Wikipedia:  European Imperialism

THE BRITISH EMPIRE

The Marriage of Queen Victoria, 10 February 1840  –  by Sir George Hayter (1840-1842)
Wikipedia - "Victoria of the United Kingdom"

 Queen Victoria (1819-1901)  –  Franz Xaver Winterhalter - 1842
 The longest reigning monarch in the United Kingdom (1837-1901)
Osborne House, Isle of Wight
Wikipedia - "Victoria of the United Kingdom"

Queen Victoria  –  Franz Xaver Winterhalter - 1843
Wikipedia - "Franz Xaver Winterhalter"

Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha –  Franz Xaver Winterhalter - 1842
Prince Consort 1819-1861
Wikipedia - "Franz Xaver Winterhalter"

Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha  –  Franz Xaver Winterhalter - 1846
Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight
Wikipedia - "Franz Xaver Winterhalter"

Queen Victoria and Prince Albert  –  possibly recreating a wedding pose for the newly developed art form of photography (ca. 1854)
Wikipedia - "Victoria of the United Kingdom"

Queen Victoria  –  Photo by Alexander Bessano (1887)
Wikipedia - "Victoria of the United Kingdom"

Queen Victoria  –  Photo by Alexander Bessano (1887)
Wikipedia - "Victorian era"

Queen Victoria  –  Diamond Jubilee - 1897
Wikipedia - "Victoria of the United Kingdom"

Queen Victoria
Wikipedia - "History of the United Kingdom"

The Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel - 1844
Wikipedia - "Franz Xaver Winterhalter"

Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston
Whig/Liberal Prime Minister of the United Kingdom  –  1855-1858, 1859-1865.
Foreign Secretary  –  1830-1834, 1835-1841, 1846-1851
Wikipedia - "Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston"

English Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom  –  1868 & 1874-1880.
Wikipedia - "Benjamin Disraeli"

British India

Lord Clive meeting with Mir Jafar after the Battle of Plassey - by Francis Hayman (c. 1762).
Robert Clive, 1st Baron Clive, first British Governor of Bengal (India)
Robert Clive's victory at the Battle of Plassey established
the Company as a military as well as a commercial power.
Wikipedia - "British Empire"

The Sepoy Mutiny in India (1857-1858)
and the British Crown's takeover of India from the East India Company

Interior of the Secundra Bagh after the Slaughter of 2,000 Rebels
by the 93rd Highlanders and 4th Punjab Regiment.
First Attack of Sir Colin Campbell in November 1857, Lucknow.
Albumen silver print, by Felice Beato, 1858.
Wikipedia - "Indian Rebellion of 1857"

Located on the outskirts of Lucknow, it was the scene of intense fighting in November, 1857. Following the action, the British dead were buried in a deep trench but the Indian corpses were left to rot. Later, the city had to be evacuated and was not recaptured until March 1858 and it was shortly afterwards that Beato probably took this photograph. As one contemporary commentator described it: "A few of their [rebel] bones and skulls are to be seen in front of the picture, but when I saw them every one was being regularly buried, so I presume the dogs dug them up." A British officer, Sir George Campbell, noted in his memoirs Beato's presence in Lucknow and stated that he probably had the bones uncovered to be photographed. However, William Howard Russell of The Times recorded seeing many skeletons still lying around in April 1858

Photographic views of Lucknow taken after the Indian Mutiny, Albumen silver print 26.2 x 29.8 cm. The image was taken by Felice Beato, a Corfiote by birth, who visited India during the period of the Indian Mutiny or First War of Indian Independence; possibly on a commissioned by the War Office in London he made documentary photographs showing the damage to the buildings in Lucknow following the two sieges. It is known that he was in Lucknow in March and April of 1858 within a few weeks of the capture of that city by British forces under Sir Colin Campbell. His equipment was a large box camera using 10" x 12" plates which needed a long exposure, and he made over 60 photographs of places in the city connected with the military events. Beato also visited Delhi, Cawnpore and other 'Mutiny' sites where he took photographs.

Wikipedia - "Indian Rebellion of 1857"

An engraving titled "Sepoy Indian troops dividing the spoils after their mutiny against
British rule" gives a contemporary view of events from a strictly British perspective.
Wikipedia - "Indian Rebellion of 1857"

The Hanging of Two Rebels,
by Felice Beato, 1858. Albumen silver print.
Siano, Brian. The Flashman Papers Project; British India in Photographs.
Wikipedia - "Indian Rebellion of 1857"

Bahadur Shah Zafar exiled in Rangoon.
Photograph by Robert Tytler and Charles Shepherd, May 1858.
Wikipedia - "Indian Rebellion of 1857"

Bahadur Shah was tried for treason by a military commission assembled at Delhi, and exiled to Rangoon where he died in 1862, finally bringing the Mughal dynasty to an end. In 1877 Queen Victoria took the title of Empress of India on the advice of her Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli.

