Readings+on+the+Economics+of+Imperialism

The readings below are both reactions to Imperialism written at nearly the same time. Read both carefully while in class (and outside of class). Always ANNOTATE while you read. Get out your pen/pencil and underline key terms or ideas. Look for how the authors’ views of imperialism are similar and how they are different. The Questions are on Schoology, Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, 1891 The Desirability of Imperialism (De la colonisation chez les peuples modernes) 4th edition (Paris, 1891), pp. 841-846, 705-706, 712-718, 737-740. Slightly adapted. It is impossible not to consider imperialism as one of the tasks imposed on the civilized states for the last four centuries, more particularly on our age. The present-day world is composed of four different parts in terms of types of civilization. That of Western civilization-our own part. A second part [is] inhabited by people of a different civilization, but organized in compact, coherent and stable societies and destined by their history and present character to govern themselves-the Chinese and Japanese peoples for example. In the third part live peoples advanced enough in some respects, but ones which either stagnated or bad not been able to constitute themselves as unified, peaceful, progressive nations, following a regular development. . . . India before the British conquest, Java, and the Indochinese peninsula represent particularly this third type. Finally, a great part of the world is inhabited by barbarian tribes or savages, some given over to wars without end and to brutal customs, and others knowing so little of the arts and being so little accustomed to work and to invention that they do not know how to exploit their land and its natural riches. They live in little groups, impoverished and scattered, in enormous territories which could nourish vast numbers of people with ease. This state of the world implies for the civilized people a right of intervention. . . . . . ln the affairs of the peoples of the last two categories. It is neither natural nor just for the civilized people of the West to be cooped up indefinitely and jammed into the restricted spaces which were their first home. Nor is it natural and just that they there accumulate the marvels of science, the arts and civilization, that they see the rate of interest fall more each day for lack of good investment Opportunities, while they leave perhaps half the world to little groups of ignorant, ineffectual men who are like feeble children. . . or to exhausted populations, without energy, without direction, who may be compared to old men. Imperialism is often confused with commerce or with the opening of commercial markets. . . . Imperialism means something quite different from the sale or purchase of commodities. It entails a profound action on a people and a territory, providing the inhabitants with some education and regular justice, teaching them the division of labor and the uses of capital when they are ignorant of these things. It opens an area not only to the merchandise of the mother country, but to its capital and its savings, to its engineers, to its overseers, to its emigrants. . . . Such a transformation of a barbarian country cannot be accomplished by simple commercial relations. Imperialism is thus the systematic action of an organized people upon another people whose organization is defective; and it presupposes that it is the state itself, and not only some individuals, which is responsible for the mission. Colonization by capital is a very important phenomenon. . . . European capitalists--and by this word we mean not only a banker, but every person putting aside a little money, a modest employee, a peasant, a worker, a spinster or a widow--can work effectively at colonization, the exploitation of the globe, without leaving their firesides. . . . All they need do is place their savings in an industrial enterprise which constructs railroads, digs canals, erects factories, clears the land in the young countries. In putting their savings to this use, the inhabitants of the old world are not in any way delinquent in their duty to their home country. The countries where civilization is old, like England or France, are enormous producers of capital, and the difficulties in employing their colossal annual savings remuneratively in their own lands becomes great. Of course, the substantial funds of the old countries can always be put into industrial, agricultural or social improvements; but the export of a part of these funds across the seas to the adolescent countries, is much more productive for the entire human race. The same capital which will produce 3 or 4 per cent when invested in agriculture in France brings 10, 15, or 20 per cent in an agricultural enterprise in the United States, in Canada, on the Plata River, in Australia, or in New Zealand. It is the same for funds put into building railroads. . . . In general terms, the old countries thus are becoming investors to which the rest of the world offers growing profit. . The great value of colonies. . . . . . is not only that they serve to catch the overflow population of the mother country, nor even that they open a particularly reliable area of investment for excess capital, it is also that they give a sharp stimulus to the commerce of the country, that they strengthen and support its industry and furnish to its inhabitants--industrialists, workers, consumer--a growth of profits, of wages, or of interest. But,. . . these advantages resulting from the prosperity of the colonies, are not limited just to the mother countries; they extend to all the countries of the old world and in fact there is not a nation which does not derive a real benefit from this increase in the productivity of humanity. . . . Imperialism has caused the opening of new sources of production. . . . It is thus that unknown products have been brought to the consumers of Europe to increase their comfort. . . . That is the first and incontestable result of imperialism. And this is the second: It is to open the new markets for the sale of products manufactured in Europe, markets more profitable and more expandable than those we have been limited to previously, because the new societies have an ability to grow and to create and accumulate riches infinitely greater than the old societies. Thus trade is stimulated and extended, the division of labor is augmented; industry having before it wider openings can and must produce more and such production on a greater scale calls for new improvements and new advances…. The advantages of which we have been speaking so far are general and apply not only to the mother countries, but to all the civilized countries, even those without colonies. . . . [But] it appears to us incontestable that the home countries gain a special advantage from their own colonies: first, it is the capital of the citizens of the mother country which is sent there, and in this more productive field it is assured of higher interest, which improves the fortunes of the investors, of which a good number without doubt remain in the mother country. Further, the community of language, habits, and traditions, gives an advantage to the home country over all foreign nations even in free trade with the colonies. The colonists retain for a long time the tastes of the mother country, [and] their relations with her have a degree of intimacy which she rarely has with other nations…. It is extremely rare that a colony furnishes a net revenue to the mother country: in infancy it is not able, in maturity it does not want to. . . . Inasmuch (to the extent) as a colony must be administered by functionaries, and defended by soldiers and sailors, drawn from the mother country, it is probable that the mother country will be out of pocket a considerable sum…. Thus it is a great illusion to found colonies in the hopes of revenue: But on the other hand, the costs of colonies to the metropole (the main city or cities of an empire: London, Manchester, Liverpool) have been singularly exaggerated by the adversaries of colonization. The English colonies today cost the country nothing, on the whole at least… Today only her possessions in South Africa require at one time or another substantial expenses. . . . In the not too distant future, perhaps 15 or 20 years, one can hope that the English colonies of Africa. . . no longer will be a charge on the budget even in the least measure. . . . And after all, what are the few hundred thousand pounds which Great Britain actually pays for the upkeep of colonies as against the immense material and moral advantages which they procure for her? John Hobson: Imperialism, 1902 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 (until now) 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 (military) 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 (products of factories) and for investments which was avowedly (admittedly) 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 (a waste; not needed; more than enough).... 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 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 (financial resources, or money) 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 (not absorbed or integrated into the dominant culture or society) 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 (cut off) of the surplus revenues which seek this outlet. Simply put: it is a waste of time to complain about imperialism if one does not look at the cause for it which is the investments made by the richest members of the imperial power into the zones imperialized.axe is laid at the economic root of the tree, and the classes for whose interest Imperialism works are shorn (cut off) of the surplus revenues which seek this outlet. Simply put: it is a waste of time to complain about imperialism if one does not look at the cause for it which is the investments made by the richest members of the imperial power into the zones imperialized.