11-26-2003, 01:50 AM
The New Imperialism and the newly-industrialising countries
While Germany, Italy, the United States and Japan, the recently industrialised powers, were under less pressure to offload surplus capital than Britain,
these nations would resort to protectionism and formal empire to end Britain's advantages on international markets.
Just as the US emerged as a great industrial, military and political power after the Civil War, so would Germany following its own unification in 1871.
Both countries undertook ambitious naval expansion in the 1890s. And just as Germany reacted to depression with the adoption of tariff protection in 1879
and colonial expansion in 1884-85, so would the US following the landslide election (1896) of William McKinley, already associated with the high
McKinley Tariff of 1890.
United States expansionism had its roots in domestic concerns and economic conditions, as in other newly industrialising nations where government sought
to accelerate internal development. Advocates of empire also drew upon to a tradition of westward expansion over the course of the previous century.
Economic depression led some US businessmen and politicians from the mid-1880s to come to the same conclusion as their European counterparts â
that industry and capital had exceeded the capacity of existing markets and needed new outlets. The "closing of the Frontier" identified by the 1890
Census report and publicised by historian Frederick Jackson Turner in his 1893 paper The Significance of the Frontier in American History, contributed to
fears of constrained natural resource.
Like the Long Depression in Europe, the main features of the US depression included deflation, rural decline, and unemployment, which aggravated the
bitter social protests of the "Gilded Age" â the Populist movement, the free-silver crusade, and violent labour disputes such as the Pullman and
Homestead strikes.
The Panic of 1893 contributed to the growing mood for expansionism. Influential politicians such as Henry Cabot Lodge, William McKinley, and Theodore
Roosevelt advocated a more aggressive foreign policy to pull the United States out of the depression: their agitation was rewarded with the
Spanish-American War of 1898 and their country's seizure of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines.
Although US capital investments within the Philippines and Puerto Rico were relatively small (figures that would seemingly detract from the broader
economic implications on first glance), imperialism for the United States, formalised in 1904 by the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine), would
also her displacement of Britain as the predominant investor in Latin Americaâa process largely completed by the end of the Great War.
In Germany, Imperial Chancellor Otto von Bismarck revised his initial dislike of colonies (which he had seen as burdensome and useless) partly under
pressure for colonial expansion to match that of the other European states, but also under the mistaken notion that Germany's entry into the colonial
scramble could press Britain into conceding broader German strategic ambitions.
Japan's development after the Meiji Restoration of 1868 followed the Western lead in industrialisation and militarism, enabling her to gain control of Korea
in 1894 and a sphere of influence in Manchuria (1905) following her defeat of Russia. Japan was responding in part to the actions of more established
powers, and her expansionism drew on the harnessing of traditional values to more modern aspirations for great-power status: not until the 1930s was
Japan to become a net exporter of capital.
Social implications of the New Imperialism
The New imperialism gave rise to new social views of colonialism. Rudyard Kipling, for instance, urged the United States to take up the "White Man's
Burden" of bringing "civilisation" to the other races of the world, whether they wanted such civilisation or not. While Social Darwinism became current
throughout western Europe and the United States, the paternalistic French-style "civilising mission" (mission civilisatrice) appealed to many European
statesmen.
Observing the rise of trade unionism, socialism, and other protest movements during an era of mass society in both Europe and later North America, elites
sought to use imperial jingoism to co-opt the support of part of the industrial working class. The new mass media promoted jingoism in the
Spanish-American War of 1898 and the Boer War and Boxer Rebellion in 1900.
Many of Europe's major elites also found advantages in formal, overseas expansion: mammoth monopolies wanted imperial support to secure overseas
investments against competition and domestic political tensions abroad; bureaucrats wanted sought office, military officers desired promotion, and the
traditional but waning landed gentry sought formal titles and high office.
The notion of rule over tropical lands commanded widespread acceptance among metropolitan populations: even among those who associated imperial
colonisation with oppression and exploitation, the 1904 Congress of the Socialist International concluded that the colonial peoples should be taken in hand
by future European socialist governments and led by them to eventual independence.
Imperialism in Asia
For details, see the main article Imperialism in Asia.
The transition to formal imperialism in India was effectively accomplished with the transfer of administrative functions from the chartered British East
India Company to the British government in 1858, following the Indian Mutiny of the previous year. Acts in 1773 and 1784 had already empowered the
government to control Company policies and to appoint the Governor-General, the highest Company official in India.
