Imperialism is the maintaining and extending of power over foreign nations, particularly through expansionism, employing both hard power (military and economic power) and soft power (diplomatic power and cultural imperialism). Imperialism focuses on establishing or maintaining hegemony and a more formal empire.
While related to the concept of colonialism, imperialism is a distinct concept that can apply to other forms of expansion and many forms of government.
Kenneth Waltz suggests that the root cause of imperialism is great power. He explains that "[w]here one finds empires, one notices that they are built by those who have organized themselves and exploited their resources most effectively," adding that "[w]eakness invites control; strength tempts one to exercise it, even if only for the 'good' of other people." According to Vladimir Lenin, imperialist wars are inevitable due to uneven development under capitalism.
Definition The word imperialism is derived from the Latin word , which means 'to command', 'to be sovereign', or 'to rule'.Howe, 13. It was coined in the 19th century to describe Napoleon III's attempts to gain political support by invasion.Steinmetz, George, (2014). "Empires, Imperial States, and Colonial Societies," Concise Encyclopedia of Comparative Sociology, ed. Sasaki, Masamichi, (Leiden & Boston: Brill), p. 59, http://www-personal.umich.edu/~geostein/docs/Steinmetz%202014%20Empires%20imperial%20states%20and%20colonies.pdf. The term was applied to the British Empire during the 1870s; by the 1880s it had acquired a positive connotation in the West.Kumar, Krishan (2017). Visions of Empire: How Five Imperial Regimes Shaped the World, (New Jersey: Princeton University Press), p. 16, https://assets.press.princeton.edu/chapters/s10967.pdf. By the end of the 19th century, the term was used to describe the behavior of empires at all times and places.Sasaki 2014, p. 59. Hannah Arendt and Joseph Schumpeter defined imperialism as expansion for the sake of expansion.
Hobson, and in 1917, Lenin, attempted to redefine imperialism as the "highest stage of capitalism", as firms exported capital to dominate economically rather than territorially. In 1965 Nkrumah went with calling neocolonialism "the last stage of imperialism", linking it to trade, bases, cultural dominance and the IMF. In 1967 Frank claimed that "unequal exchange" (pricing controlled by the empire) itself reproduced empire. In 1978 Edward Said used the term to describe domination and subordination reflecting an imperial core and a periphery.Edward W. Said. Culture and Imperialism. Vintage Publishers, 1994. p. 9. Said wrote that in addition to European governments using imperialism to strengthen their position while weakening indigenous systems of authority, imperialism also refers to the cultural attitudes accompanying this project, often the idea of exerting a "civilizing" or "improving" influence on peoples in the periphery. Marshall further pushed the term to encompass phenomena such as space development.
Colonialism
Imperialism and colonialism have been distinguished by scholars such as Young who wrote that imperialism implements state policy, while colonialism may reflect commercial intentions, although supported by force. Said stated that colonialism implies geographic separation between the colony and the imperial power. He distinguished them, stating, "imperialism involved 'the practice, the theory and the attitudes of a dominating metropolitan center ruling a distant territory', while colonialism refers to the 'settlements on a distant territory.'" Contiguous land empires such as the Russian, Chinese or Ottoman have traditionally been called imperialist, although they also sent populations into their remote territories.
Imperialism and colonialism both involve political and economic advantage over a land and its population. However, scholars sometimes find it difficult to illustrate the difference between the two. According to Painter/Jeffrey, colonialism refers to one country in de facto control of another land (in many cases, colonies had no history as a recognized nation), while imperialism lately refers to less explicit political/economic dominance. Colonialism attempts to develop resources for extraction by the colonizer,although not always successfully (as in Santo Domingo after 1520). Colonies often adopt aspects of their colonists' cultures.
Age of Imperialism
Imperialism has been present and prominent since the beginning of history,MacKenzie, John M. (2016). "Empires in world history: Characteristics, concepts, and consequences." The Encyclopedia of Empire. (John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. ), vol. I, p. 2.Lieven, Dominic (2012). "Empire, history and the contemporary global order," Proceedings of the British Academy, vol. 131: p. 132, https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/documents/2012/pba131p127.pdfKagan, Kimberly et al (2010). The Imperial Moment. (Massachusetts & London: Harvard University Press), p. 8.Waltz, Kenneth (1979). Theory of International Politics. (Boston: McGraw-Hill), p. 25, https://archive.org/details/theoryofinternat00walt/page/24/mode/2up?view=theater. and its most intensive phase occurred in the Axial Age.The Colonial surge was less "exponential" than the Axial. Taagepera, Rein & Nemcok, Miroslav (2024). More People, Fewer States: The Past and Future of World Population and Empire Sizes. (Cambridge University Press. ), p. 229. But the concept of the Age of Imperialism refers to the period which pre-dates World War I. While the end of the period is commonly dated to 1914, the date of the beginning of it varies between 1760 and 1870.Wesseling, Henk (2005). "Imperialism & the roots of the Great War." Daedalus, vol 134 (2): p. 100.August, Thomas (July 1986). "Locating the Age of Imperialism." Itinerario. vol 10 (2): p. 85. The latter date makes the Age of Imperialism identical with the New Imperialism. According to Historians Daniel Hedinger and Nadin Heé, the widespread use of the term "Age of Empire" for this specific period reflects a Eurocentric bias in terms of time.Hedinger, Daniel & Heé, Nadin (2018). "Transimperial history—connectivity, cooperation and competition". Journal of Modern European History. Vol. 16 (4): p. 447, https://histoire.ens.fr/IMG/pdf/hedinger_transimperial_history.pdf.
