Imperialism

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Imperialism is an unequal and exploitative human and territorial relationship, usually in the form of an empire, based on ideas of superiority and practices of dominance, and involving the extension of authority and control of one state or people over another.

Imperialism has been a central component of nations for much of human history; both ancient polities, like the Roman Empire and Persia, and modern states, including France, Germany, Japan, and the United States, have created empires.

Contents

[edit] Methods

[edit] Colonialism

Colonialism is the act of one country taking over some other area and settling it or ruling over it. It appears very similar to imperialism, although colonists can be invited by the receiving country. Colonialism has been around since at least the Classical World, as it is well known that the Phoenicians and the Greeks colonized much of Northern Africa.

Usually, when speaking of colonialism, people are referring to European colonialism. European countries - most notably Britain, France, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands - engaged in large amounts of colonialism, starting in the 15th century and ending in the 20th. Most of the world's surface is composed of former colonies. For example, all of the Americas and Australia, and almost all of Africa and Asia were colonized at some point. Some states, such as France and Great Britain, still have overseas colonies. However, the largest colonial empire was that of Great Britain, which ruled much of Africa and the Middle East, along with India, China, Australia and a large part of North America.

Colonialism as a worldwide system ended after World War II, due to a multitude of causes. In part, many of the old colonial powers came to accept the need for self-determination in the colonies. At the same time, there had been great advances in "asymmetric warfare", as evidenced by the ability of the poorly-equipped Vietnamese forces to fight off both France and the United States.

These days, accusations of colonialism are most often leveled at the United States, Israel, and China. This might be unreasonable, since Russia, via the former Soviet Union, colonized much of eastern Europe and western and northern Asia. Attempts by East Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and others to remove the colonial yoke were forcibly put down, though clearly in distant times - Germany is now one nation and Czechoslovakia is now the Czech Republic. Russia under Dmitry Medvedev shows signs of trying to revive this modality, though with little more military action than border-scuffles with small nations. It must be said that they pursue worldwide colonization with some trepidation when in comparison with that of the recent activities of the United States.

A particular branch of study, "postcolonialism", has arisen to study the effects and aftermaths of colonialism on different parts of the world, from the point of view of the former colonies. It particularly focuses on differences in colonial structures and their results.

[edit] Racism

Empires based on racism and exploitation, are of more recent origin - Britain being the largest colonial power.

[edit] Puppet states

A puppet state or satellite state is an example of indirect imperialism, in which a country's government is outwardly independent but is controlled by a foreign power. The most famous examples come from WWII, when the Nazis pulled the strings in the Vichy French government and the Japanese set up the puppet government of Manchukuo in Northern China.

[edit] Countries

[edit] Britain

See the main article on this topic: British Empire

The British Empire was a massive Juggernaut than spanned across the world. Starting with the colonization of the Americas, it continues to exist in a much reduced form. At the height of the Empire its image was that of mustachioed men wearing silly white helmets and sipping tea while the dark-skinned people did all the hard work.

[edit] America

[edit] Historical

Americans wore really stupid hats during this era

While America stayed out of Africa, they did engage in Imperialist behavior. The Spanish American War was effectively an excuse to exert power over the Caribbean. While many Americans at the time were isolationist, the US engaged in such actions as the Open Door policy, as well as sending the Great White Fleet around the world as a show of power.[1] During the cold war, the US felt the need to poke their nose in everyone's business fight the spectre of Communism. They accomplished this goal by intervening in other nation's civil wars and basing troops in countries, ostensibly for their protection. This meant that America had a military presence world wide, just in case someone acted up.

[edit] Recent efforts

See the main article on this topic: Neoconservatism

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the United States was left as the worlds sole superpower. Neoconservatives formulated a new foreign policy focused on maintaining America's super power status by preventing any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would make them a viable threat. [2]

Some critics of American Foreign Policy argue that it amounts to little more than modern-day colonization. There are two main forms of colonization which the Americans pursue.