The new administrative arrangement, crowned with Queen Victoria's proclamation as Empress of India in 1876, replaced the rule of a monopolistic
enterprise with that of a trained civil service headed by Graduates of Britain's top universities. India's princely states (with about a quarter of the country's
population) retained their quasi-autonomous status, subject to British overlordship and official "advice".
In South-east Asia, the 1880s saw the completion of Britain's conquest of Burma and France's takeover of Vietnam; during the following decade France
completed her Indochinese empire with the annexation of Laos, leaving the kingdom of Siam (now Thailand) with an uneasy independence as a neutral
buffer between British and French-ruled lands.
Imperialist ambitions and rivalries in East Asia inevitably came to focus on the vast empire of China, with more than a quarter of the world's population.
That China survived as a more-or-less independent state owes much to the resilience of her social and administrative structures, but can also be seen as a
reflection of the limitations to which imperialist governments were willing to press their ambitions in the face of similar competing claims.
One the one hand, it is suggested that rather than being a backward country unable to secure the prerequisite stability and security for western-style
commerce, China's institutions and level of economic development rendered her capable of providing a secure market in the absence of direct rule by the
developed powers, despite her past unwillingness to admit western commerce (which had often taken the form of drug-pushing).
This may explain the West's contentment with informal "spheres of Influences". Western powers did intervene militarily to quell domestic chaos, such as
the epic Taiping Rebellion of 1850-64, against which General Gordon (later the imperialist 'martyr' in the Sudan) is often credited with having saved the
Qing Dynasty.
But China's size and cohesion compared to pre-colonial societies of Africa also made formal subjugation too difficult for any but the broadest coalition of
colonialist powers, whose own rivalries would preclude such an outcome. When such a coalition did materialise in 1900, its objective was limited to
suppression of the anti-imperialist Boxer Uprising because of the irreconcilability of Anglo-American and Russo-German aims.
The Scramble for Africa
For details, see the main article Scramble for Africa.
In 1875 the two most important European holdings in Africa were Algeria and the Cape Colony. By 1914 only Ethiopia and the republic of Liberia
remained outside formal European control. The transition from an "informal empire" of control through economic dominance to direct control took the
form of a "scramble" for territory in areas previously regarded as open to British trade and influence.
David Livingstone's explorations, continued from the 1870s by H.M. Stanley, opened tropical Africa's interior to European penetration. In 1876 King
Leopold II of Belgium organised the International African Association, which by 1882 obtained over 900,000 square miles of territory in the Congo basin
through treaties with African chiefs.
France and Germany quickly followed, sending political agents and military expeditions to establish their own claims to sovereignty. The Berlin
Conference of 1884-85 sought to regulate the competition between the powers by defining "effective occupation" as the criterion for international
recognition of territorial claims.
Leopold was allocated the misnamed "Congo Free State" where the activities of his agents and European concessionary companies led to international
scandal (1903-04) over atrocities committed by Leopold's agents and concession-holders, forcing him (1907-08) to submit the territory to formal Belgian
colonial rule.
The codification of the imposition of direct rule in terms of "effective occupation" necessitated routine recourse to armed force against indigenous states
and peoples. Uprisings against imperial rule were put down ruthlessly, most spectacularly in South-West Africa (now Namibia) and German East Africa
in the years 1904-07.
Britain's 1882 formal occupation of Egypt (itself triggered by concern over the Suez Canal) contributed to a preoccupation over securing control of Nile
valley, leading to the conquest of the neighbouring Sudan in 1896-98 and confrontation with a French military expedition at Fashoda (September 1898). .
In 1899 Britain set out to complete her takeover of South Africa, begun with the annexation (1795) of the Cape, by invading the Afrikaner republics of the
gold-rich Transvaal and the neighbouring Orange Free State. The chartered British South Africa Company had already seized the land to the north,
renamed Rhodesia after its head, the Cape tycoon Cecil Rhodes.
British gains in southern and East Africa prompted Rhodes and Alfred Millner, Britain's High Commissioner in South Africa, to urge a "Cape to Cairo"
empire linking by rail the strategically important Canal to the mineral-rich South, though German occupation of Tanganyika prevented such an outcome
until the end of World War I.
