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V. Late Nineteenth-Century Colonial Expansion and the Attack on the Theory of Economic Imperialism: A Case of Mistaken Identity?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Eric Stokes
Eric Stokes
Affiliation:
St Catharine's College, Cambridge
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Extract

The concept of imperialism which Hobson, Lenin and the combined force of the international socialist movement forged into an idée fixe of the twentieth century was roughly handled by Western scholars long before 1945. But since then the attack has grown more precise and its character has altered. Among the first of the post-war historians (writing in English) to attempt the dethronement of imperialism as the demi-urge of the period between 1870 and 1914 was Richard Koebner. He determined on a semantic approach and put the term's linguistic history to rigorous scrutiny. On the philosophical assumption that a term's meaning is to be defined by its actual use and provenance in the political discourse in which it arose, he found that the modern concept of economic imperialism sprang out of a limited, local controversy over the nature of the Boer War. He concluded that it had been illicitly mated with other forms of militarism and economic expansion to spawn a hybrid, mythical monster that had been allowed to sprawl its length over more than half a century of world history.1

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , June 1969 , pp. 285 - 301
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1969

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References

1 Koebner, Richard, ‘The Concept of Economic Imperialism’, Economic History Review, 2nd ser. II, no. I (1949).Google Scholar

2 Cairncross, A.K., Home and Foreign Investment, 1870–1913 (1953). The best summary of the literature is to be found in D. K. Fieldhouse. See below.Google Scholar

3 A.J.P. Taylor, Germany's First Bid for Colonies, and The Struggle for Mastery in Europ.

4 Gallagher, J. and Robinson, R.,‘ The Partition of Africa’, New Cambridge Modern History, XI; Africa and the Victorians (1961);Google Scholar‘The Imperialism of Free Trade’, Economic History Review, 2nd ser. VI (1953);Google ScholarRobinson, R., ‘The Official Mind of Imperialism’, Historians in Tropical Africa, University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (Salisbury, 1962).Google Scholar

5 A. J. P. Taylor, The Struggle for Mastery in Europe, p. 256. Cf. Hinsley, F.H., ‘International Rivalry in the Colonial Sphere, 1869–1885’; Cambridge History of the British Empire, III, 99.Google Scholar

6 Hobson, J.A., Imperialism (1902), p. 80,Google Scholar cited Fieldhouse, D.K., ‘Imperialism: an Historiographical Revision’, Economic History Review, XIV, 2 (1961.Google Scholar

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8 Idem, p. 197.

9 Fieldhouse, D.K., The Theory of Capitalist Imperialism, paperback (1967), p. 192.Google Scholar

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12 Idem, pp. 299–300. Cf. ‘Imperialism and the Split in Socialism’, October 1916, Lenin, Works, XXIII, III: ‘Neither Marx nor Engels lived to see the imperialist epoch of world capitalism, which began not earlier than 1896–1900.’

Cf. ‘The Discussion on Self-Determination Summed Up’, July 1916, Works, XXII, 341–2: ‘…and 1898–1916 (I take the most important landmarks of imperialism as a period: from the Spanish-American imperialist war to the European imperialist war)’.

Cf. Lenin to Jivessa Armand, 25 Dec. 1916: Works, XXXV, 268. ‘You have forgotten the main thing—that in 1891 no imperialism existed at all (I have tried to show in my pamphlet that it was born in 1898–1900, not earlier)…’

13 Political Economy, A Textbook issued by the Institute of Economics of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R. ed. Dutt, C.P. and Rothstein, Andrew (London [1957]), pp. 279, 296.Google Scholar

14 Cf. ‘The Collapse of the Second International’, May-June 1915, Works, XXI, 225–6. ‘Let us recall what the passage from the previous and “peaceful” period of capitalism to the present and imperialist period has been based on: free competition has yielded to monopolist combines and the world has been partitioned. Both these facts (and factors) are obviously of world-wide significance: Free Trade and peaceful competition were possible and necessary as long as capital was in a position to enlarge its colonies without hindrance, and seize unoccupied land in Africa, etc., and as long as the concentration of capital was still weak and no monopolist concerns existed, i.e. concerns of a magnitude permitting domination in an entire branch of industry. The appearance and growth of such monopolist concerns, have rendered the free competition of former times impossible; they have cut the ground from under its feet, while the partition of the world compels the capitalist to go over from peaceful expansion to an armed struggle for the re-partitioning of colonies and spheres of influence.’

15 ‘Imperialism’, Works, XXXII, 242.

16 ‘Imperialism’, 1920 Preface, Works, XXII, 189–90. Cf. ‘Preface to N. Bukharin's Pamphlet, Imperialism and the World Economy’, December 1915, Works, XXII, 103.

17 ‘Imperialism’, Works, XXII, 256.

18 Idem, p. 268. But cf. Lenin to Inessa Armand, 19 Jan. 1917: Works, XXXV, 273: ‘1891. The colonial policy of France and Germany was insignificant. Italy, Japan, the United States had no colonies at all (now they have)…’

19 Works, XXII, p.262. Cf. J.Gallagher and R. Robinson, ‘The Partition of Africa ’New Cambridge Modern History, XI, 626, ‘The partition had brought them [European statesmen] to a kind of geopolitical claustrophobia, a feeling that national expansion was running out of world space, and that the great powers of the twentieth century would be those who had filched every nook and cranny of territory left.’

