John A. Hobson

Imperialism, A Study


PART I
THE ECONOMICS OF IMPERIALISM


Chapter I
The Measure of Imperialism

Quibbles about the modern meaning of the term Imperialism are best resolved by reference to concrete facts in the history of the last thirty years. During that period a number of European nations, Great Britain being first and foremost, have annexed or otherwise asserted political sway over vast portions of Africa and Asia, and over numerous islands in the Pacific and elsewhere. The extent to which this policy of expansion has been carried on, and in particular the enormous size and the peculiar character of the British acquisitions, are not adequately realised even by those who pay some attention to Imperial politics.

The following lists, giving the area and, where possible, the population of the new acquisitions, are designed to give definiteness to the term Imperialism. Though derived from official sources, they do not, however, profess strict accuracy. The sliding scale of political terminology along which no-man’s land, or hinterland, passes into some kind of definite protectorate is often applied so as to conceal the process; “rectification“ of a fluid frontier is continually taking place; paper “partitions“ of spheres of influence or protection in Africa and Asia are often obscure, and in some cases the area and the population are highly speculative.

In a few instances it is possible that portions of territory put down as acquired since 1870 may have been ear-marked by a European Power at some earlier date. But care is taken to include only such territories as have come within this period under the definite political control of the Power to which they are assigned. The figures in the case of Great Britain are so startling as to call for a little further interpretation. I have thought it right to add to the recognised list of colonies and protectorates the “veiled Protectorate“ of Egypt, with its vast Soudanese claim, the entire territories assigned to Chartered Companies, and the native or feudatory States in India which acknowledge our paramountcy by the admission of a British Agent or other official endowed with real political control.

All these lands are rightly accredited to the British Empire, and if our past policy is still pursued, the intensive as distinct from the extensive Imperialism will draw them under an ever-tightening grasp.

In a few other instances, as, for example, in West Africa, countries are included in this list where some small dominion had obtained before 1870, but where the vast majority of the present area of the colony is of recent acquisition. Any older colonial possession thus included in Lagos or Gambia is, however, far more than counterbalanced by the increased area of the Gold Coast Colony, which is not included in this list, and which grew from 29,000 square miles in 1873 to 39,000 square miles in 1893.

 

Date of
Acquisition

Area
Square Miles

Population


EUROPE –

 

Cyprus

1878

    3,584

     227,900

AFRICA –

 

Zanzibar and Pemba

1888

brace bracket  100,000     brace bracket

     200,000

East Africa Protectorate

1895

  2,500,000

Uganda Protectorate

1894-1896

  140,000

  3,800,000

Somali Coast Protectorate

1884-1885

    68,000

  (?)

British Central Africa Protectorate

1889

    42,217

     688,049

Lagos

to 1899

    21,000

  3,000,000

Gambia

to 1888

      3,550

     215,000

Ashantee

1896-1901

    70,000

  2,000,000

Niger Coast Protectorate

1885-1898

400,000 to 500,000

25,000,000 to 40,000,000

Egypt

1882

  400,000

  9,734,405

Egyptian Soudan

1882

  950,000

10,000,000

Griqualand West

1871-1880

    15,197

       83,373

Zululand

1879-1897

    10,521

     240,000

British Bechuanaland

1885

    51,424

       72,736

Bechuanaland Protectorate

1891

  213,000

     200,000

Transkei

1879-1885

      2,535

     153,582

Tembuland

1885

      4,155

     180,130

Pondoland

1894

      4,040

     188,000

Griqualand East

1879-1885

      7,511

     152,609

British South Africa Charter

1889

  750,000

     321,000

Transvaal

1900

  119,139

     870,000

Orange River Colony

1900

    48,826

     207,503

ASIA –

 

Hong Kong (littoral)

1898

         376

     100,000

Wei-hai-wei

...

         270

     118,000

Socotra

1886

      1,382

       10,000

Upper Burma

1887

    83,473

  2,046,933

Baluchistan

1876-1889

  130,000

     500,000

Sikkim

1890

      2,818

       30,000

Rajputana (States)

brace bracket since 1881 brace bracket

  128,022

12,186,352

Burma (States)

    62,661

     785,800

Jammu and Kashmir

    80,000

  2,543,952

Malay Protected States

1883-1895

    24,849

     620,000

North Borneo Company

1881

    31,106

     175,000

North Borneo Protectorate

1888

  ...

  ...

