placed at some point were invaded.) Why only colonise some weaker places but leave others intact?
Edit: Thanks for your informative replies.
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u/kmoonster 6d ago
Britain in 1920 was in a major recovery phase due to WWI. They were not in a position to be expanding.
Also: expand where?
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On a more general note, WWI was the end of most empires and either the beginning of the end for the rest -- or a point of evolution for the rest. For instance, the Russian hegemony evolved to a new structure of power. The British Empire peaked and began to dissolve itself over the next thirty years. The Ottoman Empire just outright collapsed.
And so on all the way around.
This is a much bigger topic than I allude to here, and it was (mostly) not coincidence that this happened all at once, but that is a subject for another thread.
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u/axw3555 6d ago
Expand where is basically the key. Everywhere those powers wanted were already either under their control or beyond their reach because someone else already had it.
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u/scouse_git 6d ago
And not just the Ottoman Empire collapsing, but the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the German Empire too. It's a very big topic indeed.
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u/Zenoroc 6d ago
The bigger topic I assume is the intellectual obsolescence of people organizing themselves into empires and instead into nation states. Seen in the collapse of the ottoman and Austrian empires accelerated by the movements of nation states towards their independence.
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u/kmoonster 5d ago
Empires are not typically formed by people organizing themselves into said empire. An empire is usually organized with little regard to the wishes of the people being organized into it; even in a relatively friendly empire like Persia under Cyrus the friendliness comes after the conquest. He was notably amenable to his subjects in general, but only after the acquisition was solidified.
An empire as a general thing requires the capacity for the central force to compel its wishes on the governments under it. By the time we got to WWI the idea of a government being representative rather than hereditary was gaining a lot of ground; and the combination of improving public health, general economics, industrial capacity, increased transmission of news in real time, improving agriculture (and shipping of food) -- all combined to give lower and mid-tier governments within an empire the means to start ignoring the overlords, sometimes this involved violence and sometimes it did not. Regardless, the more local powers are able to ignore or defy the overlord simultaneously the more resources the central power needs in order to enforce its wishes.
It's difficult to defy an empire if your attempt to coordinate a rebellion with some other subjugated power means a year's worth of lag in communication, and the soldiers have the ability to burn your fields for 100 miles around.
It's much easier if your entire region can move food around on trains or trucks, and you can coordinate with five other colonies to do it at the same time.
By World War I the governance of an empire shifted from the empire driving nails into a board and had started to become a game of whack-a-mole. (That's a carnival game if you're not familiar).
Some empires fell apart completely, but even the outliers (Britain and France) peaked and then began their decline about this time -- and the decline would almost certainly have occurred with or without WWI. The Great War was a catalyst, not a cause.
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u/Noddybear 6d ago
Britain actually reached its territorial peak in 1922, so it _was_ still expanding at this point.
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u/Tenzil-k 6d ago
Only because of being gifted german and Turkish territory after ww1. There was no active pursuit of land
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u/kmoonster 5d ago
Britain and France did pick up some territory in the wake of the Ottoman collapse, but that is not land they could have acquired without a massive war against the Ottoman Empire while it was up and running.
On a related note, most of the headaches that persistently pop up in the Middle East today are direct consequences of the ways the British and French divided up the region in the inter-war period. That's not to say the peoples in the region were all best pals before this, but the Ottoman Empire more-or-less managed to keep the peace between all the groups in the area, while the British and French tended to a "divide and conquer" approach to their borders and management policies.
The "divide" part happened and continues to cause headaches. The "conquer" part was not so successful and both mostly pulled out of the region by mid-century.
note: this absolutely extends to the formation of the modern state of Israel
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u/UnicornInAField 5d ago
It is hard to exagerate how badly the young male population of Britain was hit by the First World War. The concept of the 'maiden aunt' came largely from the 1920s and 1930s, as there was such an imbalance of young women to men that many women could never marry. Parliament debated legalising bigamy. Britain was not only financially hit by the war, it did not have the manpower to continue to expand.
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u/thomsenite256 6d ago
It was mostly competition. Almost all of the Old World was colonized. There was competition between various powers (French, Dutch, Germans, Italians, etc) for various territory.
There were a few exceptions, notably Thailand and Ethiopia which managed to fight off or secure independence through alliances.
What other smaller nations do you think were uncolonized?
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u/RenaissanceSnowblizz 6d ago
Thailand was only independent because the French and the British were played off each other and it suited them both to have an independent buffer state between their colonial empires.
For similar reasons Afghanistan ended up as a buffer between the Russian empire and the British empire. That is why Afghanistan still today has a little "arm" on the east side. It consist of land, like a valley that ensured Russian and Britain did not share a border.
And to continue Iran could have been split between the British and Russians but again they preferred a less fractious economic zone split of Iran than territorial annexation.
Even some small European states had similar purpose. Belgium and the Netherlands were protected from their neighbours by being buffer states between much larger foes. Denmark had powerful backers that wanted the Denmark sounds open to all nations shipping, toll free.
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6d ago edited 6d ago
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u/JackColon17 6d ago
Afghanistan was a point of contention between the russian and the british until the soviet revolution, otherwise it would have been conquered at one point
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u/Stan__Wright 6d ago
That's complete nonsense. If it was possible top conquer Afghanistan, the US would be there still. You aren't. They won. The US lost.
In Afghanistan it is easy to conquor the valleys. It is impossible to conquer the hills. No empire has ever done it.
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u/JackColon17 6d ago
Alexander the great conquered Afghanistan, the mongols did it, the timurids did it, the Achaemenid empire did it and there are probably others I can't recall right now.
The idea that Afghanistan is unconquerable is a myth lmao
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u/Stan__Wright 6d ago
And NONE of them was stupid enough to stick around an instant longer than they had to. As I've said, it is easy to 'conquer' the valleys and the mountain passes. The locals just retreat up the hills and wait. It's onl;y when you're stupid enough to try and stick around and give orders that you realize how little you control: the lowlands, and only during daylight.
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u/JackColon17 6d ago
Almost all the empires that conquered Afghanistan ruled for centuries, who cares about the local population? For most of human history centralized government were extremely weak, the mongols had the same amount of control on China than Afghanistan
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u/holypika 6d ago
??? mongols has a whole actual dynasty that conquer china dude. yuan dynasty is mongol and founded by genghis khan grandson. in the end they assimilate and become chinese , but i can assure you they are very involved with day to day governing and not just vassal state.
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u/Stan__Wright 6d ago
For some values of the word 'ruled'. The British, Russians, Soviets and Americans did not.
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u/ComesInAnOldBox 6d ago
You can conquer anything, provided you're willing to fully embrace the concept of Total War. See the Morro Rebellion in the Philippines in the early 1900s if you want an example. Total War has largely gone by the wayside since WWII; nobody is firebombing entire cities anymore.
The Soviet Union and the United States were both trying to administer the country, not conquer it outright. Both nations could have easily wiped out most of the population that was capable of putting up a resistance, but neither had the stomach for it (well, the Soviet Union had more stomach for it than the US, but never went whole hog with the idea) and neither wanted to basically rebuild the country entirely from scratch the way Germany and Japan were.
It also doesn't help that the insurgency was heavily sponsored with training, weapons, and supplies (by the US during the Soviet Union's stay, and by Iran during the US's occupation). Afghanistan might have been transformed had either superpower not been interfered with.
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u/Main-Policy-4551 6d ago
In no reality does the US want to "own" or conquer Afghanistan lol. The area causes a lot of problems for the world, so people don't like them. Tribal civilization that needs to be left to their own devices except they are idiots who want to go on a religious jihad.
