ABSTRACT

In Europe, the nineteenth century customarily is described as a century of peace, the calm surface of events being ruffled by only one quasi-global conflict (the Crimean War of 1854-6) and a succession of localised wars accompanying the national unification struggles in Germany and Italy and the long death agony of the Ottoman Empire. For the rest of the world, however, the century was anything but peaceful. From 1837 to 1901, the British Army fought over 400 battles in some 60 campaigns against enemies ranging from the Maori of New Zealand to, as we shall see, the Métis of western Canada. All this in the course of constructing an empire that by 1900 would encompass one quarter of the globe. Meanwhile, France, the second-ranking imperial power, had added Madagascar, Indochina, most of North Africa and much of West Africa to its domains, while newcomers Germany and Italy had managed to carve out empires of their own from the leavings of their more venerable predecessors.