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... Background: 1815-1870
By 1815 the world had known some four hundred years of continuous European imperialism. ... Yet the very word "imperialism," was, it seems, a mid-nineteenth-century invention, and the generation after 1870 has come to be known, in some specially significant and discreditable sense, as "the age of imperialism. ... This economic explanation of the urge to imperialism is usually taken to mean that the basic motives were also the basest motives and that, whatever political, religious, or more idealistic excuses might be made, the real impulse was always one of capitalistic greed for cheap raw materials, advantageous markets, good investments, and fresh fields of exploitation. ... The argument, in brief, is that what Hobson called "the economic taproot of imperialism" was "excessive capital in search of investment," and that this excessive capital came from oversaving made possible by the unequal distribution of wealth. ... "If the consuming public in this country raised its standard of consumption to keep pace with every rise of productive powers, there could be no excess of goods or capital clamorous to use imperialism in order to find markets. ... Lenin
Lenin elaborated the argument, in his pamphlet on Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916), to emphasize the current importance of finance capital rather than industrial, and the priority of the desire to find new outlets for investment rather than new markets. His thesis was that imperialism was "a direct continuation of the fundamental properties of capitalism in general," and that "the war of 1914 was on both sides imperialist. ... In the backward colonial peoples, argued Lenin, capitalism had found a new proletariat to exploit; and from the enhanced profits of such imperialism it was able to bribe at least the "aristocracy of labor" at home into renouncing its revolutionary fervor and collaborating with the bourgeoisie. ... Nor, of course, could it be a general explanation of imperialism, which had existed centuries before there was a "glut of capital" and before finance capital was as plentiful or as well organized as it was in the later nineteenth century. ... The New Imperialism
What made it seem particularly necessary to find some special reason for modern imperialism was both the dramatic suddenness of its reappearance and its pre-eminence in the policies of the powers during the last quarter of the century. ... Africa and Eastern Asia
What was most strikingly novel about the new imperialism was its intense concentration upon two continents: Africa and eastern Asia. ... It was this combination of novel economic conditions with anarchic political relations which explained the nature of the new imperialism. ... To say, as it was often said after 1918, that imperialism had led to war, was only half the story; it was also true that the menace of war had led to imperialism. ... Adventurers and Missionaries
Besides the direct political motives of imperialism-the desire to strengthen national security by strategic naval bases such as Cyprus and the Cape, or to secure additional sources of manpower as the French sought in Africa, or to enhance national prestige as the Italians did in Libya there was a medley of other considerations which, in varying proportions, entered into the desire for colonies. ... Administrators and Soldiers
Yet another element in the growth of imperialism was the administrator and soldier the man with a mission, who was not a missionary but who welcomed an opportunity to bring order and efficient administration out of muddle. ... The sources and the nature of the urge to imperialism were multiple, and varied considerably from one country to another. ... The beneficiaries of imperialism were not always the initiators of it; and although King Leopold, Cecil Rhodes, and many of the other empire builders amassed great personal fortunes and powers, so too did many who merely stepped in later to reap the rewards of high administrative offices and rich concessions for trading and investment. ... Wherever there was any considerable section of public opinion generally in support of imperialism, it tended to be canalized into active propagandist associations and pressure groups, often distinct from any one political party. In Britain, Disraeli committed the Conservative party to a general policy of imperialism in 1872, backed by the purchase of shares in the Suez Canal in 1875 and by the conferring of the title "Empress of India" upon Queen victoria in 1877.
Approximate Word count = 6061
Approximate Pages = 24.2
(250 words per page double spaced)
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