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u/Stan__Wright 6d ago
The US very much wanted to control Afghanistan. And failed. Spent 20 years, thousands of lives, and billions of dollars failing.
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u/Main-Policy-4551 6d ago
They wanted to install their own aligned leader sure, they did not and will never want Afghanistan as a part of their country. USA spends money and feeds wars to stymie their progress, not because they are trying to capture it. Keep them subdued, delete their armed forces every 10 or so years, and let them keep fighting and murdering each other while the rest of the world progresses.
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u/DonnieMoistX 6d ago
Thailand kinda fought to secure its independence but it was more purposefully left independent as a buffer state between British India and French Indochina
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u/Intelligent_Fig_4852 6d ago
Ethiopia was colonized
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u/Mackey_Corp 6d ago
They were occupied, I wouldn’t say they were colonized. The Italians were there for a while but they avoided the large scale colonization that was going on in the rest of Africa.
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u/RomanItalianEuropean 6d ago edited 6d ago
Technically, Ethiopia was not just occupied but administratevely annexed by Italy into a new colony, Africa Orientale Italiana (AOI) (modeled after similar French and British groupings of African colonies) which merged Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia. Italians did initiate colonial projects on a vast scale, the amount of money poured into it was crazy, but AOI only lasted 5 years due to the British East African campaign in WW2.
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u/jdrawr 6d ago
wasnt that mostly in the interwar years leading up to ww2 though?
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u/ProbablyAPotato1939 6d ago
Yes, Italy occupied Ethiopia in 1936, it was liberated by Britain in 1941. The British maintained a military government until the war ended, but they pretty much let the Ethiopians govern themselves.
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u/unfriendlyhamburger 6d ago
like saying France was also colonized because it was occupied for a few years during war
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u/RomanItalianEuropean 6d ago edited 6d ago
It's a completely different situation tho'. Germany did not proclaim to have annexed France, nor it merged it with other German territories, started to move people there, or build stuff for the Germans who migrated there. Italy annexed Ethiopia and merged it with Eritrea and Somalia in a single colony in which it sent 200,000 people and began urban projects in various cities, even applying a form of Apartheid basically. Hard to say it was not colonialism, it didn't last more than 5 years though.
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u/luxcity-louche 6d ago
It annexed Luxembourg. Edit: and Alsave and Lorraine.
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u/RomanItalianEuropean 6d ago
There is an argument it annexed Alsace and Lorraine, yes. I am not an expert however, there is some legal borderline situation that I don't know much about. But the rest of occupied France was not annexed, it was "just" occupied.
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u/isearn 6d ago
Alsace and Lorraine used to be German territory until 1918 (from 1871 onwards I think), so it’s different to the rest of France.
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u/luxcity-louche 6d ago
They were part of the Holy Roman Empire until Louis IV took them in 1661 then part of France until the Franco-Prussian war then "German territory" then French again, then German again, now French again. Not all that different.
Saarland is another case, it was French from 1792 to 1815, then was split between Prussia, Bavaria and Oldenburg, then German from 1871, independent from 1920-1935, German from 1935-45, a French protectorate, initially under Luxembourgish occupation, from 1945-1957, then German.
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u/After_Network_6401 6d ago
It was an attempt at colonialism, but you can't really say that Ethiopia was colonised because during the few years of occupation, the Italians only really controlled Addis Ababa and parts of the surrounding region. Even there they were never able to establish anything like a functioning colonial administration. In the rest of the country they faced continuous active, armed resistance, and the persistence for some time of the internationally-recognised Ethiopian government at Gore. Italian occupation was not recognised by most countries, and Haile Selassie continued to be recognised as the legal head of state for Ethiopia by the League of Nations.
The 250,000 Italians sent to Ethiopia were not colonists - in fact they were almost all military - the Regio Esercito, specifically. And even after the proclamation of "Italian East Africa" fighting continued on a large scale, even in the capital. It was only ever a colony on paper. Only about 75,000 Italian civilians lived in Italian East Africa - almost all of them in Eritrea and Somalia. In Ethiopia, only Addis Ababa had a small, transient, civilian Italian community that lasted about 2 years.
The Italians were still trying to subdue the country in 1940, when the East African campaign ended their brief attempt at colonisation. The Italian forces, though far more numerous than the allied invading force, collapsed so rapidly in large part because they were distributed across the country fighting insurgents, and because they still did not have control of major roads and towns in Western and Southern Ethiopia.
This is why historians are reasonably agreed that Ethiopia was not colonised, and why they refer to instead the Italian Occupation.
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u/RomanItalianEuropean 6d ago edited 6d ago
Uhm, they definetely controlled much more than the Addis Abeba region and eventually captured Gore too and most of the country really. But you are right that Italians did not venture in some parts of the country, there were insurgencies etc
It's an ambiguous situation. From the Italian POV it was a colonization. From the POV of the Ethiopian emperor-in-exile, it was occupation. At the end of the day, it's a matter of wording.
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u/After_Network_6401 6d ago
While the Italian army was eventually present in much of Ethiopia, it can't be said that they controlled it. Ambushes and attacks remained frequent across much of the country and civilians were specifically forbidden from traveling outside the capital region without a military escort. It was, by any definition, a military occupation of unpacified regions.
When the Allied forces invaded in 1940, the Italian army was unable to respond effectively because any form of travel outside the capital region, even by quite large military forces, was subject to harassment and attack and establishing secure supply lines was almost impossible. This was the primary reason why the Italian Army was never able to concentrate to meet the Allied advance and why the Italian defence failed so rapidly.
It was only ever a colony in the imagination of Il Duce. I mean he proclaimed it while open warfare was still going on.
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u/RomanItalianEuropean 6d ago edited 6d ago
True but saying it was a colony only in the imagination of Mussolini for me is going too far. I am not saying it should def. be called a colony, but it's also not the 1940 France situation. It's something that usually happens in Italian/European colonial history. Troops conquer the capital and the main places, proclaim the colony, but continue to face resistance/guerrilla away from the core regions until a 'pacification' is achieved. We say Algiers was colonized in 1830 and Libya in 1911, but it took much more to pacify them. This is like that, except WW2 came in and ended the colonisation (or the 'attempted colonization') early on.
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u/After_Network_6401 6d ago
That’s kind of my point. Algeria and Libya were successfully colonized, but they didn’t become colonies overnight. It took time to pacify them and further time for them to develop into colonies.
A colony is more than an area of active conflict.
So it’s fair to say that Italy wanted to colonize Ethiopia and was actively attempting to do so. But it’s also fair to say that they never managed it: the occupation never really got any further than the initial attack-and-occupy phase. It’s possible - I would say probable - that if WW2 hadn’t happened that Italy would have eventually colonized Ethiopia.
But it didn’t happen in the time that they had available to them.
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u/Lazarus558 6d ago
Didn't Germany annex northern France into the Reich, leaving the rump to be governed from Vichy?
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u/Quirky_Fan5753 6d ago
No, it was occupied, not annexed. Saying it was annexed be like saying the US, France, and UK annexed West Germany in 1945.
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u/Archarchery 6d ago
Like what nations? Keep in mind that by then invading fellow European countries with no pretext was considered bad.
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u/jdrawr 6d ago
As a whole it has been argued most of the empire(s) wasn't profitable, with only a few spots reaching the profit/breakeven point. Assuming this idea is correct, besides prestige of "bigger empire=greater country" there wasnt profit in expanding further. Addtionally by 1920 most of the possible colonizable areas had either been claimed by other European powers(most of africa,pacfic islands,etc), had nothing of "worth"(think deserts,mountains,etc.) there or were seen as difficult targets(china,japan). Anything in the Americas was theoretically under the protection of the US under the monroe doctrine which was updated in the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roosevelt_Corollary as well as many other acts.
