INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

FINAL REPORT ON

IMPERIALISM

Submitted by: Madiha Aziz I.D#: 5978 Section: C

Submitted to: Sahib Khan Channa

Overview
We live in a world today in which the consequences of nineteenth-century Western imperialism are still being felt. By about 1914 Western civilization reached the high point of its long-standing global expansion. This expansion in this period took many forms. There was, first of all, economic expansion. Europeans invested large sums of money abroad, building railroads and ports, mines and plantations, factories and public utilities. Trade between nations grew greatly and a world economy developed. Between 1750 and 1900 the gap in income disparities between industrialized Europe and America and the rest of the world grew at an astounding rate. Part of this was due, first, to a rearrangement of land use that accompanies Western colonialism and to Western success in preventing industrialization in areas Westerners saw as markets for their manufactured goods. European economic penetration was very often peaceful, but Europeans (and Americans) were also quite willing to force isolationist nations such as China and Japan to throw open their doors to Westerners. Second, millions of Europeans migrated abroad. The pressure of poverty and overpopulation in rural areas encouraged this migration, but once in the United States and Australia, European settlers passed laws to prevent similar mass migration from Asia. A third aspect of Western expansion was that European states established vast political empires, mainly in Africa but also in Asia. This "new imperialism" occurred primarily between 1880 and 1900, when European governments scrambled frantically for territory. White people came, therefore, to rule millions of black and brown people in Africa and Asia. The causes of the new imperialism are still hotly debated. Competition for trade, superior military force, European power politics, and a racist belief in European superiority were among the most important. Some Europeans bitterly criticized imperialism as a betrayal of Western ideals of freedom and equality. Western imperialism produced various reactions in Africa and Asia. The first response was simply to try to drive the foreigners away. The general failure of this traditionalist response then led large masses to accept European rule, which did bring some improvements. A third response was the modernist response of Westerneducated natives, who were repelled by Western racism and attracted by Western ideals of national independence and economic progress. Thus, imperialism and reactions to it spread Western civilization to non-Western lands.

What is Imperialism?
Imperialism is, broadly, the extension of rule or influence by one government, nation, or society over another. It is the policy of extending a nation's authority by territorial acquisition or by the establishment of economic and political hegemony over other nations, countries, or colonies. This is either through direct territorial conquest or settlement, or through indirect methods of influencing or controlling the politics and/or economy. The rule of authority of a country is based on territory, economic establishment and political influence. The term is used to describe the

policy of a nation's dominance over distant lands, regardless of whether the subjugated nation considers itself part of the empire. It is also considered the action by which one country controls another country or territory accomplished by military means to gain certain advantages. Imperialism helps one country gain power and domain over other areas. Imperialism can also be referred to as expansionism. An imperialist country, state, colony, or nation can be grouped as political, economic, religious, ideological, or exploratory. An imperialist government is a government that tries to gain new markets for exports, sources of inexpensive labor and raw materials. The interrupting of affairs between developing countries to protect international corporations caused the United States to be accused of imperialism in the early 20th century. The word imperialism was first taken up in the 1890s by the British colonial secretary Joseph Chamberlain, who favoured British expansionist policies, and was adopted into other languages during the period of imperial expansion by European powers from the 1880s to 1914. Imperialism was soon exposed to criticism from the left, in the British economist J A Hobson's Imperialism (1902), and from a Marxist perspective in Lenin's Imperialism as the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917).

Historical Background
Imperialism was developed in the early 19th century after the Industrial Revolution when the western nations began to take control of other non-industrialized nations and colonies. The "Age of Imperialism" usually refers to the Old Imperialism period starting from 1860, when major European states started colonising the other continents. The term 'Imperialism' was initially coined in the mid to late 1500s to reflect the policies of countries such as Britain and France's expansion into Africa, and the Americas. In the nineteenth century Britain the word "imperialism" came to be used in a polemical fashion to deride the foreign and domestic policies of the French emperor Napoleon III. The national spirit of England was roused by the tenseness of the struggle to a self-consciousness it had never experienced since "the spacious days of great Elizabeth." Britons, in a longstanding tradition to distinguish themselves from the European mainland, did not consider their own policies to be "imperialist". They did speak of "colonisation", the migration of people from British descent to other continents, giving rise to a greater Britain of English speaking peoples. Colonisation was not yet associated with the rule of non-western peoples. India, which Britain acquired from the East India Trading Company, was widely regarded as an exception. It was a very important exception, which nonetheless gave Britain cause for embarrassment. Benjamin Disraeli's move to make Queen Victoria "Empress of India" was even criticised as a dangerous act of (continental) imperialism. Critics feared this would have negative repercussions on British freedom and the rule of Parliament. When the subordination of non-Western peoples by European powers resumed with greater vigor in the late 19th century, the term became commonplace among liberal and Marxist critics alike.

