Imperialism: -

Imperialism can be discussed, denounced, defended and died for, but it cannot be defined in
any generally acceptable way. It means different things to different people.

Imperialism is a policy which aims at creating, organizing, and maintaining an empire that is
a state of vast size composed of various more or less distinct national units and subject to a
single centralized will.
1

Imperialism is employment of the engine of government and diplomacy to acquire territories,
protectorates, and spheres of influence occupied usually by other races or people, and to
promote industrial, trade and investment opportunities.
2

Imperialism means domination of non European native races by totally dissimilar European
nation.
3

It will be seen that Bonn imposed a quantitative measurement and presumably ruled out the
possibility of a small imperialism. Beard excluded all except economic motivations, and he
made direct government action an inseparable part of imperialism. Moon injected the test of
racial difference. The definition of Hans Morgenthau, Joseph Schumpeter, E.M. Winslow,
and Lenin suggest additional qualifications. Morgenthau scrapped the condition of exclusive
economic motivation, size of operation, and difference of race. He defined imperialism
altogether in terms of the expansion of a states power beyond its borders. Schumpeter
deprived imperialism of all conscious motivation and definable objectives. He regarded it as
an atavistic force, ancient in inception, decadent and self conscious in an age of rationalism,
yet still powerful enough to lord it over its rival, the upstart capitalism. Winslow reversed
Schumpeter and saw both organisation and specific objectives in the imperialist operation,
and he made it evil by definition. Lenin asserted the traditional view of communism, in which
imperialism is not only entirely economic but also a rather precise stage in the development
of international capitalism.

It would be futile to attempt to reconcile this definition and a host of others but it may be
possible to make a number of helpful observations. The first and most obvious one is that
imperialism is a highly subjective word that writers define it pretty much as they please.
Second, imperialism has become more of an epithet than anything else, the Russian use it to
stigmatize the policies of the western states, the anti-communist power use it to blacken
Soviet policies, and the uncommitted world uses it to condemn the policies of both the
Communist and Non-communist worlds.

1
Moritz Julius Bonn, Imperialism Encyclopedia of the Social Science
2
Charles A. Beard, American Foreign Policy in Making,
3
Parker T. Moon, Imperialism and World Politics.

As Raymond L. Buell remarked many years ago, every unjustifiable demand made by one
government upon another, every aggressive war is called imperialistic. Imperialism is a word
which indeed covers many sins. Third, it seems that if there is any consensus is common
usage certain occasional qualification ought to be disregarded. Thus, what commonly passes
for imperialism seems to warrant these assertions
(1) It may be powerful noneconomic motivations, it may, as a matter of fact, be without
expectations of economic gain.
(2) It may pertain to very limited operations, a vast empire need not to be contemplated at
all.
(3) It need not involve a difference of race, there may very well be imperialism within a
single race
(4) It may be planned or unplanned.
(5) furthermore Imperialism may be with or without high regard for the welfare of the
inhabitants of the area in question, it may be developmental or exploitative, and it may
promote the capacity for self-government or ruthlessly suppress all impulses in that direction.
Finally, it may be economically profitable for the imperialist country, or it may be decidedly
unprofitable.

What Charles Hodges called it many years ago: a projection externally, directly or
indirectly, of the alien political, economic, or cultural power of one nation into the internal
life of another people. It involves the imposition of control open or covert, direct or indirect
of one people by another.
4

The object of imperialism added Professor Hodge, is to affect the destinies of the backward
people in the interest of the more advanced from the standpoint of world power.

MOTIVE OF IMPERIALISM
Because the fruits of imperialism the subordinate areas variously called possession, colonies,
protectorates, semi-protectorates, and dependent states have long been regarded as valuable
to the controlling state, they have been eagerly sought. To some extent they have been the
badge of status in international society. Consequently, imperialistic rivalries have been a
fertile source of interstate conflict; they have figured importantly in the international
economy, they have often been an expression of belligerent nationalism, and they have been a
major or a contributing cause of many of the past three centuries.

4
Charles Hodge, the backward of International Relations (New York : John Wiley & Sons, 1932), pp. 421,422.
(1) Economic gain: - This includes conquest for the sake of loot, the quest for competition
free markets and sources of raw materials, the search for virgin fields of investment for the
capitalists of imperial powers, and the urge to secure certain strategic raw materials. At times
imperialism may have provided goods that could not be obtained otherwise; at other times it
merely made it possible to get them at a lower price or with less likelihood of interruption by
war. While the 19
th
century imperialists declaration that trade follow as flag is not verified
by statistics, as we shall see, nevertheless he believed it, and in any event he found in
imperialism a shortcut around foreign exchange difficulties.