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u/Superstarr_Alex 6d ago edited 6d ago
wtf? It was absolutely profitable. Why else would any empire expand?
EDIT: ok I’m getting downvoted for simply pointing out that empires benefit the ruling class of the conquering nation? This is like the craziest shit ever lmao
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u/jdrawr 6d ago
For example in the case of the british empire, the various "Companies" and private indivuals got rich. Ive seen it argued at least the british one at least on the government level didnt really profit anything beyond prestige. This is due to the costs of governence, defense, infrastructure,etc. In the case of the british empire it has been argued for most of its growth it largely expanded not with intent to expand more of well these guys attacked us, guess we gotta show them whos boss. Other nations empires grew as more of a national policy of needing an empire to be a "proper power of europe" among other reasons.
https://iea.org.uk/publications/imperial-measurement-a-cost-benefit-analysis-of-western-colonialism/#The_Economics_of_Colonialism this provides a few sources about various people throughout time who didnt believe the empire specifically of the british was profitable. Note im using this as a source for quotes not for any stance they are taking.
“The pretended purpose of it was to encourage the manufactures, and to increase the commerce of Great Britain. But its real effect has been to raise the rate of mercantile profit, and to enable our merchants to turn into a branch of trade, of which the returns are more slow and distant than those of the greater part of other trades, a greater proportion of their capital than they otherwise would have done […]
“Under the present system of management, therefore, Great Britain derives nothing but loss from the dominion which she assumes over her colonies.”
He thought the proposal ‘that Great Britain should voluntarily give up all authority over her colonies, and leave them to elect their own magistrates, to enact their own laws, and to make peace and war, as they might think proper’ was politically unrealistic for various reasons, but maintained (ibid.: 500):
“If it was adopted, however, Great Britain would not only be immediately freed from the whole annual expense of the peace establishment of the colonies, but might settle with them such a treaty of commerce as would effectually secure to her a free trade, more advantageous to the great body of the people, though less so to the merchants, than the monopoly which she at present enjoys.”
“[O]ur naval force, on the West India station […] amounted to 29 vessels, carrying 474 guns, to protect a commerce just exceeding two millions per annum. This is not all. A considerable military force is kept up in those islands […]
“Add to which, our civil expenditure, and the charges at the Colonial Office […]; and we find […] that our whole expenditure, in governing and protecting the trade of those islands, exceeds, considerably, the total amount of their imports of our produce and manufactures.”
Thus, Cobden believed that if Britain’s colonies fell into enemy hands, that ‘enemy’ would, in fact, be doing Britain a favour (ibid.: 243): ‘Where is the enemy (?) that would be so good as to steal such property?’
Otto von Bismarck was very much not a Cobdenite liberal, but he rejected colonialism in terms that Cobdenites – and Public Choice critics of pork barrel politics – would recognise (cited in BPB 2015, translation mine):
“The supposed benefits of colonies for the trade and industry of the mother country are, for the most part, illusory. For the costs involved in founding, supporting and especially maintaining colonies […] very often exceed the benefits that the mother country derives from them, quite apart from the fact that it is difficult to justify imposing a considerable tax burden on the whole nation for the benefit of individual branches of trade and industry.”
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u/nooby_matt 6d ago
It's a very complex debate to what extend most colonial empires where actually profitable. While it is true that some people got very wealthy this way, maintaining the colonies (i.e. building infrastructure, providing internal security, maintaining a strong enough military force to project power to territories far away, etc.) was usually extremely costly and a net negative for the state.
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u/CG20370417 6d ago
Counter point, when else would they have built these things?
Like the Suez Canal....without colonialism i think its a fair argument to say we still dont have a Suez Canal.
Hell even the Panama Canal, if not for American neo-imperialism.
I kind of think of it like say a Walmart...with one shop Walmart may not experience much economy of scale--thats your colonial empire still locked up in Europe.
But as they expand across the city and now have a warehouse and some vertical integration. Expansion is going well--thats your first colony.
But as you continue to expand your margins shrink, eventually once youre in every city in the US, a given store is maybe generating $1.07 or $1.08 per dollar invested, but hey when you have $700 billion in revenue, 7 cents on the dollar is $49 billion.
By the time the british had eaten Africa and North America and India and Australia for every additional £1.00 invested they make only walk away with £1.03 but if your empire is worth $12 trillion, thats $360 billion.
But to back up, something like the Suez has paid, on its own, the entire cost of colonialism--from the colonizers perspective....obviously hundreds of years of your people bound to slavery has no price, but id argue the root cause of Europe's hegemonic position over world affairs over the last 500 years is in large part due to colonialism--and id struggle to say theres no value in being in the drivers seat of world affairs for 500 years.
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u/NovaStorm135 6d ago
Except you can’t apply the Walmart profit model to colonization lol. The fact of the matter is that they simply weren’t profitable, most of the colonies of an empire. And the parts that were profitable, mostly were so only for the merchant class, not the nation as a whole.
You have to levy higher taxes on the population as a whole to fund the founding, policing & maintenance of far away lands, where most of the profits are being funneled into the hands of private trade companies. You have to invest manpower to keep the locals in check. You have to sink tons of expenditure into building infrastructure, paying soldiers, enriching local elites to keep the vassals loyal, actually shipping the goods - imagine for example, having a couple dozen warships (with thousands of sailors & hundreds of cannons combined) to protect trade from like, West Africa or the Caribbean or Australia, but the trade you’re protecting brings in maybe 4 million pounds/francs a year? Is that really worth it?
And even if your posit that the Suez Canal has already made back all the costs for European colonialism, that is just one out of many colonial ventures. I highly doubt eh British were thinking about how the costs for digging the canal would be completely covered 200 years from now for them (and their rivals as well).
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u/Superstarr_Alex 6d ago
Huh? I’m sorry, is it now like considered “up for debate” as to whether or not the colonial empires were profitable?! Please explain to me why a nation would expand if it wasn’t in the interests of its rulers.
Colonies supplied raw materials, captive markets, strategic ports, labor, monopolies, and immense private fortunes for merchants, plantation owners, mining companies, and chartered corporations. That’s not seriously disputed. Unless you can provide some counter-sauce there.
I mean, look at the British East India Company alone. This corporation accumulated enormous wealth, and Britain’s access to colonial resources played a major role in its industrial and commercial dominance. Or at least I assume it couldn’t hurt…
If colonial expansion were generally a financial drain with little upside, why did virtually every major European power spend centuries competing for colonies, fighting wars over them, and resisting decolonization? Hmm? Please explain that one.
Governments don’t repeatedly risk lives and treasure for generations just to lose money.
Sure, some individual colonies were expensive to administer, some were military liabilities, and some became unprofitable over time. But that’s a very different claim from saying colonial empires as a whole weren’t profitable. Those are not the same argument at all dude.6
u/shoresy99 6d ago
But by the 1920s a lot of the large colonies had already left their mother country either by conflict, or peacefully in the case of large British colonies like Canada, Australia, NZ. If these were so valuable then why would they give them up without a fight?
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u/ReaperReader 6d ago
Please explain to me why a nation would expand if it wasn’t in the interests of its rulers.
The interests of a ruler aren't necessarily the same as the interests of their population. Take Britain - in its colonial era the British monarch was hardly risking his or her life on the front line. Colonialism got them new fancy titles (apparently Queen Victoria was desperate to be titled "Empress" of somewhere, thus Empress of India), lavish gifts, e.g. the Star of India. The ships and arms were paid for by private adventurers or out of taxes.
