European Imperialism

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]

Remember the "second industrial revolution" [ID]. The giant growth of industrial productivity was fueled in part by growing European control over world resources and markets, building massively on the two previous centuries of economic "globalization" [see map just below]. Economic competitiveness thus became linked with national competitiveness. Out of this, a new spirit of "profitable militarism" gripped parts of Europe. Examples = Cecil Rhodes | Jules Ferry | Albert Beveridge | Charles A. Conant | Novelist Joseph Conrad looked deeply into the "heart" of this "darkness", a brutalization of Europe as well as of the "peripheries" under its control

*1867:1912; Some potential victims of imperialism began to stir in their own defense and with an eye to imperial expansion on their own behalf [EG#1 = Japan] [EG#2 = Russia]

*1897:The new nation-state Italy stumbled badly as it sought to join the camp of the imperializing West

But almost no peoples beyond the western European and north American territories escaped the modern dilemma (transform yourself or be transformed by others). Theoretical views on meaning of "Third World"
*1974:1989; Immanuel Wallerstein in his influential Modern World-System (3vv) refuted the notion that there were first, second and third worlds. Also see his World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction (2004)

*1914:Asia [MAP]
*1914:Africa [MAP]

RISE

*1492:+; Atlantic seaboard monarchical powers (Spain, Portugal, England and France) solved the problems of trans-oceanic travel and transport. This was the true beginning of "globalization" [MAP]

*1789:+; Rise of the great mercantilist corporations

*1831:+; International grain trade LOOP

*1840s:1949; China

*1843:+; LOOP on Putiatin involves USA

*1850s:1914; "The Great Game" [16-hop LOOP]

*1870s:+; International petroleum era opened

*1853:+; Manchuria, China & Japan

*1877:1879; Russo-Turkish War [MAP]

*1885fe26: Berlin Conference divided Africa [MAP]

*1897:Italian defeat at the hands of Ethiopia [MAP]

*1896:+; USA in Spanish-American War [join 11-hop LOOP on US imperialism, to the end of the Russo-Japanese War] [MAP]

*1903:1905; Russian and Japanese competition in Manchuria provoked Russo-Japanese War [MAP#1] [MAP#2] and stirred European imperialist and anti-imperialist passions