(2) National Prestige: - Many defenders of imperialism have believed that a state must
achieve its manifest destiny or its place in the sun. Generation of English men gloried in
the boast that the sun never sets on the British Empire. Not Texans alone but many other
people are intoxicated by dimensions. Benito Mussolini loved to move his hand over the map
of those expanses of African desert and hill land that he had brought under the Italian flag.
His chest expanded with his dominations
More recently we have come to the sober realisation that land for flag-flying may mean
responsibilities and expanse rather than grandeur, but an analysis of imperialism shows that
the desire for land and still more land has often been a product of aggressive nationalism.
A study of the motivations of French imperialism in Eastern Asia concluded that the valued
who the French sought were far less tangible than those of land. The authors conclusions are
unequivocal.
(3) The white mans burden:- In the past at least, many members of advanced Western
societies believed that their state had a moral obligation to carry the blessings of their own
religion and civilization to backward peoples. In their view, the White man had a duty to
uplift his less fortunate brothers, usually, in the yellow mans Africa. Many of these people
were wholly sincere, as it is proved by the countless missionaries, soldiers, and administrators
who braved the perils of the strange and unknown.

(4) National Defence: - Imperialism may serve national defence in a number of ways, by
providing areas and bases for the defence of the state or its lines of communication, by
providing much-needed markets and by sources of essential raw materials and by providing
populations from which troops and labourers may be drawn. State have often sought to
protect them by gaining control of outlaying or borders areas, either by completely
subordinating the areas or by winning influence over nominally independent states, called
buffer states. Moves of this sort are designed to fix broad belts of insulation around states by
keeping enemies far from their borders, and sometimes by installing defences within the
protective belt itself. Thus through most of the nineteenth century England relied upon the
buffer states of Afghanistan, Persia, and Tibet for the defence of India against Russia.


(5) Surplus Population: - Statesman have at times supported imperialism because they saw in
colonies an outlet for a population growing with embarrassing rapidity. Economic interest
may profit, too, for immigrating nationals promise to be good customers. Actually,
overpopulated state has found little relief in emigration in their colonies. Englishman has
gone to the Dominions in great numbers, but they have sawn less interest in moving to
colonial possessions. Of nearly 20,000,000 Europeans who immigrated between 1880 and
1940, nearly 17,000,000 went to the free nations of the western Hemisphere.
5
Between 1925
and 1933, while Japan was trying to justify her designs on China with the population-pressure
argument, less than four present of her population increase of that period migrated to her own
colonies
6
. During the last decade of her colonial empire, 1904-1913, Germany sent only one
out of 24,000 of her annual population increment to her colonies. All imperialist states have
failed completely to win as much enthusiasm for home as for flags in those faraway places
with strange sounding names.

(6) Leninist View: - The Communists have their interpretations of imperialism. They apply
the term to a phase in the expansion of capitalism, but, not to their own expansion. There is
thus a sharp distinction between Leninist imperialism, which is a communist theory to
explain the inherent and progressive iniquity of capitalism, and Soviet imperialism, which is
a term applied by anti-communists to the pattern of subversion and subjugation carried on by
Soviet Union.
The Leninist theory of Imperialism rests upon the assumption that all political action springs
from economic motives. Consequently, when capitalist societies find that they have reached a
point where the production of goods is so great that domestic markets are no longer adequate,
they bring political forces into play in order to achieve the subordination of outside areas that
these may be held as controlled markets for surplus products and surplus investment capital.
Therefore capitalism is itself the cause of Imperialism.


WHAT IS COLONIALISM:-

Colonialism is a practice of domination, which involves the subjugation of one people to
another. One of the difficulties in defining colonialism is that it is hard to distinguish it from
imperialism. Frequently the two concepts are treated as synonyms. Like colonialism,
imperialism also involves political and economic control over a dependent territory. The
etymology of the two terms, however, provides some clues about how they differ. The term

5
H. Arthur Steiner. Principles and Problems of International Relations (New York: Harper,1940), pp. 145-146.
6
Grower Clark, the Balance Sheet of Imperialism: Facts and Figures on Colonies.
colony comes from the Latin word colonus, meaning farmer. This root reminds us that the
practice of colonialism usually involved the transfer of population to a new territory, where
the arrivals lived as permanent settlers while maintaining political allegiance to their country
of origin. Imperialism, on the other hand, comes from the Latin term imperium, meaning to
command. Thus, the term imperialism draws attention to the way that one country exercises
power over another, whether through settlement, sovereignty, or indirect mechanisms of
control.
The legitimacy of colonialism has been a longstanding concern for political and moral
philosophers in the Western tradition. At least since the Crusades and the conquest of the
Americas, political theorists have struggled with the difficulty of reconciling ideas about
justice and natural law with the practice of European sovereignty over non-Western peoples.
In the nineteenth century, the tension between liberal thought and colonial practice became
particularly acute, as dominion of Europe over the rest of the world reached its zenith.
Ironically, in the same period when most political philosophers began to defend the principles
of universalism and equality, the same individuals still defended the legitimacy of
colonialism and imperialism. One way of reconciling those apparently opposed principles
was the argument known as the civilizing mission, which suggested that a temporary period
of political dependence or tutelage was necessary in order for uncivilized societies to
advance to the point where they were capable of sustaining liberal institutions and self-
government.