During the Age, European nations, helped by industrialization, intensified the process of colonizing, influencing, and annexing other parts of the world. In the late 19th century, they were joined by the United States and Japan. Other 19th century episodes included the Scramble for Africa and Great Game.See Stephen Howe, ed., The New Imperial Histories Reader (2009) online review.
In the 1970s, the British historians John Gallagher (1919–1980) and Ronald Robinson (1920–1999) argued that European leaders rejected the notion that "imperialism" required formal, legal control by one government over a colonial region. Much more important was informal control of independent areas.R.E. Robinson and John Gallagher, Africa and the Victorians: The official mind of imperialism (1966). According to Wm. Roger Louis, "In their view, historians have been mesmerized by formal empire and maps of the world with regions colored red. The bulk of British emigration, trade, and capital went to areas outside the formal British Empire. Key to their thinking is the idea of empire 'informally if possible and formally if necessary.'"Wm. Roger Louis, Imperialism (1976) p. 4. Oron Hale says that Gallagher and Robinson looked at the British involvement in Africa where they "found few capitalists, less capital, and not much pressure from the alleged traditional promoters of colonial expansion. Cabinet decisions to annex or not to annex were made, usually on the basis of political or geopolitical considerations."
Looking at the main empires from 1875 to 1914, there was a mixed record in terms of profitability. At first, planners expected that colonies would provide an excellent captive market for manufactured items. Apart from the Indian subcontinent, this was seldom true. By the 1890s, imperialists saw the economic benefit primarily in the production of inexpensive raw materials to feed the domestic manufacturing sector. Overall, Great Britain extracted profits from India, especially Mughal Bengal, but not from most of the rest of its empire. According to Indian Economist Utsa Patnaik, the scale of the wealth transfer out of India, between 1765 and 1938, was an estimated $45 Trillion. The Netherlands extracted wealth out of the East Indies. Germany and Italy got little trade or raw materials from their empires. France did slightly better. The Belgian Congo was notoriously profitable when it was a capitalistic rubber plantation owned and operated by King Leopold II as a private enterprise. However, scandal after scandal regarding atrocities in the Congo Free State led the international community to force the government of Belgium to take it over in 1908, and it became much less profitable. The Philippines cost the United States much more than expected because of military action against rebels.
Because of the resources which were made available by imperialism, the world's economy grew significantly and it became much more interconnected in the decades before World War I, making the many imperial powers rich and prosperous.
Europe's expansion into territorial imperialism was largely focused on economic growth by collecting resources from colonies, in combination with assuming political control by military and political means. The colonization of India in the mid-18th century offers an example of this focus: there, the "British exploited the political weakness of the Mughal state, and, while military activity was important at various times, the economic and administrative incorporation of local elites was also of crucial significance" for the establishment of control over the subcontinent's resources, markets, and manpower. Although a substantial number of colonies had been designed to provide economic profit and to ship resources to home ports in the 17th and 18th centuries, D. K. Fieldhouse suggests that in the 19th and 20th centuries in places such as Africa and Asia, this idea is not necessarily valid:D. K. Fieldhouse, "'Imperialism': An Historiographical Revision." Economic History Review 14#2 1961, pp. 187–209 online.
During this time, European merchants had the ability to "roam the high seas and appropriate surpluses from around the world (sometimes peaceably, sometimes violently) and to concentrate them in Europe".David Harvey, Spaces of Global Capitalism: A Theory of Uneven Geographical Development (Verso, 2006) p. 91.
European expansion greatly accelerated in the 19th century. To obtain raw materials, Europe expanded imports from other countries and from the colonies. European industrialists sought raw materials such as dyes, cotton, vegetable oils, and metal ores from overseas. Concurrently, industrialization was quickly making Europe the centre of manufacturing and economic growth, driving resource needs.
Communication became much more advanced during European expansion. With the invention of railroads and telegraphs, it became easier to communicate with other countries and to extend the administrative control of a home nation over its colonies. Steam railroads and steam-driven ocean shipping made possible the fast, cheap transport of massive amounts of goods to and from colonies.