Empire and Imperialism

European imperial expansion in the Middle East to 1914 was a small part of a global takeover of non-Western lands from the mid-nineteenth century onward that saw nearly all of the African continent and independent territories in Asia either occupied or forced to bow to European demands, as in the case of China.

Scholars attribute this imperial expansion to several impulses; the primary factors were the desire to control markets or natural resources and European continental rivalries extended to denial of lands to a rival. Behind the specific reasons lay the basic driving force of European technological superiority established by the scientific and industrial revolutions, creating a reservoir of power and skills lacking in non-European regions. This facilitated conquest and fueled attitudes of racial superiority referred to as Social Darwinism. A transference of Darwin's theory of natural evolution to societal development, this theory justified white domination of non-whites because they had evolved to a superior level of civilization.

More recent approaches to the study of imperialism have expanded the range of scholarly inquiry. Cain and Hopkins's theory of "gentlemanly capitalism," where individuals close to power influenced decisions based on their own investments in areas such as Egypt, has attracted attention, but other studies point to the greater complexity of imperial associations, challenging previous assumptions. Occupation did not automatically mean economic dominance, as shown by France's control of the Imperial Ottoman Bank and the fact that its economic interests in Egypt were greater than those of Britain, the occupying power, demonstrated in the work of Jacques Thobie and Samir Saul.

Intertwined with such economic penetration of non-Western areas was the nature of the indigenous response, whether nationalist or, for minorities, often collaboration with overseas capital. Further complicating matters is the question of the impact of outside investment on local economies, possibly leading to Lebanese migration to the Western hemisphere, as Akram Khater has shown, at the same time that Europeans might be migrating to northern African countries for economic opportunities lacking in their own lands, processes seen in the scholarship of Mulia Clancy-Smith, Robert Tignor, and Roger Owen.

Finally, much recent scholarship has approached imperialism, Middle Eastern or otherwise, from the vantage point of ordinary people, European or the colonized. This approach automatically makes available many more sources than those found in official government archives, and especially calls attention to the role of women as either part of the imperial venture or the objects of it in the imperial imagination and representation of non-Western women.