Paradoxically Britain, the staunch advocate of free trade, emerged in 1914 with not only the largest overseas empire thanks to her long-standing presence
in India, but also the greatest gains in the "scramble for Africa", reflecting her advantageous position at its inception. Between 1885 and 1914 Britain took
nearly 30% of Africa's population under her control, to 15% for France, 9% for Germany, 7% for Belgium and only 1% for Italy: Nigeria alone
contributed 15 million subjects, more than in the whole of French West Africa or the entire German colonial empire.
Changes in African society
As in Asia, imperial rule in Africa utilised divisions within African society and between ethnic and cultural groups to maintain control. A section of the
subjected population came to terms with the new imperial administration and took part in its imposition or maintenance, as many chiefs or communities
sought to overturn their pre-colonial status.
Both traditional and emerging elites sought a place in the political framework and sent their sons to be educated in metropolitan schools and universities,
though many of the professional classes came to resent the limitation of political and government opportunities, contributing to the later growth of modern
colonial nationalism.
Colonialism revolutionised traditional economies, inducing far-reaching social changes and political consequences. Balanced, subsistence-based economies
shifted to specialisation and the production of surpluses for sale. Traditional social structures were undermined, as land and labour became commodities to
be bought, sold, or traded.
Imperial rivalry
For details, see the main article Imperial rivalry.
The extension of European control over Africa and Asia added a further dimension to the rivalry and mutual suspicion which characterised international
diplomacy in the decades preceding World War I. France's seizure of Tunisia (1881) initiated fifteen years of tension with Italy, which had hoped to take
the country and which retaliated by allying with Germany and waging a decade-long tariff war. Britain's takeover of Egypt a year later caused a marked
cooling of relations with France.
The most striking conflicts of the era were the Spanish American War of 1898 and the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05, each signalling the advent of a
new imperial great power. The Fashoda incident of 1898 represented the worst Anglo-French crisis in decades, but France's climbdown in the face of
British demands foreshadowed improved relations as the two countries set about resolving their overseas claims.
British policy in South Africa and German actions in the Far East contributed to the dramatic policy shift which in the 1900s aligned hitherto isolationist
Britain with first Japan as an ally, and then with France and Russia in the looser Entente. German efforts to break the Entente by challenging French
hegemony in Morocco resulted in the Tangier Crisis of 1905 and the Agadir Crisis of 1911, adding to tension in the years preceding World War I.
It may be debated whether the New imperialism itself contributed in large measure to the subsequent global conflict, except to the extent that it broadened
the geographical area of military operations. Both the European divisions of the 1870s onward and the accelerated colonial drive of the period can be said
to derive from the same causes: strategic conditions, aggressive competing nationalisms and the economic and political imperatives of the new mass
society.
Theories of the New Imperialism
For details, see the main article Theories of New Imperialism
The accumulation theory adopted by J.A. Hobson and later Lenin centred on the accumulation of surplus capital during and after the Industrial Revolution:
restricted opportunities at home, the argument goes, drove financial interests to seek more profitable investments in less-developed lands with lower labour
costs, unexploited raw materials and little competition.
Some have criticised Hobson's analysis, arguing that it fails to explain colonial expansion on the part of less industrialised nations with little surplus capital,
such as Italy, or the great powers of the next century â the United States and Russia â which were in fact net borrowers of foreign capital.
Opponents of Hobson's accumulation theory often point to frequent cases when military and bureaucratic costs of occupation exceeded financial returns.
In Africa (exclusive of what would become the Union of South Africa in 1909) the amount of capital investment by Europeans was relatively small before
and after the 1880s, and the companies involved in tropical African commerce exerted limited political influence.
The World-Systems theory approach of Immanuel Wallerstein sees imperialism as part of a general, gradual extension of capital investment from the
"centre" of the industrial countries to a less developed "periphery": Protectionism and formal empire were the major tools of "semi-peripheral", newly
industrialised states, such as Germany, seeking to usurp Britain's position at the "core" of the global capitalist system.
Echoing Wallerstein's global perspective to an extent, imperial historian Bernard Porter views Britain's adoption of formal imperialism as a symptom and
an effect of her relative decline in the world, and not of strength: "Stuck with outmoded physical plants and outmoded forms of business organisation,
[Britain] now felt the less favourable effects of being the first to modernise."
