imperialism

imperialism The belief in the desirability of acquiring colonies and dependencies. Imperialism reached a peak in 1914, when 79 per cent of the world's land surface was under the control of a few colonial powers (mostly European, but also states such as Japan and the USA). Even though the underlying motives of imperialism are still unclear, there are three major theories of imperialism.

1. The first notes the economic interests of European capitalists in an expansion of their markets, a view taken by many Marxists. For example, the Belgian Congo became a market for Belgian goods and an important provider of raw materials at the same time. However, with a number of notable exceptions (such as India, or French West Africa) very few imperial ventures yielded a high rate of return on investment. 2. The second, more important reason for imperialism concerns events outside Europe, in the colonies themselves. According to this theory, individual soldiers or administrators proceeded to extend their country's sphere of influence and created a situation which the home government then had to accept. The most famous example of this is perhaps the desire of Cecil Rhodes to extend British sovereignty over Rhodesia (now Zambia and Zimbabwe). Similar instances led to the French expansion from Senegal to the Soudan (now Mali), and the expansion of the Russian Empire. Another example of a ‘local’ cause was a power vacuum in a country, which was then filled for strategic reasons by European states, as happened in the colonialization of Egypt, Tunisia, or Indochina. 3. The third and most potent set of arguments refer to non-economic circumstances in Europe and the USA. One theme has been the rivalry between European states, which was a major factor in German colonial expansion from the 1880s onwards. Another was the use of imperialism by state leaders as a machiavellian technique to deflect attention from domestic problems, for example in Portugal, France, and Italy (Abyssinia, Libya). Finally, there developed a genuine belief in the superiority of Western culture (as exemplified by men such as Rudyard Kipling and Rhodes), supported by a missionary zeal to spread the Christian religion. In the case of Britain, almost as important as its imperial territories was its ‘informal empire’, territories which were not nominally under British control, but which were heavily dependent on British commercial, financial, or military patronage. Since 1914, most countries in Africa and Asia have become independent, though in a process of what Kwame Nkrumah has termed ‘Neocolonialism’, as most African countries remain crucially dependent on the interference and goodwill of the developed countries through their large-scale debt, political instability, and economic weakness.

decolonization;