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Introduction Major European powers had for centuries engaged in colonialism however the phenomenon of the period 1870-1914 was expansion in a form never before witnessed. Competitive industrial nations, Great Britain first and foremost set out on a race to divide the world, at least the parts unoccupied namely Africa and Asia between them. In the three decades after 1870 European nations divided up the remainder of the world; by 1900 Europe controlled almost all of Africa and …

…Algericas Conference of 1906. Indeed it could be said that it was Wilhelm's interference in colonial affairs that encouraged Britain and France to come together in the Entente Cordiale of 1904. However, it is fair to say that it was not Wilhelm's colonial blundering, which forced Britain to abandon "splendid isolation" but rather his naval policies and his European foreign policy. When Europe went to war in 1914 it was over specific European issues rather than colonial ones.