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Imperialism 101
Chapter 1 of Against Empire by Michael Parenti
Imperialism has been the most powerful force in world history over the last four or five centuries, carving up whole continents while
oppressing indigenous peoples and obliterating entire civilizations. Yet, it is seldom accorded any serious attention by our academics,
media commentators, and political leaders. When not ignored outright, the subject of imperialism has been sanitized [cleaned], so that
empires become “commonwealths,” and colonies become “territories” or “dominions”. Imperialist military interventions become
matters of “national defense,” “national security,” and maintaining “stability” in one or another region. In this book I want to look at
imperialism for what it really is.
Define oppressing indigenous peoples = _____________________________________________________________________
Define obliterating entire civilizations = _____________________________________________________________________
Why are countries “carving up” other countries? ______________________________________________________________
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What is the author’s tone? ________________________________________________________________________________
Across the Entire Globe
By "imperialism" I mean the process whereby the dominant politico-economic interests of one nation expropriate for their own
enrichment the land, labor, raw materials, and markets of another people.
The earliest victims of Western European imperialism were other Europeans. Some 800 years ago, Ireland became the first colony of
what later became known as the British empire. A part of Ireland still remains under British occupation. Other early Caucasian victims
included the Eastern Europeans.
A particularly pernicious example of intra-European imperialism was the Nazi aggression during World War II, which gave the German
business cartels and the Nazi state an opportunity to plunder the resources and exploit the labor of occupied Europe, including the slave
labor of concentration camps.
The preponderant thrust of the European, North American, and Japanese imperial powers has been directed against Africa, Asia, and
Latin America. By the nineteenth century, they saw the Third World as not only a source of raw materials and slaves but a market for
manufactured goods. By the twentieth century, the industrial nations were exporting not only goods but capital, in the form of
machinery, technology, investments, and loans.
DEFINE IMPERIALISM = __________________________________________________________________________________________________
What is the reason/cause of imperialism? ___________________________________________________________________________________
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Give three examples in HISTORY of how countries have imperialized other countries:
1. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
2. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
3. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Effects of IMPERIALISM - Artificially Converted to Poverty
With the advent of the Western colonizers, the peoples of the Third World were actually set back in their development sometimes for centuries.
British imperialism in India provides an instructive example. In 1810, India was exporting more textiles to England than England was exporting to
India. By 1830, the trade flow was reversed. The British had put up prohibitive tariff barriers to shut out Indian finished goods and were dumping
their commodities in India, a practice backed by British gunboats and military force. Within a matter of years, the great textile centers of Dacca
and Madras were turned into ghost towns. The Indians were sent back to the land to raise the cotton used in British textile factories. In effect,
India was reduced to being a cow milked by British financiers.
By 1850, India's debt had grown to 53 million pounds. From 1850 to 1900, its per capita income dropped by almost two-thirds. The value of the
raw materials and commodities the Indians were obliged to send to Britain during most of the nineteenth century amounted yearly to more than
the total income of the sixty million Indian agricultural and industrial workers. The massive poverty we associate with India was not that
country's original historical condition. British imperialism did two things: first, it ended India's development, then it forcibly underdeveloped that
country.
Why would the Indian people be upset about British Imperialism?
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Who is going to protest against British Imperialism!? _________________________
Referring to what the English colonizers did to the Irish, Frederick Engels wrote in 1856: "How often have the Irish started out to achieve
something, and every time they have been crushed politically and industrially. By consistent oppression they have been artificially converted into
an utterly impoverished nation." So is with most of the Third World. The Mayan Indians in Guatemala had a more nutritious and varied diet and
better conditions of health in the early 16th century before the Europeans arrived than they have today. They had more craftspeople, architects,
artisans, and horticulturists than today. What is called underdevelopment is not an original historical condition but a product of imperialism's
super exploitation.
Imperialism has created what I have termed "maldevelopment": modern office buildings and luxury hotels in the capital city instead of housing
for the poor, cosmetic surgery clinics for the affluent instead of hospitals for workers, cash export crops for agribusiness instead of food for local
markets, highways that go from the mines to the refineries and ports instead of roads in the back country for those who might hope to see a
doctor or a teacher.
