Rise of The New Imperialism

The Rise of the New Imperialism overlaps with the Pax Britannica period (1815–1914). The American Revolution and the collapse of the Spanish empire in the New World in the early 1810-20s, following the revolutions in the viceroyalties of New Spain, New Granada, Peru and the Río de la Plata ended the first era of European empire. Especially in the United Kingdom (UK), these revolutions helped show the deficiencies of mercantilism, the doctrine of economic competition for finite wealth which had supported earlier imperial expansion. The 1846 repeal of the Corn Laws marked the adoption of free trade by the UK. As the ‘workshop of the world’, the United Kingdom was supplying a large share of the manufactured goods consumed by such nations as Germany, France, Belgium and the United States. The Pax Britannica era also saw the enforced opening of key markets to European, particularly British, commerce: Turkey and Egypt in 1838, Persia in 1841, China in 1842 with the First Opium War, and Japan in 1858 leading to the Meiji period.