Excerpt
John
A. Hobson (18581940), an English economist, wrote one
the most famous critiques of the economic bases of imperialism
in 1902.
Amid
the welter of vague political abstractions to lay one's
finger accurately upon any "ism" so as to
pin it down and mark it out by definition seems impossible.
Where meanings shift so quickly and so subtly, not only
following changes of thought, but often manipulated
artificially by political practitioners so as to obscure,
expand, or distort, it is idle to demand the same rigour
as is expected in the exact sciences. A certain broad
consistency in its relations to other kindred terms
is the nearest approach to definition which such a term
as Imperialism admits. Nationalism, internationalism,
colonialism, its three closest congeners, are equally
elusive, equally shifty, and the changeful overlapping
of all four demands the closest vigilance of students
of modern politics.
During
the nineteenth century the struggle towards nationalism,
or establishment of political union on a basis of nationality,
was a dominant factor alike in dynastic movements and
as an inner motive in the life of masses of population.
That struggle, in external politics, sometimes took
a disruptive form, as in the case of Greece, Servia,
Roumania, and Bulgaria breaking from Ottoman rule, and
the detachment of North Italy from her unnatural alliance
with the Austrian Empire. In other cases it was a unifying
or a centralising force, enlarging the area of nationality,
as in the case of Italy and the PanSlavist movement
in Russia. Sometimes nationality was taken as a basis
of federation of States, as in United Germany and in
North America.
It
is true that the forces making for political union sometimes
went further, making for federal union of diverse nationalities,
as in the cases of AustriaHungary, Norway and Sweden,
and the Swiss Federation. But the general tendency was
towards welding into large strong national unities the
loosely related States and provinces with shifting attachments
and alliances which covered large areas of Europe since
the breakup of the Empire. This was the most definite
achievement of the nineteenth century. The force of
nationality, operating in this work, is quite as visible
in the failures to achieve political freedom as in the
successes; and the struggles of Irish, Poles, Finns,
Hungarians, and Czechs to resist the forcible subjection
to or alliance with stronger neighbours brought out
in its full vigour the powerful sentiment of nationality.
The
middle of the century was especially distinguished by
a series of definitely "nationalist" revivals,
some of which found important interpretation in dynastic
changes, while others were crushed or collapsed. Holland,
Poland, Belgium, Norway, the Balkans, formed a vast
arena for these struggles of national forces.
The
close of the third quarter of the century saw Europe
fairly settled into large national States or federations
of States, though in the nature of the case there can
be no finality, and Italy continued to look to Trieste,
as Germany still looks to Austria, for the fulfillment
of her manifest destiny.
This
passion and the dynastic forms it helped to mould and
animate are largely attributable to the fierce prolonged
resistance which peoples, both great and small, were
called on to maintain against the imperial designs of
Napoleon. The national spirit of England was roused
by the tenseness of the struggle to a self-consciousness
it had never experienced since "the spacious days
of great Elizabeth." Jena made Prussia into a great
nation; the Moscow campaign brought Russia into the
field of European nationalities as a factor in politics,
opening her for the first time to the full tide of Western
ideas and influences.
Turning
from this territorial and dynastic nationalism to the
spirit of racial, linguistic, and economic solidarity
which has been the underlying motive, we find a still
more remarkable movement. Local particularism on the
one hand, vague cosmopolitanism upon the other, yielded
to a ferment of nationalist sentiment, manifesting itself
among the weaker peoples not merely in a sturdy and
heroic resistance against political absorption or territorial
nationalism, but in a passionate revival of decaying
customs, language, literature and art; while it bred
in more dominant peoples strange ambitions of national
"destiny" and an attendant spirit of Chauvinism.
No
mere array of facts and figures adduced to illustrate
the economic nature of the new Imperialism will suffice
to dispel the popular delusion that the use of national
force to secure new markets by annexing fresh tracts
of territory is a sound and a necessary policy for an
advanced industrial country like Great Britain....
But these arguments are not conclusive. It is open to
Imperialists to argue thus: "We must have markets
for our growing manufactures, we must have new outlets
for the investment of our surplus capital and for the
energies of the adventurous surplus of our population:
such expansion is a necessity of life to a nation with
our great and growing powers of production. An ever
larger share of our population is devoted to the manufactures
and commerce of towns, and is thus dependent for life
and work upon food and raw materials from foreign lands.
