  |
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
 |
Introduction
| Overview | Population
| Life expectancy A world of empiresIn 1900, most people in the world lived in some kind of empire, and imperialism was the pervasive attitude of Western countries to the rest of the world. Britain was the most powerful nation in the world, and its empire was unrivalled – the largest ever, covering a third of the world's surface. Most of Africa had been divided up by European powers, with only Liberia and Abyssinia (Ethiopia) free of foreign influence. In terms of global power, the central story of the 20th century was the decline of the British empire and the rise of the United States, which – after the end of the Cold War in the 1990s – emerged as the sole superpower. The following were the main European empires in 1900, with some of their colonies/'territories': • American empire The Philippines, Puerto Rico, Alaska, Hawaii. • Austro-Hungarian empire Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, much of the Balkans. • Belgian empire Belgian Congo (Zaïre). • British empire India (now India, Pakistan, Bangladesh),
Burma, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Singapore, Hong Kong, South Africa, Rhodesia
(Zambia and Zimbabwe), Gold Coast (Ghana), Nigeria, Uganda, Egypt, Malta,
British Guiana (Guyana), Jamaica, Bahamas.
• Danish empire Iceland, Greenland. • Dutch empire Dutch Guiana (now Suriname), Dutch East Indies. • French empire Algeria, Tunisia, French Morocco, French West Africa (including Senegal, Sudan, Niger, Guinea, Benin), Madagascar, French Indochina, French Guiana. • German empire German East Africa (including Tanganyika), Kamerun (now Cameroon), German South-west Africa (now Namibia) and German New Guinea. • Japanese empire Formosa (now Taiwan), Korea (1910) • Ottoman empire Turkey, Greece, Albania, Serbia, Bulgaria, Lebanon, Palestine, Libya • Portuguese empire Angola, Portuguese Guinea, Portuguese East Africa, East Timor • Russian empire Covered more than a sixth of the world's
land, across eastern Europe and Asia.
• Spanish empire Spanish Sahara, Spanish Morocco. |
|
Video
Transcript
