Blackwell Reference Online

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Imperialism designates the historical phenomenon whereby certain political entities have sought to exert control over and extract resources from others, whether through formal conquest, informal coercion, or a host of intermediate solutions (e.g., protectorates, alliances, occupations, and so on). It also denotes the multiple concepts or theories of imperialism, which continue to be the object of controversies that easily exceed the realm of academic debate, especially since “imperialist” still largely remains a term of reprobation. Initially coined to designate the existence and expansion of empires (from Ancient Rome to Napoleonic France), the notion of imperialism gained prominence in the late nineteenth century, when it came to identify the reality of European colonialism (from the British Raj to the “scramble for Africa”). The ensuing history of the concept registers a distinction between, on the one hand, purely political definitions of imperialism, which reduce it to an instance of power politics and foreground the issue of territorial gain, and, on the other, socioeconomic analyses, which, while not discounting the significance of physical expansion, emphasize the underlying and often invisible causes of imperialist policies, thereby accounting for the influence of material factors on geopolitical decisions. The penchant for a given concept or theory of imperialism invariably ... log in or subscribe to read full text