The classic study of imperialism is J. A. Hobsons Imperialism: A study first published in
1902. Although Hobson failed to define imperialism, he did have this to say of colonialism.
Colonialism in its best sense, is a natural overflow of nationality; its test is the power of
colonist to transplant the civilisations they represent to the new natural and social
environment in which they find themselves.
7

Later writers also have attributed to colonialism something of the parent-and offspring
relationship that Hobson had in mind.
Winslow spoke of it as the occupation of virgin territory in which conflict was incidental, or
even unnecessary, and subordinate to the desire of Europeans to find a new place to live.
Townsend and Peake chose not to use imperialism because it has come to connote a
particular kind of colonial rule generally exploitative which has often characterized this
modern movement, but not always.
8

Winslow has aversions of the same kind, imperialism, he felt quite properly suggest
something more organised, more military, more self-consciously aggressive, bent on
objectives above and beyond those of colonialism.


7
J. A. Hobsons Imperialism: A study, 3d ed. (London, 1938), p. 7.
8
Winslow, p. 4.
These distinctions in theory tend to break down in practise. It is sometimes impossible to
draw a line between the overflow of nationality on the one hand and the projection of the
power of one nation into the internal life of another people on another hand. Hobson
recognised this inaccuracy of terms when he said that the colonial party in England. And
president Sukarno of Indonesia certainly had imperialism in mind when in his opening
address at the Bandung Conference of 1955 he said: I beg of you not to think of Colonialism
only in the classic form of which we knew. Colonialism has also its modern dress in the form
of economic control, intellectual control, and actual physical control by a small but alien
community within the nation.
The Bandung Conference itself disclosed a total lack of agreement on the meaning of
colonialism. This historic gathering of the representative of twenty-nine countries of Asia and
Africa solemnly resolved that colonialism in all its manifestations is an evil which should
speedily be brought to an end. But whereas the spokesman of Pakistan, the Philippines,
Thailand, Turkey, Iraq, and Ceylon voiced apprehensions concerning Soviet colonialism, the
representatives of the uncommitted world led by Nehru of India, denied that there was such
a thing as Soviet colonialism. While the delegates could all agree that colonialism was an
evil they could not agree on what it was or where it existed.



The Differences in Colonization in Africa and India


In many ways, British colonialism in India in the 18th and 19th centuries was quite similar to
European colonialism in Africa at the same time. In both cases, Europeans, mostly for
economic reasons, imposed their will upon another group of people. Also in both cases,
Europeans enjoyed a technological advantage that made this imposition easier. These
colonization efforts differed, however, in their structure. Whereas one country dominated
India, many countries carved out their own territories in Africa. Also, Europeans set up
territorial empires in Africa, while the British set up mostly an economic empire with the
British East India company in India. What accounts for these differences?
Geography may have been responsible for why Britain could come to control India almost
exclusively, while it had to share Africa with other European powers. Africa was simply too
large for the British to control exclusively. Furthermore, they had little interest in controlling
the whole of Africa. While they had some interest in Africa's interior, the British were mostly
interested in controlling strategic choke points like South Africa, Egypt, and Gibraltar.
Controlling these key points was much more important to the British than controlling a vast,
largely empty continent. Thus, while they rivaled with the French and others for control of
the African interior, they were unwilling to invest as many resources there as they were in
strategic areas. In contrast, India was relatively small compared to Africa, small enough that
the British could control. Though they exerted political power in India, their chief concern
was in maintaining their commercial interests. It was relatively easy for the British to
dominate India, because all it had to do was protect its interests by keeping other Europeans
out. It did not have to establish and defend a territorial empire.






Colonialism Today: -
In 1959 British PM Harold Macmillan said in a speech in Moscow- imperialism is an epoch
in history, not a present reality. Even Jawaharlal Nehru sometimes spoke in a similar way,
although in 1954 he declared We talk about the crisis of the time and many people do it in
different ways. Probably in the United States of America the crisis of the time is supposed to
be communism versus anti communism. Well, the crisis of the time in Asia is colonialism
versus anti colonialism.
9
Professor D.W. Brogan and others have frequently referred to the
post-imperial age. Certainly the great colonial empires have passed into history.

Early, in 1963 an American news paper surveyed the remnants of colonial empires and found
that there are still 99 dependants areas, U.N. trust territories and south Africas League of
Nations mandate. More than one-fourth of these bits and pieces of colonialism were less
than 50 square miles area. Only nine of these territories were larger than 100,000 square
miles, and by 1966 five of these had become independent of were on the verge of
independence. The United Nation Trusteeship Council has almost run out of business even
though the task of decolonisation is still finished. It has only two trust territories under its
jurisdiction.
The United Nation has been a main forum for the continuing struggle against colonialism in
all manifestations to use the words of the final communiqu of the Bandung Conference of
1955. Although the majority of the original members of UN come from the Western world,
more than one-half of its members today are states that they have attained independence since
the end of World War II, most of them located in Asia and Africa. The former Colonial
powers and their supports have been increasingly put on the defensive in the organs and
agencies of the United Nations.

9
Quoted in Indiagram, issued by the Embassy of India, Washington D.C .No. 526