Wealth is transferred from Third World peoples to the economic elites of Europe and North America (and more recently Japan) by direct
plunder, by the expropriation of natural resources, the imposition of ruinous taxes and land rents, the payment of poverty wages, and the forced
importation of finished goods at highly inflated prices. The colonized country is denied the freedom of trade and the opportunity to develop its
own natural resources, markets, and industrial capacity. Self-sustenance and self-employment gives way to wage labor. From 1970 to 1980, the
number of wage workers in the Third World grew from 72 million to 120 million, and the rate is accelerating.
Hundreds of millions of Third World peoples now live in destitution in remote villages and congested urban slums, suffering hunger, disease, and
illiteracy, often because the land they once tilled is now controlled by agribusiness firms who use it for mining or for commercial export crops
such as coffee, sugar, and beef, instead of growing beans, rice, and corn for home consumption. A study of twenty of the poorest countries,
compiled from official statistics, found that the number of people living in what is called "absolute poverty" or rockbottom destitution, the
poorest of the poor, is rising 70,000 a day and should reach 1.5 billion by the year 2000 (San Francisco Examiner, June 8, 1994).
Imperialism forces millions of children around the world to live nightmarish lives, their mental and physical health severely damaged by endless
exploitation. A documentary film on the Discovery Channel (April 24, 1994) reported that in countries like Russia, Thailand, and the Philippines,
large numbers of minors are sold into prostitution to help their desperate families survive. In countries like Mexico, India, Colombia, and Egypt,
children are dragooned into health-shattering, dawn-to-dusk labor on farms and in factories and mines for pennies an hour, with no opportunity
for play, schooling, or medical care.
In India, 55 million children are pressed into the work force. Tens of thousands labor in glass factories in temperatures as high as 100 degrees. In
one plant, four-year-olds toil from 5 o'clock in the morning until the dead of night, inhaling fumes and contracting emphysema, tuberculosis, and
other respiratory diseases. In the Philippines and Malaysia corporations have lobbied to drop age restrictions for labor recruitment. The pursuit
of profit becomes a pursuit of evil.
What are the NEGATIVE EFFECTS of Imperialism? (LiST at least 3 for credit)
1. ____________________________________________________________________
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2. ____________________________________________________________________
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3.
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CAUSE and EFFECT of IMPERIALISM
The dominant theory of the last half century, enunciated {voiced} in the United States and other parts of the Western world, maintains that it is
up to the rich nations to help uplift the "backward" nations, bringing them technology and teaching them proper work habits. This is an updated
version of "the White Man's Burden," a favorite imperialist fantasy.
Define “White Man’s Burden” = ____________________________________________________________________________________________
What is your reaction to this ‘concept’? _____________________________________________________________________________________
How would you feel if I tried to imperialize [take over] you because I felt it was my duty or burden to do so? (because you were underdeveloped,
or “backward”)? ________________________________________________________________________________________________________
According to the development scenario, with the introduction of Western investments, the backward economic sectors of the poor nations will
release their workers, who then will find more productive employment in the modern sector at higher wages. As capital accumulates, business
will reinvest its profits, thus creating still more products, jobs, buying power, and markets. Eventually a more prosperous economy evolves.
This "development theory" or "modernization theory," as it is sometimes called, bears little relation to reality. What has emerged in the Third
World is an intensely exploitive form of dependent capitalism. Economic conditions have worsened drastically with the growth of transnational
corporate investment. The problem is not poor lands or unproductive populations but foreign exploitation and class inequality. Investors go into
a country not to uplift it but to enrich themselves.
The legacy of imperial domination is not only misery and strife, but an economic structure dominated by a network of international corporations
which themselves are beholden to parent companies based in North America, Europe and Japan. If there is any harmonization or integration, it
occurs among the global investor classes, not among the indigenous economies of these countries. Third World economies remain fragmented
and unintegrated both between each other and within themselves, both in the flow of capital and goods and in technology and organization. In
sum, what we have is a world economy that has little to do with the economic needs of the world's people.
What was the CAUSE OR REASONS for IMPERIALISM? What did (does) the U.S., Europe and Japan feel they are
doing that is benefitting underdeveloped countries? How did they JUSTIFY IMPERIALISM??
