External threats, both real and imagined, such as the

Napoleonic Wars (1796-1815) and Russian expansion toward

Afghanistan (in the 1830s), as well as the desire for internal
stability, led to the annexation of more territory in India.

as the territorial aggrandizement eventually paid off, opinion in London welcomed the
absorption of new areas. Occasionally the British Parliament witnessed heated debates
against expansion, but arguments justifying military operations for security reasons
always won over even the most vehement critics.

East India Company was formed by British traders to trade with India. They set up godowns
to store the goods they traded in. The protection of these godowns served as a good excuse to
build forts and maintain armies at such centers.
During this time disorganized kingdoms were fighting amongst themselves. The British
took the golden opportunity to benefit from these internal quarrels and helped one king
against another. In this bargain the British gained more power and wealth. The British trained
Indian soldiers and employed them in their army. This army was far better trained and
disciplined than the armies with small Indian kings who were just struggling to survive.
Gradually the British succeeded in capturing very large parts of India. They made treaties
with kings who accepted the authority of the British. They were kings only in name. The
British very cleverly managed to collect huge wealth from the people and the kings.

" You English committed one supreme crime against my people. For a hundred years you
have done everything for us. You have given us no responsibility for our own government."

The policy and ideology of European colonial expansion between the 1870s and the outbreak
of World War I in 1914 are often characterised as the "New Imperialism". The period is
distinguished by an unprecedented pursuit of what has been termed "empire for empire's
sake", aggressive competition for overseas territorial acquisitions and the emergence in
colonising countries of doctrines of racial superiority which denied the fitness of subjugated
peoples for self-government.

During this period, Europe's powers added nearly 8,880,000 square miles (23,000,000 km²) to
their overseas colonial possessions. As it was mostly unoccupied by the Western powers as
late as the 1880s, Africa became the primary target of the "new" imperialist expansion
(known as The Scramble for Africa), although conquest took place also in other areas —
notably south-east Asia and the East Asian seaboard, where Japan joined the European
powers' scramble for territory.

The Berlin Conference (1884–1885) mediated the imperial competition among Britain, France
and Germany, defining "effective occupation" as the criterion for international recognition of
colonial claims and codifying the imposition of direct rule, accomplished usually through
armed force.
A decade later, rival imperialisms would collide in the 1898 Fashoda Incident, during which
war between France and Britain was barely avoided. This fear led to new alliances, and in
1904 the Entente Cordiale was signed between both powers. Imperialistic rivalry between the
European powers was a main cause of the triggering of World War I in 1914.

In Germany, rising pan-germanism was coupled to imperialism in the Alldeutsche Verband

("Pangermanic League"), which argued that Britain's world power position gave the British
unfair advantages on international markets, thus limiting Germany's economic growth and
threatening its security.