ABSTRACT
Then, during the last two decades of the nineteenth century and the immediate pre-war period, imperial rivalries were renewed, reaching a greater intensity than ever before. The Monroe Doctrine (1823) discouraged European states from turning their attention to the American continent, but Africa, the Far East and the Pacific all experienced partition. British acquisitions during the 1880s and 1890s included Egypt, Nigeria, East Africa, Uganda, Bechuanaland, the Rhodesias, Nyasaland, Sierra Leone, the Sudan, Swaziland, Burma, Malaya, New Guinea and Borneo. The French extended their dominion over the whole of Laos, Annam and Tong King in Indochina, and over the whole of the West African interior. Germany carved out the enclaves of South-West Africa, Togoland, the Cameroons and German East Africa, together with the Pacific possessions of Eastern New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago and the Caroline Islands. Italy annexed Eritrea, Somaliland and, in 1912, Libya. Finally, Russia extended her Asiatic interests into the Liaotung Peninsula region of China. By 1914, therefore, most of the globe was under the rule of European countries or peopled by Europeans who had asserted their independence from the original metropolitan power. The only states which had managed to retain their autonomy were Japan (which had Europeanized itself), China (which had to put up with foreign enclaves and unfavourable trade agreements), Siam, Afghanistan, Ethiopia and Liberia.
