Imperialism

Imperialism is a political relationship of dependency without involving territorial annexation and occupation. This relationship is distinguished by three necessary elements: inequality, domination, and a multiplicity of causes. An imperial relationship is one of effective domination or control over foreign entities through various direct and/or indirect means. Imperial domination includes control over the foreign entities' political, economic, and cultural practices. States, for example, may implement unfair trade practices and treaties. Actual military force is not a necessary condition; the implied use of force may be sufficient to compel other territories to acquiesce to the demands of the more dominant state. The spatial manifestation of imperial relations may be termed empire.

This use is contrasted with colonialism, usually defined as the direct physical control of one territory by another. It is possible, from this perspective, to have imperialism without colonialism but not vice versa; colonialism always includes imperialism. Many countries were affected by imperialism but not by colonialism. China and Siam (present-day Thailand), Iran, and Afghanistan, for example, were not colonies but did experience imperialism. In China, as a case in point, Britain established a string of “treaty ports” along the southeastern coast during the mid-19th century. Along with these ports, the British imposed a series of unequal arrangements, including extraterritoriality, which undermined Chinese sovereignty.

The term imperialism, derived from the Latin word imperium, was first introduced during the mid-18th century and originally used in reference to Pax Britannica. During this period, Britain occupied (in the form of colonies) many territories throughout the world; however, Britain also influenced many more kingdoms and states through imperial practices. Retrospectively, the term has been used to describe the early policies and practices of Rome and China. It has also been used to describe the Soviet Union and contemporary U.S. foreign policy (i.e., Pax Americana). Similar to colonialism, the term imperialism has been transformed to reflect changing global political–economic realities and our understanding of territorial relationships.

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the term imperialism was significantly transformed and modified through Marxist writings. Imperialism, in classical Marxian use, refers to a particular stage of capitalism. Karl Marx, in his critique of capitalism, premised that once the oppressed and exploited proletariat realized their actual conditions, they would rise up in a spontaneous socialist revolution. This revolt did not materialize among the laboring classes of Europe, however, leading some Marxists to reconsider the inner workings of capitalism. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin in particular set out to explain why the proletariat did not revolt; indeed, at the time of his writing, Lenin witnessed the growth of a privileged proletariat in industrialized states and the concurrent hyperexploitation of peasants in nonindustrialized territories. Lenin's definition of imperialism, therefore, was historically specific. He developed his ideas at a particular moment and in response to specific practices emanating from Europe, namely Europe's partitioning of Africa and Asia. This was a period of intensive colonial domination, one that also witnessed the emergence of corporate monopolies and finance capital. In his classic 1916[Page 247] book Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, Lenin agreed with Marx that capitalism was confronted with a series of inherent and inevitable crises and contradictions. Capital tended to “overaccumulate,” with idle surpluses of labor coinciding with surpluses of capital. It was imperative, therefore, for capital to continuously expand and seek new sites of investment as well as new sources of materials, markets, and (cheaper) labor. According to Lenin, imperial states would identify other territories to exploit. This could be in the form of colonies or, more indirectly, through the imposition of unequal treaties. Geographer David Harvey later called this a spatial fix. Consequently, through the subordination and oppression of indigenous peoples, as well as the monopoly of production, exchange, and consumption, these colonies were hyperexploited. Capitalists could then afford to transfer some of the superprofits to the proletariat within their home countries. In effect, these superprofits were used to buy off and placate the laboring classes with marginally higher wages and better working conditions. In this way, the proletariat benefited from the hyperexploitation of foreign people and thus was less inclined to stage a revolution. Therefore, imperialism, from a Marxian perspective, refers to a situation where the domestic proletariat of highly developed capitalist countries are bought off with the profit of the exploitation of lesser developed territories. Nationalist and racist ideologies may be used to further justify the hyperexploitation of foreign territories.

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