Empire and Imperialism

The explanation for the change in this relationship during the nineteenth century remains complex. Initial explanations for the development of nineteenth-century imperialism located the causes as lying within Europe and focused in particular on economic factors. Such a view, derived ultimately from J.A. Hobson's seminal Imperialism: A Study, and which was taken up by Lenin and Marxist writers, saw imperialism as driven by the exploitation of the economic resources of the wider world, with financiers pressing governments to annex colonies in order to protect their overseas investments. However, because of the limited returns from imperial conquest in this period and because colonial expansion did not, in practice, follow overseas investments, this view has been criticized. Alternative explanations have emphasized the importance of chauvinist ideas in the origins of European expansion, stressing how deep-rooted militaristic values in nineteenth century European society, alongside racist and nationalist theories, and reinforced in turn by ideas of social Darwinism and of Europe's "civilizing mission" overseas, led to the assumption that colonies were essential for national prestige.

However, historians are skeptical of interpretations that locate imperialism's origins solely within Europe. Such views, it is argued, erroneously see Africans and Asians as passive ciphers in a process that ought to be seen as involving a shifting relationship of power between Europe and the wider world. The historians writing in the 1950s and 1960s as the societies of Africa and Asia threw off European rule acquired an awareness of the role played by developments in what was termed "the periphery"—that is, areas on the frontiers of existing European territories overseas. The most influential of such historians were Ronald Robinson and Jack Gallagher. Their work stressed how Britain's expansion was driven by strategic imperatives in the defense of the route to the Indian empire, and the threats to it that developed within Africa and Asia in the 1870s and 1880s. Robinson and Gallagher emphasized the variety of methods—including gunboat diplomacy and "influence" as much as formal annexation—Britain used to defend these interests, these varying according to the relationship Britain was able to negotiate with those Africans and Asians living on "the periphery."

Certainly any explanation of European expansion has to include developments outside Europe as well as factors within it, and has to be located in the existing, and already growing, overseas interests of the European powers—primarily Britain and France—in the mid-nineteenth century. Important in this was the corrosive impact of an industrializing West on societies in Africa and Asia, and the problems this impact—economic, social, cultural, and technological—generated within these societies and in relations with Europeans. What transformed this process into the large-scale conquest of Africa and Asia was Germany's intervention overseas in 1883–1885. For the German chancellor Otto von Bismarck (1815–1898), colonial expansion was relatively cheap and was popular within Germany, but most significantly, it brought with it major diplomatic gains for Germany's position in Europe. By threatening the existing possessions of Britain and France, German colonial expansion showed the importance of German diplomatic friendship. The ensuing furor not only diverted the danger of diplomatic isolation for Germany but also ensured that Britain and France had to expand in order to defend their overseas interests.