Analyze The Influence Of European Countries Between 1880 And 1914

510 Words3 Pages

Between the years 1880 and 1914, many European countries started colonizing other countries for various reason. But, the most influential of those would be rivalries, natural resources, nationalism, and social darwinism. These motivated the Europeans to acquire land in Africa during this time period. The most powerful countries during the time all had colonies. Without colonies, your country simply was inferior to the others. Prince Leopold of Belgium would talk about having to dominate others to show that Belgium is capable of being a superpower. It was humiliating if your countries had little colonies, according to Louis Bernard, a colonial official from France. This “need of colonies” creates competition between countries. This leads to rivalries being formed, which further motivates countries to acquire more land. Just before the 1880s, European countries were experiencing the industrial revolution. This brought factories, pollution, manufactured goods, and most importantly a need for natural resources. But, after the supply of resources started to run low, the Europeans started looking for other countries that had plentiful amounts of it. Prince Leopold would talk about gathering resources and electricity from other lands across the globe. Similarly, Joseph Chamberlain, a British politician, talked about how without an increase of natural …show more content…

People considered the country with the most land to be the best one. This creates the idea of nationalism and your country must be the best one. Archibald Philip Primrose, a British politician, talked about how each country must strive to be the fittest, in the world wide game of survival of the fittest. Since each country wants to be the fittest, it creates a nationalistic pride in their citizens to help their country succeed. So, they decide to take over the “weaker” countries that have a lot of land and