An Age of Expansion and Independence Movements

In the early 1800s, the West expanded its holdings and colonies. The Louisiana Purchase was one of the largest land acquisitions on record, made possible when revolution in Haiti and impending war with Great Britain forced Napoleon to give up his dream of an empire on the North American continent. The 800,000-square-mile territory was sold to the United States for $15 million in 1803. The purchase helped establish the concept of extra-constitutional authority: there was no provision in the Constitution for a transaction of this magnitude.

During this period, the saying "The sun never sets on the British Empire" was almost literally true, because nearly every part of the globe contained a British colony or outpost, looking south to Africa and Australia, west to the Caribbean and Canada, and east to India and Singapore. France made Tahiti a protectorate in 1842 and New Caledonia in 1853. The scramble for Africa divided the continent between France, Germany, England, Belgium, Spain, Italy, and Portugal, as these countries sent troops to maintain their new possessions. Underlying this push to gain colonies was a quest to gain raw materials and open new markets in order to avoid overproduction at home.

Where there were colonies, there were eventually independence movements and nationalist movements, as native-born peoples decided (sometimes after hundreds of years, as in India) to free themselves from foreign rule. The examples of the American and French revolutions inspired other revolutions, among them Haiti's and those in Latin America. Egypt was another country that began a nationalist movement during this time, in an attempt to shake off indirect British rule and control of the Suez Canal.