Consequences of Industrialization (1750–1900)
What you must know
Industrialization changed imperialism's form. Earlier maritime empires had been largely commercial; the "new imperialism" of roughly 1850–1914 was industrial, territorial and fast, driven by demand for raw materials and markets, nationalist rivalry, strategic chokepoints like the Suez Canal, and an ideology of racial hierarchy expressed in Social Darwinism, the "civilizing mission" and the White Man's Burden. Technologies of empire - quinine, steamships, the telegraph, railroads and the Maxim gun - made conquest cheap. The Berlin Conference (1884–85) set rules for the Scramble for Africa without African representation; the Congo Free State under Leopold II became a byword for atrocity; Britain took direct control of India after the 1857 rebellion and ruled as the Raj; China was forced open by the Opium Wars and the Treaty of Nanking, then rocked by the Taiping and Boxer uprisings; Japan, itself imperial, colonized Korea and Taiwan. Consequences were uneven: export monoculture and dependency, new rail and port infrastructure built for extraction, migration of indentured laborers from India and China, settler colonies in Australia and Algeria, and resistance ranging from armed revolt to religious revival and nationalist organization. Local elites often collaborated, which is why empire was cheaper than it looked.
Traps
Do not merge the new imperialism with earlier Spanish and Portuguese conquest. Europe was not the only imperial power - the United States, Japan and Russia also built empires. Do not assume colonized peoples were passive. And avoid treating economic motives as the sole cause; strategy and ideology mattered.
Worked example
Answer imperial questions in four moves - economic motive, enabling technology, legitimating ideology, local response or collaboration - then check whether the prompt asks about causes or consequences before writing.