20 J. A. Hobson, Imperialism (1902 ed.), p. 38.

21 Ibid. p. 46.

22 Cf. Cowan, C.D., Nineteenth Century Malaya (1961), p. 270.Google Scholar

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24 Africa and the Victorians, p. 469.

25 J. Gallagher and R. E. Robinson, New Cambridge Modern History, XI, 593.

26 Cf. Africa and the Victorians, p. 156: ‘The Egyptian crisis after 1876 was no accident. Although both French and British misunderstood its character, it was not unusual for European influences in the end to bring about a nationalist reaction and the fall of a collaborating Oriental regime. The internal crisis was worked by the extension of European influence into Egypt since the beginning of the 19th century; and when the insidious effects had come to a head, the occasion of direct European intervention had arisen.’

27 But there are occasional direct references, cf. ‘The Imperialism of Free Trade’, Economic History Review, 2nd ser. VI, I (1953), 2, 15.Google Scholar

28 ‘The Partition of Africa’, New Cambridge Modern History, XI, 639.

29 Some of Lenin's earliest uses of the term ‘imperialism’ omit all reference to extra-European colonialism; cf. ‘The Tasks of Revolutionary Social Democracy in the European War’, Aug. 1914, Works, XXI (Moscow 1964),Google Scholar 15ff. and ‘ The European War and International Socialism’, Aug-Sept. 1914, idem, pp. 20ff.

30 Cf. Hilferding, R., Das Finanzkapital (Wien, 1927 edn.),Google Scholar fünfter Abschnitt, ‘Zur Wirtschaftspolitik des Finanzkapitals’.

31 ‘Imperialism’, Works, XXII, 243.

32 ‘A Caricature of Marxism and Imperialist Economism’, Aug.–Oct. 1916; Works, XXIII, 44.

33 ‘Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism’, Works, XXII, 297.

34 Idem. pp. 268–9.

35 Bukharin, N., Imperialism and World Economy (London, Martin Lawrence, n.d.), p. 121.Google Scholar

36 ‘A Caricature of Marxism and Imperialist Economism’; Collected Works, XXIII, 42.

37 This was Lenin's first title, changed later on to ‘Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism’.

38 ‘Imperialism… ’, Works, XXII, 297. Cf. ‘Imperialism and the Split in Socialism’, Oct. 1916; Works, XXIII, 107.

39 Winslow, E.M., The Pattern of Imperialism (New York, 1948), p. 155.Google Scholar

40 Luxemburg, Rosa, The Accumulation of Capital (1963, paperback), p. 446.Google Scholar

41 Nettl, J.P., Rosa Luxemburg (1966), II, 533.Google Scholar

42 Cf. ‘The Junius Pamphlet’ and ‘ The Discussion on Self-Determination Summed Up’, Works, XXII. ‘A Caricature of Marxism and Imperialist Economism’, Works, XXIII.

43 ‘The Question of Peace’, July-Aug. 1915, Works, XXI, 290.

44 ‘The Junius Pamphlet’, July 1916, Works, XXII, 310.

45 ‘Socialism and War’, July-Aug. 1915, Works, XXI, 306.

46 ‘The Discussion on Self-Determination Summed Up’, July 1916, Works, XXII, 342.

47 ‘The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination’, Feb.-March 1916, Works, XXII, 150–1.

48 ‘The Discussion on Self-Determination Summed Up’, July 1916, Works, XXII, 338: ‘ …capitalism is undoubtedly developing the productive forces more vigorously, rapidly and independently in Poland, Finland, the Ukraine and Alsace than in India, Turkestan, Egypt and other straightforward colonies’.

49 ‘The Discussion on Self-Determination Summed Up’, July 1916, Works, XXII, 356–7.

50 Leonard Woolf, Empire and Commerce in Africa (1920), pp. 22 ff. Maurice Dobb, chap, VII, ‘Imperialism’ in Political Economy and Capitalism (1937).

51 Lenin, , ‘Preliminary Draft of Theses on the National and Colonial Questions’, June 1920, Works, XXXI, p. 146:Google Scholar ‘World political developments are of necessity concentrated on a single focus—the struggle of the world bourgeoisie against the Soviet Russian Republic, around which are inevitably grouped, on the one hand, the Soviet movements of the advanced workers in all countries, and, on the other, all the national-liberation movements in the colonies and among the oppressed nationalities… ’ Cf. his outline for draft theses on the international economic and political situation for the 2nd Congress of the Comintern, 19 July 1920, Works, XXXV, 450–1.

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54 Soviet Russia, in terms of the theory, is included in ‘the industrialized world’. For a modern Marxist statement, cf. Magdoff, Harry,’The Age of Imperialism’, Monthly Review, New York, XX (06 1968), esp. pp. 22–3.Google Scholar