Recent imperial historians Porter, P.J. Cain and A.G Hopkins contest Hobson's conspiratorial overtones and "reductionisms", but do not reject the
influence of the City's financial interests.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Imperialism
While Germany, Italy, the United States and Japan, the recently industrialised powers, were under less pressure to offload surplus capital than Britain,
these nations would resort to protectionism and formal empire to end Britain's advantages on international markets.
Just as the US emerged as a great industrial, military and political power after the Civil War, so would Germany following its own unification in 1871.
Both countries undertook ambitious naval expansion in the 1890s. And just as Germany reacted to depression with the adoption of tariff protection in 1879
and colonial expansion in 1884-85, so would the US following the landslide election (1896) of William McKinley, already associated with the high
McKinley Tariff of 1890.
United States expansionism had its roots in domestic concerns and economic conditions, as in other newly industrialising nations where government sought
to accelerate internal development. Advocates of empire also drew upon to a tradition of westward expansion over the course of the previous century.
Economic depression led some US businessmen and politicians from the mid-1880s to come to the same conclusion as their European counterparts â
that industry and capital had exceeded the capacity of existing markets and needed new outlets. The "closing of the Frontier" identified by the 1890
Census report and publicised by historian Frederick Jackson Turner in his 1893 paper The Significance of the Frontier in American History, contributed to
fears of constrained natural resource.
Like the Long Depression in Europe, the main features of the US depression included deflation, rural decline, and unemployment, which aggravated the
bitter social protests of the "Gilded Age" â the Populist movement, the free-silver crusade, and violent labour disputes such as the Pullman and
Homestead strikes.
The Panic of 1893 contributed to the growing mood for expansionism. Influential politicians such as Henry Cabot Lodge, William McKinley, and Theodore
Roosevelt advocated a more aggressive foreign policy to pull the United States out of the depression: their agitation was rewarded with the
Spanish-American War of 1898 and their country's seizure of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines.
Although US capital investments within the Philippines and Puerto Rico were relatively small (figures that would seemingly detract from the broader
economic implications on first glance), imperialism for the United States, formalised in 1904 by the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine), would
also her displacement of Britain as the predominant investor in Latin Americaâa process largely completed by the end of the Great War.
In Germany, Imperial Chancellor Otto von Bismarck revised his initial dislike of colonies (which he had seen as burdensome and useless) partly under
pressure for colonial expansion to match that of the other European states, but also under the mistaken notion that Germany's entry into the colonial
scramble could press Britain into conceding broader German strategic ambitions.
Japan's development after the Meiji Restoration of 1868 followed the Western lead in industrialisation and militarism, enabling her to gain control of Korea
in 1894 and a sphere of influence in Manchuria (1905) following her defeat of Russia. Japan was responding in part to the actions of more established
powers, and her expansionism drew on the harnessing of traditional values to more modern aspirations for great-power status: not until the 1930s was
Japan to become a net exporter of capital.
Social implications of the New Imperialism
The New imperialism gave rise to new social views of colonialism. Rudyard Kipling, for instance, urged the United States to take up the "White Man's
Burden" of bringing "civilisation" to the other races of the world, whether they wanted such civilisation or not. While Social Darwinism became current
throughout western Europe and the United States, the paternalistic French-style "civilising mission" (mission civilisatrice) appealed to many European
statesmen.
Observing the rise of trade unionism, socialism, and other protest movements during an era of mass society in both Europe and later North America, elites
sought to use imperial jingoism to co-opt the support of part of the industrial working class. The new mass media promoted jingoism in the
Spanish-American War of 1898 and the Boer War and Boxer Rebellion in 1900.
Many of Europe's major elites also found advantages in formal, overseas expansion: mammoth monopolies wanted imperial support to secure overseas
investments against competition and domestic political tensions abroad; bureaucrats wanted sought office, military officers desired promotion, and the
traditional but waning landed gentry sought formal titles and high office.
The notion of rule over tropical lands commanded widespread acceptance among metropolitan populations: even among those who associated imperial
colonisation with oppression and exploitation, the 1904 Congress of the Socialist International concluded that the colonial peoples should be taken in hand
by future European socialist governments and led by them to eventual independence.
Imperialism in Asia
For details, see the main article Imperialism in Asia.
The transition to formal imperialism in India was effectively accomplished with the transfer of administrative functions from the chartered British East
India Company to the British government in 1858, following the Indian Mutiny of the previous year. Acts in 1773 and 1784 had already empowered the
government to control Company policies and to appoint the Governor-General, the highest Company official in India.