In the twentieth century the term "imperialism" also grew to apply to any historical or contemporary instance of a greater power acting, or being perceived to be acting, at the expense of a lesser power. Imperialism is therefore not only used to describe frank empire-building policies, such as those of the Romans, the Spanish or the British, but is also used controversially and/or disparagingly, for example by both sides in communist and anti-communist propaganda, or to describe actions of the United States since the American Presidency's acquisition of overseas territory during the Spanish-American War, or in relation to the United States' present-day position as the world's only superpower.

Early Empires
Evidence of the existence of empires dates back to the dawn of written history in Egypt and in Mesopotamia, where local rulers extended their realms by conquering other states and holding them, when possible, in a state of subjection or semisubjection. An early, highly organized empire was that of Assyria, which was succeeded by the even more integrated Persian Empire. Ancient imperialism reached its climax under the long-enduring Roman Empire, the eastern part of which lasted until late into the Middle Ages as the Byzantine Empire. In Western Europe no true empire arose to replace Rome; the Holy Roman Empire, despite the aspirations of its rulers, was little more than a confederation of princely states. However, imperialism remained an important historical force elsewhere. In the Middle East and North Africa the Arabs and later the Turks built large empires. Farther east, besides the huge, if unstable, empires of the nomadic Mongols and others arising out of Central Asia, there were long-lasting and complex imperial organizations exemplified by various Chinese dynasties.

Development Through the Ages

Imperialism was reborn in the West with the emergence of the modern nation-state and the age of exploration and discovery. It is to this modern type of empire building that the term imperialism is quite often restricted. Colonies were established not only in more or less sparsely inhabited places where there were few or no highly integrated native states (e.g., North America and Africa) but also in lands where ancient civilizations and states existed (e.g., India, Malaya, Indonesia, and the Inca lands of South America). The emigration of European settlers to people the Western Hemisphere and Africa, known as colonization, was marked by the same attitude of assumed superiority on the part of the newcomers toward the native populations that prevailed where the Europeans merely took over control without large-scale settlements. From the 15th to the 17th century the Portuguese and the Dutch built trading empires in Africa and the East for the exploitation of the resources and commerce with lands already developed. The Spanish and Portuguese established important colonies in the New World in the 16th and 17th cents., hoping to exploit the mineral wealth of the lands they conquered. The British and French imperialists became the foremost exemplars of colonial settlement in Africa and the East. Acting on

mercantilist principles, the European nations in the 18th century attempted to regulate the trade of their colonies in the interests of the mother country. Later, the increase of manufactures in the Industrial Revolution introduced a new form of imperialism, as industrial nations scrambled both for markets and for raw materials. The eastward spread of Russia after the 16th century and the westward spread of the United States may also be termed imperialistic, although the United States did not actually acquire colonial possessions until the Spanish-American War. In the late 19th century Italy, Germany, and Japan also developed imperial ambitions; these nations, like the older colonial powers, were moved by a variety of aims, including commercial penetration, military glory, and diplomatic advantage. At its best, European imperialism brought economic expansion and new standards of official administration and public health to subject countries; at its worst, it meant brutal exploitation and dehumanisation. In every instance, however, the pressure of an alien culture, with its different values and religious beliefs, and the imposition of new forms of social organization meant the breakdown of traditional forms of life and the disruption of native civilization. At the end of the 19th century there was a strong reaction against the most inhumane forms of imperialist exploitation. Efforts were made to improve the standards of colonial administration; and a new justification of the rule of non-Europeans by the European powers was found in the idea of the white mans burden, which advanced the notion that the developed nations of Europe had a duty to rule Asians and Africans in order to lead them to a higher level of civilization and culture. Among the leading critics of imperialism at that time were the Marxists, who saw imperialism as the ultimate stage of capitalism and made much of the connection between imperialist rivalries and war. After World War I, anti-imperialist feeling grew rapidly throughout the world, sparked by the development of movements for national liberation within subject countries. Nevertheless the major colonialist powers, Great Britain, France, and others, held on to their colonies, while Fascist governments in Italy and Germany, as well as militarist opinion in Japan, fostered even more extreme imperialist aims. In the years since World War II, most of the countries once subject to Western control have achieved independence. Much of the contemporary debate centers on the issue of neo-imperialism. Many of the less developed countries contend that their economic development is largely controlled and seriously retarded by the developed countries, both through unfair trading practices and by a lack of controls over international business corporations.

