The Long and Short of It--Racism?

David and Mia (fairly) recently mentioned the factor of racism in the European imperialist mindset. Race obviously provided a simple and conspicuous means to identify the rest of the world as 'other' and thereby facilitate the 'cognitive dissonance' (our favorite buzzword with imperialism) allowing liberalism for whites and subjugation for everyone else. 

I don't think imperialism hinges on race, however, in the way David and Mia seem to assert. My case in point is the Irish. For centuries, the Irish have been seen as the savage and inferior counterparts to the English despite their superficial (and genetic) similarities with the rest of Great Britain. Anti-Irish bigots had no trouble reducing this group to the level of apes and primitive peoples, as exemplified by the cartoon above. 

Even if the Congolese tribes and the Chinese had looked like Europeans, I'm confident some new means of differentiating Europe from the 'rest of the world' would have come about fairly quickly.

In Memory of Charlie Darwin

In 10th grade, we talked about the three great "Humiliations" of mankind: the Copernican revolution, which showed we are not at the center of the universe, evolution by natural selection, which showed we are not the crown of creation, and psychoanalysis, which showed we might not be in control of our own thoughts. We've discussed one already (Copernicus) in this course, and on Darwin's 200th birthday we're talking about the second. Darwin's hypothesis had a deeply disturbing impact on many people. It took mankind off its pedestal, it encroached on a religious explanation of the natural world, and it posed a further challenge to the Enlightenment social paradigm. As biology, it's irrefutable. However, it quickly became co-opted by racial apologists, nationalists, and members of the middle class as pseudo-scientific 'Social Darwinism'. What I think this shows most is simply that revolutions in our understanding of the world always precipitate a change in how society looks at itself, and the idea behind the scientific revolution can often become the idea behind a cultural revolution. 

Interestingly, 'Social Darwinism' wasn't in response to something new--it was taking a new idea and using it to deal with a pre-existing issue of growing inequality (another challenge to the Enlightenment paradigm).  So in this case, the process worked in reverse (even though Darwin's was in no way intended to defend imperialism or such thing). 

Rage against the Imperialist Machine?

There's been quite a bit of anger of late about the injustice of imperialism, such as Laura's and Leigh's posts. I by and large tend to agree with it, but it raises an interesting point. What would Europe and the West have been like without imperialism? Would the West still enjoy the standard of living and wealth it now has if not for imperialism? Would we even be in a position to complain about imperialism if it were not for imperialism? Scarcity means, unfortunately, that the world's resources aren't infinite. To some extent, one nation's loss comes at another's gain. So without imperialism, we might have a more equitable distribution of resources around the world, but that would mean decreased standards of living elsewhere.

I'm willing to accept this as a consequence of a non-aggressive, voluntary global village/community/[insert warm fuzzy platitude here]. But I think we should keep in mind that you can't have your cake and eat it too.

2/1-2/8 Summary

In class this week we focused on the causes and effects of imperialism. I really liked Danielle's comment regarding the Boer war in her post--namely, to what lengths were European powers willing to go in exercising their imperial policy? She asks the question "How can imperialism ever be successful if people will ALWAYS revolt?" I agree with her assessment that European powers needed a variety of power structures (like a nominally independent Congo Free State, one-sided trade agreements with China, and puppet rulers in India) to deal with their subjects without resorting to overt tyranny. However, in some cases this strategy failed egregiously, thereby highlighting the paradox of a liberal imperialism--Britain had to wage total war against the Boers with concentration camps, creating its own guerrilla forces, and a scorched-earth policy to suppress the rebellion. Military necessity forced the British to abandon 'civilized' practices of warfare, as encapsulated in the trial and scapegoating of 'Breaker' Morant. 

Why Can't We Be Friends? (da da daah da da...) [837ish-843ish]

The greatest downside of nationalism (for the nationalist at least) is that despite all your eloquence on unity and common purpose, your nation doesn't always get along too well. In fact, when coupled with profound economic upheaval, conflict often emerges. The first Industrial Revolution saw a revolution in the means of production that took some time to adjust to. Along with the political turmoil of the period, it provoked revolutions in 1830 and 1848. However, the second Industrial Revolution saw no such thing. I posit two principal causes:

1. The Second IR was not as 'revolutionary' as the first. As the textbook mentions, the Second IR was principally an "increas[e] in the scope and scale of industry", not a transformation of industry or the creation of industry. This made it less of a shock to people.