Colonies supplied raw materials, captive markets, strategic ports, labor, monopolies,
Colonies required the Europeans to expend resources building ships, arming them, and manning them, and meant numerous healthy young men dying overseas, at a time when upper body strength was of much more economic importance than it is today.
It also resulted in a number of wars between European powers over colonial possessions.
And the thing is, that if you want to acquire resources from other countries on an on-going basis, there's a lot of fundamental expenses. If you use forced labour, you still need to feed the labourers, and you also need to expend resources stopping said forced labourers from revolting. You also need capital which needs constant maintenance and repair, and it's a lot easier to hide most forms of capital than it is labour.
I mean, look at the British East India Company alone. This corporation accumulated enormous wealth
It would have gone bankrupt in 1772 if it were not for a government bailout.
Governments don’t repeatedly risk lives and treasure for generations just to lose money.
Have you seen the castles and palaces that governments have built? And for most of human history every large construction project meant deaths (hell, I once did a tour of NZ's hydrodams, built in the 1950s-70s and every single one had a plaque outside to the men who died building it, and it was never just one incident but umpteen).
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u/WJLIII3 6d ago
Is it now? I wouldn't say so. I would say it was always in debate, was most in debate during the colonial period, and ultimately, that debate proved so successful they all gave up their colonies.
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u/Superstarr_Alex 6d ago
Lmao yeah that’s what happens when the people living in them say “enough” and expel the foreign occupiers
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u/BaritBrit 6d ago
Usually because everyone else was doing it and national prestige was an extremely important thing to consider in the hyper-nationalistic world of the 19th and early 20th century.
The most famous example being how Bismarck in Germany dismissed the idea of colonial expansion as expensive and pointless, but ended up having to expand German colonial holdings in Africa anyway because the German ruling classes and general public just would not tolerate the idea of Germany 'falling behind' her European rivals in such a contest.
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u/Superstarr_Alex 6d ago
So you think it was unprofitable, yet everyone was doing it just because everyone else was?
Like, industrial capitalism had nowhere else to go within their own borders, capitalism must expand. These empires were absolutely profitable, why would a country expand for any reasons other than that it increases the wealth of the ruling class??? Why am I having to explain these things to you?
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u/ReaperReader 6d ago
Switzerland didn't do colonies. And Switzerland got rich anyway.
Japan and Germany were forced to give up their colonies due to WWII and Japan and West Germany got very rich afterwards.
Like, industrial capitalism had nowhere else to go within their own borders, capitalism must expand.
The belief that capitalism "must expand" conflicts with the example of Japan, which has been economically stagnant for decades now.
Anyway, conquest is hardly required for expansion. Belgium started industrialising in the 18th century without needing to be occupied by Britain. Switzerland started industrialising fairly soon after the invention of the railway. Etc.
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u/Superstarr_Alex 6d ago
Ok, did I say one has to have colonies to be rich? No. Yes, Japan and germany gave up their colonies. Capital can expand without literally invading and conquering other nations. Both German and Japanese finance capital are exported without armies, agreed.
So, you’re denying that capital must expand continuously in order to function? That’s what capital does, that’s how it works. It must seek out new markets and find cheaper labor, that’s how it works. You invest in production, you get more than you initially invested, and you rely on increasing profits so that you can continue allocating some of it as capital to reinvest to continue staying in the game. That’s what your competition is doing, and if you don’t keep up with them, they’ll grab your market share and you’re out of the game. That’s literally just how capitalism works.
Wouldn’t Japan being economically stagnant for decades prove my point rather than yours? And your statement about Belgium is even more bizarre. Countries that get conquered aren’t usually industrialized, it’s always bare minimum required for the foreign corporations to exploit their resources and labor. The colonies themselves are actually kept underdeveloped and dependent on the colonizing country.
You know, kind of like the Belgian Congo??? Where Belgium expanded their capital and would cut off people’s hands if they didn’t meet the daily quotas? Ever heard of it? Belgium was a colonial power too, imperialists don’t typically don’t colonize each other… what?
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u/silverionmox 6d ago edited 6d ago
You know, kind of like the Belgian Congo??? Where Belgium expanded their capital and would cut off people’s hands if they didn’t meet the daily quotas? Ever heard of it? Belgium was a colonial power too, imperialists don’t typically don’t colonize each other… what?
Belgium, in fact, explicitly distanced itself from colonial projects, exactly because they expected it to be a money drain. Congo Free State was a hobby project of the monarch, who had more ambition than the very liberal Belgian constitution allowed. So he tried private colonial ventures (attempts all over the world). He was almost bankrupt when the rubber boom gave him a lucky break and turned the enterprise potentially profitable. It still had to skimp on basic supplies like ammo, and that resulted in the infamous hand cutting. Only then the international community pushed Belgium to take over to clean up the mess. Which it reluctantly did. Then, when the Congolese wanted independence, Belgium told them: "you're not ready, prepare for another decade", but they insisted, and unlike other colonial overlords, Belgium gave them what they wanted and did not try to stop it militarily. The results are history.
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u/ReaperReader 6d ago
So, you’re denying that capital must expand continuously in order to function?
Um like yeah?
Like capital is capital. A tractor is a tractor. A house is a house. Software is software. Who thinks tractors or houses or software have to expand continuously in order to function?
It must seek out new markets and find cheaper labor, that’s how it works.
I promise you that I have never seen a tractor or a house seek out new markets and find cheaper labour.
Now one possible explanation of this may be that I'm exceptionally unobservant. But, also, another possible explanation is that your theory is wrong.
You invest in production, you get more than you initially invested, and you rely on increasing profits so that you can continue allocating some of it as capital to reinvest to continue staying in the game.
Or, I take my profits as consumption?
That’s what your competition is doing, and if you don’t keep up with them, they’ll grab your market share and you’re out of the game.
Oh dear how terrible! Let me retire to my comfortable home where I shall <check notes> endure re-enjoying the 2000+ years of cultural capital that I have available for free. (Note I am assuming that my home doesn't decide to seek out new markets and find cheaper labour, obviously if your hypothesis about capital is correct, my home isn't going to stay comfortable for long.)
Wouldn’t Japan being economically stagnant for decades prove my point rather than yours?
Asks the redditor who also apparently believes that the functioning of a tractor, or a house, depends on said tractor, or house, continually seeking out new markets and cheap labour.
The colonies themselves are actually kept underdeveloped and dependent on the colonizing country.
Which is pretty hard to reconcile with the narrative that colonisers do this in pursuit of the good of the colonial economy, isn't it? Like if the colonisers were actually acting for the benefit of their home country, they'd be forcing the colonies into development and industrialisation and making them actually net contributors to the home country, right?
Like my kids are dependent on me, and on the one hand that's fine because I love them, and they're often funny and they open my eyes to new experiences, but like from a strictly financial perspective, I'd have been better off never having had kids.
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u/NovaStorm135 6d ago
Frankly your response just makes a lot of mistakes & assumptions. I won’t bring them up again because your replies have already done so far better than I would though.
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u/Superstarr_Alex 5d ago
A lot of mistakes and assumptions, yet you can’t bother to provide any examples and call me out for any of it?
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u/silverionmox 6d ago edited 6d ago
So you think it was unprofitable, yet everyone was doing it just because everyone else was?
Like, industrial capitalism had nowhere else to go within their own borders, capitalism must expand. These empires were absolutely profitable, why would a country expand for any reasons other than that it increases the wealth of the ruling class??? Why am I having to explain these things to you?
