Framework for imperialism/colonialism

Definition

Reasons

Theories- Liberal non-marxist and Radical Marxist

Critique

Definition of imperialism by Hobbes

Prior to Hobbes, two neutral connotations of imperialism existed

Understanding of capitalism is important

Reasons-

Economic

Prestige, power

Ideology

Religion

Geographical suzerainty

Theories- take from kautsky

Liberal non-marxist

Radical Marxists

Post colonial

Neo imperialism

Critique: inital conditions approach, liberal-radical approach, colonialism as social formation approach

Introduction:

Imperialism and Colonialism are two terms that has been used interchangeably,

though etymologically both have different meanings. But in terms of practice, it is

tough to distinguish between the two. For example, British control of India has

been seen as British ‘imperialism’ by some and as British ‘colonialism’ by others.

Definition of imperialism:

(from INGNOU)

Imperialism refers to the establishment and safeguarding of unequal economic,

political, and cultural relationship between states, which is very often expressed

in terms of domination and subordination. In other words, it entails the

oppression and exploitation of the weak in the hands of the powerful. The word ‘imperial’ is derived from the Latin word; imperium which means ‘command’. In

its broader meaning, it involves, “the domination by one country or group of

people over others in ways that benefit the former usually at the expense of the

latter” {Keith & Gurley, 1985}. According to Cohen, “Imperialism might be

defined as a relationship of effective domination or control, political or economic,

direct or indirect, of one nation over another” {Benjamin, 1973}. George

Lichtheim described empire/imperialism as “the relationship of ruling or

controlling power to those under its domination. He traced imperialism from its

classic roots in Greek and Roman empires. He believed that domination and

subjugation constitute the elements of imperialism” {Lichtheim (1970}. Whereas

Chilcote argues that imperialism, as a relationship of domination and subjugation,

is derived not only from the traditional understanding of imperialism (dating back

to the Greek and Roman Empires) but it is also associated with the influence of

mercantile interests, along with the rise of nation-state and the spread of

European power overseas to Africa and Latin America {Chilcote, 1981: 4}. For

example, British Empire and Russian Tsarist regime had established its control

over large parts of Asia-Africa and central Asia, respectively. In other words,

imperialism is attached with powerful states that have capability to dominate

other states. If one is going by the literal meaning, colonialism has different

connotation altogether. However, like modern day imperialism, colonialism, too,

developed mainly as a consequence of the Industrial revolution in the West.

However, looking from etymological point of view, the term ‘colony’ originated

from the Latin word ‘colonus’, meaning ‘farmer’. This simply means that

colonialism originally involved the transfer of population to a new territory.

However, the above meaning of the term colonialism does not explain some

specific cases such as British control over India and different European powers’

control over China during the last century. Hence, the term colonialism needed to
acquire a more political meaning than the description above proposed. It became

more of a kind of domination on a colony by a coloniser. Colony here means, the

territory where a dominant power has established its political and economic

control through either explicit use of force (as in case of India), or tacitly

controlling the economy of the country (as in the case of China).

The indirect

control of a foreign territory had different names like, protectorate, dominion or

satellite state. Thus colonialism, like imperialism denotes a process of economic

exploitation through political control. Invariably, however, when a dominant

power uses force with a view to establish control over political institutions of the

subjugated colony the relationship of colonialism changes into imperialism. Being

essentially a relationship, it becomes difficult, at times, to identify a dividing line

between the two. In case of India, the suppression of the rebellion of 1857 by

brutal force used by the British denoted a change in the relationship. The British

had openly shed the disguise of being mere traders or revenue – seekers.

Definitions (from sobhanlal dutta gupta)

Etymologically speaking, the word imperialism is associated with Empire in the sense that this entails the idea of extension of a country’s power through political annexation of
territories of other countries.

Colonialism is an offshoot of imperialism and is more specific, in its being, as the Oxford dictionary defines it, as a “policy or practice of acquiring political control over another
country, occupying it with settlers, and exploiting it economically.