1. _______________________________________________________________________________________
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2. _______________________________________________________________________________________
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3. _______________________________________________________________________________________
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According to this author, what are the REAL EFFECTS of IMPERIALISM? (What has it done to the people?)
1. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
2. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
European Imperialism and Colonial Response
Chuck Schaefer
Department of History, Valparaiso University
adapted from http://www.crl.edu/focus/article/421
The course is titled History 304, "European Imperialism and Colonial Response: Knowledge, Race & Power in British India."
Imperial conquest and control dominated European politics for three centuries. It was characteristic of European power over the far corners of
the world. Few countries remained independent and for those that did their independence was dependent upon European approval.
Imperialism also feed the industrial engines of Europe, providing the raw materials for production as well as the markets for commodity
exchange. On the response side, colonialism had a more profound global impact than nationalism, industrialism or militarism, for it
incorporated them all and stamped them with its particular image. In fact, colonialism ushered in modernity for more people than any other
ideology or shared experience. All of this is to say that imperialism/colonialism is a historical phenomenon worthy of intense scrutiny and is
nowhere more dramatically illustrated than with the British Raj in India.
WOW!!! PARARAPHRASE PLEASE (WHO, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE, WHY!!) ___________________________________________________________
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How did the British IMPERIALIZE INDIA?
The composing room of the Times of India,
1898. Photo courtesy of the British Library.
This seminar asks the question: How did so few Englishmen rule over such a vast population in India for so long? The class attempts to assess
how the British assembled knowledge to geographically map India, to separate the Indian population on the basis of religion and caste, to
economically dominate all roadways and waterways of the subcontinent, and to construct alternate interpretations of Indian culture in order to
more effectively divide and rule.
Another key component was race. Colonialism had the effect of reformulating notions of race. For the British, service in India caused them to
radically alter their self-conception and construct new identities that were at once as foreign to England as they were to India. Likewise, many
Indians assumed identities that were equally alien. Yet the racial gulf between an Englishman and an Indian was huge, but not necessarily
separate. Recent historiography indicates that both Englishmen and Indians were influenced by one another, mutually borrowing customs,
costumes and ideas.
The bulk of the class focuses more intentionally on the power dynamic, that is to say how knowledge was used more effectively than weapons to
rule over India. The intention is to disassemble "indirect rule" to look at its constituent parts. Moreover, in this section we will be assessing how
when certain indigenous customs, for example, sati (widow burning) did not fit into colonial moral codes they were abolished.
As a seminar, emphasis is placed on the research paper. To summarize these expectations, I will reproduce the paragraph describing them from
the syllabus.
The research paper should be between 12 and 15 pages long, excluding citations. The paper will be based on primary documents. (No secondary
sources are allowed other than for general information you deem absolutely necessary). We will be devoting considerable time to looking at
how documents can be used as historical texts. The research paper is your opportunity to write original history!
Wilfred Scawen Blunt: Britain's Imperial Destiny, 1896-1899
Modern History Sourcebook: Source:
From: W. S. Blunt, My Diaries: 1888-1914, 2 Vols., (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1921), I.212-213, 298-299, 325, 375-380.
Scanned by Jerome S. Arkenberg, Cal. State Fullerton. The text has been modernized by Prof. Arkenberg.
9th Jan. 1896. The German Emperor has telegraphed his congratulations to Kruger [the Boer leader], and this seems to have produced
great anger in England. We have now managed in the last six months to quarrel violently with China, Turkey, Belgium, Ashanti, France,
Venezuela, America, and Germany. This is a record performance, and if it does not break up the British Empire nothing will. For myself I am glad
of it all, for the British Empire is the greatest engine of evil for the weak races now existing in the world---not that we are worse than the French
or Italians or Americans--indeed, we are less actively destructive---but we do it over a far wider area and more successfully. I should be delighted
to see England stripped of her whole foreign possessions. We are better off and more respected in Queen Elizabeth's time, the "spacious days,"
when we had not a stick of territory outside the British Islands, than now, and infinitely more respectable. The gangrene of colonial rowdyism is
infecting us, and the habit of repressing liberty in weak nations is endangering our own. I should be glad to see the end....
