50 Fun Facts About Imperialism

Which sultanate fought Britain in history's shortest recorded war, an 1896 bombardment lasting under an hour?

Zanzibar's palace was shelled on 27 August 1896 after Khalid bin Barghash seized the throne without British approval, and the fighting lasted 38 to 45 minutes. Khalid fled to the German consulate.

Failure to meet quotas of which commodity was punishable by death in the Congo Free State of the 1890s?

Rubber quotas were enforced by the Force Publique, whose punishments for shortfalls made severed hands the symbol of the Congo Free State; the outcry forced Belgium to annex the territory in 1908.

Which territory did William Seward buy from Russia in 1867 for $7.2 million, a deal mocked as 'Seward's Folly'?

Alaska cost about two cents an acre; the deal looked foolish until the gold rushes of the 1890s, and the territory became the 49th state in 1959.

Which Pacific kingdom's queen was deposed in an 1893 coup, after which the United States annexed the islands in 1898?

Hawaii's Queen Liliuokalani was overthrown on 17 January 1893 after 162 sailors and marines landed from the USS Boston; Congress annexed the islands by joint resolution in July 1898.

From which country did Panama secede in 1903, with a US warship offshore, days before signing a canal treaty?

Colombia had rejected the canal treaty, so Washington backed the rebels: the USS Nashville landed at Colón on 2 November 1903, and the Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty followed on 18 November without a single Panamanian signature.

Which colony's name did journalist Flora Shaw coin in The Times in 1897, before marrying its future governor-general?

Nigeria was her suggested name for the British protectorate on the Niger River; in 1902 she married the administrator who amalgamated its northern and southern halves in 1914.

Which author was vice-president of the American Anti-Imperialist League from 1901 until his death in 1910?

Mark Twain had initially backed the Spanish–American War as a liberation but reversed course over the Philippine–American War, writing a scathing 1901 essay for the North American Review.

Which Boer War siege's 217-day defence made Robert Baden-Powell a national hero before he founded the Scouts?

Mafeking held out from October 1899 to May 1900, and its cadet corps of boys aged 12 to 15 who ran messages under fire later helped inspire the Boy Scouts.

Which 1899 Conrad novella drew on its author's 1890 journey up the Congo River as a steamboat officer?

Heart of Darkness was serialised in Blackwood's Magazine; its narrator Marlow captains a steamer for a Belgian company in search of the ivory trader Kurtz.

Which US battleship's explosion in Havana harbour in February 1898 was blamed on Spain by the American press?

The USS Maine lost 261 of its 355 crew; a 1976 US Navy study led by Admiral Rickover concluded the likeliest cause was spontaneous combustion in a coal bunker, not a Spanish mine.

Which English philosopher coined 'survival of the fittest' in 1864, a phrase later used to justify empire?

Herbert Spencer wrote the phrase in Principles of Biology after reading Darwin, and Darwin himself adopted it in the 1869 fifth edition of On the Origin of Species.

Vladimir Lenin's 1916 pamphlet, published in 1917, called imperialism the 'highest stage' of what?

Capitalism, Lenin argued, had reached a monopoly phase in which banks and industry fused and exported capital, so rival empires carved up the world; he built on the 1902 work of an English liberal economist.

Theodore Roosevelt's 1904 corollary asserted an 'international police power' for the US as an addition to what?

The Monroe Doctrine of 1823 had warned Europe off the Americas; Roosevelt's addition, prompted by the 1902–03 European blockade of Venezuela over unpaid debts, claimed the right to intervene first.

Which company, founded by Cecil Rhodes in 1888, controlled 90% of the world's diamond output by 1902?

De Beers was financed by Rothschild and Beit money, and its Kimberley mines paid for Rhodes's political career and the chartered company that pushed north of the Limpopo.

Which African republic, settled by the American Colonization Society from 1822, declared independence in 1847?

Liberia was, with Ethiopia, one of only two African states to escape the Scramble for Africa; its settlers' descendants, the Americo-Liberians, ruled it until a 1980 coup.

In which present-day country did German forces carry out the Herero and Nama genocide between 1904 and 1908?

Namibia was then German South West Africa, where General Lothar von Trotha's order of October 1904 declared that every Herero within German borders, armed or not, would be shot.

Which British general was killed when the Mahdi's army stormed Khartoum in 1885, two days before relief arrived?

Charles Gordon had been sent to evacuate Egyptian garrisons but chose to hold the city for ten months; the public blamed the government's delay in sending Wolseley's relief column, which came in sight of the city on 28 January.

Which country, made a Japanese protectorate by a 1905 treaty, was annexed outright by Japan in 1910?