The new administrative arrangement, crowned with Queen Victoria's proclamation as Empress of India in 1876, replaced the rule of a monopolistic
enterprise with that of a trained civil service headed by Graduates of Britain's top universities. India's princely states (with about a quarter of the country's
population) retained their quasi-autonomous status, subject to British overlordship and official "advice".
In South-east Asia, the 1880s saw the completion of Britain's conquest of Burma and France's takeover of Vietnam; during the following decade France
completed her Indochinese empire with the annexation of Laos, leaving the kingdom of Siam (now Thailand) with an uneasy independence as a neutral
buffer between British and French-ruled lands.
Imperialist ambitions and rivalries in East Asia inevitably came to focus on the vast empire of China, with more than a quarter of the world's population.
That China survived as a more-or-less independent state owes much to the resilience of her social and administrative structures, but can also be seen as a
reflection of the limitations to which imperialist governments were willing to press their ambitions in the face of similar competing claims.
One the one hand, it is suggested that rather than being a backward country unable to secure the prerequisite stability and security for western-style
commerce, China's institutions and level of economic development rendered her capable of providing a secure market in the absence of direct rule by the
developed powers, despite her past unwillingness to admit western commerce (which had often taken the form of drug-pushing).
This may explain the West's contentment with informal "spheres of Influences". Western powers did intervene militarily to quell domestic chaos, such as
the epic Taiping Rebellion of 1850-64, against which General Gordon (later the imperialist 'martyr' in the Sudan) is often credited with having saved the
Qing Dynasty.
But China's size and cohesion compared to pre-colonial societies of Africa also made formal subjugation too difficult for any but the broadest coalition of
colonialist powers, whose own rivalries would preclude such an outcome. When such a coalition did materialise in 1900, its objective was limited to
suppression of the anti-imperialist Boxer Uprising because of the irreconcilability of Anglo-American and Russo-German aims.
The Scramble for Africa
For details, see the main article Scramble for Africa.
In 1875 the two most important European holdings in Africa were Algeria and the Cape Colony. By 1914 only Ethiopia and the republic of Liberia
remained outside formal European control. The transition from an "informal empire" of control through economic dominance to direct control took the
form of a "scramble" for territory in areas previously regarded as open to British trade and influence.
David Livingstone's explorations, continued from the 1870s by H.M. Stanley, opened tropical Africa's interior to European penetration. In 1876 King
Leopold II of Belgium organised the International African Association, which by 1882 obtained over 900,000 square miles of territory in the Congo basin
through treaties with African chiefs.
France and Germany quickly followed, sending political agents and military expeditions to establish their own claims to sovereignty. The Berlin
Conference of 1884-85 sought to regulate the competition between the powers by defining "effective occupation" as the criterion for international
recognition of territorial claims.
Leopold was allocated the misnamed "Congo Free State" where the activities of his agents and European concessionary companies led to international
scandal (1903-04) over atrocities committed by Leopold's agents and concession-holders, forcing him (1907-08) to submit the territory to formal Belgian
colonial rule.
The codification of the imposition of direct rule in terms of "effective occupation" necessitated routine recourse to armed force against indigenous states
and peoples. Uprisings against imperial rule were put down ruthlessly, most spectacularly in South-West Africa (now Namibia) and German East Africa
in the years 1904-07.
Britain's 1882 formal occupation of Egypt (itself triggered by concern over the Suez Canal) contributed to a preoccupation over securing control of Nile
valley, leading to the conquest of the neighbouring Sudan in 1896-98 and confrontation with a French military expedition at Fashoda (September 1898). .
In 1899 Britain set out to complete her takeover of South Africa, begun with the annexation (1795) of the Cape, by invading the Afrikaner republics of the
gold-rich Transvaal and the neighbouring Orange Free State. The chartered British South Africa Company had already seized the land to the north,
renamed Rhodesia after its head, the Cape tycoon Cecil Rhodes.
British gains in southern and East Africa prompted Rhodes and Alfred Millner, Britain's High Commissioner in South Africa, to urge a "Cape to Cairo"
empire linking by rail the strategically important Canal to the mineral-rich South, though German occupation of Tanganyika prevented such an outcome
until the end of World War I.