What is this author’s tone? ___________________________
How does this author feel about British Imperialism? Give EVIDENCE to support your CLAIM!!
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OMG!! IMPERIALISM at its worst!!
17th Oct. 1898. Arrived at Saighton. I have had it out with George [Wyndham, parliamentary under-secretary in the War Office] about
Fashoda. He states the English case with brutal frankness. "The day of talking," he says, "about legality in Africa is over, all the international law
there is there consists of interest and understandings. It is generally agreed by all the powers that the end of African operations is to 'civilize' it in
the interests of Europe, and that to gain that end all means are good. England intends to do it on the Nile, and it makes no difference what the
precise legal position is. We may put forward the Khedive's rights if it is convenient or we may put forward a right of conquest, or a right of simply
declaring our intentions. One is as good as another to get our end, which is the railway from Cairo to the Cape. We don't care whether the Nile
is called English or Egyptian or what it is called, but we mean to have it and we don't mean the French to have it. The Khedive may be kept on
for some years as a sort of Indian maharajah, but it will end in a partition of the Ottoman Empire between England, Germany, and Russia. France
will be allowed Northwestern Africa. It is not worth while drawing distinctions of right and wrong in the matter, it is a matter entirely of
interest."
Why do the British want AFRICA? ________________________________________________________________________________
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Again, HOW did the British JUSTIFY its actions? ____________________________________________________________________
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What is this author’s tone? ___________________________
How does this author feel about British Imperialism? Give EVIDENCE to support your CLAIM!!
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15th June, 1899. The plot for annexing the Transvaal has taken a new development. Chamberlain [the colonial secretary], to force the hand
of the government, has published a dispatch of Milner's [governor of Cape Colony] written on the 4th of May of the most aggressive kind, and the
newspapers are full of flame and fury, the Daily News leading the chorus. They talk about Milner's "cool and impartial judgment" just as if
Milner had not been specially selected by Chamberlain to put the job through. Milner was sent to Egypt ten years ago to convert English liberal
opinion to the plan of remaining on there instead of withdrawing the garrison, and having succeeded in that mission he has been sent to the Cape
to convert English liberal opinion to the idea of re-annexing the Transvaal. Milner is quite an extremist as an imperial agent and is invaluable to
the empire builders. Now there will certainly be war in South Africa. They have tried every kind of fraud to get their way, now they will try force.
They seem to have squared the German Emperor, France is in chaos, and they think their opportunity come.
The Boers, however, will fight, and there is some chance of a general war between the Dutch and the English in South Africa, which may alleviate
the condition of the only people there whose interests I really care for in the quarrel, namely the blacks.
Who are the British Imperializing now? How will they succeed?
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OMG!! IT gets WORSE!!
22nd Dec., 1900. The old century is very nearly out, and leaves the world in a pretty pass, and the British Empire is playing the devil in it has
never an empire before on so large a scale. We may live to see its fall. All the nations of Europe are making the same hell upon earth in China,
massacring and pillaging and raping in the captured cities as outrageously as in the Middle Ages. The Emperor of Germany gives the word for
slaughter and the Pope looks on and approves. In South Africa our troops are burning farms under Kitchener's command, and the Queen and the
two houses of Parliament, and the bench of bishops thank God publicly and vote money for the work. The Americans are spending fifty millions a
year on slaughtering the Filipinos; the King of the Belgians has invested his whole fortune on the Congo, where he is brutalizing the Negroes to fill
his pockets. The French and Italians for the moment are playing a less prominent part in the slaughter, but their inactivity grieves them. The
whole white race is reveling openly in violence, as though it had never pretended to be Christian. God's equal curse be on them all! So ends the
famous nineteenth century into which we were so proud to have been born....
PARAPHRASE PLEASE!! __________________________________________________________________________________________________
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What is this author’s tone? ___________________________
How does this author feel about Imperialism? Give EVIDENCE to support your CLAIM!!
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This text is part of the Internet Modern History Sourcebook. The Sourcebook is a collection of public domain and copy-permitted texts for
introductory level classes in modern European and World history.
Unless otherwise indicated the specific electronic form of the document is copyright. Permission is granted for electronic copying, distribution in
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© Paul Halsall, November 1998
[email protected]
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1899blunt.asp