New Imperialism
"New Imperialism" was the colonial expansion adopted by Europe's powers and, later, Japan and the United States, during the late 19th and early 20th centuries; approximately from the Franco-Prussian War to World War I (c. 1871-1914). The period is distinguished by unprecedented pursuit of what has been termed "empire for empire's sake," aggressive competition for overseas territorial acquisitions, and the

emergence in colonizing countries of doctrines of racial superiority which denied the fitness of subjugated peoples for self-government. The term imperialism was used from the third quarter of the 19th century to describe various forms of political control by a greater power over less powerful territories or nationalities, although analytically the phenomena which it denotes may differ greatly from each other and from the "New" imperialism. A later usage developed in the early 20th century among Marxists, who saw "imperialism" as the economic and political dominance of "monopolistic finance capital" in the most advanced countries and its acquisition and enforcement through the state of control of the means (and hence the returns) of production in less developed regions. Elements of both conceptions are present in the "New imperialism" of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But along with the adoption of ultra-nationalist and racial supremacist ideologies, the period shifted to pre-emptive colonial expansion, fueled by the imposition of tariff barriers aimed at excluding economic rivals from markets. English writers have sometimes described elements of this period as the "era of empire for empire's sake," "the great adventure," and "the scramble for Africa." During this period, European nations added 20% of the Earth's land area (nearly 23,000,000 km, or 8,900,000 mi) to their overseas colonial holdings (primarily occupying land in Africa). Since it was mostly unoccupied by the Western powers as late as the 1880s, Africa became the primary target of the "new" imperialist expansion, although conquest took place also in other areas; notably Southeast Asia and the East Asian seaboard, where Japan and the United States joined the European powers' scramble for territory.

Theories
The accumulation theory adopted by J.A. Hobson and later Lenin centered on the accumulation of surplus capital during and after the Industrial Revolution: restricted opportunities at home, the argument goes, drove financial interests to seek more profitable investments in less-developed lands with lower labor costs, unexploited raw materials and little competition. Some have criticized Hobson's analysis, arguing that it fails to explain colonial expansion on the part of less industrialized nations with little surplus capital, such as Italy, or the great powers of the next century the United States and Russia which were in fact net borrowers of foreign capital. Opponents of Hobson's accumulation theory often point to frequent cases when military and bureaucratic costs of occupation exceeded financial returns. In Africa (exclusive of what would become the Union of South Africa in 1909) the amount of capital investment by Europeans was relatively small before and after the 1880s, and the companies involved in tropical African commerce exerted limited political influence. The World-Systems theory approach of Immanuel Wallerstein sees imperialism as part of a general, gradual extension of capital investment from the "core" of the industrial countries to a less developed "periphery." Protectionism and formal empire

were the major tools of "semi-peripheral," newly industrialized states, such as Germany, seeking to usurp Britain's position at the "core" of the global capitalist system. Echoing Wallerstein's global perspective to an extent, imperial historian Bernard Porter views Britain's adoption of formal imperialism as a symptom and an effect of her relative decline in the world, and not of strength: "Stuck with outmoded physical plants and outmoded forms of business organization, [Britain] now felt the less favorable effects of being the first to modernize." Recent imperial historians Porter, P.J. Cain and A.G Hopkins contest Hobson's conspiratorial overtones and "reductionisms," but do not reject the influence of "the City's" financial interests.

