The Spread of Colonial Rule

In the nineteenth century, a new phase of Western expansion into Asia and Africa began. 

Whereas before 1800 European aims in the East could be summed up as “Christians and spices” and Western gold and silver were exchanged for cloves, silk, and porcelain, now European nations began to view Asian and African societies as markets for the prodigious output of European factories and as sources of the raw materials needed to fuel the Western industrial machine.

This relationship between the West and African and Asian societies has been called the new imperialism.