Colonialism and Imperialism, 1450-1950 by Benedikt Stuchtey Original in German, displayed in English Published: 2011-01-24 The colonial encirclement

of the world is an integral component of European history from the Early Modern Period to the phase of decolonisation. Individual national and expansion histories referred to each other in varying degrees at different times but often also reinforced each other. Transfer processes within Europe and in the colonies show that not only genuine colonial powers such as Spain and England, but also "latecomers" such as Germany participated in the historical process of colonial expansion with which Europe decisively shaped world history. In turn, this process also clearly shaped Europe itself. Table of Contents 1. Introduction 2. Colonialism and Imperialism 3. Regions and periods 4. Forms 5. Outlook 6. Appendix 1. Literature 2. Notes Citation Introduction In world history, no continent has possessed so many different forms of colonies and none has so incomparably defined access to the world by means of a civilising mission as a secular programme as did modern Europe. When Spain and Portugal partitioned the world by signing the Treaty of Tordesillas on 7 June 1494, they declared a genuine European claim to hegemony. A similar claim was never staked out in this form by a world empire of Antiquity or a non-European colonial power in the modern period, such as Japan or the USA. The extraordinary continuity of Chinese colonialism or that of the Aztecs in Central America before the Spaniards arrived is indeed structurally comparable to modern European expansion. But similar to the Phoenician and the Roman empires, the phenomenon of expansion usually ended with colonisation and not in colonial development. The imperial expansion since about 1870 was not a European invention but its chronological and spatial dimension was as unique as the variety of colonial methods of rule . It is characteristic that the impetus for colonialism was often derived as an answer to European history itself. This includes capitalist striving for profit, the colonies as valves for overpopulation, the spirit of exploration, scientific interest, and religious and ideological impulses up to SocialDarwinistic and racist motives. Colonialist urges of this type do not explain the expansionistic economic, military and other forces in the periphery that compelled the governments of the mother countries into a defensive pressing forward. 1 What is now understood as globalisation has a critical background in the world historical involvement of the non-European sphere from the Early Modern Period up and into the period of decolonisation. No European country remained exempt all directly or indirectly participated in the colonial division of the world. The Treaty of Tordesillas (1494) put global power thinking into words that perceived of colonial possessions as a political, economic and cultural right, last not least even as an obligation to a civilizing mission that was only definitively shaken with the independence of India in 1947.1 These two dates mark the start and decline of a key

problem in the history of Europe, perhaps even its most momentous, that the always precarious colonial rule caused complex competitions among Europeans just as much as among the indigenous population in the colonies, that it was able to simultaneously create cooperation and close webs of relationships between conquerors and the conquered, and that it was never at any time free of violence and war, despotism, arbitrariness and lawlessness. This turns the simultaneity and multitude of European colonialisms and imperialisms into a border-bridging experience. Few transnational specifics of European history illustrate the diversity of a European consciousness this clearly. 2 But what was colonialism? If one looks back at the essential elements in the thought of the Spanish world empire since the 16th century, it was similar to that of the English and Portuguese up to the most recent time because of the often claimed idea that the European nations created their empires themselves without the participation of others. Conquest followed discovery: Christopher Columbus (c. 14511506) landed in 1492 on a West Indian island that he called San Salvador to emphasize the religious character of taking possession. Spain's power was only definitively broken with the Treaty of Paris in 17632, which ended the Seven Years' War and solidified British colonial supremacy. It also revealed the entanglement between Europe and the American continent because the seed had been sown for the independence struggle of the United States as well as the revolutions in Central and South America between 1780 and 1820. After human and citizens rights had been fought for during the French Revolution, the first Black republic in world history arose in 1804 from a slave revolt in Haiti. Its leader Franois-Dominique Toussaint L'Ouverture (c. 17431803) had himself been a slave to his 45th year, was a student of French Jesuits and an admirer of the writings of Guillaume-Thomas Raynal (17111796) . Colonialism was by no means a one-dimensional affair with a simply European orientation and European discoverers such as Columbus and Vasco da Gama (14681524) , who succeeded in making the first East India voyage in less than a decade after 1492. Instead, colonialism should be understood as a dynamic interaction in the context of which the colonial empires and the individual colonies massively influenced the historical development of their European mother countries. This even extended to the programmes of rulers' titles. Subsequent to da Gama successfully establishing trade relations with the Southwest Indian spice port of Calicut, king Manuel I (14691521) not only styled himself king of Portugal, but also lord of Arabia, Persia and India. Like the Portuguese world empire, the Spanish arrived in all of Europe because European and non-European immigrants participated as much as did the natives in the colonies. The Spanish empire can hardly be imagined without Belgians, Italians and Chinese, while commerce and administration in the Portuguese empire was shaped to a significant degree by Germans, Flemings, Moslems and Jews.3 3 Colonialism and Imperialism According to Wolfgang Reinhard, colonialism in terms of a history of ideas constitutes a "developmental differential" due to the "control of one people by an alien one".4 Unlike the more dynamic, but also politically more judgmental and emotionally charged form of imperialism, colonialism as the result of a will to expand and rule can initially be understood as a state that establishes an alien, colonial rule. It has existed in almost all periods of world history in different degrees of expression. Even after the official dissolution of its formal state in the age of decolonisation, it was possible to maintain it as a myth, as in Portugal after the Carnation Revolution in 1974, when the dictatorship of Antnio de Oliveira Salazar (18891970) was debated but hardly ever the colonial past in Angola, Mozambique, Goa, Macao and East Timor. Already in 1933, the Brazilian sociologist Gilberto Freyre stated the thesis that the Portuguese as the oldest European colonial nation had a special gift for expansion in his controversial book Casa-grande e Senzala (The Masters and the Slaves). It consisted of peacefully intermingling the cultures without racism and colonial massacres. Using the example