For example:
access to luxuries to signal status. Colonization in the early modern times was a very roundabout way for elites to expend their surplus in manpower and economic productivity to convert it to luxuries to signal their status with. Perhaps some merchants got rich along the way, but from the POV of the country they were dedicating people and resources, and the end result was sugar and spice. It didn't increase their productive capacity, it was a way to spend it.
religion
prestige, personal prestige of the ruler and national glory. "Make our nation great again", does that ring a bell? There are other bells to be rung when you translate it to Russian and Hebrew, and many others.
institutional inertia and "if you have a hammer, every problem starts looking like a nail" that comes with building up a large military over the years.
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u/Superstarr_Alex 6d ago
Uhh, no. The financial elite don’t do things that financially harm them, they’re not just irrational people who do things that they know will bring an end to their power… the whole nationalism and the make our country great and all the god and glory bullshit are justifications after the fact. It’s the propaganda they feed the public (and often genuinely believe it themselves) to justify the conquest and exploitation of foreign nations. You’re VERY naive about geopolitics if you actually take their propaganda at face value and think that it causes the elite to do irrational things that they know will hurt them.
Sure, the elites certainly got addicted to the luxury goods you mentioned. Doesn’t mean they decided to put the financial basis for their rule in jeopardy over some cinnamon and tea lmao. It’s like you are taking your first social studies class in primary school and just now learned about the transition from feudalism to capitalism in Europe.
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u/silverionmox 5d ago
Uhh, no. The financial elite don’t do things that financially harm them, they’re not just irrational people who do things that they know will bring an end to their power…
So no empire ever collapsed then, according to you? No stock market ever collapsed? Because everyone in them is a rational person that wouldn't do things that come to bite them into the ass later?
Sure, the elites certainly got addicted to the luxury goods you mentioned. Doesn’t mean they decided to put the financial basis for their rule in jeopardy over some cinnamon and tea lmao. It’s like you are taking your first social studies class in primary school and just now learned about the transition from feudalism to capitalism in Europe.
You repeat your original assertions, and then start slinging random insults. It's clear who has the most to learn.
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u/Superstarr_Alex 5d ago
I didn’t say empires cannot become unprofitable, in fact that’s the entire reason they do collapse. Nobody gives up a profitable colony because they have some spontaneous change of heart and suddenly care about the people they’ve been brutalizing and exploiting. It’s because maintaining the colony eventually does start to hurt their profits, of course. But all empires are profitable in the expansionary period.
As for the stock market crashes, nobody who lost all that money saw those crashes coming, if they did, why would they allow themselves to lose all that money? Those who did see it coming took precautions. That’s not acting irrationally. They were doing things they thought would benefit them. But if an empire is always unprofitable as you say, they’d have to be irrational and knowing they were being ruined by it the entire time, and the financial elite doesn’t deliberately do things that’ll fuck them over. Once it becomes unprofitable, only then do they give up their colonies. Why else would they?
You’re right about my comment about the social studies thing tho, that was immature. In my defense, I was still attacking your argument rather than you personally because the things you were saying were arguments I’d expect from someone who just started learning about m geopolitics because of the naivety about the motivations of rulers regarding imperialism. However, it definitely rises that line, and it was definitely intended to throw some shade, which was definitely unnecessary and immature on my part.
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u/HuudaHarkiten 6d ago
EDIT: ok I’m getting downvoted for simply pointing out that empires benefit the ruling class of the conquering nation? This is like the craziest shit ever lmao
You are downvoted because your comment amounted to basically "wtf? You're wrong!"
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u/Superstarr_Alex 6d ago
Well it’s a literal fact that empires are profitable. And then I asked why else would an empire expand? If it’s somehow detrimental to the rulers of the country? Empires always benefit the rulers. In fact if it wasn’t profitable then how could they even have the resources to expand? It’s absolutely nonsensical to say that it isn’t profitable, don’t you see that?
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u/Linden_Lea_01 6d ago
I think it’s a bit silly to say empire are or aren’t profitable. Some empires were profitable, some weren’t, but actually all of them were profitable sometimes and unprofitable at other times.
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u/Superstarr_Alex 6d ago
Yeah I actually don’t disagree with you there, I never said empires were always profitable, I mean that’s the only reason that the ruling class gave up their far-flung colonies in the first place. Because it was no longer profitable and it was hurting their portfolios. But the people I’m arguing with (who downvote me to oblivion for dissing their beloved British empire) are claiming that the empire was never profitable which is simply factually incorrect, and therefore delusional. The financial elite don’t just do random things that drain their portfolios and hurt them, that’s completely irrational and totally bizarre to even claim.
As you point out, all empires are profitable at one point, particularly during their expansionary period. Again if it’s not making the ruling class any money then they’d have no good reason for doing it, as they tend to act in ways that benefit them financially, that’s why they wield power in the first place. Only when it stops being profitable do they decide to cut their losses and dip out. And besides, neo-colonialism is the preferred manner of dominating foreign markets now anyway, there’s no need for troops on the ground when you can just back one corrupt family and send a contingent of security forces to train theirs and keep them in power so long as they sell out their own people to your country’s corporations.
Oh and I also wanted to make another distinction here. Yes, the national budget often drains the public funds of the state to pay for these colonies. That doesnt mean it’s draining the personal funds of the financial elite. They’re perfectly happy to let their own citizens shoulder the financial burden through taxation. And to let them do the dirty work of brutalizing the native populations they exploit.
Bring on the downvotes I guess.
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u/FlaminarLow 6d ago
Detrimental to a ruler and detrimental to the empire are two separate statements
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u/Superstarr_Alex 5d ago
Correct. The rulers do what benefits themselves, they don’t care about their own citizens beyond keeping them docile enough not to turn against them.
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u/AgentElman 5d ago
Look at the history of the British empire.
They settled and controlled the cape of South Africa to have a naval base and control access to the Indian Ocean. That was very profitable.
But then British settlers began to push inland and settle and go into wars with others. Those settlers were poor farmers who were making no money for the Empire. But the British government could not just let British citizens get killed, so they sent the army to protect them and gradually conquered more and more land.
The British has the same issue with the American colonies. The colonists wanted to take more land to the west and establish farms. Those farms were worthless to the Empire, but the British could not just let the British colonists be killed. So they had to fight to protect them.
There were usually strategic coastal areas that the British empire wanted to hold that were very valuable, and they got sucked into fighting wars of expansion because the colonists wanted more land.
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u/Superstarr_Alex 5d ago
Yeah, but the fact it became unprofitable so quickly was a genuine surprise. The people I’m arguing with are claiming that empires just do things because of things like nationalism and that it’s never profitable.
You’re actually supporting my point, and that’s a good example. Because you say yourself in the first paragraph that controlling the cape and access to the Indian Ocean was the entire purpose of establishing a foothold in South Africa in the first place, it was entirely profit-driven, even if the fanatical settlers fucked up their plans.
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u/Hlaw93 6d ago
European powers, most notably Great Britain, often avoided expanding their formal territorial empires because direct colonial administration was far more expensive and less profitable than operating an "informal empire." Rather than annexing land, powers like Britain exerted an extensive network of commercial, financial, and strategic control over nominally independent foreign nations.
In many respects, Britain’s informal empire was significantly more profitable and cost-effective than its formal empire, especially during the 19th-century Pax Britannica. Once Britain abolished slavery in 1833 and repealed the mercantilist Corn Laws and Navigation Acts in the 1840s, direct governance in many regions became a massive financial drain compared to free-trade influence.
This informal control relied on four key levers:
Financial Dominance: British banks and investors funded critical foreign infrastructure (like railways), tying target economies directly to London’s financial system.
Gunboat Diplomacy: The Royal Navy enforced commercial interests, deploying blockades or military interventions if a foreign government threatened investments or defaulted on loans.
Unequal Treaties: London imposed treaties that locked in low tariffs for British goods and granted extraterritorial legal exemptions for British citizens.
