AGE OF IMPERIALISM INTRODUCTION

We live in a world today in which the consequences of nineteenth-century Western imperialism are still being felt. By about 1914 Western civilization reached the high point of its long-standing global expansion. This expansion in this period took many forms. There was, first of all, economic expansion. Europeans invested large sums of money abroad, building railroads and ports, mines and plantations, factories and public utilities. Trade between nations grew greatly and a world economy developed. Between 1750 and 1900 the gap in income disparities between industrialized Europe and America and the rest of the world grew at an astounding rate. Part of this was due, first, to a rearrangement of land use that accompanies Western colonialism and to Western success in preventing industrialization in areas Westerners saw as markets for their manufactured goods. European economic penetration was very often peaceful, but Europeans (and Americans) were also quite willing to force isolationist nations such as China and Japan to throw open their doors to Westerners. Second, millions of Europeans migrated abroad. The pressure of poverty and overpopulation in rural areas encouraged this migration, but once in the United States and Australia, European settlers passed laws to prevent similar mass migration from Asia. A third aspect of Western expansion was that European states established vast political empires, mainly in Africa but also in Asia. This "new imperialism" occurred primarily between 1880 and 1900, when European governments scrambled frantically for territory. White people came, therefore, to rule millions of black and brown people in Africa and Asia. The causes of the new superiority were among the most important. Some Europeans bitterly criticized imperialism as a betrayal of Western ideals of freedom and equality. Western imperialism produced various reactions in Africa and Asia. The first response was simply to try to drive the foreigners away. The general failure of this traditionalist response then led large masses to accept European rule, which did bring some improvements. A third response was the modernist response of Western-educated natives, who were repelled by Western racism and attracted by Western ideals of national independence and economic progress. Thus, imperialism and reactions to it spread Western civilization to non-Western lands.

imperialism are still hotly debated. Competition for trade, superior military force, European power politics, and a racist belief in European

Cecil John Rhodes PC, DCL (5 July 1853 26 March 1902)[1] was an English-born South African businessman, mining magnate, and politician. He was the founder of the diamond company De Beers, which today markets 40% of the world's rough diamonds and at one time marketed 90%.[2] An ardent believer in British colonialism, he was the founder of the state of Rhodesia, which was named after him. In 1964, Northern Rhodesia became the independent state of Zambia and Southern Rhodesia was thereafter known simply as Rhodesia. In 1980, Rhodesia, which had been de facto independent since 1965, became independent from Britain and was renamed Zimbabwe. South Africa's Rhodes University is also named after Rhodes. He set up the provisions of the Rhodes Scholarship, which is funded by his estate.

A portrait bust of Rhodes on the first floor of No. 6 King Edward Street marks the place of his residence whilst in Oxford.

Germany
From their original homelands in Scandinavia and far northern Europe Germanic tribes expanded throughout northern and western Europe in the middle period of classical antiquity, and southern Europe in late antiquity, conquering Celtic and other peoples and forming in 800 the Holy Roman Empire, the first German Empire. However unlike China, there was no real systemic continuity from the western Roman Empire to its German successor which famously was "not holy, not Roman, and not an empire",[14] and numerous small states existed in variously autonomous confederation. Although by 1000 Germanic conquest of central, western, and southern Europe west of and including Italy was complete, excluding only Muslim Iberia, there was no process equivalent to Han sinification, and "Germany" remained largely a conceptual term referring to an amorphous area of central Europe. Not a maritime power, and not a nationstate, as it became one, Germany's participation in Western imperialism was negligible until the late 19th century and the participation of Austria was primarily as a result of Habsburg control of the First Empire, the Spanish throne, and other royal houses. After the defeat of Napoleon, who caused the dissolution of that first German Empire, Prussia, and the German states

continued to stand aloof from imperialism, preferring to manipulate the European system through polices such as those of Metternich. After Prussia unified the other states into the second German Empire, its long-time leader Otto von Bismarck (186290) had long opposed colonial acquisitions, arguing that the burden of obtaining, maintaining and defending such possessions would outweigh any potential benefit. He felt that colonies did not pay for themselves, that the German bureaucratic system would not work well in the easy-going tropics, and the diplomatic disputes over colonies would distract Germany from its central interest, Europe itself.[15] However, in 1883-84 he suddenly reversed himself and overnight built a colonial empire in Africa and the South Pacific, and then lost interest in imperialism. Historians have debated exactly why he made this sudden and short-lived move.[16] He was aware that public opinion had started to demand colonies for reasons of German prestige.[17] Bismarck was influenced by Hamburg merchants and traders, his neighbors at Friedrichsruh. The establishment of the German colonial empire proceeded smoothly, starting with German New Guinea in 1884.[18] After the collapse of the short-lived Third Reich, and the failure of its attempt to create a great land empire in Eurasia, Germany was split between Western and Soviet spheres of influence until Perestroika and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Tsarist and Soviet Russian imperialism

