Economic Imperialism

ECONOMIC IMPERIALISM. The term imperialism is generally used to mean foreign control of assets and decisions, including where such control exists in fact but not in law. Empire may be "formal" or "informal" (Gallagher and Robinson, 1953), "colonial" or "neocolonial" (in the terminology of dependency theory). This essay considers economic causes and effects of imperialism. There is a long and geographically widespread history of rulers using force to enhance their fiscal and military potential by appropriating territory, subjects, or tribute from their neighbors. The literature on "economic imperialism," however, mainly concerns the last five hundred years. Its focus has been the causal relationships between the political and economic expansion of western Europe overseas and the consequences of European expansion for the economies of the rest of the world. This requires broadening, in recognition that the expansionary processes that emanated from Europe were extended, mainly by societies which themselves stemmed from earlier phases in these processes, such as the United States and Australia, but also by others on which Western imperialism had impacted from outside, notably Japan. Types and Periods. Imperialism has taken diverse forms, often historically interrelated. But it is reasonable to make a basic distinction between the wholesale appropriation of territory, involving the demographic and political displacement of any previous occupants, and control over societies that, however reshaped, remained in occupation of much or all of the land. Territorial appropriation and demographic displacement have occurred widely and recurrently, but in global terms the major example is the conquest and settlement, by west Europeans and people predominantly descended from them, of three already inhabited continents plus the previously uninhabited one, Antarctica. This process, begun with Columbus's arrival in the New World in 1492, was not essentially completed in North America and Australa- sia until the late nineteenth century. In South America in parts of the Amazon Basin, it was not quite finished by 2000. In the majority of these territories, the new societies, dominated by settlers or by Creole elites, won independence (for example, the United States, the republics of Latin America). Those British colonies of settlement established late enough for the imperial power to avoid the U.S. outcome became self-governing while retaining constitutional and political links with the "mother country." Haiti was an exception—a state created not by settlers but by a revolution (in the 1790s) of African slaves who had been imported to work the Europeans plantations. Imperialism without anything approaching a demographic takeover also has an ancient and geographically widespread history, as when states were forced to pay tribute to foreign rulers. But in the context of the "economic imperialism" literature, two main subcategories may be identified.download