of Brazil, he rationalized colonial paternalism with the allegedly successful relationship between masters and slaves. 4 But other colonial powers also claimed this for themselves. Even the harshest critics of expansion policies starting with Bartolom de las Casas (14741566) to the MarxistLeninist criticism of the 20th century did not doubt the civilising mission that justified colonial hegemony.5 Similar to the abolitionists , they criticised the colonial excesses that could mean mismanagement, corruption and, in the extreme case, genocide. However, that the colonies became an integral part of the mother country, that therefore the colonial nation is indivisible, at home on several continents and, thus, incapable of doing any fundamental evil, can be shown to be part of the European colonial ideology since its earliest beginnings. Intellectual transfer processes had already taken place at this time, in the Age of Enlightenment most noticeably in the mutual influence of Adam Smith (17231790) , Denis Diderot (17131784) , Johann Gottfried Herder (17441803) and their contemporaries.6 They agreed on a moderate critique of colonial expansion and a simultaneous enthusiastic, cosmopolitan exuberance for appropriating the world outside of Europe. Though slavery and cosmopolitanism could theoretically not be brought to a common denominator, in practice the conquest explained its legitimacy since the 16th century with its own success. The Dutch, English, Portuguese, Spanish, French and Russian colonial enterprises, which each surveyed the world in its own manner with soldiers, scientists, merchants and missionaries, shared the common perception of the "Other" on the basis of the presumed cultural superiority of the "Self". As different as the spread of Christianity proceeded with the nonconformist, dissenting elements of Protestantism in North America and the Catholic forces in South America so, too, was the result different in the end. Spain, for example, was not able to use Latin America for a profitable export economy, but by contrast the British succeeded in monopolising the slave trade as a most lucrative long-distance business. 5 When, during the course of the 19th century, the Italians, Belgians and Germans raised a claim to their share of the world in addition to the old colonial powers, the term "Imperialism" became an ideologically loaded and overall imprecise, but probably irreplaceable historiographical concept.7 During the phase of High Imperialism between 1870 and World War I, every larger European nation state as well as the USA and Japan participated in acquiring territories outside Europe. That is what makes this period so unique in European history, though measured against other criteria, such as time and space, it was not more spectacular than previous ones. Thus, the European conquest of North and South America in the 16th and 17th centuries or of India in the 18th and early 19thcenturies was no less incisive in its spatial dimension or the number of people brought under European rule as was the "Scramble for Africa" that became synonymous with the unsystematic and overly hasty intervention of Europeans in the entire African continent. But unlike in earlier periods, a broad European public for the first time participated politically, economically and culturally directly in the process of that expansion. It had deep-reaching effects on the historical development of the European societies themselves, which is reflected, for example, in the professional careers of politicians, diplomats and high-ranking military men. After all, it was caused by massive economic and diplomatic rivalries between the European colonial powers and a widespread chauvinism. 6 Likewise, this process was to a significant extent triggered by internal crises in Africa itself. As in the 16th century, the rivalry between Christian and Islamic missions again erupted in the North of Africa. In a classic of the historiography of imperialism, Ronald Robinson and John Gallagher explain that Europe is not the only place for understanding the motives of European expansion. According to Robinson and Gallagher, this motivation was primarily founded in Africa, at least, as far as late

Victorian society was concerned.8 If non-Western societies were no longer just the victims of Europe and quite a few of their elites participated in colonial and imperial rule, a layer of European settlers, Christian missionaries, colonial officers etc., who bridged the "periphery" and the "centre", became a third force known in research as the "men on the spot". Their lobbying influence on the expansion of the colonial empires was no less than that of political and economic interest groups in the metropole, even though their motivations depended more situationally on the events in the colonies than could be or would be the case in the European centres of power. This can be shown equally for the Asian, the African and the Pacific regions. Colonial sites of remembrance and their culture of monuments recall to this day conflicts and ambivalences of European colonial rule in public memory.9 7 This circumstance made High Imperialism a European and global project at both the centre and the periphery. Furthermore, it illustrates the critical significance of political and military force in the imperial process. "Gunboat diplomacy", one of the historical buzzwords for Europe's intercourse with Africa in the final third of the 19th century, also occurred in Turkey and China. Informal imperialism, often equated with the dominance of free trade over other methods of colonial influence, lost ground to the extent that coercion could only be exercised by violence. This is well illustrated by the war with China over the opium trade (18401842). The brutal suppression of the Indian "mutiny" in 1857/1858 by the British constitutes the opposite of the Manchester School of Economics' view that, based on free trade rather than unilateral exploitation, the world would find a balance of peaceful and cooperative exchange between Europe and the non-European sphere. The protection of national economic interests or the defence of prestige later led several German observers to the conclusion that the English were conducting a commercial imperialism, whereas the French wanted to enhance the respect for their nation in the world. 8 Nevertheless, the "informal empire" was the prevailing model. In the British context, this led to the exaggerated thesis that the nation was not interested in expansion and that in this regard it was characterized by "absentmindedness".10 Those who currently perceive global capitalism as the successor of formerly direct territorial rule because it exercises no less pressure on the political and social systems to impose its economic interests, see the origins of informal imperialism reaching deep into the 19th century. Until the recent past, this thesis could be countered by noting that it not only underestimates the scale of the creation of global empires but also their dissolution.11 The consequences of the problematic withdrawal of the French from Algeria, the Italians from Eritrea or the British from India and Ireland still remain present. In this respect, colonisation and decolonisation were two historical processes referring to each other, comparable to the systole and diastole of the metropolitan heart beat. Only the interaction of these two as well as numerous other factors resulted in the world historical consequences of European expansion. 9 Regions and periods Colonial regions and their limits as well as periods and their caesuras offer two possibilities of approaching European colonialism. For example, the independence of the North American colonies in 1776 marks one of the most important turning points from the Atlantic to the Asian aspect of the British empire and, also, the first experience of decolonization of global significance in the history of European imperialism. The second only began in the 1950s, here especially on the African continent and, offset in time from the freedom movements of Central and South America as well as Asia. In the 18th century, the foremost European colonial powers, led by England, solidified their global hegemonic position. If they did not create overseas empires, they conquered territories in the form of a continental colonialism as the Russian monarchy did in Siberia and the Habsburgs in South-eastern Europe.