The "taproot of imperialism" is not in nationalist pride, but in capitalist oligarchy; and, as a form of economic organization, imperialismis unnecessary and immoral, the result of
the mis-distribution of wealth in a capitalist society. That dysfunction of political economycreated the socio-cultural desire to extend the national markets into foreign lands, in
search of profits greater than those available in the Mother Country.

So we understand that capitalism was important to the understanding of imperialism.

J. A. Hobson said that imperialism was an economic, political, and cultural practice common to nations with a capitalist economic system. Because of its innate productive
capacity for generating profits, capitalism did not functionally require a large-scale, large-term, and costly socio-economic enterprise such as imperialism. A capitalist society
could avoid resorting to imperialism through the radical re-distribution of the national economic resources among the society,

Understanding of cap essential for understanding of imperialism:

Capitalism is essentially the investment of money in the

expectation of making a profifit, and huge profifits could be made at

some considerable risk by long-distance trading ventures of this

kind. Profit was quite simply the result of scarcity and distance.

It was made from the huge difference between the price paid for,

say, pepper in the spice islands and the price it fetched in Europe,
a difference that dwarfed the costs of the venture.

Capitalist production is based on wage labour. A clear line of

division and conflflict emerges between the owners of capital, who

own what Karl Marx called ‘the means of production’, and those

who sell their labour in exchange for wages.

Markets, like merchants, are nothing new, but they are central to a

capitalist society in a quite new and more abstract way. This is

because production and consumption are divorced – people do not

consume what they produce or produce what they consume – and

are linked only through the markets where goods and services are

bought and sold.

This applies not only to goods and services but also to labour,

money, and capital. The wage, that is the price, for labour is

established on a labour market, where employers compete for

labour and workers compete for jobs. Money itself is bought and

sold on currency markets. The ownership of companies is bought

and sold in stock exchanges

markets generate intense

competition between capitalist enterprises. They compete in many

different ways by, for example, exploiting labour more effificiently or

using technical innovation to reduce costs or market products more

effectively. Competition forces companies into constant change as

they seek to beat the competition or at least keep up with it

capitalism involves the

investment of money to make more money. While merchants have

long done this, it is when production is fifinanced in this way that a

transformative capitalism comes into being.

Characteristics of cap
- capital importance

- profiteering

-wage labour

- economic competitiveness

- financial institutions and the banking system

Forms of cap

-mercantile cap:

Capitalism is essentially the investment of money in the

expectation of making a profifit, and huge profifits could be made at

some considerable risk by long-distance trading ventures of this

kind. Profifit was quite simply the result of scarcity and distance.

It was made from the huge difference between the price paid for,

say, pepper in the spice islands and the price it fetched in Europe,

a difference that dwarfed the costs of the venture. What

mattered was whether the cargo made it back to Europe, though

market conditions were also very important, for the sudden

return of a large flfleet could depress prices. Markets could also

become saturated if the high profifitability of the trade led too

many to enter it. A glut of pepper eventually forced the East India

Company to diversify into other spices and other products, such

as indigo.

A large amount of capital was needed for this trade. An East

Indianman, as the ships engaged in this trade were called, had

to be built, fifitted out, armed with cannon against Dutch and

Portuguese rivals, and repaired, if and when it returned. The

Company’s shipyards at Blackwall and Deptford, which were

major employers of local labour, required fifinancing. Capital was

also needed to stock outgoing vessels with bullion and goods to

pay for the spices, with munitions, and with food and drink for

the large crews they carried.

. Like its

counterparts abroad, the English East India Company was closely

intertwined with the state, which granted it a monopoly for the

import of oriental goods and gave it the right to export bullion to

pay for them. In exchange the state, always short of money, gained

revenue from customs duties on the large and valuable imports

made by the company. There was certainly competition but it was

international competition, in the Indies between the English, the

Dutch, and the Portuguese, and as far as possible eliminated

within each country.

This was certainly capitalism, for long-distance trade required a

heavy investment of capital in the expectation of large profifits, but a

free market capitalism it clearly was not. The secret of making high

profifits was to secure monopolies by one means or another, exclude

competitors, and control markets in every way possible

-industrial cap

In the 1780s two Scots, James M‘Connel and John Kennedy,

travelled south to become apprentices in the Lancashire cotton

industry.

