EUROPEAN IMPERIALISM

European Imperialism

European Imperialism

Introduction

Imperialism is a means of building an empire. Imperialism expansion occurs when a nation expands its authority by territorial conquest and exercising economic and political powers in other territories or nations. Imperialism is necessary to preserve the existing social order in the more developed countries. It is necessary to secure trade, markets, maintain employment and capital exports, and to channel energies and social conflicts of the metropolitan populations into foreign countries. Imperialism has a very strong ideological and racial assumption of Western superiority.

Literature Reviews on European Imperialism

The empires of Europe, including those of the UK, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, Portugal, Spain, and Russia, reached their greatest extent in the 19th century. (Townsend 1941, 96)Although partly e continuation of the expansionist policies of previous centuries, these nations increased their efforts to extend their power and influence across the globe. (Burton 1969, 99) At various times during the 19th century Europeans held control over the continents of South America, Africa, Asia, and Australasia. (Orde 1996, 65) European imperialism was driven by e combination of factors, from e desire for territorial strength, economic opportunities, and political prestige, to the need for cheap supplies to fuel Europe's industrial revolutions. (Parsons 1999, 105) Also significant was the Europeans' sense of duty to Christianize and 'civilize' other nations through mission work and the enforcement of European culture and administrative methods. (Nussbaum 1995, 109)

By 1815 the world had known some four hundred years of continuous European imperialism. (Ragatz 1944, 153) In e sense this was the outward expansion of European power over other continents. Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, French, British colonial empires had followed one another throughout these four centuries. (Pyenson 1985, 85)Always these extensions of control over non-European territories had involved, in varying proportions, trading, miss ionizing, adventure, settlement, loot, national pride, conquests, and wars between rival powers. (Polanyi 1957, 97)In 1870 there was, therefore, nothing whatever new about the extension of European control and power over other parts of the earth. (Porter 1994, 78)Yet the very word "imperialism," was, it seems, e mid-nineteenth-century invention, and the generation after 1870 has come to be known, in some specially significant and discreditable sense, as ''the age of imperialism.'' In what sense can these decades between 1870 and 1914 be so described? (Cannadine 1999, 156)

Hobson

E famous British economist, J. E. Hobson-and following him, Lenin-attributed the colonial expansions of these years to special new economic forces at work in the most industrialized nations of western and central Europe. (Pagden 1995, 99)This economic explanation of the urge to imperialism is usually taken to mean that the basic motives were also the basest motives and that, whatever political, religious, or more idealistic excuses might be made, the real impulse was always one of capitalistic greed for cheap raw materials, advantageous markets, good investments, and fresh fields of exploitation. (Hobson 1902, 96)

Lenin

Lenin elaborated the argument, in his pamphlet on Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916), to emphasize the current importance of finance capital rather than industrial, and the ...