This continental variant was equivalent in nature to the later westward shift of the American Frontier and the north migration of the South African boundary as well as the subimperialism, e.g. of Egypt and the Sudan. While the direct penetration of North and South America was almost entirely completed, that of the Asian and African sphere only began on a larger scale after 1800 in Africa, for example, after 1830 with the French conquest of Algeria, from which Morocco and Tunisia were also to be brought under French influence. The Russian conquest of Siberia, which followed the course of the rivers similar to the American expansion, aimed to acquire the lucrative fur trade. Concurrent with the mining of gold and precious stones in Brazil, silver mines were also found in the Siberian highland and the financial as well as the informational value of a caravan route between Russia and China was recognized. The coastal fort colonies that the Dutch operated in Indonesia and the English on the coasts of India initially were reserved for commercial interests in spices, tea, coffee and cotton. As long as they did not expand inland and develop larger areas, they lacked military value. 10 In 1772, when governor Warren Hastings (17321818) strove not only for economic but also for the political and administrative development of the hinterland in Bengal and his administration was overshadowed by numerous scandals, his famous critic Edmund Burke (17291797) vented his anger on the methods of colonial rule. In this way, he also directed attention to the newly formed field of tension of the competing powers of the administrative centre in London and the "men on the spot", those increasingly more powerful servants of European colonialism who at the same time also pursued their own interests in the periphery. In the 19th century, this would become a fixed topos of mutual accusations when businesses based on shares and founded on the model of the East India Company (chartered in 1559, monopoly to 1858), and comparable to the Dutch Vereenigden Oost-Indischen Compagnie (1602 1798), were raised by Sweden, Denmark, Scotland, Austria, Brandenburg-Prussia and Poland and were partly equipped with sovereign rights. Financially, they were based on the exchanges, which were becoming ever more central to European economic life, and a modern banking system that coordinated the international trade in luxury goods, such as silk, with that in foods novel to Europe, such as potatoes, maize and rice. Only the English company flourished in the long run. Within limits, the Dutch company, which focused on the spice trade and participated in expanding the colonial empire in Southeast Asia, also succeeded. The British created a cotton monopoly. With the trade in goods, for example, coffee from Java and tea from China, Europeans continuously developed new areas, especially Asia, that could be "opened" almost without violence (China since 1685). The formal use of colonial violence was symbolized in its most illustrative form in the slave trade with the establishment of slave ports on the coasts of West and East Africa as the starting points of slave shipments to the plantations of Middle and South America. 11 South Africa, since the 17th century developed by the Dutch as a settlement colony and since 1815 of importance to the British because of its gold and diamond mines, is exempted from this. Similar to Egypt, it played a special role, including with regard to its perception by Europeans. The shipping routes around the Cape and through the Suez Canal were of elementary significance from the perspective of military and commercial politics. Furthermore, a presence in Egypt held great symbolic significance, as manifested in attempts at its conquest from Napoleon Bonaparte (17691821) to Adolf Hitler (18891945). Remarkable in this parallel is the belief that focussed power in Europe and on the Nile as the access to Asia was a condition of concentrated power in the world. A British colonial administrator such as Evelyn Baring, Lord Cromer (18411917) , who was stationed in Calcutta and Cairo, knew like none other that the survival of the empire depended as much on India, the Jewel in the Crown, as on the Suez Canal. His book Ancient and Modern Imperialism (1910) is a testimonial of intimate knowledge of the manner in which colonial rule functioned, as

they were handed down at various administrative posts. What the British were willing to spend on the defence of their interests some 6,000 miles from London is evident from the, on the whole devastating, South African War (also Second Boer War, 1899 1902). Volunteers from numerous European countries fought on the side of the Boers against the British, who in turn recruited large military contingents in Australia and Canada. The legend of imperial rule irretrievably lost its legitimacy when in 1956 the British and the French armies had to leave the Suez Canal Zone under pressure from the USA and the Soviet Union. Therefore, the Canal as well as the Cape were areas of first rank in the encounters of Europeans and non-Europeans as well as areas of encounter in the sequence of various European colonialisms. 12 Precisely defined dividing lines between periods are impossible in this panorama as a matter of course. For this, the enterprises in which all European colonial powers were more or less involved (voyages of discovery , scientific projects such as cartography, construction of mercantilist colonial economies etc.) were too different in their time spans and too fluid, while the interactions between Europe and the rest of the world, which were subjected to continuous change, were too divergent. However, there were phases in the overall development of European colonialism that can be separated in analogy to the development of the great power system of the European states: 13 1. In the beginning, Portugal and Spain (in personal union 15801640) were primarily interested in overseas trade to Brazil and the Philippines and inspired by Christian missionary zeal. With few exceptions, they managed to avoid colonial overlap. 14 2. By contrast, competition heated up in the 17th century, when the English, French and Dutch pressed forward, initially not in the territories of the Spaniards and the Portuguese, but in neighbouring regions. This is demonstrated in exemplary manner by the North American Atlantic coast between the French possessions in modern Canada and the Spanish claims in the South. 15 3. When it became impossible to avert the crisis of the Ancien Rgime in Europe any longer, the colonial empires also lost their cohesion. The British won against their French rival in North America and India, against the Dutch in Southeast Asia and against the Spanish in South America. The independence of the United States was substituted with supremacy in India, in South Africa and especially on the seas with the almost peerless Royal Navy and modern free trade. 16 4. The colonial incorporation of Africa on a large scale began with France's conquest of Algeria in 1830, which at the same time more than before released Europe's internal economic and industrial tensions as colonialist forces and peaked in High Imperialism between 1870 and World War I.12 17 5. Since the origins of a pluralistic colonial system during the course of the 19th century, not only the Europeans were involved in dividing the world but also Japan and Russia. The USA is the prototype for a successful linkage of continental internal colonisation in the form of the westward shift of the Frontier and maritime colonial policy in the Asian sphere, while paradoxically being the most successful model of anti-colonialism. At the latest around 1900, the European system of great powers stood before the challenge of global competition. In the controversial interpretation of Niall Ferguson, it was logical that the USA would assume Britain's role as the "global hegemon" in the 20th century and marginalize the formal and informal colonialism of Europe but also continue globalization as "anglobalisation".13

