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The first steps toward economic imperialism in China date from the mid-1500s, when Portuguese traders paid for access to ports in Macau on China's far south-east coast.
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1511: Portugal makes first European colonial claim on Malaysia, capturing Malacca. 1641: Dutch East India Company and local allies push Portuguese from Malacca. 1700s: Now known as Malaya, its trading ports gain more economic clout as British trade with China expands.
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Hernán Cortés and a small group of Spanish soldiers conquered Mexico in 1521, just two years after they landed near the modern-day city of Veracruz.
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Spain established its first permanent settlement in the Philippines in 1565. Spanish colonial control of the Philippines continued until 1898, when the United States took possession of the islands as a territory after winning the Spanish-American War.
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Europeans such as the Portuguese arrived in Indonesia from the 16th century seeking to monopolise the sources of valuable nutmeg, cloves, and cubeb pepper in Maluku.
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On January 26, 1788, Captain Arthur Phillip guides a fleet of 11 British ships carrying convicts to the colony of New South Wales, effectively founding Australia.
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This was a transitional arrangement, and the British Government issued the Charter for Erecting the Colony of New Zealand on 16 November 1840. The Charter stated that the Colony of New Zealand would be established as a Crown colony separate from New South Wales on 3 May 1841.
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In 1858 the British government took direct command of India.
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From the 17th century through to the 19th century, the Habsburg monarchy, Austrian Empire, and (from 1867 to 1918) the Austro-Hungarian Empire made a few small short-lived attempts to expand overseas colonial trade through the acquisition of factories.
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The British military occupied Egypt in 1882 to protect financial interests in the country, culminating in a violent war.
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By 1884, the entire country had come under French rule, with the central and northern parts of Vietnam separated in the two protectorates of Annam and Tonkin. The three Vietnamese entities were formally integrated into the union of French Indochina in 1887.
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On February 5, 1885, Belgian King Leopold II established the Congo Free State by brutally seizing the African landmass as his personal possession. Rather than control the Congo as a colony, as other European powers did throughout Africa, Leopold privately owned the region.
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In 1899, Sudan was once again under the control of Anglo-Egyptian forces, and it was administered as a British colony. The government was modernized, and the British instituted economic reforms. Mahdist uprisings continued during the first decade of renewed British rule but were easily crushed.
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In 1895 the third major Cuban insurrection in thirty years erupted against the Spanish. In 1898, as the Cubans were preparing a final assault on Spanish urban strongholds, the United States declared war on Spain, invaded Cuba, and began a military occupation that remained until 1902.
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The Colony and Protectorate of Kenya was established on 11 June 1920 when the territories of the former East Africa Protectorate were annexed by the UK.