Sarawak

1888

    50,000

     500,000

British New Guinea

1888

    90,540

     350,000

Fiji Islands

1874

      7,740

     122,676


The list is by no means complete. It takes no account of several large regions which have passed under the control of our Indian Government as native or feudatory States, but of which no statistics of area or population, even approximate, are available. Such are the Shan States, the Burma Frontier, and the Upper Burma Frontier, the districts of Chitral, Bajam, Swat, Waziristan, which came under our “sphere of influence“ in 1893, and have been since taken under a closer protectorate. The increase of British India itself between 1871 and 1891 amounted to an area of 104,993 square miles, with a population of 25,330,000, while no reliable measurement of the formation of new native States within that period and since is available. Many of the measurements here given are in round numbers, indicative of their uncertainty, but they are taken, wherever available, from official publications of the Colonial Office, corroborated or supplemented from the Statesman’s Year-book. They will by no means comprise the full tale of our expansion during the thirty years, for many enlargements made by the several colonies themselves are omitted. But taken as they stand they make a formidable addition to the growth of an Empire whose nucleus is only 120,000 square miles, with 40,000,000 population.

For so small a nation to add to its domains in the course of a single generation an area of 4,754,000 square miles [4], with an estimated population of 88,000,000, is a historical fact of great significance.

Accepting Sir Robert Giffen’s estimate [5] of the size of our Empire (including Egypt and the Soudan) at about 13,000,000 square miles, with a population of some 400 to 420 millions (of whom about 50,000,000 are of British race and speech), we find that one-third of this Empire, containing quite one-fourth of the total population of the Empire, has been acquired within the last generation. This is in tolerably close agreement with other independent estimates. [6]

The character of this Imperial expansion is clearly exhibited in the list of new territories.

Though, for convenience, the year 1870 has been taken as indicative of the beginning of a conscious policy of Imperialism, it will be evident that the movement did not attain its full impetus until the middle of the eighties. The vast increase of territory, and the method of wholesale partition which assigned to us great tracts of African land, may be dated from about 1884. Within fifteen years some three and three-quarter millions of square miles have been added to the British Empire. [7]

Nor does Great Britain stand alone in this enterprise. The leading characteristic of modern Imperialism, the competition of rival Empires, is the product of this same period. The close of the Franco-German war marks the beginning of a new colonial policy in France and Germany, destined to take effect in the next decade. It was not unnatural that the newly-founded German Empire, surrounded by powerful enemies and doubtful allies, and perceiving its more adventurous youth drawn into the United States and other foreign lands, should form the idea of a colonial empire. During the seventies a vigorous literature sprang up in advocacy of the policy [8] which took shape a little later in the powerful hands of Bismarck. The earliest instance of official aid for the promotion of German commerce abroad occurred in 1880 in the Government aid granted to the “German Commercial and Plantation Association of the Southern Seas.“ German connection with Samoa dates from the same year, but the definite advance of Germany upon its Imperialist career began in 1884, with a policy of African protectorates and annexations of Oceanic islands. During the next fifteen years she brought under her colonial sway about 1,000,000 square miles, with an estimated population of 14,000,000. Almost the whole of this territory is tropical, and the white population forms a total of a few thousands.

Similarly in France a great revival of the old colonial spirit took place in the early eighties, the most influential of the revivalists being the eminent economist, M. Paul Leroy-Beaulieu. The extension of empire in Senegal and Sahara in 1880 was followed next year by the annexation of Tunis, and France was soon actively engaged in the scramble for Africa in 1884, while at the same time she was fastening her rule on Tonking and Laos in Asia. Her acquisitions since 1880 (exclusive of the extension of New Caledonia and its dependencies) amount to an area of over three and a half million square miles, with a native population of some 37,000,000, almost the whole tropical or sub-tropical, inhabited by lower races and incapable of genuine French colonisation.

Italian aspirations took similar shape from 1880 onwards, though the disastrous experience of the Abyssinian expeditions has given a check to Italian Imperialism. Her possessions in East Africa are confined to the northern colony of Eritrea and the protectorate of Somaliland.

Of the other European States, two only, Portugal [9] and Belgium, enter directly into the competition of the new Imperialism. The African arrangements of 1884-6 assigned to Portugal the large district of Angola on the Congo Coast, while a large strip of East Africa passed definitely under her political control in 1891. The anomalous position of the great Congo Free State, ceded to the King of Belgium in 1883, and growing since then by vast accretions, must be regarded as involving Belgium in the competition for African empire.

Spain may be said to have definitely retired from imperial competition. The large and important possessions of Holland in the East and West Indies, though involving her in imperial politics to some degree, belong to older colonialism: she takes no part in the new imperial expansion.