18 Forms Since the 16th century, genuine European colonial powers such as Spain, Portugal, France and Britain were distinguished by developing a concept of their world rule and basing it on the legacy of Rome.14 This does not mean that stragglers like Italy, Belgium and Germany did not produce their own forms of imperial thought and had specific colonial systems with which they caught up to the great historical empires. German colonial officials, pragmatists such as Heinrich Schnee (18711949) and Carl Peters (18561918) , saw German colonialism in the light of and in delimitation against British and French colonialism as well as in the context of world politics. They also participated in the virtually Europe-wide debate about the possible model function that the Roman Empire had for Europe. However, unlike the empires of the late 19th century, Spanish world rule was characterized by being pre-modern, and British colonial rule no later than 1750 held a geographical sway without example, which makes a thorough concept of empire and expansionism a precondition. Their shared reference frame was the Atlantic world, which as a historical concept for determining colonial practices had gained acceptance.15 In this case, "imperiality" and "globality" were one and carried by a Christian universalist, almost messianic claim to leadership. However, the price that Spain came to pay for its position as world-empire was high and due to the European constellation of powers. Its global superiority was offset by rejecting the claim to the imperial title of the Holy Roman Empire as a consequence of the division of the Habsburg inheritance. 19 The empires of the modern nation state were not exposed to a loss of unity associated with the global dimension. Their expansion drive was primarily conditioned by worldly factors such as profit and prestige, in any case not a concept of universal monarchy indebted to Christian salvation, peace and justice. The world empire thought of Charles V (15001558) survived to the extent that the civilising mission of the modern European imperialisms became a transnational, but not primarily religious motor. Their driving forces were very different, not necessarily ideological but, in the French case, they constituted a part of the cost/benefit calculation. In 1923, Albert Sarraut (1872 1962) , the governor general of Indochina, defined the leitmotiv of "mise en valeur" (development) and based it on the concept that the colonies are merely an exterritorial component of a "Greater France" or a "France Africaine".16 There already were similar considerations in Victorian England with regard to the white settlement colonies, such as Canada and Australia. For the historian John Robert Seeley (1843 1895) and before him Charles Dilke (18431911) , the empire signified the "expansion of England" into a colonial world, in which cricket would be played just as in Oxford.17 Nation and expansion were conditional upon each other without relinquishing diversity. James Anthony Froude (18181894) warned that whoever overemphasized the value of India and the African colonies also underestimated that of the "white settlements". His book Oceana, or England and her colonies (1886) was an attempt at staging the British empire as the legitimate heir of the Roman republic: The former followed the principle of politically wise forms of government when it subordinated colonialism and republicanism to reason and with it attributed more weight to the code of the virtue of good government than to the authority of military or economic monopolies of violence in the African and Asian colonies.18 Winston Churchill (1874 1965) invented for this the exclusive term "English-speaking peoples". 20 That this rule could apply to the overseas empires but would be different for continental ones like that of the Habsburgs was discussed by contemporary observers in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy's sphere of influence and especially in delimitation against the pulsating German empire. Austrian imperial history was formulated in imperial terminology after all, the occupation of Bosnia-Herzegovina was officially accepted at the Congress of Berlin in 1878. However, the Habsburg Empire was not

centralistic but multinational in concept and tolerated local independence up to the confirmation of regional and religious diversity. Habsburg's deficit of not being able to provide a national identity was partially compensated by strengthening the popular dynasty, although it, in the person of Emperor Franz Joseph (18301916) , was not equal to the extreme High Imperialism of the turn of the century. The empire was governed in a nostalgic rather than modern manner. Where similar backward tendencies appeared in other European monarchies, a balance was sought using political and cultural measures. One of the best known examples is the crowning of Victoria (18191901) as the empress of India in 1876, which was in a manner an imitation of the Bonapartist succession practice of the Spanish monarchy in South America. Benjamin Disraeli (18041881) pushed Victoria's imperial title forward because he saw a crisis coming toward Britain and the empire with the monarch's Germanism and obliviousness to duty after the death of her prince consort Albert (18191861) . Subsequently, British imperialism became even more unrivalled and the centrality of Europe in the world of the 19th century became even more clearly an economic, military and maritime centrality of Great Britain. Based on the Royal Navy and world trade, the Pax Britannica symbolized this programme of a pacifist colonialism. In the concept of a peace-making world empire, there could be several global players but only one global hegemon. This idealisation of maritime rule was reflected in Alfred Mahan's (18401914) classic The Influence of Sea Power upon History (1890), a manifesto of the triumphal "anglobalisation", that is the earth-girding and people-uniting expansion of the Occident. 21 The overseas as well as the continental colonial empires of Europe were together characterised by constructing their imperial rule over a developmental differential against the "Other" and, thus, significantly contributed to a changed self-perception of Europe in the world. Essentially, it was more about self-image than the image of others. Rule was alien rule over peoples perceived as being "subject". It had to be achieved with violent conquest and secured with colonial methods to guarantee economic, military and cultural exploitation. Therefore, the European claim to superiority legitimised the logic of the unequal interrelationship between colonial societies and a novel capitalism in Europe, especially the British "gentlemanly capitalists",19 whose global reach came to bear in a particularly pronounced form as the slave economy. Nowhere was the ambivalence between ruthless hegemonic ambition on one hand and concepts such as world citizenship, cosmopolitanism and human rights, which were derived from the Enlightenment, more clear than in slavery on the other hand.20 Slavery, which made use of the idea of the different natures of people, culminated in the race theories of High Imperialism. Probably no European colonial power remained aloof from this discussion, which with the help of medicine, anthropology, ethnology etc. was founded on pseudoscience, guided by practical benefit and brought the contradictions and perversions of imperialism to a climax. French debates from Arthur de Gobineau's (18161882) Essai sur l'ingalit des races humaines, 1853) to Georges Vacher de Lapouge's (18541936) Race et milieu social: essais d'anthroposociologie (1909) profited in the same way as the British controversies involving, for example, Joseph Chamberlain (18361914) from the stereotypical ideas that colonial officials brought back to the centres of power from their every day experiences. The genocide of the Germans against the Herero and Nama in German Southwest Africa (19031907) is one of many testimonials, the reign of terror of the Belgian king Leopold II (18351909) in the Congo another. 22 Outlook Therefore, the concept of a "Europeanisation of the world" signifies the dilemma. On one hand, there are positive achievements, such as modern statehood, urbanisation, rationalism and Christianity, European thought systems such as Liberalism, Socialism and Positivism, which was received with great enthusiasm in France and England as well as in Brazil and Japan. On the other hand, there are negative legacies, such as