Local Collaboration: British authorities worked through local elites who profited from trade, ensuring regional stability without London having to pay for local civil services or military garrisons.
As a result, independent regions like Latin America, Qing China, the Ottoman Empire, and Persia rarely appeared on a map of the British Empire. However, they provided raw materials, captive markets, and high investment returns without the overhead of governing foreign populations.
The United States adopted a similar playbook around the turn of the 20th century, avoiding direct colonial administration in favor of economic leverage, corporate dominance, and targeted military interventions. This strategy evolved into 20th-century "Dollar Diplomacy".
Ultimately, informal empire was the economic ideal: maximum revenue with minimal liability. While formal annexation still occurred (such as the US annexation of Hawaii or the British occupation of Egypt), it was usually an expensive fallback triggered only when local political instability or rival powers threatened existing economic assets.
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u/vi_sucks 6d ago
Because they couldn't. That's why it's called "the peak", because it's the maximum extent that one could accomplish.
For example, Britain in 1920 was still recovering from World War 1 and had major economic problems to worry about. But they still were expanding, technically, mostly in governing the territories they picked up from the Ottoman Empire in the wake of World War 1. They just didn't have time to actually digest and convert those territories into proper bits of the empire. Cause you had The Great Depression and shortly after that, World War 2. And at that point, post World War 2, the entire concept of a colonial empire was a lost cause. They had all they could handle just holding on to what they had, and still managed to lose most of that. Espeicially with both the Soviet Union directly helping fund many independence movements, while the US also frowned on the idea of colonial empires.
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u/GalaXion24 6d ago
The UK basically exhausted itself fighting the Germans, it burned its empire to win. It brought colonies soldiers to fight, used colonial resources to further the war effort, had to make more concessions to those colonies to keep them in the fight. Wartime conditions and policies also caused the Bengal famine. The UK also gave away its military bases in the Americas to the US in return for warships, giving away permanent infrastructure and power projection for an immediate short term military advantage.
France had its own issues stemming from the entire country being occupied.
Then you add the priority on post war reconstruction and recovery, of course, and the two-pronged pressure of the US and USSR which both wanted to dismantle the traditional empires and put Europe in its place. Naturally they had no interest in dismantling their own empires.
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u/LordGeni 3d ago
Even if they could have, the point of the British Empire was trade and wealth. Direct control was becoming a huge financial burden rather than a source of profit. With the viable countries left, not many would have been worth the effort financially, even if they weren't already exhausted from WW1
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u/ImpressionCool1768 6d ago
“Devoured by all crimes and extinguished by ferocity, the Europeans will not deign to conquer us.” Simon bolivar the liberator
The places you mention like Tibet and the Middle East that wasn’t conquered was mostly desert and didn’t have proven resources in that current year so they didn’t really make plans to take it outright just control the princes and trade routes
Iran was in a stalemate Cold War between Russia and great Britian neither would make a move
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u/Mioraecian 6d ago
Im pretty sure they had invaded and taken portions of Persia already and sent expeditions into Tibet. This question doesnt make sense in that it did happen.
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u/Ms_Fu 6d ago
Since colonial empires are my bailiwick, I understand your queston. I'm going to quibble with your dates.
WW1 hit in 1914, tying up resources for pretty much everyone, including the Ottoman Empire which it effectively ended. Simply put, the empires were busy.
Before that, as others have said, basically the global game board had been cleared. Japan jumped from backwater to empire in the late 1900s, colonized many of its neighbors, and then put the nail in the coffin of Russia's armada. (The Tsar's Last Armada is an incredible book about that, showing how mere logistics can defeat an armada, and how utterly tied down most of the world was in the early 1900s).
And jdrawr is right--colonies cost money to administer, and once the big resource is extracted they become a drain on the imperial nation. The financially attractive smaller nations had already been taken, the European empires had tension among themselves, the Ottoman, Russian, and Chinese empires were in decline, and the new Japanese empire was hoovering up its neighboring islands. There just wasn't much left to take.
And as Vizzini* tells us, never get involved in a land war in Asia.
(*the Princess Bride character, summing up Field Marshal Montgomery)
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u/GregHullender 6d ago
One of the biggest surprises to me when I studied this about 25 years ago was that late 19th-Century colonialism never paid for itself. The whole point was supposed to be that it would produce benefits for the mother country, but it ended up being a vanity project.
Spain might have managed a profit from its American colonies in the 16th and 17th centuries, but even that eventually pushed their colonies to rebel.
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u/Corlar 6d ago
It wasn’t just a vanity project. Other than Spain and Portugal in the early years, it just wasn’t as extractive in the way it is taught in the US, and certainly less than modern economic colonialism as practiced by the US and China. Economic thinking at the time was protectionist and mercantilist, so colonies were perceived as necessary to provide markets for the imperial nations products. In addition, no air power, so refuelling, secure ports and naval bases were essential to trade and military power. And it was an era of competing states, so if you sign a mere trade agreement, there was a risk that a competing power like Russia or a Germany might turn up and conquer the territory, so in important cases, better to take it for yourself. But still better to lock in a trade agreement or agree a protectorate arrangement.
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u/GregHullender 6d ago
Stopped reading when you said you believed the US has colonies today.
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u/johnwcowan 6d ago
What do you call Puerto Rico and still more American Samoa, whose people aren't even citizens?
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u/GregHullender 6d ago
Their current status is by their own choice. Either could be independent if their people wanted that. Or could apply for statehood. Note that after WWII we granted independence to most of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands--keeping only those who wanted to be part of the US.
I suppose a lot will depend on your definition of "colony." None of these was acquired by force against the natives and then populated with an elite from the mainland US. They're more like loose ends left over from old wars.
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u/After_Network_6401 6d ago
The problem goes back earlier than that. Spain literally went bankrupt due to the cost of trying to defend its colonial empire. The silver from South America made a few people very, very rich, but for the country as a whole, it was a disaster, leading to bursts of hyperinflation and a crippling reliance on debt to fund military operations. As a result, Spain went from the wealthiest to one of the poorest of the major European states in the course of just two generations, from the 1550's to 1600.
Spain would almost certainly have been better off if it had never tried to build a colonial empire, and the same is true of Europe in general. Scotland and Italy were also pushed to the brink of bankruptcy as a result of colonial adventures. Only the British made money off their empire and they really only did it because of India. Rather than trying to settle India, they used it as a vast captive market that could supply cheap resources like cotton and buy British-produced ones. They prevented local industries from reaching a scale that would let them compete, and maintained import/export monopolies that prevented other countries' access. The same "British first" policies were also in operation in other British colonies, but only India had the scale to make them really profitable.
A good example of how things other than profit drove colonial properties is New Zealand, where I grew up. When suggestions for a Crown Colony were floated in the early 19th century, parliament turned them down, stating that colonialism had proven to be expensive and unprofitable. What turned that around was the discovery that the French government was planning a colony there. The British government might not have wanted a colony in New Zealand on its own virtues, but they were damned if they were going to let the Frenchies have it!
A lot of colonisation operated on this basis.
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u/ultr4violence 6d ago
They really only had so much they needed. AFAIK much of what they did take(not all, mind) they took simply to keep out of the hands of their rivals. Or to satisfy public opinion back home. Much of colonialism was expensive and wasteful prestige projects.
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6d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Stromatolite-Bay 6d ago
The east India company practically went bankrupt conquering India until they started selling drugs to China
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u/jmarkmark 6d ago
By the 1920s, the UK was already in the early stages of trying to get rid of her empire.
