Imperialism

“the actions and attitudes which create or uphold [empires] – but also less obvious and direct kinds of control or domination by one people or country over others”, e.g. cultural or economic imperialism; (dependency; globalization) [Howe, Empire, A Very Short Introduction]

 

a system of political control imposed by a metropolitan power on a number of subordinate (peripheral) societies that lay outside the geographic boundaries of the metropolitan nation;  the metropolitan power exerts control over its colonies through direct and indirect methods for a variety of commercial, military, strategic, and social reasons [Harland-Jacobs]

 

Early definitions
the use of national force to secure new markets by annexing fresh tracts of territory; a political philosophy of territorial expansion in search of markets for surplus manufactured goods [Hobson, "Imperialism, 1902"]

 

the highest stage of capitalism; its basic features include: the creation of monopolies, the emergence of a financial oligarchy that merges bank capital with industrial capital; export of capital become more important than the export of commodities; formation of international monopolies; the territorial division of the world. [Lenin, "Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism"]

 

the object-less disposition of a state to expansion by force without assigned limits [Schumpeter, "The Sociology of Imperialism"]

 

 

Recent definitions
"a sufficient political function of [the] process of integrating new regions into the expanding economy; its character is largely decided by the various and changing relationships between the political and economic elements of expansion in any particular region and time"
[Robinson and Gallagher, "The Imperialism of Free Trade," 5-6]

"The distinguishing feature of imperialism is not that it takes a specific economic, cultural or political form, but that it involved an incursion, or an attempted incursion, into the sovereignty of another state.  Whether this impulse is resisted or welcomed and whether it produces costs or benefits are important but separate questions.  What matters for purposes of definition is that one power has the will, and, if it is to succeed, the capacity to shape the affairs of another by imposing upon it.  The relations established by imperialism are therefore based upon inequality and not unpon mutual compromises of the kind which characterise states of interdependence." [Cain and Hopkins, British Imperialism, Innovation and Expansion, 42-3]


“the practice, the theory, and the attitudes of a dominating metropolitan centre ruling a distant territory”; an ideological force [Said, 1993, in Ashcroft, 46]


"As an ideology. . . imperialism bundles together different elements that more or less cohere, though these elements may also appear separately or in varying combinations, and with varying degrees of intensity":  advocacy of territorial expansion by military force; chauvinism based on loyalty to the existing Empire; the glorification of the military and of war; racial superiority of white Europeans; responsibility to import the light of civilization [Brantlinger, Rule of Darkness, 7-8]


“domination or control of one group over another,” ie, cultural, religious, or Dollar imperialism; the formation of an empire; when one nation extends its dominion over one or several other nations [Baumgart, Imperialism, 1]

an umbrella term covering the whole gamut of relations between a dominant and a subordinate society; "the effective domination by a relatively strong state over a weaker people whom it does not control as it does its home population, or as the effort to secure such domination" [ Mary Ann Heiss, "The Evolution of the Imperial Idea and U.S. National Policy," 513, quoting Smith The Pattern of Imperialism (1981), 6, and Fieldhouse Colonialism, 1870-1945 (1981), 1]

“Imperialism is the concept that comprises all forces and activities contributing to the construction and the maintenance of transcolonial empires.  Imperialism presupposes the will and ability of an imperial center to define as imperial its own national interests. . . Imperialism thus implies not only colonial politics, but international politics for which colonies are not just ends in themselves, but also pawns in global power games. . . . Imperialism is planned and carried out by chanceries, foreign ministries, and ministries of war, colonialism by special colonial authorities and ‘men on the spot.’. . . “Imperialism”is in some respects a more comprehensive concept.  ‘Colonialism’ might appear to be one special manifestation of ‘imperialism’. . ." [Osterhammel, Colonialism, 21-2]

“the seizure of land from its owners and their consequent subjugation by military force and cultural programming: the latter involved the description, mapping and ecological transformation of the occupied territory” [Kiberd, Inventing Ireland, 5] 

 
“the late nineteenth/early twentieth century moment when European empires reached their formal apogee” [Hall, Cultures of Empire, 5]