Caesarism, racism and colonial violence. It can also raise the question whether European history between about 1450 and 1950 cannot be predominantly read as a history of expansion, especially if one treats the history of the empires beyond Eurocentrism as world history but without underlaying it with a universal theory and without constructing it as a historical unity. With the treaty to divide the world of 1494, a more intensive interaction of nation, expansion and "Europeanisation of the world" began that was not a unilateral creation of dependencies but a process of give and take with reciprocal influences beyond fixed imperial boundary drawing. According to this multipolar dynamic, Europe was not decentralised or provincialised,21 but Europe is equally unsuitable as the only perspective in the interpretation of the global modern period.22 23 Benedikt Stuchtey, London

Appendix Literature Aldrich, Robert: Vestiges of the Colonial Empire in France: Monuments, Museums and Colonial Memories, Basingstoke 2005. Barth, Boris / Osterhammel, Jrgen (eds.): Zivilisierungsmissionen: Imperiale Weltverbesserung seit dem 18. Jahrhundert, Constance 2005. Chakrabarty, Dipesh: Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, New Jersey 2000. Cain, Peter J. / Hopkins, Antony G.: British Imperialism: Innovation and expansion 16881914, 2. ed., London 2001. idem: British Imperialism: Crisis and deconstruction 19141990, 2. ed., London 2001. Dilke, Charles Wentworth: Problems of Greater Britain, London 1890, vol. 12. Drescher, Seymour: Abolition: A history of slavery and antislavery, Cambridge et al. 2009. Elliott, John H.: Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492 1830, New Haven et al. 2006. Ferguson, Niall: Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World, London 2003. Froude, James Anthony: Oceana, or England and her colonies, London 1886. Headley, John M.: The Europeanization of the World: On the Origins of Human Rights and Democracy, Princeton et al. 2008. Kiernan, Victor: The Lords of Human Kind: European Attitudes to Other Cultures in the Imperial Age, London 1995. Koebner, Richard / Schmidt, H. D.: Imperialism: The story and significance of a political word, Cambridge 1965. Korman, Sharon: The Right of Conquest: The acquisition of territory by force in international law and practice, Oxford 1996. Mommsen, Wolfgang J.: Der europische Imperialismus: Aufstze und Abhandlungen, Gttingen 1979.

Oliveira Marques, Antonio Henrique de: Geschichte Portugals und des portugiesischen Weltreichs, Stuttgart 2001. Osterhammel, Jrgen: Kolonialismus: Geschichte, Formen, Folgen, 5. ed., Munich 2006. Pagden, Anthony: Lords of all the World: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and France c. 1500 c. 1800, New Haven 1995. Porter, Andrew: European Imperialism, 18601914, Houndmills 1994 (Studies in European History). Porter, Bernard: The Absent-Minded Imperialists: Empire, Society, and Culture in Britain, Oxford et al. 2004. Reinhard, Wolfgang: Kleine Geschichte des Kolonialismus, Stuttgart 2008. Robinson, Ronald / Gallagher, John: Africa and the Victorians: The Official Mind of Imperialism, London 1961. Sarraut, Albert: La mise en valeur des colonies Franaises, Paris 1923. Seeley, John Robert: The Expansion of England, London 1883. Stuchtey, Benedikt: Die europische Expansion und ihre Feinde: Kolonialismuskritik vom 18. bis in das 20. Jahrhundert, Munich 2010. Wesseling, Hendrik L.: The European Colonial Empires 18151919, Harlow 2004.

Europe In Retrospect A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE PAST TWO HUNDRED YEARS by Raymond F.Betts CHAPTER SIX Expansion I would annex the planets if I could. CECIL RHODES One of the most dramatic, morally debatable, and significant activities of the nineteenth-century European social order was its outward movement into a dominant position on several continents and among many islands cast about the earth. Of course, empire was hardly a new institution. It has been a rather constant characteristic of the Western world since well before the days when Roman legions sallied forth to make alien peoples bow beneath standards surmounted by bronze eagles. And even the first years of the nineteenth century were witnesses to Napoleon's effort at surpassing imperial Rome. But never before the end of the century were there so many expressions of imperialism, with rival colonial systems competing in so many areas of the world. Great Britain, France, Holland, Belgium, Italy, Germany, Spain, Portugal, even Russia (not to mention the United States and Japan outside of Europe) intruded forcefully into Africa, or Asia, the Middle East, or the South Pacific--and finally sought the North and South Poles in the early years of this century. As an American senator of the time remarked, the Western world had an acute case of land hunger. The intensity of this activity has led it to be called a "scramble," more specifically a scramble for Africa and Oceania (the islands of the South Pacific). Because it appeared to be so sudden and so competitive, and yet so much a part of late nineteenthcentury political and economic power, this particular phase of overseas expansion has been labeled the "New Imperialism"in order to distinguish it from the "Old Colonialism" that supposedly ended in the late eighteenth century. Between the two, according to an older school of historians, existed a hiatus, a lull, during which Europe remained at home. Today there is rather common agreement that European overseas expansion was a constant factor of the nineteenth century, with British commercial activities the most obvious aspect, but with both Great Britain and France seeking new trade outlets, strategic sites, and--on more than one occasion--a political advantage of one over the other. At the end of the century political annexation was the dominant characteristic of imperialism. If one considers that the major European land holdings in Africa before 1870 were Algeria (France) and South Africa (England), and then regards the political map of 1914 when only Liberia and Ethiopia were independent African states, one can appreciate the rapidity of the political change. Why? The Causes of Modern European Imperialism