Russia, the only active expansionist country of the North, stands alone in the character of her imperial growth, which differs from other Imperialism in that it has been principally Asiatic in its achievements and has proceeded by direct extension of imperial boundaries, partaking to a larger extent than in the other cases of a regular colonial policy of settlement for purposes of agriculture and industry. It is, however, evident that Russian expansion, though of a more normal and natural order than that which characterises the new Imperialism, comes definitely into contact and into competition with the claims and aspirations of the latter in Asia, and has been advancing rapidly during the period which is the object of our study.

The recent entrance of the powerful and progressive nation of the United States of America upon Imperialism by the annexation of Hawaii and the taking over of the relics of ancient Spanish empire not only adds a new formidable competitor for trade and territory, but changes and complicates the issues. As the focus of political attention and activity shifts more to the Pacific States, and the commercial aspirations of America are more and more set upon trade with the Pacific islands and the Asiatic coast, the same forces which are driving European States along the path of territorial expansion seem likely to act upon the United States, leading her to a virtual abandonment of the principle of American isolation which has hitherto dominated her policy.

The following comparative table of colonisation, compiled from the Statesman’s Year-book for 1900 by Mr. H.C. Morris [10], marks the present expansion of the political control of Western nations:–

 

Number of
Colonies

Area
Square Miles


Population


Mother
Country

Colonies,
&c.

Mother
Country

Colonies,
&c.


United Kingdom

  50

     120,979

11,605,238

  40,559,954

345,222,239

France

  33

     204,092

  3,740,756

  38,517,975

  56,401,860

Germany

  13

     208,830

  1,027,120

  52,279,901

  14,687,000

Netherlands

    3

       12,648

     782,862

    5,074,632

  35,115,711

Portugal

    9

       36,038

     801,100

    5,049,729

    9,148,707

Spain

    3

     197,670

     243,877

  17,565,632

       136,000

Italy

    2

     110,646

     188,500

  31,856,675

       850,000

Austria-Hungary

    2

     241,032

       23,570

  41,244,811

    1,568,092

Denmark

    3

       15,289

       86,634

    2,185,335

       114,229

Russia

    3

  8,660,395

     255,550

128,932,173

  15,684,000

Turkey

    4

  1,111,741

     465,000

  23,834,500

  14,956,236

China

    5

  1,336,841

  2,881,560

386,000,000

  16,680,000

U.S.A.

    6

  3,557,000

     172,091

  77,000,000

  10,544,617


Total

136

15,813,201

22,273,858

850,103,317

521,108,791


The political nature of the new British Imperialism may be authoritatively ascertained by considering the governmental relations which the newly annexed territories hold with the Crown.

Officially, [11] British “colonial possessions“ fall into three classes – (1) “Crown colonies, in which the Crown has the entire control of legislation, while the administration is carried on by public officers under the control of the Home Government; (2) colonies possessing representative institutions, but not responsible government, in which the Crown has no more than a veto on legislation, but the Home Government retains the control of public affairs; (3) colonies possessing representative institutions and responsible government, in which the Crown has only a veto on legislation, and the Home Government has no control over any officer except the Governor.”

Now, of the thirty-nine separate areas which have been annexed by Great Britain since 1870 as colonies or protectorates, not a single one ranks in class 2 or 3. The new Imperialism has established no single British colony endowed with responsible government or representative institutions. Nor, with the exception of the three new States in South Africa, where white settlers live in some numbers, is it seriously pretended that any of these annexed territories is being prepared and educated for representative, responsible self-government; and even in these South African States there is no serious intention, either on the part of the Home Government or of the colonists, that the majority of the inhabitants shall have any real voice in the government.

It is true that some of these areas enjoy a measure of self-government, as protectorates or as feudatory States, under their own native princes. But all these in major matters of policy are subject to the absolute rule of the British Government, or of some British official, while the general tendency is towards drawing the reins of arbitrary control more tightly over protectorates, converting them into States which are in substance, though not always in name, Crown colonies. With the exception of a couple of experiments in India, the tendency everywhere has been towards a closer and more drastic imperial control over the territories that have been annexed, transforming protectorates, company rule, and spheres of influence into definite British States of the Crown colony order.