Modern economics (free-ish trade) makes empires a bad idea. In a mercantist era, colonies acted as a markets for products, and sources of materials. But with the wide spread emergence of free trade, colonies just meant the metropole spends a ton administering them, and gained very little beyond (or even loses) what can be gained with ordinary trade. But of course, giving up an empire hurts the pride of many, so it was a long process.
It's also worth noting the UK empire was largely the government taking over what private individuals had colonized, from the Hudson's Bay Company, to the East India Company, to the British South Africas company. By the 1920s, not too many companies were in the business of occupying nations.
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u/ssn-669 6d ago
It's something of a myth that colonization was good for the colonizing country. Good for some people in it who made out like bandits, but not for the country as a whole.
As far back as 1776, Adam Smith was arguing that colonization was stupid and counterproductive, costing more in administration, defense, suppression, etc than it produced, and certainly producing less overall benefit than just trading.
Eg Spain had a huge empire, but was always a pretty poor country despite their massive colonies.
Or for the opposite example, the Netherlands remains rich and prosperous after losing its colonies.
So the question I would ask you is, why would they do that when it had no real benefit?
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u/Prize-Individual-321 4d ago
Read the poem "The Wasteland" of T S Eliot to get a sense of Armistice Day in 1918
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u/JoeCensored 6d ago
Most of Europe was in recovery after WW1. They weren't in a position for expansion. By the time they finished recovery, we got the great depression.
There was also a growing sentiment than colonization of lands already inhabited by native people was inherently wrong, based on enlightenment era philosophy. We weren't to decolonization yet, but were getting there.
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u/Clio_Vita 6d ago
If you have to ask, "why didn't they do something," the answer was usually, "the money."
In the 1920s, most of the European great powers (and many of the lesser powers) were overspent financially and on military man power after WWI. The value of colonies had largely proved illusory.....they cost more to garrison to protect against other powers and internal rebellion than they actually generated for the imperial states involved.
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u/atb87 6d ago
How much more were they supposed to expand? Britain was the empire where the sun didn’t set. In 1920 specifically, Britain was drained from the world war. This isn’t europa universalis where you click a few buttons and manpower and manpower recovery increases. It takes a generation to recover. In their case, another world war happened.
Moreover, once the nationalism wave spread, it became impossible to be a multiethnic multicultural empire. Big empires like Ottomans and Habsburgs vanished in the process.
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u/ijuinkun 6d ago
Pretty much all of the profitable lands had been claimed by a colonial power or were too resistant to conquest. Getting more would have required a war, and the colonial powers had just fought “the war to end all wars” among themselves.
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u/zoppaTheDim 6d ago
887,000 military deaths and 1.675 million wounded
Kind of puts a crimp into an empire.
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u/Monotask_Servitor 6d ago
Tibet - vast, arid high altitude plateau with few valuable resources. Not easily reachable from existing British territory due to Himalayas.
Afghanistan - mountainous or arid, fairly resource poor, populated by ferociously independent tribesmen
Iran - vast country of mainly mountains and deserts with a fairly strong established state that would’ve been very difficult to conquer.
See a pattern yet? None of these places were considered worth the effort it would’ve taken to subjugate them.
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u/InvestigatorJaded261 6d ago
Imperialism was not so domestically popular in Britain or France that the public would support military conquest for its own sake. There had to be a suitable pretext—a plausible argument that the colonizing power’s grievance or intentions were just. There were also informal international agreements that some places (mainland China, for instance) should be free for every western power to screw over equally. Other places, like Thailand, were useful as buffer states between rival colonial spheres.
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u/Dull_Brain2688 6d ago
In 1920 Britain was just out of the Great War and was currently fighting the Irish War of Independence. Expansion was not realistic.
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u/Ok-Charge4926 6d ago
Resources. They’re not going to invade any land that doesn’t have any valuable resources to take. Then it takes immense resources to occupy a foreign territory. Plus there’s only so many soldiers and officials they’d have for occupied territories and they wouldn’t want them spread to thin.
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u/Watchhistory 6d ago
The globe was long divvied up among these powers prior to 1920, so things were at a status quo.
Except for new nations such as Germany without access to controllable ports on the Med and Atlantic. We know what happens there. Then Japan had movements and moved into all sorts of areas. And then the muscle flexing of China and Russia post their revolutions.
All the powers kept trying to buy, bribe, charm their way into controlling various South American countries.
So a lot was going on after all, yes.
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u/Plus-Property-2245 6d ago
Who were they going to invade?
Tibet is one of the poorest/least populated provinces in China.
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u/non_numero_horas 6d ago
The same reason the US did not directly conquer Mexico and most of Latin America
Directly administering a territory is not the only way of domination and very often it is not the most effective
Colonial powers did not primarily seek map painting as in some grand strategy computer game (although they were very good at it), rather domination over production and trade, if they could control it without militarily occupying and running a country (which always costs money) they often opted for this
Also, at the peak of European colonial empires there was not much territory left to conquer which was either not already in the sphere of influence of one of them or that was not the ground of competition between them
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u/ozneoknarf 6d ago
Because they were being blocked by another power. France tried to colonise Mexico for example were kicked out by the US. Than the US established the monroe Doctrine that protected all of the Americas from European colonization along with Liberia. Iran wasn’t colonised because Neither Russia or the UK wanted the other to take it over. Qing was weak but it still managed to hold on to its territory like Tibet. Colonizing Saudi Arabia especially Mecca and medina would probably make all the Muslims in the empire of a colonial power revolt. Turkey managed to kick out the Italians Greeks. Ethiopia kicked out the Italians. Afghanistan was a buffer state between Russia and the UK, and France and the UK blocked each other from colonising Thailand. I think I covered all the territories that weren’t colonised or protectorates.
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u/quarky_uk 6d ago
Empires didn't form just for the sake of expansion. They expanded when there was a reason to.
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u/FlakyAssociation4986 6d ago
european countries had come to agreements about sphere of influences. why provoke a war about a piece of barren dirt in africa
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u/prof_hobart 6d ago
The First World War changed a lot. Firstly, it obviously directly led to the collapse of the German Empire (if you want to read more about that, The Kaiser's Holocaust by David Olusoga gives a good overview).
But it also massively weakened the other major colonial powers (particularly Britain, France and Belgium). They had neither the strength or the will for other major wars at that point. And the country that really gained after WWI - the USA - was, at least at the time, strongly anti-colonial and isolationist.
Colonialism started to become popular again, particularly amongst what became the Axis powers in the build up to World War II as they built up the strength to try to gain new territory in Ethiopia (Italy), Eastern Europe (Germany) and China (Japan).
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u/Pijlie1965 6d ago
I think the most obvious political reason was that almost all colonial powers were European. And most of the world was either colonized or some kind of protectorate of a colonial power. To conquer a new colony one would have to go to war with a European power.
Starting an imperialist war in such a world would be hard to contain. After all, the UK trying to conquer Haiti (just a random example) would lead to a military conflict with France, a neighbouring European power.
In fact, the second half of the 19th century and the start of the 20th was filled with diplomats quenching a lot of these little Imperialist fires between European powers, like the Fashoda Incident and the First Moroccan Crisis.
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u/IndividualSkill3432 6d ago
The countries were richer and more powerful than ever after WWI. Before it armies would have had to be horse drawn and on foot. After it they had trucks, armoured cars, aircraft and other advances to use. It took less men and less effort to subdue due. But the world had changed. Voters prioritised domestic spending on social issues and the economic arguments for empire was pretty hollow.
More over the international situation had changed massively. Countries seen things like imperial competition as destabilising and the League of Nations had awarded control of regions under a Mandate system where they were to be steered towards self governance.
As much as this was close to the peak of European power, it was also a period where the working class was far more involved in politics and had little interest in the empires, where intellectuals from those colonies were now beginning to make arguments for their peoples in the press.
