Colonial politics in the mid 19th century

For all history buffs out there, since a world I am developing for a personal project resembles ours around the mid to late 19th century(think 1860's, 1870;s) I just wanted to ask what the main causes of wars were during this time, as well as how the interactions between different cultures often panned out(I know it didn't end well most of the time but there have to be more intricacies to it than that).

As for other aspects the technology for the "civilized" nations is as you would expect, i.e ironclads and cartridge ammunition breach loading firearms as a standard armament though this can still be called a fantasy world as many of the landscapes are surreal in nature or strangely formed, and things like the dead rising from the grave is a well documented phenomena that is studied at universities, among other things....

And when I refer to different cultures, I do mean pretty much exclusively human as the 2nd most intelligent non-supernatural species is equivalent in mental fortitude to a gorilla.

If more information is needed please ask.

A lot of the wars of the 19th century started for pretty bullshit reasons. Particularly the stuff involving the French. ESPECIALLY the French in the Franco-Prussian War. (Who lost.)

Beyond that, a lot of the same wars also had your bog standard imperialist reasons behind it. X wants more land or the Y resources in Z territory for example and of course the classic "Our way is better! 'No you!'" shenanigans.

And it led to a shitshow of treaties, alliances, shifting balances of power, and some very bizarre other things that culminated in World War One.

The 1850's through the end of the century was an era of rapidly expanding industrialization, and the major powers needed raw materials and resources badly- this drove the competition for overseas colonies. At the same time, the spread of rail and steam-powered engines meant that armies no longer had to live off the land while on campaign- that made battles between much larger forces operating farther away from their home countries for longer periods of time. The result was the Austria-Prussian War of 1866, and the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. You should research those two wars if you want a good grounding of the type of grand-strategies, operations and tactics of the era.

What about wars oversees in the colonial territories themselves?

(Here is a link.)

That period of time was also a Imperialistic one where the common folk and the highborn didn't always see eye to eye, and the lowborn were able to get their hands on the tools of war. So you see a bunch of insurrections and rebellions in addition to the usual Great Powers Pissing Contests, the kind that pretty much come part and parcel with expansionism.

Eddie Izzard pretty much nailed it:

edited 9th Jul '16 9:00:33 PM by pwiegle

In some cases though, it's boil down to basically selling guns on fighting natives, OR, provoking some natives to attack other natives, and THEN selling them some guns. Rinse, repeat, increase the price, then get some concessions, then build some big trade embassy, then make said embassy bigger, then make it looks like a big fort, then begin recruit natives for workers (and guards), then makes the embassy actual fort (wait, what?), then begin upgrade said fort (WAIT, WHAT?!), then begin to build some other "embassy" on your bought land, rinse, repeat, (WAITWAITWAIT-), then bring the treaty and show them your shiny, big guns.

Or go skip on fireworks (and bloodworks).

Up till the Napoleonic wars, combat was largely the job of a professional soldiering class. But the 19th century saw the rise of mass enlistment and citizen armies; all of a sudden, Joe Sixpack was playing an active role in history for what seemed, to a lot of observers, like the first time.

As a corollary, for the first time the peasantry really started seeing the world outside their farms en masse. And this applies to colonial actions, just as much as to intra-European kerfuffles. So there's an interesting dynamic where both sides, colonizer AND colonized, were newly confronted with a world far bigger than they'd been historically accustomed to expect.

Colonial politics had only one goal: resource extraction.

Everything else was secondary, if your not making money, You. Are.Doing. It. Wrong. This was that attitude that lead the British to sell Opium to China, and then go to war to protect there right to sell it Twice over the Chinese right to ban the stuff because they were losing money buying tea.

Or take the cluster that was the Congo where king Leopold II of Belgium had the entire Congo enslaved to get rubber, and cutting the hands of people who did not get enough of it with. Yes really and he had his own private army, the Force Publique to do the enslaving, they were a nasty bunch. The book Heart Of Darkness" was based on the authors travel in the Congo "Free" State.

Or how the Americans, we were hardly immune to this, supporting fruit company's on conquer nations in the aptly named "Banana Wars".

This is the bottom line to colonies, money. Colonial politics is about maximizing profits, locals be damned.

edited 16th Jul '16 9:15:00 PM by dragonkingofthestars