European international relations in the nineteenth century were primarily geared around the balance of power - the idea that to preserve peace on the continent, no one power could be allowed to achieve hegemony over the other powers. This led the British and French governments to take a significant interest in the decline of the Ottoman Empire. The British and French feared that a declining Ottoman Empire would cede much of its territory to the growing Russian Empire, which would in turn threaten the balance of power on the European continent. This fear led directly to the Crimean War.

The nineteenth century in the United States was a century of isolationism. America largely ignored the rest of the world, and the rest of the world largely ignored America. This all changed with American victory in the Spanish-American War in 1898. This led to the emergence of the United States as an imperial power as America took control of countries like the Philippines and Cuba.

Egypt had long been a region of the Ottoman Empire until Muhammad Ali took control of the region for himself in the first half of the nineteenth century. The loss of Egypt, and the inability of Ottoman authorities to even try to take it back, highlighted the weaknesses of the Ottoman Empire during its "Sick Man of Europe" phase.

The Seven Years’ War (usually called the French-Indian War in the United States of America) was fought between Britain and France from 1756 to 1763. It has been called the true first world war by some historians because it was fought between various European powers on almost every continent and ocean on the planet. It ended in victory for the British and in the subsequent peace treaty the French ceded control of the Indian subcontinent to the British Empire. This led to the rise of the British East India Company, and, later, the British Raj.

The wave of new imperialism in the second half of the nineteenth century was marked by land grabs in Africa and in East Asia. It was caused by the need for raw resources and the desire to access new markets; the zeal of Christian missionaries and their desire to spread the gospel to native people around the world; and nationalism and the competition between European nations. The belief in Social Darwinism emerged as a result of imperialism, rather than causing imperialism. It provided a moral justification for European imperial conquest.

While some of these contributed more than others, and there are other contributing factors theorized, such as Portuguese slave trade to the north of the Zulu, these are the commonly accepted causes of death and destabilization in South Africa that allowed the Boers and later the British to take over the territory of what was previously stable and powerful nations.

While South Africa was the British Colony that actually produced primarily diamonds and gems, it was the resources of India that made the British Empire so especially powerful and influential. The actual "crown jewel" of the Queen's crown is the "Koh-i-Noor", which was seized from India.

The other options are all also British colonies.

While Britain and France contributed a lot of colonial land to America, those became the United States. While France also conquered a few lands that America would come into control of, such as the Philippines and Haiti, the vast majority of American colonial property was formerly Spanish, such as Cuba and Puerto Rico, after the Spanish American War of 1898. America still controls Puerto Rico, Guam, the US Virgin Islands, and American Samoa. These lands, while officially controlled by the United States, have vastly restricted rights, powers, and protections compared to the 50 US states.

The Berlin Conference was convened from 1884 to 1885 and led to the division of the African continent between the various European imperial powers. The fact that it was in Berlin is telling because Germany, at the time, was a newly unified nation that wanted to compete with the colonial empires of western European nations like France and Britain, and so sought assurances for the establishment of colonies in Africa without the interference of other European nations.

The imperialist dogma “the White Man’s Burden” was coined in a poem by Rudyard Kipling in 1898. It was used to refer to a sort of moral imperative on the part of Western Europe and the United States to conquer and rule native people for their own benefit. The idea that was commonly held at the time was that western civilization had a responsibility to bring “civilization” to all the people in the world. Due to its title and provocative message it has long been a controversial expression.