Along with the French and Industrial Revolutions, imperialism has been a mine of causes picked at by many generations of historians. The Marxist-Leninist argument would have it that an ever-increasing capitalism needed new places for financial investment and for markets of its goods in order to avoid its necessary collapse. This is the analysis contained in the title of Lenin's most famous work, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, published first in 1917. "Highest" here has reference to a scale of historical progression: it is the last stage beyond which capitalism cannot go because it can find no other outlets to relieve the pressure that capital accumulation has generated. Thereafter the system (in today's parlance) will self-destruct. Even the pro-imperialists of the late nineteenth century used a somewhat similar argument, but not to condemn capitalism. A famous French supporter of empire referred to colonies as the safety valve of the industrial steam engine, without which it would explode. And more than one publicist exclaimed, "No exportation without colonies." Thus, in the minds of contemporaries imperialism was the process of expansion by which to assist the industrial system in its search for new markets and, consequently, new profits. But where the imperialists considered this process a commercial policy, Lenin deemed it a historical necessity, a particular phase of capitalism, when financial interests controlled industry and were helpless to do anything but place their gold overseas, if they did not want an overwhelming glut. The distinctions between the two economic approaches to imperialism may seem highly refined at first glance. Yet what the imperialists were urging as policy--a conscious state decision to better the society's economy--Lenin was analyzing as part of an unavoidable, necessary, or fated historical process; for him it was not policy, but inevitability: it could not be reversed or changed, and beyond this "highest" stage lay the necessary fall of the entire capitalist system. This particular argument is stressed somewhat, not because it effectively accounted for the European history of the moment, but because Lenin's thesis grew in historical importance in the twentieth century to become the most popular explanation of modern imperialism, and one still vehemently proclaimed today. Yet the commercial argument was and remains an important one, particularly if it is not reduced to a simple correlation between the amount of colonial territory acquired and the amount of goods and money exported. Europe's traditional and then current areas of principal export were the Americas and Europe itself. Very little money or goods went to tropical Africa or the islands of the Pacific. If anything in the commercial domain, the newly acquired colonial territories were "claims" "pegged out" for the future, as Lord Roseben, late nineteenthcentury British prime minister, described them in a consciously chosen mining metaphor. What this idea suggests is the growing political consciousness of the competitive European industrial system. With the United States and Germany added to the great producing nations of the world--alongside England, France, and Belgium--there was concern that national industries would be disadvantaged, that national treasuries would suffer accordingly. Add to this concern another dimension, that stemming from the "social question." The so-called Long Depression of 1873-1896 was a downward trend in cyclical economics which meant chronic unemployment and possible social unrest. When Cecil Rhodes said that imperialism was a "bread-and-butter" question it was this

problem that he had in mind: new markets overseas would relieve the economic slump at home by generating the need for more products, hence reemployment of workers. Modern analysts, following the thought of an outstanding English imperialist of the turn of the century, Lord Alfred Milner, have called this "social imperialism." Alongside the economic argument sturdily stands a political one, as old and as much discussed. In brief, it would read: imperialism is overseas nationalism. The rivalry traditionally demonstrated by European states was extended overseas in the late nineteenth century, as it had been earlier in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In the later instance, it was Africa and Oceania that were the fields of political and military maneuver, as it had been North America and India earlier. The coincidence between the political establishment of modern Europe--with the unification of Italy and Germany in 1870-1871-and the dramatic acquisition of new territory--say that of Tunisia by France in 1881 or Egypt by England in 1882--tempts the conclusion that the old diplomatic grounds of Europe, Germany, and Italy, where the major powers struggled and bickered, were now gone and had to be replaced elsewhere. In this argument Africa was of no European interest in and of itself; it was an area in which European diplomatic negotiation could be played out. But there is more to the thesis than this. Nationalism must be considered. As has frequently been asserted, nationalism had the qualities of a secularized religion; it suggested the purposes and the destiny of the society upholding it. In the United States the idea of "Manifest Destiny," of the belief that divine purpose directed this nation westward to the Pacific, is a well-known expression of this sentiment. The German soldiers who wore belt buckles in World War I with the words Gott mit uns on them is a less significant, but no less telling example. Each western nation tended to develop a grand national myth about its unique and destined goals. In broad and poetic terms, these myths were all translated to the colonial world in variations of Kipling's famous words: "the white man's burden." France, Great Britain, and the other colonizers had a duty to bring the benefits of their advanced civilization to the world beyond their geographical limits. Here is a smug and simple argument, but one of great appeal in the late nineteenth century when European technological superiority could be measured. It was easy to conclude that the steam engine was a manifestation of European cultural superiority in all domains. As one French cynic put it: the Chinese were supposedly inferior because they had no machine guns or generals like Moltke, the Prussian who directed the stunning German military defeat of France in 1870. This failure or unwillingness to distinguish wisely between technology and culture allowed the Europeans to be arrogant, and, moreover, to assume that in any arrangement of the world they were at the head or in the center. Buttressing this contention was a pseudo-scientific attitude known by the name "Social Darwinism." Darwin's theory of evolution, first espoused in his famous book On the Origin of Species, published in 1859, was extended and distorted to include social organisms as well as biological ones. Not Darwin, but lesser minds and less cautious ones, suggested that the state or society was like a biological organism: it grew or it died-the alternatives were that stark. In a world already described by capitalist economics as being "competitive," the biological contentions that all species "struggle for survival" and that the

strongest would survive could be and easily were made social laws. Nationalism now carried the striking corollary that the state needed to expand, to grow in size as proof of its vitality and as confirmation of its historical destiny. Given the fact that this was the age in which bigness had already acquired qualitative value, it was easy for nationalists to conclude that the bigger the state in size, the greater it was in culture or civilization. The terms "Greater Britain," "Greater France," and even "Greater Germany" were bandied about as expressions of national pride in overseas political enterprises. The notion that the "sun never sets on the British Empire" was a comforting thought for the late nineteenthcentury English. When the German foreign minister, Prince von Bulow, asserted that Germany seeks "her place in the sun," he was hoping for a similar condition. These new perceptions of the place of European nations in the world suggest that an age of global politics was emerging. Naval power was then at its zenith: the Americans sent the "Great White Fleet" around the world during the administration of President Theodore Roosevelt; the British launched the latest in battleship design with the Dreadnought in 1906. And the Germans, hoping to threaten, if not compete equally with the British, began a large navy in 1898 under the watchful eye of Admiral Tirpitz and the proud gaze of Kaiser Wilhelm II. To support these new oceanic fleets in their world mission, coaling stations and naval ports were deemed necessary. The port of Singapore, the city of Dakar in Senegal, the base at San Diego-and many other lesser known geographical locations--were linked into grand "lifelines of empire," of which the British "red line" was the most famous: going from England, past Gibraltar, through the Suez Canal, beyond Aden to India. And the new canals--the Panama and the Kiel--were manifestly assets in this naval age, the means by which to move fleets quickly from one body of water to another. Thus, a strategic component was added to the many reasons, or justifications, for imperialism. The causal pattern of modern imperialism was complicated and extensive. Equally important, it was not all Eurocentric. The explanations adduced above clearly suggest that imperialism radiated from its center in Europe out to the peripheries of the non-Western world. However, historical patterns are neither so symmetrical nor so singularly directed. Beyond the grand generalizations concerning an expansionist capitalism or a gloryseeking nationalism are the vexing peculiarities of the "local scene": the activities carried on by merchant, adventurer, soldier, or missionary, far from the capitals of Europe--and often equally far from the thinking taking place in them. Many contemporary historians are persuaded that the periphery often acted on the center: in terms of physics, the activity was centripetal as well as centrifugal. A local revolt, coastal competition among vying European merchants, problems with local rulers or local pirates, all were factors upsetting the local balance of power and necessitating the intervention of the home country, if the position of its local nationals--again the merchant, missionary, adventurer, and soldier--was to be maintained. As the peculiarities of regional history are examined, the simple pattern of a Eurocentric imperialism is found wanting. The activity occurring on the local scene in Africa or Asia may have propelled an unwilling or unprepared government into imperialist activity it really had no national interest in. In this respect, imperialism can be considered national reaction to local "accidents."