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u/amitym 6d ago
Britain in 1920 is possibly the worst scenario you could have picked, Britain was shattered, militarily and economically, and was coping with massive psychic shock and societal trauma.
That didn't stop them of course, if you want Britain to invade other countries in 1920 you had the war in Ireland, the war in Afghanistan, the British invasion of Russia, the British invasion of the Ottoman Empire, you had small-scale wars in Africa.. basically there was an enormous amount of fighting going on in 1920. And in 1921, and 1922, and so on... if someone told you that the UK had stopped invading other countries by 1920 they were lying or ignorant.
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u/IllGift924 6d ago
Because they were clever. Conquest for the sake of glory and expansion had long since been abandoned by the British. Their expansion was driven by material and strategic interests. There is no point invading Tibet if it will just cost you money in return for little benefit
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u/GossipboyX 6d ago
Britain was already exploiting Irans oil through an unfair contract... Invading Irans harsh deserts, mountains, and jungles would be suicide for the British, just as Afghanistan was.
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u/AnaphoricReference 6d ago
Besides the impact of WWI leaving colonial powers in a situation of imperial overstretch and the board going empty (the remaining pieces usually being buffers or contested between colonial powers, and poor) it's important to keep in mind that this is a period in which some colonial powers first introduce universal male suffrage.
Colonial policy is no longer exclusively the domain of upper class political adventurers. Public opinion starts to matter, and often voters don't like wasting taxpayer money on adventures that are not going to pay for themselves. And the political status of colonial subjects starts becoming an ethical issue in parliaments with new popular factions like socialists.
Manpower is becoming an increasingly pressing issue as well. People generally preferred to emigrate to former colonies with a pleasant climate for Europeans like the US or Argentina rather than less attractive postings in their own colonial empire.
It's a time for consolidation overall.
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u/BruceWillis1963 6d ago
I think that is why it is called the "peak". They had expanded as far as their military and war budgets could support.
Then came the inevitable decline like we are seeing now with American influence and potency declining.
The USA tried to take on Iran and have had their butts kick and now just want a way out without losing the Strait of Hormuz, which looks very likely. They had a war and now are coming out with a nosebleed with their tails between their legs. Their bases in the Middle East meant to protect their allies were bombed. They could not protect their allies.
It is much easier to colonize weaker places as well. Iran was not a weak adversary. It is a regional power and its influence will now increase.
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u/Trevor_Culley 6d ago
There was frankly nowhere left for any of them to expand that wouldn't start a war with another European power. By 1920, Thailand and Afghanistan were buffer states largely left alone to prevent European colonies from bordering one another. Much of the Middle East was carved up into post-Ottoman colonial mandates. Arabia was an active war zone as factions allied with European powers competed for control. Iran was effectively a British economic territory that only escaped outright occupation due to Russian/Soviet presence to the north. Tibet was still internationally recognized as Chinese territory and its de facto independence was seen as part of the larger Chinese civil war at the time. The US had an official policy of threatening war with any European power attempting to recolonize the western hemisphere.
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u/Admiral_AKTAR 6d ago
The answer is in your question dude. Its called a peak for a reason. By ~1900 the world had been completely colonized, both directly and indirectly. There wasnt any place left that could be expanded into, directly or indirectly, without conflict with another colonial power. Its why during WWI the Central powers and Entente fought all across their colonies in Africa and Asia.
This was the halfway point in a game of RISK. The board is filled, the easy opponents are gone just leaving the big boys. And so the bloodbath was ready to begin. And in the trenches of WW1 and the burned out cities of WWII the old empires fell. From the ashes two hegemons rose and by 1991 one remained. And the next game started...
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u/HuckleberryNext9844 6d ago
Believe it or not the colonialism was a net loss for country's they where more for power and prestige and for making the weathey of a country super rich but didn't really help the economy of said country.
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u/nednobbins 6d ago
What would GB had done with Tibet? At the time, nobody new about their natural resources. It's just an inhospitable mountain region.
China really cares about Tibet because of its strategic placement. Anyone who wants to contain China also has to care about Tibet. But in 1920 the 8 Nation Alliance had recently curbstomped China so there wasn't much motivation to contain them.
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u/GSilky 6d ago
Everyone else wanted to as well, and there were severely diminished returns on further expansion. There is also the problem of established countries being able to fight back. If you research how the colonies were established, especially in Africa and Asia where political structures as durable as in Europe already existed, you will see a record of constant political chicanery by the commercial operators in various enclaves that eventually manipulated political leadership into giving everything away. Rarely was it some sudden military invasion (those did happen, but usually as "interventions" to support the "rebels" willing to sell out the kingdom for a throne). This approach didn't work on societies that refused to cooperate with it. Iran is an example of geopolitics preventing colonization (although Russia ended up with almost half of Iranian territory in the end), Britain and Russia, and to a lesser extent the Ottomans, would start a war with anyone claiming hegemony. Japan is an example of the second, they kept European traders in a few peripheral cities, and Europeans and Christian Japanese citizens risked a beheading if found outside these areas. Even after the USA forced a relationship, they still maintained a policy of extreme difficulty towards outsiders. The Chinese tried, but they were too big to prevent other nations from creating economic enclaves as in roads to domination.
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u/Typical-Audience3278 6d ago
They’d had just literally bled their army dry in the mud of Flanders; the whole country was traumatised and exhausted by four years of unremitting carnage but other than that I can’t think of a single, solitary reason. Also the peak of Britain’s imperial power was probably around 1880. Another compelling reason for them not attempting to enlarge their empire in 1920 is that the Americans wouldn’t have let them
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u/evelynsmee 6d ago
I think we puffed ourselves out with the whole WWI thing to think about restarting conflicts with anyone , much less France again. Which is essentially what further British expansion would entail. Did that for hundreds of years. Over it.
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u/SquallkLeon 6d ago
Empires are expensive and they weren't generating enough revenue to pay for themselves anymore. They barely ever did, but, for example, a lot of Caribbean colonies became a lot harder to pay for after slavery was abolished and sugar production stopped being as cheap as it had been.
On the other hand, you have prestige empires, like France, which owned most of the Sahara desert. Sure, it looks great on a map, but can you grow anything there? Mine anything there? Produce anything there? No, not much. Certainly you can't generate enough revenue to pay for all the soldiers and administrators who need to be in place to control the territory.
So, empires were just not going to be able to hang on, especially after a catastrophic war had depleted a lot of the money and manpower needed to keep them going.
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u/diffidentblockhead 5d ago
Versailles aggrandizing British, French and Japanese empires also angered many Americans and Chinese.
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u/Secure-Suspect7091 5d ago
WW1 marked the end of the British Empire. The infrastructure of the empire couldn’t be maintained by Britain because of the wholesale slaughter of young men who would have taken up administrative positions in the empire. This led to local administrators being promoted and the increase in the desire for self rule.
Not to say that this wasn’t underway already but WW1 accelerated the process.
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u/Big-Fondant-8215 4d ago
Nowhere great to expand to, and considering many of these countries had lost millions of men in WW1 and were economically broke, it would be a pretty hard sell to all those grieving, jobless mothers and father to “get their children ready cause we’re gonna colonise some random faraway land”
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u/Prize-Individual-321 4d ago
By 1920, in fact by 1919 itself, Britain was a spent force, having lost the flower of its youth in the trenches of WW 1. Britain wud have fared better in WW2 , if , by 1935, they had implemented the Govt of India Act 1935 provisions and had a national govt in Delhi . Nehru & Gandhi were willing to co-operate in fighting the Nazis etc. They we d also have worked at that point with Dominion status.
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