The maximum territorial extent of countries in the world under Soviet influence, after the Cuban Revolution of 1959 and

before the official Sino-Soviet split of 1961. As Germanic tribes conquered western Europe, Slavic peoples gradually expanded their control over eastern Europe and northern Eurasia, and in the form of the Romanov Empire extended that control to the Pacific forming a common border with the Qing Empire. Bolshevik leaders had effectively reestablished a polity with roughly the same jurisdiction as that empire by 1921, but with an internationalist ideology: Lenin in particular asserted the right to self-determination for national minorities within the new territory.[19] Beginning in 1923, the policy of "Indigenization" [korenizatsiia] was intended to support non-Russians develop their national cultures within a socialist framework. Never formally revoked, it stopped being implemented after 1932. After World War II, the Soviet Union installed socialist regimes modelled on those it had installed in 191920 in the old Tsarist empire in areas its forces occupied in Eastern Europe.[20] The Soviet Union and People's Republic of China supported postWorld War II anti-colonial nationalliberation movements to advance their own interests but were not always successful.[21] Trotsky, and others believed that the revolution could only succeed in Russia as part of a world revolution, which was in fact shortly after the Russian Revolution spreading in the defeated central powers of Europe. Lenin wrote extensively on the matter and famously declared that Imperialism was the highest stage of capitalism. However after Lenin's death, Joseph Stalin established Socialism in one country for the Soviet Union, creating the model for subsequent inward looking Stalinist states and purging the early Internationalist elements. The internationalist tendencies of the early revolution would be abandoned until they returned in a client state form in the competition with the United States in the Cold War.

"President McKinley fires a cannon into the Imperialist Strawman", cartoon by W.A. Rogers in Harper's Weekly of September 22, 1900 Though the Soviet Union declared itself antiimperialist, critics argue that it exhibited tendencies common to historic empires. Some scholars hold that the Soviet Union was a hybrid entity containing elements common to both multinational empires and nation states. It has also been argued that the USSR practiced colonialism as did other imperial powers and was carrying on the old Russian tradition of expansion and control.[22]

The United States as "the world's policeman"

The early United States expressed its opposition to Imperialism, at least that distinct from its own Manifest Destiny, in policies such as the Monroe Doctrine. Beginning in the late 19th and early 20th century however, policies such as Woodrow Wilson's mission to "make the world safe for democracy"[23] were often backed by military force, but more often effected from behind the scenes, consistent with the general notion of hegemony and imperium of historical empires.[24][25] In 1898 Americans who opposed imperialism created the Anti-Imperialist League to oppose the US annexation of the Philippines. A year later a war erupted in the Philippines causing business, labor and government leaders in the US to condemn America's occupation in the Philippines. They also denounced them for causing the deaths of many Filipinos.[26] After the became generally influence second world war the United States identified with Western interests in a global conflict of spheres of with the Soviet Union. After the

collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States did not diminish its global ability to project force, remaining "the sole superpower" and what has been called a "unipolar" situation of domination by it globally came into force. Since the end of the previous century Battlespace domination has been an open and variously reported policy of the U.S. Department of defense and U.S. Administrations stated and restated in various Quadrennial Reports, force posture statements, etc. in execution of its role as sole remaining superpower.[27][28] The 2010

QDR indicates a change in perspective and it is unclear how the policy of the first decade of the 21st century would be sustained through the anticipated fiscal environment of the second.[29] In 2005, the United States had 737 military bases in foreign countries, according to official sources.[30] As of 2010 US Military spending is about 43% of the world total.[31] Only a handful of countries spent a larger portion of GDP on military in 2010 and of these only Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates spent more than US$10 billion.

Submitted by: JOGIE D. DE VERA