Korea stayed under Japanese rule until 1945, when Japan's surrender left the peninsula split between Soviet and American occupation zones.

Which kingdom was the only Southeast Asian state never colonised, a buffer between British and French possessions?

Siam kept its independence by ceding territory and legal privileges in unequal treaties while King Chulalongkorn modernised the state; it renamed itself Thailand in 1939.

Who read Indonesia's proclamation of independence in Jakarta on 17 August 1945, two days after Japan's surrender?

Sukarno declared independence from his own front porch before a crowd of about 500 and became the republic's first president the next day; the Dutch fought on until 1949.

Which secret 1916 Anglo-French deal to partition the Ottoman Empire did the Bolsheviks publish in 1917?

The Sykes–Picot Agreement, drafted by a British and a French diplomat, appeared in Izvestia and Pravda on 23 November 1917, embarrassing Britain before the Arabs it had promised independence.

Which West African kingdom's bronzes were looted by a British punitive expedition in 1897 and sold to pay for it?

Benin City fell on 18 February 1897, its Oba was exiled to Calabar, and the Admiralty auctioned much of the plunder that May; German museums bought most of the auctioned pieces, and the bronzes are now the subject of restitution claims.

Which future leader petitioned the 1919 Paris peace talks for Vietnamese rights under the name Nguyen Ai Quoc?

Ho Chi Minh's petition asked the Western powers to honour Wilson's self-determination for French Indochina; the snub helped make him the symbol of Vietnam's anti-colonial movement.

Which Habsburg archduke, made Emperor of Mexico by Napoleon III in 1864, faced a firing squad at Querétaro in 1867?

Maximilian was left stranded when Napoleon III withdrew French troops in 1866–67; Benito Juárez's republicans captured him, and his execution on 19 June 1867 was painted by Édouard Manet.

Which prime minister pushed the Royal Titles Act through Parliament in 1876 so Victoria could be Empress of India?

Benjamin Disraeli's act was proclaimed at a Delhi Durbar on 1 January 1877; Victoria had already raised him to the peerage as Earl of Beaconsfield in 1876.

Which empress dowager declared war on the foreign powers in 1900, siding with the Boxers, then fled Beijing for Xi'an?

Cixi ruled from behind the curtain for nearly half a century; after the allied armies took the capital she returned in 1902 and belatedly backed reforms, dying in 1908 a day after the Guangxu Emperor.

Which Qing commissioner had over a thousand tons of confiscated opium destroyed at Humen in June 1839?

Lin Zexu's public letter urging Queen Victoria to halt the trade never got a reply, and after British victories the court made him a scapegoat, dismissed him in 1840 and exiled him to Ili in Xinjiang.

Which Filipino leader declared independence in June 1898 and fought the Americans until his capture at Palanan in 1901?

Emilio Aguinaldo was seized on 23 March 1901 by General Funston, aided by Macabebe scouts who got inside his headquarters by a ruse; he lived to see full independence in 1946.

Which 1901 measure let the US intervene in Cuba and lease naval stations, later giving it Guantánamo Bay?

The Platt Amendment set seven conditions for withdrawing US troops and was written into Cuba's 1901 constitution; most of it was repealed in 1934 under Franklin Roosevelt's Good Neighbor policy.

Which 1879 battle saw Cetshwayo's Zulu army destroy a British column, killing more than 1,300 of its men?

Isandlwana was Britain's worst defeat by a technologically inferior indigenous force; the Zulu 'horns and chest of the buffalo' encircled an unentrenched camp, and the defence of Rorke's Drift began the same afternoon.

Which Boer president received Kaiser Wilhelm II's 1896 telegram congratulating him on repelling the Jameson Raid?

Paul Kruger led the South African Republic in the Transvaal, and the telegram of 3 January 1896 caused such fury in Britain that German shop windows were smashed and German sailors attacked in London.

Which 1895 treaty ended the First Sino-Japanese War, handing Formosa and the Pescadores to Japan in perpetuity?

The Treaty of Shimonoseki also gave Japan the Liaodong Peninsula, but Russia, France and Germany forced it to hand that back within weeks in the Triple Intervention, in exchange for a larger indemnity.

Which mineral-rich province, led by Moïse Tshombe, seceded from the newly independent Congo in July 1960?

Katanga's breakaway was backed by the Belgian mining giant Union Minière; UN forces ended it in January 1963, and Tshombe went on to become Congo's prime minister in 1964.

Which Chinese port, leased by Germany in 1898, gained a brewery in 1903 whose beer is still sold worldwide?

