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John Hobson:
Imperialism, 1902
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 fulfillment
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 Great 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.
From John A. Hobson, Imperialism (London: Allen and Unwin,
1948)
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