In order to buy and pay for these things we must sell
our goods abroad. During the first three quarters of
the nineteenth century we could do so without difficulty
by a natural expansion of commerce with continental
nations and our colonies, all of which were far behind
us in the main arts of manufacture and the carrying
trades. So long as England held a virtual monopoly of
the world markets for certain important classes of manufactured
goods, Imperialism was unnecessary.
After
1870 this manufacturing and trading supremacy was greatly
impaired: other nations, especially Germany, the United
States, and Belgium, advanced with great rapidity, and
while they have not crushed or even stayed the increase
of our external trade, their competition made it more
and more difficult to dispose of the full surplus of
our manufactures at a profit. The encroachments made
by these nations upon our old markets, even in our own
possessions, made it most urgent that we should take
energetic means to secure new markets. These new markets
had to lie in hitherto undeveloped countries, chiefly
in the tropics, where vast populations lived capable
of growing economic needs which our manufacturers and
merchants could supply. Our rivals were seizing and
annexing territories for similar purposes, and when
they had annexed them closed them to our trade The diplomacy
and the arms of Great Britain had to be used in order
to compel the owners of the new markets to deal with
us: and experience showed that the safest means of securing
and developing such markets is by establishing 'protectorates'
or by annexation....
It
was this sudden demand for foreign markets for manufactures
and for investments which was avowedly responsible for
the adoption of Imperialism as a political policy....
They needed Imperialism because they desired to use
the public resources of their country to find profitable
employment for their capital which otherwise would be
superfluous....
Every
improvement of methods of production, every concentration
of ownership and control, seems to accentuate the tendency.
As one nation after another enters the machine economy
and adopts advanced industrial methods, it becomes more
difficult for its manufacturers, merchants, and financiers
to dispose profitably of their economic resources, and
they are tempted more and more to use their Governments
in order to secure for their particular use some distant
undeveloped country by annexation and protection.
The
process, we may be told, is inevitable, and so it seems
upon a superficial inspection. Everywhere appear excessive
powers of production, excessive capital in search of
investment. It is admitted by all business men that
the growth of the powers of production in their country
exceeds the growth in consumption, that more goods can
be produced than can be sold at a profit, and that more
capital exists than can find remunerative investment.
It
is this economic condition of affairs that forms the
taproot of Imperialism. If the consuming public in this
country raised its standard of consumption to keep pace
with every rise of productive powers, there could be
no excess of goods or capital clamorous to use Imperialism
in order to find markets: foreign trade would indeed
exist....
Everywhere
the issue of quantitative versus qualitative growth
comes up. This is the entire issue of empire. A people
limited in number and energy and in the land they occupy
have the choice of improving to the utmost the political
and economic management of their own land, confining
themselves to such accessions of territory as are justified
by the most economical disposition of a growing population;
or they may proceed, like the slovenly farmer, to spread
their power and energy over the whole earth, tempted
by the speculative value or the quick profits of some
new market, or else by mere greed of territorial acquisition,
and ignoring the political and economic wastes and risks
involved by this imperial career. It must be clearly
understood that this is essentially a choice of alternatives;
a full simultaneous application of intensive and extensive
cultivation is impossible. A nation may either, following
the example of Denmark or Switzerland, put brains into
agriculture, develop a finely varied system of public
education, general and technical, apply the ripest science
to its special manufacturing industries, and so support
in progressive comfort and character a considerable
population upon a strictly limited area; or it may,
like Great r Britain, neglect its agriculture, allowing
its lands to go out of cultivation and its population
to grow up in towns, fall behind other nations in its
methods of education and in the capacity of adapting
to its uses the latest scientific knowledge, in order
that it may squander its pecuniary and military resources
in forcing bad markets and finding speculative fields
of investment in distant corners of the earth, adding
millions of square miles and of unassimilable population
to the area of the Empire.
The
driving forces of class interest which stimulate and
support this false economy we have explained. No remedy
will serve which permits the future operation of these
forces. It is idle to attack Imperialism or Militarism
as political expedients or policies unless the axe is
laid at the economic root of the tree, and the classes
for whose interest Imperialism works are shorn of the
surplus revenues which seek this outlet.
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