By 1820 the company had

three mills and had established itself as the leading spinner of fifine

cotton in Manchester, the global metropolis of cotton spinning. There were already 344 cotton mills by 1819

M‘Connel and Kennedy’s labour force grew from 312 in

1802 to around 1,500 by the 1830s. Much of this was cheap child

labour and at times nearly half those employed were under the age

of 16.

As industrial capitalism developed, conflflict over wages became

increasingly organized. The spinners defended themselves against

wage reductions through their unions, organizing at fifirst locally but

then regionally and nationally

Industrial capitalism not only created work, it also created ‘leisure’

in the modern sense of the term.

Leisure was also the creation of capitalism in another sense,

through the commercialization of leisure.

The

new railway companies provided cheap excursion tickets and

Lancashire cotton workers could go to Blackpool for the day

The investment of capital in the expectation of profifit drove the

Industrial Revolution and rapid technical progress increased

productivity by leaps and bounds. But machines could not work on

their own and it was wage labour that was central to the making of

profifit. The wage bill was the employer’s main cost and became the

focus of the conflflict between the owners of capital and, as Karl Marx

put it, those who owned only their ‘labour power’

-financial cap

Hilferding highlights the fact that industrial capitalism has been replaced by financial capitalism. Following this transformation, the industrial liberal bourgeoisie, favourable, at
least initially, to the free market and to the suppression of feudal restrictions, has become, in the course of time, financial imperialistic bourgeoisie, organically operating within
the structure of the State.
State (political power) and Finance (economic power) become eventually the two faces of the same coin.

The term “finance capital” comes from Rudolf Hilferding, the Austro-German Marxist theoretician. He was categorizing an increasing concentration and centralization of capital
in large corporations, cartels, trusts, and banks.1 For Hilferding, the earlier competitive “liberal capitalism,” opposed to intervention by the mercantilist state, was transformed at
the turn of the century into monopolistic “finance capital” which was integrated into a “centralized and privilege-dispensing state.” He thought that flows of investment capital
served to integrate the nascent global economy, which was operating predominantly under the control of the City of London, then the leading power center. Hilferding saw
finance capital engaged in vigorous expansion, constantly searching for new spheres of investment and markets.

In Finance Capital Hilferding suggests that, in the early stages of capitalist development, banks engage in short-term lending for “circulation” purposes, while concerning
themselves with their liquidity. As capitalist development proceeds, banks lend longer-term for “investment” purposes, and their concern shifts to securing their solvency.
Consequently, banks and industrial enterprises become amalgamated into “finance capital,” developing mutual “commitment” relations, and giving a bank-based character to
the financial system.

Ma’am
Acc to hobson, imperialism was a historically determined event: the transformation of nationalism which has dominated the international arena for more than a century into a
general tendency of states to expand beyond their national boundaries.

Prior to hobson, two neutral connotations of imperialism existed:

One used by those who desired to keep British settlements under imperial control rather than allying them to become independent states and the other associated with
expansionism and control of uncivilised parts of the world.

Reasons:

Economic

Prestige, power

Ideology

Religion

Geographical suzerainty

Theories:

Move from colonialism to neocolonialism:

This switchover from open colonialism to neo-colonialism happened for one primary reason

and one main secondary reason. The primary reason was the tremendous uprisings of oppressed

people‟s in the Third World against open colonialism. The world‟s peoples just would not stand

for traditional colonialism any more. The secondary reason is that the United States—which was

at the same time developing as a superpower and lacking a huge colonial empire itself—for its

own ideological reasons preferred a more hidden form of exploitation and control of other

countries and would no longer accept the exclusive political and economic control of large parts

of the world by its weakened European competitors. The U.S. found it better to pretend to be in

favor of “independence” and “democracy” in order to gain entrance into the former European

colonies itself.

Critique (from reader)

Initial conditions approach

Liberal critique

Colonialism as social formation approach