What remains important, regardless of the causes that inspired it, is the acquisition of such incredibly large and varied colonial empires throughout the world.

Modern Imperialism and its Impact Apr 7, 2010 Daniel Cunningham

World Empires - Political Map of the World: World Map Imperialism played a big part in the economies of large, industrial or militarilypowerful nations and even in the world economy in the last two centuries. In the 19th century, several countries in Europe, including Britain, Germany, France and others, created colonies in Africa, Asia and its islands in order to have control over the resources there. They accomplished this by using their military, politicking and businesses investments. Britain was the greatest European "empire" of the 19th century. It included Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India and several colonies in Africa and Asia. India rebelled against the British in 1857, like American colonists did in 1775. The British crushed the rebellion in India, unlike in America. The British built railroads, telegraphs, canals, harbors and had improved farming there. France, Germany and other European powers learned from this and "jumped on the bandwagon", gaining colonies - mostly in Africa. American Imperialism Following the Spanish-American War in 1898, the United States saw the opportunity to gain colonies from the islands it conquered from Spain in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean, including Cuba, Puerto Rico,Guam and the Philippines. Many people in these empires believed they could truly be a world power only by gaining colonies around the world. Ads by Google Online Baby Shop Baby & Mom Care Products @First Cry Upto 50% Off Prices. Shop Now! www.Firstcry.com Property in South Africa 1000's of Property Listings. Expert Advice, Pics, Info & Virtual Tours! www.PrivateProperty.co.za/SA

Why Did the U.S. Try to Gain Colonies Overseas? One of the reasons why the U.S. was willing to seek colonies aboard in the last few years of the 19th century was the closing of the American West and seeking new markets. The frontiers of the world were sought by the government and businesses. By 1890, the U.S. was making more than it could use. Therefore, it was important to look overseas to find new markets for U.S. produce, new occupations for capital and new jobs for workers. Most Americans agreed and feared that if the U.S. did not act, then the other world powers would gather more colonies and the U.S. would be largely left out of the world economy. American scholars defended imperialism as a justification of Darwins survival of the fittest philosophy. Stronger nations, in their view, would dominate weaker nations or territories in order to help those stronger nations gain wealth, health and to pass along that wealth and health to the weaker nations/territories it dominates. Others believed that the Anglo-Saxon race, especially in America, should spread its ideas of liberty and Christianity to primitive people in under-developed lands. Another reason that imperialism appealed to Americans was the control of the sea. It makes for a productive economy, foreign commerce, a navy to defend its trade routes and colonies, which have the resources and markets. The Impact of Imperialism Imperialism has benefited the citizens of the imperial nations, including the U.S., by expanding foreign commerce and thereby helping the domestic economies of each nation. By having control over lands overseas, a nation can have more output for itself and foreign trade. It exports would be greater than its imports, thereby increasing its wealth. They would have less to buy from other nations or territories and profit from them, seeking what those nations/territories have. It has also benefited the land the nation has control of, by improving or building roads, schools, sewers, health, education and other things. At the same time, it provides the natives with work in their native land. For example, the British created schools in India for Indian children so that they would be loyal to the British. They did this for other thier colonies. Read This Next Causes of World War I American Imperialism - Expansion in the U.S. American Foreign Policy Before WWI

But for many imperial nations, control over a land meant more than domination. It meant repression and brutality as in the case with Britain, even the United States, particularly in The Philippines. Most Filipinos resented American rule, despite their gratitude for them freeing the Filipinos from Spanish rule. They viewed the Americans as liberators then as occupiers. So, they rebelled and the U.S. retaliated for four years, killing guerrillas responsible for attacks on American soldiers. Some of that retaliation resulted in entire communities being forced to evacuate and sent to concentration camps, while U.S. soldiers burned their communities and resources so that the rebels wouldn't be able to use them. Many suspected rebels were killed by Americans without proof of their loyalties and deeds. The U.S. controlled the islands with a civilian governor until 1946, when it granted independence. Modern American Imperialism Imperialism has played a large part, politically, in recent U.S. history by setting up democratic governments in West Germany, Japan (after WW II), South Korea, (after WW II and the Korean War), Vietnam (after the Indo-China War), and most recently, Afghanistan (after its 2001-2002 war), and Iraq (after its 2003 war). In Iraq, Americas first priority was to stop the looting of Saddams palaces and government buildings by Iraqi citizens, by maintaining law and order. U.S. forces were to set up elections to ensure democracy there as U.S. did in Germany, Japan and the Far East. Soon U.S. forces got bogged down there, responding to terrorist attacks. In the end, there were democratic elections resulting in a democratic government. But U.S. forces are still there in a policy that appears to be over-reaching "political imperialism", unlike in

post-war Germany, Japan and South Korea, but much like in the Philippines in the early to mid 20th century. As for commerce, only Japan and South Korea have benefited from U.S. influence to a great degree; so much that they have been Americas greatest competition throughout the 1980s and 90s until China took over the world market. Sources: (Brinkley, Alan. Current, Richard. Freidel, Frank. Williams, T. Harry. American History, A Survey, Seventh Edition, Volume II: Since 1865, pages 575-592. 1987.) (Harper, Andrew. Interpretations of American History II class notes. 2005.) Read more at Suite101: Modern Imperialism and its Impact | Suite101.com http://daniel-cunningham.suite101.com/modern-imperialism-and-its-impacta222745#ixzz1nHsmnRlJ

