Imperialism

IN A GENERAL SENSE, imperialism is defined as the extension of a country's power over another territory. The inhabitants of the occupied territory are subjected to the rule of the occupier, by force if necessary. This generalized definition of imperialism would apply to conquerors reaching back to the time of the Roman Empire and the Mongols. This is pure imperialism wherein the goal of the invading force was to extend its territory and take the riches of the occupied land. The form of imperialism related to 19th-century European territorial usurpation has a more restrictive focus and a set of specific theories and models attached to it. The “new” imperialism got its start in England as part of an effort led by Joseph Chamberlain to expand British influence beyond the confines of its island empire and to acquire territories in Africa and Asia. Those in England objecting to this expansionist thrust were labeled “Little Englanders” by the imperialists.

A competition soon started, involving England and other European countries, to determine which of them would gain spheres of influence and establish colonies in Africa and Asia. The period from the 1880s to the [Page 525]onset of World War I became known as the Age of Imperialism. The Berlin Conference convened in 1884 to determine which European countries would occupy and colonize which regions of Africa. The eventual “carving up of Africa” was under way with the avowed justification of bringing “civilization” to the nonwhite races. By 1900, 90 percent of the African continent had been colonized by European powers. Polynesia was 99 percent occupied, Asia 57 percent occupied, and Australia entirely occupied. Great Britain gained the greatest amount of colonized territory followed by France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Germany, a late entry in the race, came into the colonizing picture in 1914.

In his 1902 book, Imperialism, the British scholar J. A. Hobson categorized imperialism as an economic action. He put forward the “accumulation theory” of capital, contending that the surplus capital deriving from the production processes in England was flowing out of the country because the impoverished working class was too poor to purchase goods in any significant volume.

Hobson's work influenced Vladimir Lenin, whose book Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism later became the basis for a neo-Marxist interpretation of imperialism. In his book, Lenin argued that imperialism and its attendant colonizing activities represented a natural progression in the evolution of capitalism. In his thesis, Lenin concluded that the European capitalist countries needed overseas territories to provide raw materials for their production processes and ways to invest the capital that was accumulating. In addition, the colonies became markets for the high value-added goods made from the raw materials taken from these same colonies. Lenin also concluded that capitalism was not a necessary economic stage to go through before reaching socialism. In this regard, he departed from the views of Marx.

The guiding paradigm of capitalist imperialism, the form exhibited following the “Scramble for Africa,” was the accumulation of capital through the exploitation of the materials and laborers in the occupied colonies. In every occupation, the sole purpose was to invest only as much in the colony as necessary in order to ensure the uninterrupted acquisition and delivery of the identified goods to the production facilities in Europe. Full regional development of the colony was never the goal.

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