Newly-Industrializing Countries
Just as the U.S. emerged as one of the world's leading industrial, military and political powers after the Civil War, so did the German Empire following its own unification in 1871. Both countries undertook ambitious naval expansion in the 1890s. And just as Germany reacted to depression with the adoption of tariff protection in 1879 and colonial expansion in 1884-85, so did the U.S., following the landslide election (1896) of William McKinley, in the form of the McKinley Tariff of 1890.

United States
United States expansionism had its roots in domestic concerns and economic conditions, as in other newly industrializing nations where government sought to accelerate internal development. Advocates of empire also drew upon a tradition of westward expansion over the course of the previous century. Economic depression led some U.S. businessmen and politicians from the mid-1880s to come to the same conclusion as their European counterparts that industry and capital had exceeded the capacity of existing markets and needed new outlets. The "closing of the Frontier" identified by the 1890 Census report and publicized by historian Frederick Jackson Turner in his 1893 paper The Significance of the Frontier in American History, contributed to fears of constrained natural resources. Like the Long Depression in Europe, the main features of the U.S. depression included deflation, rural decline, and unemployment, which aggravated the bitter social protests of the "Gilded Age" the Populist movement, the free-silver crusade, and violent labor disputes such as the Pullman and Homestead strikes. The Panic of 1893 contributed to the growing mood for expansionism. Influential politicians such as Henry Cabot Lodge, William McKinley, and Theodore Roosevelt advocated a more aggressive foreign policy to pull the United States out of the depression. However, opposition to expansionism was strong and vocal. The U.S. became involved in the War with Spain only after Cubans convinced the U.S. government that Spain was brutalizing them. The result of the war was that the U.S. came into the possession of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. However, only the Philippines remained, for three decades, as a colonial possession.

Although U.S. capital investments within the Philippines and Puerto Rico were relatively small (figures that would seemingly detract from the broader economic implications on first glance), "imperialism" for the United States, formalized in 1904 by the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, would also spur on her displacement of Britain as the predominant investor in Latin America a process largely completed by the end of the Great War.

Germany
In Germany, Imperial Chancellor Otto von Bismarck revised his initial dislike of colonies (which he had seen as burdensome and useless), partly under pressure for colonial expansion to match that of the other European states, but also under the mistaken notion that Germany's entry into the colonial scramble could press Britain into conceding to broader German strategic ambitions.

Japan
Japan's development after the Meiji Restoration of 1868 followed the Western lead in industrialization and militarism, enabling her to gain control of Taiwan in 1895, Korea in 1910 and a sphere of influence in Manchuria (1905), following her defeat of Russia in the Russo-Japanese War. Japan was responding in part to the actions of more established powers, and her expansionism drew on the harnessing of traditional Japanese values to more modern aspirations for great-power status: not until the 1930s was Japan to become a net exporter of capital.

Social Implications
It has been debated between economists and political theorists on whether or not imperialism benefits the states that practice it. Some theorists have even argued that imperialism is the result of the natural struggle of peoples survival. After World War two, the idea of liberating people and bringing them to a blessing in a superior way of life was another justification of imperialism. Colonies became a source of pride as well as economic benefit. Europeans felt that they had an obligation to bring their "superior" culture to their colonies Insofar as "imperialism" in the non-Marxist sense might be used to refer to an intellectual position, it would imply the belief that the acquisition and maintenance of empires is a positive good, probably combined with an assumption of cultural or other such superiority inherent to imperial power (The White Man's Burden). Imperialist policies have been criticized because they have often been used for economic exploitation of poorer countries as sources of raw materials and cheap labor. When imperialism is accompanied by overt military conquest of non-human rights abusing nations, it is also seen as a violation of freedom and human rights. Many instances of this have been recorded throughout Asia, Africa, and Europe, notably among the poorer, resource-rich countries. In recent years, there has also been a trend to view imperialism not at an economic or political level, but as a cultural issue, particularly in regard to the widespread global

influence of American culture (Cultural Imperialism). Some dispute this extension of the concept, however, on the grounds that it is highly subjective to differentiate between mutual interaction and undue influence, and also that this extension is applied selectively.