Paradoxically Britain, the staunch advocate of free trade, emerged in 1914 with not only the largest overseas empire thanks to her long-standing presence
in India, but also the greatest gains in the "scramble for Africa", reflecting her advantageous position at its inception. Between 1885 and 1914 Britain took
nearly 30% of Africa's population under her control, to 15% for France, 9% for Germany, 7% for Belgium and only 1% for Italy: Nigeria alone
contributed 15 million subjects, more than in the whole of French West Africa or the entire German colonial empire.
Changes in African society
As in Asia, imperial rule in Africa utilised divisions within African society and between ethnic and cultural groups to maintain control. A section of the
subjected population came to terms with the new imperial administration and took part in its imposition or maintenance, as many chiefs or communities
sought to overturn their pre-colonial status.
Both traditional and emerging elites sought a place in the political framework and sent their sons to be educated in metropolitan schools and universities,
though many of the professional classes came to resent the limitation of political and government opportunities, contributing to the later growth of modern
colonial nationalism.
Colonialism revolutionised traditional economies, inducing far-reaching social changes and political consequences. Balanced, subsistence-based economies
shifted to specialisation and the production of surpluses for sale. Traditional social structures were undermined, as land and labour became commodities to
be bought, sold, or traded.
Imperial rivalry
For details, see the main article Imperial rivalry.
The extension of European control over Africa and Asia added a further dimension to the rivalry and mutual suspicion which characterised international
diplomacy in the decades preceding World War I. France's seizure of Tunisia (1881) initiated fifteen years of tension with Italy, which had hoped to take
the country and which retaliated by allying with Germany and waging a decade-long tariff war. Britain's takeover of Egypt a year later caused a marked
cooling of relations with France.
The most striking conflicts of the era were the Spanish American War of 1898 and the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05, each signalling the advent of a
new imperial great power. The Fashoda incident of 1898 represented the worst Anglo-French crisis in decades, but France's climbdown in the face of
British demands foreshadowed improved relations as the two countries set about resolving their overseas claims.
British policy in South Africa and German actions in the Far East contributed to the dramatic policy shift which in the 1900s aligned hitherto isolationist
Britain with first Japan as an ally, and then with France and Russia in the looser Entente. German efforts to break the Entente by challenging French
hegemony in Morocco resulted in the Tangier Crisis of 1905 and the Agadir Crisis of 1911, adding to tension in the years preceding World War I.
It may be debated whether the New imperialism itself contributed in large measure to the subsequent global conflict, except to the extent that it broadened
the geographical area of military operations. Both the European divisions of the 1870s onward and the accelerated colonial drive of the period can be said
to derive from the same causes: strategic conditions, aggressive competing nationalisms and the economic and political imperatives of the new mass
society.
Theories of the New Imperialism
For details, see the main article Theories of New Imperialism
The accumulation theory adopted by J.A. Hobson and later Lenin centred on the accumulation of surplus capital during and after the Industrial Revolution:
restricted opportunities at home, the argument goes, drove financial interests to seek more profitable investments in less-developed lands with lower labour
costs, unexploited raw materials and little competition.
Some have criticised Hobson's analysis, arguing that it fails to explain colonial expansion on the part of less industrialised nations with little surplus capital,
such as Italy, or the great powers of the next century â the United States and Russia â which were in fact net borrowers of foreign capital.
Opponents of Hobson's accumulation theory often point to frequent cases when military and bureaucratic costs of occupation exceeded financial returns.
In Africa (exclusive of what would become the Union of South Africa in 1909) the amount of capital investment by Europeans was relatively small before
and after the 1880s, and the companies involved in tropical African commerce exerted limited political influence.
The World-Systems theory approach of Immanuel Wallerstein sees imperialism as part of a general, gradual extension of capital investment from the
"centre" of the industrial countries to a less developed "periphery": Protectionism and formal empire were the major tools of "semi-peripheral", newly
industrialised states, such as Germany, seeking to usurp Britain's position at the "core" of the global capitalist system.
Echoing Wallerstein's global perspective to an extent, imperial historian Bernard Porter views Britain's adoption of formal imperialism as a symptom and
an effect of her relative decline in the world, and not of strength: "Stuck with outmoded physical plants and outmoded forms of business organisation,
[Britain] now felt the less favourable effects of being the first to modernise."
Recent imperial historians Porter, P.J. Cain and A.G Hopkins contest Hobson's conspiratorial overtones and "reductionisms", but do not reject the
influence of the City's financial interests.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Imperialism