The Scramble for the World: Competition and Cooperation between the Imperial Powers

Abstract

Due to the rapid and uncoordinated expansion of empire in the second half of the nineteenth century, European colonial empires were overlapping and interconnected to a much greater degree than has previously been understood. Given these circumstances, policymakers in imperial capitals reached for a range of tools with which to manage the economic and geopolitical competition between them. These tools included international arbitration, threats, military cooperation, partition, debt bonds, diplomatic treaties and, ultimately, war. This study examines the practice of managed competition in three case studies. First, in east Africa the British, German, Portuguese, Italian and French empires cooperated in the partition of the Sultanate of Zanzibar, swapping territory and customs concessions. Second, in the Pacific Ocean the empires of Russia, Japan, Great Britain and the United States established a cooperative regulatory regime to prevent the overhunting of limited fur seal stocks. Third, during and after the yìhéquán rising in northern China, an alliance of between eight and ten empires formed deep military and financial ties. Rather than as antagonistic rivals, then, we must understand competing empires as different parts of a single interconnected and interdependent imperial system.