ABSTRACT
In the course of the nineteenth century Europeans completed the process of dominating the neighbouring continents of Asia and Africa. Vast areas previously inhabited by independent nomadic or primitive tribes were brought under European administration for the first time. Great decaying empires or principalities were either conquered outright, or, like China or Egypt, brought under the economic control of European powers. The process accelerated as the century went on, reaching its culmination only in the years after 1880, but in the period 1830 to 1880 immense increases in European power were made. Only in the American continents was Europe in retreat. In the half century before 1830 the Spanish, Portuguese and British had been forced to abandon most of their American empires, and in the half century after 1830 the South American nations painfully asserted their independence, while the USA grew to be a world power, in spite of the grim set-back of the civil war.
