What Country had the most colonies in 1900?
World Colonial Empires, 1900
Data Scavenger Hunt
Find answers to the following questions using the visual above:
A colony is an area over which a foreign nation or state extends or maintains control. As of 1900, what continent had the most colonies?
What continent was the least colonized in 1900.
Identify any countries whose colonies were bigger than the country that controlled them.
In 1900, what was the only African country not colonized?
What country had the most colonized land under its control?
Big Brain Questions
Answer these questions by yourself using your brain and the links below:
Many European nations wanted colonies as sources of raw materials (resources they could take) and new markets (places they could sell their finished products) and as potential outlets for excess population (extra poor people). Describe how these motivations guided the colonization of what later became the United States of America.
Some claim that the American South (the area south of the Mason Dixon line) was a colony of the North. Based on the definition of and reasons for colonization (see above), explain whether the U.S. south (home to great quantities of raw materials) was in fact a colony of the North (home to the factories that turned those resources into products).
America was once a colony and then later a colonizer. Explain whether U.S. colonial power was a perversion of its founding ideals.
Belgium is about 77 times smaller than Democratic Republic of the Congo. Explain why a tiny country like Belgium was able to rule a huge colony like the Belgium Congo?
Explain whether a colony has the right to rebel against a foreign occupying power.
Write and Discuss
Take ten minutes to write about the question at the top of the page and then discuss with your classmates.
Act on your Learning
Imagine how someone from Guam, the Philippines, American Samoa, Alaska, Panama Canal Zone, Hawai‘i, Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, and all the indigenous Americans whose land was colonized might feel about colonization. Try to contact a political official from one of the above and ask them to share their opinion of colonization. Share their response with your class.
Get Creative
Opportunities for individual adventurism and profit also ran high. Imagine you were a poor person living in crowded London in 1900. Explain whether you would have become a colonist and moved far from home.
