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 fulfilment 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 selfconsciousness
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 threequarters
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 Greatr 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.
Source:
From John A. Hobson, Imperialism (London: Allen and Unwin,
1948), pp.35, 71-72,7778, 8081, 9293.
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(c) Paul Halsall Aug 1997
