Modern European Imperialism =
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 into regions beyond established frontiers or borders.
Throughout most known history, the sovereign center of state
power has been a great ruling city ("Metropol", Metropole, or "core" ),
exercised in regions either close or far away ("Periphery")
[ID].
Imperialism may or may not include formal absorption within
borders of the metropol or "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, the designated "insiders" and "clients" of the metropol state --
companies or corporations -- play the central role, but always with the
underwriting if not outright support and often partnership association of the metropol state.
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.
In the beginning, the imperialist process was carried out with
relentless cruelty [EG]. By the nineteenth
century, imperialism was defended as being in the interest of the periphery. In
different forms, metropol/periphery relationships were frequently described as a bountiful
superior civilization bestowing its blessings on a needy inferior.
Metropol and Periphery are theoretical descriptions. But they
work to identify the essential qualities of more-or-less any 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]
were inclined to see things that way. Some attribute
the qualities of a political metropol not just to nation-states but to any of the globe-striding,
transnational corporations, or even to the actions of
certain international organizations, e.g., World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF)
[ID] or the World Trade Organization (WTO)
[ID].
An Outline Chronology
Modern imperialism is clearly rooted in the evolution of
overseas transportation beginning in about 1500 =
*1492+: Atlantic seaboard monarchical powers (Spain,
Portugal, England and France) solved the problems of trans-oceanic travel and
transport. This was the actual beginnings of that seemingly very modern phenomenon "globalization" [MAP].
Martin Walker's interpretation of the three epochs of "globalization" [TXT]
The "New World" (the global western hemisphere) was colonized
[Moving
MAP].
A characteristic feature of modern imperialism in its earliest evolution was
the rise of great mercantilist corporations [LOOP].
Rise
*1750:1950; Two centuries in which modern
imperialism was arguably the central component of world history =
The giant growth of industrial productivity
[ID] was fueled in part by growing
European control over world resources and markets, building massively on the
two previous centuries of economic "globalization".
*1831+: International grain trade LOOP
*1840s:1949; China
*1843+: LOOP on Putiatin involves USA
*1850s:1914; Sixteen-hop LOOP on "The Great Game"
*1853+: Manchuria, China & Japan
*1867:1912; Some potential
victims of imperialist expansion began to stir in their own defense
and with an eye to imperial expansion on their own behalf [EG#1
= Japan | EG#2 = Russia].
These two very different sovereign powers seemed to take the following lesson =
In the modern world a nation is either an imperializer or is imperialized. Was
that lesson correct?
*1870s+: International petroleum era opened
MAP of late 19th-c global high-seas trade routes
*1877:1879; Russo-Turkish War [MAP]
*1885fe26: Berlin Conference divided Africa
[MAP]
*1897:The new nation-state Italy
stumbled badly in northeastern Africa, on the periphery of the Middle-East or
what SAC calls AfroAsia [ID], as it sought to
take its place among the expansive nation-states of the imperializing "West" [MAP]
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
MAP of world showing "countries" that have never been invaded by England
*1896+: USA in Spanish-American War [join 11-hop LOOP on US imperialism,
to the end of the Russo-Japanese War in 1906] [MAP]
*1899:English imperialism found new life in rapprochement
[ID] with old enemy, USA
*1903:1905; Russian and Japanese imperialist competition in Manchuria provoked Russo-Japanese
War [ID] [MAP#1]
[MAP#2]
European imperialist and anti-imperialist passions were stirred
The outbreak of WW1 on its Eastern and Western fronts in 1914 marked the apex of modern imperialism =
*1914:Asia [MAP]
*1914:Africa [MAP]
Subsequent developments in relations among European imperialist powers, especially modern total war
[TXT]
Novelist Joseph Conrad looked deeply
into the "heart" of this "darkness", a brutalization of Europe as well as of the
"peripheries" under its control
Almost no peoples, perhaps even including the core
"metropols" of western European and north America. escaped the modern dilemma
of modernization = transform yourself or be transformed by
others. Herein lies a great unexplored historical topic = "The Westernization of
The West", or "Metropols as Peripheries in the Deep History of Imperialism"
Decline
In the aftermath of WW1, national liberation movements in the global periphery sought to break free from metropol dominion [EG#1=Persia (Iran) LOOP | EG#2=Turkey LOOP]
After WW2 and all around the globe, national liberation movements grew in number and strength [EG=Indonesia LOOP]
The post-WW2 "Cold War" showed that the imperialist impulse was not defeated by the victories of several important new nation-states over old imperialist powers. Theoretical views on meaning of "Third World".
The old and still on-going experience of Iran [SAC Narrative Extension
on Persia (Iran) | LOOP on Persia/Iran |
Iran in the Cold War]
*1974:1989; The great theoretical proliferator of the concepts "core" (metropol) and "periphery", Immanuel Wallerstein,
in his influential Modern
World-System (3vv) [ID] refuted the notion that there were first, second and third worlds.
Also see his World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction (2004).
Post-colonial or post-imperial independence
Subsequent developments in the imperialized world = GO [TXT]
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*1492:+; Polar projection of early "Western"
expansion over the globe
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*1857:1905; Russia in Asia
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*1689:+; Southeast Siberia
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*1877:1879; Russo-Turkish War
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*1898:+;US imperialism
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