In 1900, 85 per cent of the world's land mass belonged to a handful of European powers. The British Empire - the largest of its kind - alone represented one quarter of the Earth's surface and population. In 1901, Queen Victoria died after reigning over her burgeoning empire for 64 years (Britain had been acquiring colonies since the 16th century). Her death heralded the end of an era characterised by cosy philosophies of unbridled industrial and imperial expansion; by class, race and gender hierarchies; and by the ethos, "God's in his heaven, all's right with the world". By the early 1900s, four of Britain's former colonies had attained the first stage of independence. Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa became dominions. In 1931, the Commonwealth was born, a recognition of the fact that by then the dominions were self-governing and virtually independent. Other colonies such as India were given increasing levels of autonomy, together with a modern administrative structure, making the attainment of ultimate independence a realistic goal for nationalists.
The Austro-Hungarian empire was facing a more imminent collapse. An air of jaded unreality about the fragmented, antiquated empire Emperor Franz Josef had ruled over for so many years intensified, with little recognition of the strife that was about to explode.
During the first decade of the century, Britain and other colonial powers - France, Germany, Russia, Italy, and, increasingly, Japan - were still jostling to increase their empires (mostly in the hitherto unexplored areas of Africa and east Asia) and busily making secret alliances with each other. This race for power, particularly between Germany and Britain - Germany sought to rival Britain's superior naval force - led to a sense of the inevitability of war, culminating in the cataclysmic events of 1914. Although the old British, French, Belgian and Portuguese empires struggled on until after 1950, the first World War devastated the economies of the old powers, with the emergence of the US as the most significant new empire. For several decades the US had as its arch-rival the Soviet Union (the old monarchical notion of empire was gone but, despite their anti-colonial attitude, both the US and the USSR acquired territories as aggressively as their predecessors).
At the close of the century, the US reigns unchallenged as the dominant world power. A new cross-border form of colonisation has emerged out of the demise of the old ideal of the nation state: the march of the multinational companies which are expanding their trade empires across the globe. The ideal of nationhood, which led most conquered countries to rise up and break away from their European colonisers, has lost its significance in the headquarters of the old empires. As a result of the EU (and now the euro), its member-states have changed from a hotbed of conflict and division to form a harmonious economic and social - and largely borderless - alliance.
As for the now independent nations whose indigenous culture and way of life were forever torn asunder by the experience of colonisation, they are still in the process of self-determination. This, largely unaided, process has been painful, often resulting in the appearance of tyrants such as Idi Amin in Uganda and Jean-Bedel Bokassa of the Central African Republic in the 1970s.