One is establishing "free markets", so that foreign markets can freely be flooded with American goods.[3] This can also be associated with the privatization of national assets, which usually fall into the hands of private American contractors.[4] The Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq planned to sell approximately 150 of 200 state-owned enterprises in 2004,[5] prompting critics from the Washington Post to claim: "It took L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator in Baghdad, no more than a stroke of the pen … to accomplish what eluded [Republicans] over the course of a decade and two presidential campaigns".[6]

The other is military occupation. The American Armed Forces currently have permanent bases in 61 countries worldwide.[7] They have a military presence in over 100 countries worldwide, including 100,000 troops in Europe, 77,000 in the Pacific and East Asia, and a total of 270,000 troops in foreign countries not currently in action. In 2012, there were an estimated 67,500 servicemen and servicewomen in Iraq and Afghanistan.[8]

"Seldom has history seen such a dominant, unilateral power astride the international scene." This is taken from a report to Congress and the President: "Commission on Review of Overseas Military Facility Structure of the United States".[9] The ambitions of the American foreign policy are clearly stated and not at all secretive, as seen in this extract from the above Commission:

"We have undertaken a transformation of strategy that is far-reaching in its implications on our ability to defend ourselves at home and to pursue our interests in the world. We have formulated new doctrines, organized new unit structures, developed new weapons, communications, intelligence, logistics, and command and control systems, and sought new allies and altered basing locations at home and abroad. We are adopting new techniques and procedures, shifting our forces around the globe, and otherwise launching a myriad of innovations."[10]

Any thinking person must wonder what could be implied by "our ability to defend ourselves at home and to pursue our interests in the world", when the American government insists its current military actions are purely defensive measures, put in place to "counter terrorism".

[edit] France

France extensively colonized Africa and Indochina, and still held many of its colonies until the 1970s.

[edit] Japan

All the World under one Roof

Japan joined the empire game relatively late, but nonetheless managed to acquire a sizable one. Initially an absolute monarchy, then a constitutional monarchy, it eventually spiraled into fascism. Like the Russian empire, the Japanese Empire had the emperor play a spiritual role. Unlike the Russians however, the Emperor was worshipped. This caused some trouble later.

[edit] Russia

Nicolas II, last Emperor of Russia. Also, owner of an awesome mustache
"Autocracy, Orthodoxy, and Nationality"
—Maxim of Alexander III[11]

Tsarist Russia had ambitions in Asia, Africa already having been taken. They attempted to gain control of Manchuria and Korea, unfortunately for them, they came in conflict with the Japanese Empire. Russia suffered a humiliating defeat, losing much of their navy while the successful Japanese assault on the Russian stronghold of Port Arthur gave some European observers some unfortunate ideas about the effectiveness of massed infantry attacks against entrenchments, machine guns and modern artillery. The Russian Empire was an autocracy with a sizeable theocratic element. Unlike the aforementioned Japanese Empire, the czar was "merely" head of the church and answered only to God rather than being worshipped himself. It didn't end well.

The successors to the tsars would of course not stoop to something like a theocratic Russian autocracy, well, not theocratic[12] at least... Lenin didn't mind snapping up several of the old tsarist imperial domains when he was able, while Uncle Joe thought that the red gospel was so fantastic that the Eastern half of Europe couldn't possibly live without it, but when his successors tried to convince the Afghans things ended about as well as could be expected from looking at the history of Afghanistan.

[edit] Germany

[edit] Holy Roman Empire

The Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire, but it did last some 900 years. It never engaged in overseas imperial conquest. This may have been due to its generally questionable ability to effectively exert central control over the dozens of independent immediate princes and bishops.

[edit] Second and Third Reichs

The German Empire didn't last long: from unification in 1871 to collapse after the Great War was a mere 47 years [13]. Germany got into the overseas empire game late, getting only some bits of Africa and a few islands in the Pacific.

[edit] Footnotes

  1. Navies were like the nuclear missiles of the day, everyone had to have the biggest and fanciest.
  2. McGowan, J. (2007). "Neoconservatism". American Liberalism: An Interpretation for Our Time. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. pp. 124–133. ISBN 0-807-83171-9.
  3. Examples given of the modern Iraq conflict
  4. [1]
  5. [2] (Paywall) and [3]
  6. [4]
  7. [5]
  8. Troop Levels in the Afghan and Iraq Wars, FY2001-FY2012: Cost and Other Potential Issues, PDF
  9. [6]
  10. [7]
  11. The content of "Nationality" ("Narodnost") was the problem: Did it refer to Russian nationalism? Love of the empire? The people? While usually translated as "nationality", other possible translations[wp] are something like the "spiritual identity of the people", or even "populism"
  12. Although communism has more than a little whiff of religious and Messianic fervour about it.
  13. There is an argument to be made that the Third Reich was an imperial project
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