Qingdao, then spelled Tsingtao, gave its name to the Anglo-German brewery that is now China's second largest; Japan seized the port in 1914, a grievance behind the May Fourth Movement of 1919.

Which British consul's 1904 report on the Congo Free State preceded his own hanging for treason in 1916?

Roger Casement's report detailed the enslavement and mutilation of Congolese workers; knighted in 1911, he was hanged at Pentonville on 3 August 1916 for seeking German arms for the Easter Rising.

Which English economist's 1902 book 'Imperialism: A Study' blamed empire on surplus capital seeking outlets abroad?

J. A. Hobson argued that under-consumption at home left investors hunting profits in colonies, a 'taproot' thesis Lenin borrowed wholesale; Hobson himself thought reform, not revolution, could cure it.

Which US naval officer's 1890 book on sea power was ordered reading for Kaiser Wilhelm II's officers?

Alfred Thayer Mahan's 'The Influence of Sea Power upon History' argued that naval supremacy made nations great; Theodore Roosevelt predicted it would become 'a naval classic'.

Which British governor set out 'indirect rule' in his 1922 book 'The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa'?

Frederick Lugard governed through emirs and chiefs rather than British officials, and from 1914 to 1919 ran the combined colony he had created by amalgamating its northern and southern protectorates.

John Hay's 1899 notes asking the powers not to shut rivals out of China's treaty ports became known as what?

The Open Door notes went to Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia, and Hay sent a second in July 1900 adding that China's territorial integrity must be preserved as the Boxer crisis raged.

Which 1860 Dutch novel by Multatuli exposed abuses of the coffee-growing cultivation system in Java?

Max Havelaar stirred the conscience that produced the Dutch 'Ethical Policy' of schooling for the colonised; Indonesian novelist Pramoedya Ananta Toer called it 'the book that killed colonialism'.

Which Pacific islands did Germany and the US partition in 1899, with Britain compensated elsewhere?

Samoa's eastern islands became American Samoa, still a US territory today, while Britain took Germany's rights in Tonga and part of the Solomons in return for stepping aside.

Which French premier told the Chamber of Deputies that 'superior races' had a duty to civilise 'inferior races'?

Jules Ferry secured the Tunis protectorate in 1881 and the conquest of Annam and Tonkin, and fell from office in 1885 when a reverse in Tonkin gave his critic Clemenceau the chance to topple him.

Which German gunboat's arrival at Agadir on 1 July 1911 set off the Second Moroccan Crisis?

The SMS Panther's 'leap' won Germany a slice of French Congo, the Neukamerun, in exchange for accepting a French protectorate over Morocco, sealed by the Treaty of Fez in March 1912.

Which Rif leader's 1921 victory at Annual, in Spanish Morocco, is still called Spain's worst modern military defeat?

Abd el-Krim's Rifians killed some 13,000 Spanish and colonial troops in the rout to Melilla; the disaster toppled governments in Madrid and paved the way for Primo de Rivera's 1923 dictatorship.

Portugal's 'Pink Map' of 1885 claimed a corridor between which two of its colonies, until Britain's 1890 ultimatum?

Angola and Mozambique were to be joined across the Zambezi basin; Lisbon's climbdown after the 1890 British Ultimatum so humiliated the monarchy that it fed the republican movement that ended it in 1910.

Which Beijing university was founded in 1911 with Boxer indemnity money that the US remitted to China?

Tsinghua began as a preparatory school for students bound for America after Washington returned nearly $12 million of its indemnity share in 1908; it now ranks among Asia's top universities.

Which German foreign secretary told the Reichstag in 1897 that Germany demanded 'our own place in the sun'?

Bernhard von Bülow's phrase became the slogan of Weltpolitik, the push for colonies and a battle fleet; he rose to chancellor in 1900 and served until 1909.

Which West African ruler's Wassoulou Empire resisted France from 1882 until his capture in 1898?

Samori Touré was surprised at Guelemou on 29 September 1898 and taken without a fight; exiled to Gabon, he died there in 1900, and Guinea's first president Sékou Touré claimed him as a great-grandfather.

Which explorer died in 1873 at Chitambo's village, after which Susi and Chuma carried his body 1,000 miles to the coast?

David Livingstone's heart was buried under a tree where he died in present-day Zambia; Susi and Chuma's caravan reached Bagamoyo in 1874, and he was buried in Westminster Abbey that April.

Two man-eating lions at Tsavo halted construction of which British East African line in 1898?

The Uganda Railway's bridge over the Tsavo River was abandoned by terrified workers until Lieutenant-Colonel John Patterson shot the lions in December 1898; he claimed 135 victims, later studies suggest around 30.