The British Empire (colored in red [pink]) - 1897
Wikipedia - "British Empire"

France

King Louis-Philippe of France (reigned 1830-1848) - Franz Xaver Winterhalter - 1839
Wikipedia - "Louis-Philippe of France"

Portrait of Napoleon III - Franz Xaver Winterhalter (1852)
Museo Napoleonico - Rome
Wikipedia - "History of France"

Portrait of Napoleon III - Franz Xaver Winterhalter - 1857
Wikipedia - "Franz Xaver Winterhalter"

Maximilian of Mexico - Franz Xaver Winterhalter (1864)
Wikipedia - "History of France"

The Paris Commune - 1871

The Barricades

Photo taken on May 29, 1871, after "la semaine sanglante" (The Bloody Week)
Wikipedia - "Paris Commune"

The photos below:
Paris destroyed during the Paris Commune uprising
www.marxists.org/history/france/paris-commune/images

The Assault force

The resultant destruction of Paris: The Hotel de Ville

Napoleon's column and statue - Place Vendome

Around the Arc de Triompfe

Other parts of Paris






Approximately 30,000 people were killed, countless others wounded and perhaps 50,000 executed or imprisoned, 7,000 exiled to New Caledonia in the Pacific, and thousands chose to flee France to other countries, as a result of the Paris Commune uprising.

The Third Republic



A strong anti-republicanist spirit grew up around the hope of the revival of either a Bourbon or Orleanist monarchy.  While Paris was strongly republicanist, much of the rest of the country was monarchist -- as witnessed by the 1871 elections which returned a monarchist majority to the National Assemby and the election in 1873 of Mac-Mahon, an ardent monarchist, as President of France.   But that sentiment faded fairly quickly and by 1877 the monarchists lost their dominant position in the National Assembly in an election centering basically on the question of whether France was to be primarily Presidential (monarchists) or Parliamentary (republicans).  The republicans won handily in the election.

 

Adolphe Thiers - by Félix Nadar
French Prime Minister (1836-39;1840) and President (1871-1873)
Wikipedia - "Adolphe Thiers"

Patrice de Mac Mahon - President (1873-1879)
Wikipedia - "Patrice de Mac-Mahon, duc de Magenta"

Léon Gambetta - by Félix Nadar
French Prime Minister (1881-1882)
Wikipedia - "Léon Gambetta"

Erecting the Eiffel Tower - 1878
Wikipedia - "History of France"

Prussia / Germany

Wilhelm I Hohenzollern - King of Purssia (1861-1888) and German Emperor (1871-1888)
Wikipedia - "William I, German Emperor"

Austria

Franz Joseph I, Emperor of Austria (1830-1916) wearing the uniform of an Austrian Field Marshal - Franz Xaver Winterhalter - 1865
Wikipedia - "Franz Xaver Winterhalter"

Belgium

Leopold I (Saxe-Coburg-Gotha) - 1790-1865
(Uncle of Albert Prince-Consort of England)
King of Belgium  –  1831-1865
Painting:  Leopold Saxe-Coburg as a Russian general
by Geo Dawe 1823-1825
St-Peterburg, Winter Palace War Gallery
Wikipedia - "Leopold I of Belgium"

King Leopold I of Belgium - Franz Xaver Winterhalter - 1839
Wikipedia - "Franz Xaver Winterhalter"

Leopold I and family
(Queen Louise-Marie, Crown Prince Leopold, Prince Philippe, Princess Marie-Charlotte)
Wikipedia - "Leopold I of Belgium"

The Meiji Imperial Restoration

Samurai of the Satsuma clan, during the Boshin War period
Wikipedia - "Meiji period"

Young Meiji - (1852-1912)
Wikipedia - "Emperor Meiji"

Meiji - Japanese Emperor - 1867-1912
Wikipedia - "Emperor Meiji"

The Russo-Japanese War

 Battlefields of the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905)
Wikipedia - "Russo-Japanese War"

Japanese bombardment during the Siege of Port Arthur
Imperial Japanese Navy General Staff
Wikipedia - "Russo-Japanese War"

Japanese soldiers' corpses in a trench, with Russian soldiers looking on - 1905
Underwood & Underwood, Inc.
Wikipedia - "Russo-Japanese War"

Retreat of Russian Soldiers after the Battle of Mukden.
P. F. Collier & Son
Wikipedia - "Russo-Japanese War"

Russian and Japanese Delegates in the Treaty of Portsmouth.
P. F. Collier & Son
Wikipedia - "Russo-Japanese War"



 
 

Prepared by Miles H. Hodges