Rival Empires

In his classic study of Imperialism , JA Hobson distinguished between colonialism and nationalism. Colonialism “consists in the migration of part of a nation to vacant or sparsely peopled foreign lands,” and thus is “a genuine expansion of nationality” and nationalism. With imperialism, however, few citizens of one nation re-settle into another, and those who do migrate “form a small minority wielding political or economic sway over a majority of alien and subject people.”

The innovation of nineteenth-century Imperialism, though, lay in the fact that a number of nations vied for empire:

“The novelty of the recent Imperialism regarded as a policy consists chiefly in its adoption by several nations. The notion of a number of competing empires is essentially modern. The root idea of empire in the ancient and mediæval world was that of a federation of States, under a hegemony, covering in general terms the entire known or recognised world, such as was held by Rome under the so-called pax Romana. When Roman citizens, with full civic rights, were found all over the explored world, in Africa and Asia, as well as in Gaul and Britain, Imperialism contained a genuine element of internationalism. With the fall of Rome this conception of a single empire wielding political authority over the civilised world did not disappear. On the contrary, it survived all the fluctuations of the Holy Roman Empire. Even after the definite split between the Eastern and Western sections had taken place at the close of the fourth century, the theory of a single State, divided for administrative purposes, survived. Beneath every cleavage or antagonism, and notwithstanding the severance of many independent kingdoms and provinces, this ideal unity of the empire lived.”

On this basis, many political thinkers suggested that empire was “the only feasible security for peace.” Nationalist and competitive imperialism, though, “seems to have crushed the rising hope off internationalism.” Imperialism transforms “the wholesome stimulative rivalry of varied national types into the cutthroat struggle of competing empires.” Even here, Hobson was not without hope. Left to pursue their own actual interests, nations would still cooperate. What was really happening was not competition between nations themselves but competition between the interests of business interests who held inordinate power in various European countries. Imperialism was thus capitalism projected into politics and grown global.