.Imperialism

Capitalism

as the Highest Stage of

LENINS THEORY OF IMPERIALISM Lenin argued that capitalism necessarily induced monopoly capitalism - which he also called "imperialism" - in order to find new markets and resources, representing the last and highest stage of capitalism. This theory of necessary expansion of capitalism outside the boundaries of nation-states - one of the foundations of Leninism as a whole - was also shared by Rosa Luxemburg and then by liberal philosopher Hannah Arendt. Since then, however, Lenin's theory has been extended by Marxist scholars to be a synonym of capitalistic international trade and banking. While Karl Marx never published a theory of imperialism, he referred to colonialism in Das Kapital as an aspect of the prehistory of the capitalist mode of production. In various articles he also analyzed British colonial rule in Ireland and India. Moreover, using the Hegelian dialectic, he predicted the phenomenon of monopoly capitalism in The Poverty of Philosophy (1847), hence the slogan "Workers of the world, unite!". Lenin defined imperialism as "the last and highest stage of capitalism", the era in which monopoly finance capital becomes dominant, forcing nations and corporations to compete themselves increasingly for control over resources and markets all over the world. Marxist theories of imperialism, or related theories such as dependency theory, focus on the economic relations between countries (and within countries), rather than the more formal political and/or military relationships. Imperialism thus consists not necessarily in the direct control of one country by another, but in the economic exploitation of one region by another, or of a group by another. This Marxist usage contrasts with a popular conception of 'imperialism', as directly controlled vast colonial or neocolonial empires. Lenin held that imperialism was a stage of capitalist development with five simultaneous features as outlined below: 1) Concentration of production and capital has led to the creation of national and multinational monopolies - not as understood in liberal economics, but in terms of de facto power over their enormous markets - while the "free competition" remains the domain of increasingly localized and/or niche markets: Free competition is the basic feature of capitalism, and of commodity production generally; monopoly is the exact opposite of free competition, but we have seen the latter being transformed into monopoly before our eyes, creating large-scale industry and forcing out small industry, replacing large-scale by still larger-scale industry, and carrying concentration of production and capital to the point where out of it has

grown and is growing monopoly: cartels, syndicates and trusts, and merging with them, the capital of a dozen or so banks, which manipulate thousands of millions. At the same time the monopolies, which have grown out of free competition, do not eliminate the latter, but exist above it and alongside it, and thereby give rise to a number of very acute, intense antagonisms, frictions and conflicts. Monopoly is the transition from capitalism to a higher system. [Following Marx's value theory, Lenin saw monopoly capital as plagued by the law of the tendency of profit to fall, as the ratio of constant capital to variable capital increases. In Marx's theory only living labor or variable capital creates profit in the form of surplus-value. As the ratio of surplus value to the sum of constant and variable capital falls, so does the rate of profit on invested capital.] 2) Industrial capital as the dominant form of capital has been replaced by finance capital (repeating the main points of Rudolf Hilferding's magnum opus, Finance Capital), with the industrial capitalists being ever more reliant on finance capital (provided by financial institutions). 3) The export of the aforementioned finance capital is emphasized over the export of goods (even though the latter would continue to exist); 4) The economic division of the world by multinational enterprises, and the formation of international cartels; and 5) The political division of the world by the great powers, in which the export of finance capital by the advanced capitalist industrial nations to their colonial possessions enables them to exploit those colonies for their resources and investment opportunities. This superexploitation of poorer countries allows the advanced capitalist industrial nations to keep at least some of their own workers content, by providing them with slightly higher living standards.

Imperialism in Africa
One of the first targets of imperialism was Africa. Countries in Africa were usually not advanced, powerful, or organized enough to stop a European army. The "scramble for Africa" began when Henry Stanley claimed the Congo River Valley for Belgium. France then claimed Algeria and built the Suez Canal. Britain took Egypt in order to have control of the canal, which was crucial to their shipping routes. Britain and Egypt then took control of Sudan. France began to colonize Tunisia and Morocco. Italy took Libya. Britain fought a war with and defeated the Boers in order to gain control of the resource rich Southern Africa. Cecil Rhodes became rich from the Kimberly diamond fields, which produced 90% of the world's diamonds at the time. By the early 1900's most of Africa was taken by European colonists.