This is attributable, not to any greed of tyranny on the part of the Imperial Government, but to the conditions imposed upon our rule by considerations of climate and native population. Almost the whole of this new territory is tropical, or so near to the tropics as to preclude genuine colonisation of British settlers, while in those few districts where Europeans can work and breed, as in parts of South Africa and Egypt, the preoccupation of the country by large native populations of “lower races“ precludes any considerable settlement of British workers and the safe bestowal of the full self-government which prevails in Australasia and Canada.

The same is true to an even more complete extent of the Imperialism of other continental countries. The new Imperialism has nowhere extended the political and civil liberties of the mother country to any part of the vast territories which, since 1870, have fallen under the government of Western civilised Powers. Politically, the new Imperialism is an expansion of autocracy.

Taking the growth of Imperialism as illustrated in the recent expansion of Great Britain and of the chief continental Powers, we find the distinction between Imperialism and colonisation, set forth in the opening chapter, closely borne out by facts and figures, and warranting the following general judgments: –

First – Almost the whole of recent imperial expansion is occupied with the political absorption of tropical or sub-tropical lands in which white men will not settle with their families.

Second – Nearly all the lands are thickly peopled by “lower races.”

Thus this recent imperial expansion stands entirely distinct from the colonisation of sparsely peopled lands in temperate zones, where white colonists carry with them the modes of government, the industrial and other arts of the civilisation of the mother country. The “occupation” of these new territories is comprised in the presence of a small minority of white men, officials, traders, and industrial organisers, exercising political and economic sway over great hordes of population regarded as inferior and as incapable of exercising any considerable rights of self-government, in politics or industry.



Notes

4. Sir R. Giffen gives the figures as 4,204,690 square miles for the period 1870-1898.

5. The Relative Growth of the Component Parts of the Empire, a paper read before the Colonial Institute, January 1898.

6.

BRITISH COLONIES AND DEPENDENCIES, 1900


 

Area
Square Miles

Estimated
Population


EUROPEAN DEPENDENCIES

 

            119

       204,421

ASIATIC DEPENDENCIES –

 

India (1,800,258 square miles, 287,223,431 inhabitants)

brace bracket

  1,827,579

291,586,688

Others (27,321 square miles, 4,363,257 inhabitants)

AFRICAN COLONIES

 

     535,398

    6,773,360

AMERICAN COLONIES

  3,952,572

    7,260,169

AUSTRALASIAN COLONIES

  3,175,840


    5,009,281


Total

  9,491,508


310,833,919


PROTECTORATES –

 

Asia

     120,400

    1,200,000

Africa (including Egypt, Egyptian Soudan)

  3,530,000

  54,730,000

Oceania

            800


         30,000


Total Protectorates

  3,651,200


  55,960,000


Grand total

13,142,708

366,793,919

(Compiled from Morris’ History of Colonisation, vol.ii, p.87, and Statesman’s Year-book, 1900.)

7. Liberalism and the Empire, p. 341.

 

1884-1900

Area
Square Miles

  Population  


British New Guinea

1884

  

     90,540

  

     350,000

Nigeria

1884

(?)

   450,000

(?)

30,000,000

Pondoland

1884

  

       4,040

  

     188,000

Somaliland

1884

     68,000

(?)

Bechuanaland

1884-1885

   264,000

     272,000

Upper Burma

1886

     83,470

  2,947,000

British East Africa

1886

   860,000

  2,500,000

Zululand (with Tongaland)

1887

     15,000

     240,000

Sarawak and Brunei

1888

     65,000

     545,000

Pahang (Straits Settlements)

1888

     10,000

       57,000

Rhodesia

1889

   470,000

     718,000

Zanzibar

1890

       1,020

     200,000

British Central Africa

1891

     42,217

     900,000

Uganda

1894

   150,000

  4,000,000

Ashantee

1896

     21,000

(?)

  3,000,000

Wei-hai-wei

1898

          270

  

     118,000

Kow-lung

1898

          400

     100,000

Soudan

1898

   950,000

(?)

10,000,000

Transvaal and Orange River Colony

1900

   167,000

  

  1,301,000

 



Total

 

3,711,957

57,436,000

Total area, British Empire, January 1884 – square miles, 8,059,179. Population, 248,000,000.

8. Fabri’s Bedarf Deutschland der Colonien was the most vigorous and popular treatise.

9. Portugal’s true era of Imperialism in Africa, however, dates back two centuries. See Theal’s fascinating story of the foundation of a Portuguese Empire in Beginnings of South African History (Fisher Unwin).

10. Cf. his History of Colonisation, vol.ii. p.318 (Macmillan & Co.).

11. See the Colonial Office List.

 


Last updated on 12.11.2006