2. Rather than take up arms, reformers principally felt their calling lay in the political process. The development of states based around nations meant a greater connection between the state and its people (in part because of democratization, in part because the legitimacy of the state was now fundamentally in its people, not the royal line or aristocracy [Russia withstanding]). In places with developed political institutions, like Britain, violence was at a minimum, whereas in France events like the Paris Commune led to violent crackdowns. 

Change therefore came in the form of Socialist parties and workers movements that sought to work within the context of a 'bourgeois' government to improve the lot of the working class. Socialist thinkers like Eduard Bernstein moderated Marx's vision and used the vehicle of social institutions to achieve change rather than syndicalists and anarchists. A useful analogy, perhaps, is the AFL vs. the Knights of Labor from US history. 'Mass politics', as the textbook calls it, organized huge voting blocs within the political apparatus and were thus taken more seriously by the established states of the day.

Finally, this period of the "Gilded Age" is often cited by critics of capitalism for being an era of cartelization and monopolization. However, as the textbook correctly mentions, FREE TRADE proved to be one of the best deterrents to cartel behavior in countries like Britain (top right pp. pg. 829). FREE TRADE (i.e. foreign competition for the cartel, which makes it more difficult to sustain prices above the market rate) can defeat monopolies and cartels far better than regulation. 

pp. 793-806

The most pressing question to ask regarding this reading, I think, is how this new imperialism differed from other from previous European expansion in the 17th and 18th centuries. There are several principal areas of divergence.

1) Imperialism, unlike earlier colonialism, had to reconcile itself with Europe's nominal commitment to liberalism. It therefore had a much more developed cultural flavor, as exemplified by France. Liberal nationalism became the rhetorical signature of imperial apologists, such as Jules Ferry. Imperialism became France's route to re-establish its national pride and dignity after the humiliation of the Franco-Prussian War. It also employed clearly developed ideas of racial and cultural superiority.

2) For similar reasons to 1), imperialism involved more subtle and varied means of control than past colonialism. In China, for example, European powers used trade treaties to cement and codify their commercial and cultural influence. After the Sepoy Rebellion in India, moreover, Britain rearranged its colonial government by removing whites from prominent public positions and establishing puppet governments.

Once again, both of these differences reduce to the different ideological contexts of the period. The transparency of foreign operations had increased exponentially over earlier colonization efforts, making it necessary for European powers to use less overt methods of control. Imperialism also required a more sophisticated defense to win over public approval and connect it to existing ideologies of nationalism and the like.

The Highest Stage of Capitalism?

Note: documents found at the Internet Modern History Sourcebook

Lenin and Hobson both argued imperialism was the natural (and, in Lenin's case, most extreme) manifestation of state-endorsed capitalism. Hobson, in Imperialism, endorses the view that imperialism exemplified the economic interest groups pressuring newly-unified states to expand their markets beyond Europe. Lenin followed Marx's analysis, contending that imperialism resulted from the general stagnation of capitalism as domestic industries coalesced into monopolies and profit margins began to decrease. To maintain profitability without increasing surplus value (the difference between a worker's wage and the value of his work), Marx argued capitalists would be forced to innovate or expand their markets. Thus, imperialism.

Others felt the process operated in reverse order. Joseph Schumpeter, in The Sociology of Imperialism, wrote that the imperialist spirit was a consequence of "The 'inner logic' of capitalism would have never evolved it. Its sources come from the policy of the princes and the customs of a pre-capitalism milieu... a martially-oriented class (i.e. the nobility) [that] maintained itself in the ruling position." The nationalist, statist desire for expansion and glory, in other words, created the opportunity for economic expansion.

Because the causes and effects of imperialism are so intermixed, determining them presents a 'chicken and the egg' problem. However, I am inclined to agree with Mr. Schumpeter. Imperialism was a state-sponsored enterprise, with the state acting in a power-maximizing fashion. Companies may have advocated and endorsed it, but it was fundamentally a political and cultural ideology.