Modern Imperialism Imperialism has existed for many years and has displayed many differing forms. It is a naturally occurring event that has a vast and complex history. Major world powers have been striving to expand their relative power and at the same time provide for their people. From the earliest civilizations groups of individuals set out to improve their well being at the expense of others. When examining more modern imperialism there is little variation from this view. Countries all over the world depend on their colonies to meet the needs of their nation. The world has become transformed and many changes have occurred based on situations resulting from imperialism. There are processes towards basic imperialism that can be labelled as fundamental. Japan's imperial experience in Korea, for example, differs from what the "West" experienced in Africa and Asia in several ways. The 19th and 20th centuries displayed a great amount of expansion and the countries of the West were heavily responsible for this experience. Japan, however, played a key role in the history of imperialism as they joined in the fight for world power. First of all, Japan's experience is different from the West's in that it was more of a reactionary decision to expand, while the West had strong, rational motives to do so. Secondly, Japan's choices in altering Korea's society by such drastic measures are more powerful than how most of the West approached controlling their many colonies. Thirdly, the West did not have to deal with the outside interference and resistance that Japan was accustomed to near the end of their rule over Korea. Fourthly, Japan and Korea are two closely related countries. Their societies are similar and their geographical locations are very close to each other. The West, on the other hand, does not typically have this attachment with its colonies and the effects are noticeable. Lastly, because Japan had a history of Emperor worship the ways in which the country approached imperialism is affected in ways not applicable to the West. These differing aspects of rule displayed by Japan and the West clearly promote Bruce Cummings take on the matter of imperial experiences in the modern era. Imperialism and colonialism can be explained fundamentally to be able to better observe the differences between the methods and reactions that Japan and the West encounter. Imperialism is generally defined as a system of constraint and control exercised over the people and territories. It can be politically controlled or not depending on the need of the nation. Colonialism varies from imperialism in that it does not necessarily impose rule over the tributary countries, but merely controls trade and foreign relations. Alteration of the local political structure often occurred if the ruling country deemed it necessary. For example, expansion in India, where the state was taken

over, was quite different from that in China, where the state was maintained but society was influenced. Whatever the differences, the main goals of establishing a colony by imperial or colonial means is to better the home country by exploiting others. There are many motivations towards expanding the reach of a country. Desire for new knowledge, the spread of religion, and the search for allies are all desired components of expansion. However, economic motives seem to lead the group. Imperialism is seen as an integral component of global capitalism. By the 1900's imperialism was driving the capitalist world economy and expanding it tremendously. The search for new sources of wealth was key to the West. Japan differed from the West in this respect. Japanese society in this period bore very little resemblance to Western capitalist societies, regardless of the basic economic imperialist theories. Economic motivation was not completely disregarded, but it was simply not the main reason for the decision to expand in the case of the Japanese. The West wanted to take complete advantage of all of the opportunities expansion can provide. They wanted a cheap supply of consumer goods and of raw materials, a new market for their exports, a way to avoid taxing tariffs (especially in the Orient where spices and luxury items were a premium), and a new and rich supply of natural resources. Imperialism offered those aspects of economic returns and the West demonstrated just how beneficial it could be. Japan and the West seemed to have different purposes behind expanding their country's reach on the world. The West developed an imperial experience relatively naturally. As they got more modernized the West realized the potential for expanding their economic market. Other areas of the World offered new opportunities that the West was interested in. The West realized the potential that Asia and Africa presented and wanted to reap some of their wealth to better themselves. To do so they had to incorporate the foreign country into their economy

Modern European Imperialism, Up to the 1960s = Rise and Fall?

with links to SAC & MAPS FIRST, SOME DEFINITIONS "Imperialism" may be defined as the projection of state power (preeminently administrative, military and economic) from one sovereign center ("Metropol", Metropole, or "core" ) into a region beyond established borders ("Periphery"). Imperialism may or may not include "colonial" occupation of periphery territory, but it always includes managerial control and exploitation of the wealth and resources of the periphery in the interest of the metropol. In many instances designated "insiders" and "clients" of the metropol state -- companies or corporations -- play the central role, but always with the underwriting of the metropol state. Usually, imperialism is defended as being in the interest of the periphery. In different forms, metropol/periphery relationships are described as a bountiful superior civilization bestowing its blessings on a needy inferior. Modern imperialism has taken the form of outsider control of the process whereby non-European (and some European) areas and peoples ("backward" or "underdeveloped") have been brought forcibly into the world of industrialized market economics. Metropol and Periphery are not absolute terms, of course. They describe the essential qualities of the specific relationship between an imperial power and the imperialized victim (or ward). Some have found it easy to generalize the metropol/periphery relationship in such a way as to include the manner in which managerial centers of power might relate to outlying regions within one and the same sovereign nation-state (US populists and progressives [ID] often saw it that way), or in such a way as to attribute the qualities of a political metropol to any of the globe-striding, trans-national corporations, or even in such a way as to include the actions of certain international organizations, e.g., World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) [ID] or the World Trade Organization (WTO) [ID]
Earlier empire building was mainly for resources and spreading of religion and so forth whereas 19th century imperialism was based on nationalism and obtaining markets for trade.

Old Imperialism: It occurred between 16th and 18th centuries. It began in 1870s colonized Asia and Africa by using military force to take control of local governments. It exploited local economies for raw materials required by Europes growing industry. It imposed Western values to benefit the backwards colonies. New Imperialism: European powers did not usually acquire territory (except for Spain in Americas and Portugal in Brazil) but rather built a series of trading stations. It respected and frequently cooperated with local rulers in India, China, Japan, Indonesia, and other areas where trade flourished between locals and European coastal trading centers. It involved economic penetration of non-European regions in the 19th century.