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Imperialism has two meanings; one describing an action and the other describing an attitude.

  1. Action: Imperialism is the practice of extending the power, control or rule by one country over areas outside its borders. The areas so controlled or ruled may be called that country's empire
    Empire

    Empire derives from the Latin word imperium, denoting ?military command? in Roman. Politically, an empire is a geographically extensive group of states and peoples united and ruled either by a monarch or an oligarchy....
    . Imperialism is a branch of Colonialism
    Colonialism

    Colonialism is the extension of a nation's sovereignty over Territory beyond its borders by the establishment of either settler or exploitation colony in which Indigenous people populations are direct rule, Population transfers, or Genocide....
     in which the controlled areas are formally declared to be its "colonies" or "protectorates".






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    Imperialism is the growth of one self at the cost of another.

    Jacob Davies

    Imperialism is Dominance.

    Thomas Deery





    Encyclopedia


    Imperialism has two meanings; one describing an action and the other describing an attitude.

    1. Action: Imperialism is the practice of extending the power, control or rule by one country over areas outside its borders. The areas so controlled or ruled may be called that country's empire
      Empire

      Empire derives from the Latin word imperium, denoting ?military command? in Roman. Politically, an empire is a geographically extensive group of states and peoples united and ruled either by a monarch or an oligarchy....
      . Imperialism is a branch of Colonialism
      Colonialism

      Colonialism is the extension of a nation's sovereignty over Territory beyond its borders by the establishment of either settler or exploitation colony in which Indigenous people populations are direct rule, Population transfers, or Genocide....
       in which the controlled areas are formally declared to be its "colonies" or "protectorates". Imperialism is also used to refer to situations where the mode of control is less formal ; for instance where the dominant country's influence or control in the subordinate areas is economic, not involving overt territorial conquest. (Age: 1815-1914)
    2. Attitude: Imperialism is the attitude of superiority, subordination and domination over foreign peoples.


    Imperialism is often autocratic, and also sometimes monolithic in character. While the term imperialism often refers to a political or geographical domain such as the Ottoman Empire
    Ottoman Empire

    The Ottoman Empire , also known by its contemporaries as the Turkish Empire or Turkey , was an empire that lasted from 1299?1923. It was Treaty of Lausanne by the Republic of Turkey, which was officially proclaimed on October 29, 1923....
     the Russian Empire
    Russian Empire

    File:Russian Emperor Flag.jpgFile:Romanov Flag.svgThe Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917....
    , or the British Empire
    British Empire

    The British Empire comprised the dominions, Crown colony, protectorates, League of Nations mandate, and other Dependent territory ruled or administered by the United Kingdom , that had originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries....
    , etc., the term can equally be applied to domains of knowledge, beliefs, values and expertise, such as the empires of Christianity
    Christianity

    Christianity is a Monotheistic religion #Christian view religion centered on the life and teachings of Jesus as New Testament view on Jesus' life....
     (see Christendom
    Christendom

    Christendom usually refers to Christianity as a territorial phenomenon. It can also refer to the part of the world in which Christianity prevails....
    ) or Islam
    Islam

    Islam is a Monotheism, Abrahamic religion originating with the teachings of the Prophets of Islam Muhammad, a 7th century Arab religious and political figure....
     (see Caliphate
    Caliphate

    The caliphate represented the political leadership of the Muslim ummah in classical and medieval Islamic history and juristic theory. The head of state's position is based on the notion of a successor to the Prophets of Islam Muhammad's political authority....
    ).

    Overview

    Imperialism is found in the ancient histories of the Assyrian Empire, Roman Empire
    Roman Empire

    The Roman Empire was the Roman Republic phase of the Ancient Rome, characterised by an autocracy form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
    , Greece
    Ancient Greece

    The term Ancient Greece refers to the period of History of Greece lasting from the Greek Dark Ages ca. 1100 BC and the Dorian invasion, to 146 BC and the Roman Republic conquest of Greece after the Battle of Corinth ....
    , the Persian Empire
    Persian Empire

    The 'Persian Empire' was a series of successive Iranian or Persianization empires that ruled over the Iranian plateau, the original Persian homeland, and beyond in Southwest Asia, South Asia, Central Asia and the Caucasus....
    , and the Ottoman Empire
    Ottoman Empire

    The Ottoman Empire , also known by its contemporaries as the Turkish Empire or Turkey , was an empire that lasted from 1299?1923. It was Treaty of Lausanne by the Republic of Turkey, which was officially proclaimed on October 29, 1923....
     (see Ottoman wars in Europe
    Ottoman wars in Europe

    The wars of the Ottoman Empire in Europe are also sometimes referred to as the Ottoman Wars or as Turkish Wars, particularly in older, European texts....
    ), ancient Egypt
    Egypt

    Egypt is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Western Asia. Covering an area of about , Egypt borders the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Gaza Strip and Israel to the northeast, the Red Sea to the east, Sudan to the south and Libya to the west....
    , India
    India

    India, officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and outlying territories by total area country by geographical area, the List of countries by population country, and the most populous liberal democracy in the world....
    , the Aztec
    Aztec

    Aztec is a term used to refer to certain ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those groups who spoke the Nahuatl and who achieved political and military dominance over large parts of Mesoamerica in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, a period referred to as the Late post-Classic period in Mesoamerican chronology....
     empire, and a basic component to the conquests of Genghis Khan
    Genghis Khan

    Genghis Khan , born , was the founder, Khan and Khagan of the Mongol Empire, the World's largest empires contiguous empire in history....
     and other warlords. Although imperialist practices have existed for thousands of years, the term "Age of Imperialism" generally refers to the activities of nations such as Britain
    British Empire

    The British Empire comprised the dominions, Crown colony, protectorates, League of Nations mandate, and other Dependent territory ruled or administered by the United Kingdom , that had originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries....
    , Japan
    Empire of Japan

    The Empire of Japan was a Japanese political entity that existed during the period from the Meiji Restoration in 1868 until its defeat in World War II in 1945....
    , and Germany
    German Empire

    The German Empire is the name commonly used in English to describe Germany from the unification of Germany and proclamation of William I, German Emperor as German Emperor on 18 January 1871, to 1918, when it became Weimar republic after defeat in World War I and the abdication of William II, German Emperor ....
     in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, e.g. the "Scramble for Africa
    Scramble for Africa

    The Scramble for Africa, also known as the Race for Africa, was the proliferation of conflicting European claims to African territory during the New Imperialism period, between the 1880s and the World War I in 1914....
    " and the "Open Door Policy
    Open Door Policy

    The Open Door Policy is a concept in foreign affairs. As a theory, the Open Door Policy originates with British commercial practice, as was reflected in treaties concluded with Qing Dynasty China after the First Opium War ....
    " in China.

    The word itself is derived from the Latin verb imperare (to command) and the Roman concept of imperium
    Imperium

    Imperium in a broad sense translates as 'Power '. In ancient Rome the concept applied to people and meant something like 'power status' or 'authority' or could be used with a geographical connotation and meant something like 'territory'....
    , while the actual term 'Imperialism' was coined in the sixteenth century, reflecting what are now seen as the imperial policies of Portugal
    Portugal

    Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic , is a country on the Iberian Peninsula. Located in southwestern Europe, Portugal is the westernmost country of mainland Europe and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the west and south and by Spain to the north and east....
    , Spain, Britain
    United Kingdom

    The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom , the UK or Britain,is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe....
    , Belgium
    Belgium

    * A small German-speaking Community of Belgium exists in eastern Wallonia. Belgium's linguistic diversity and related political and cultural conflicts are reflected in the history of Belgium and a complex Communities and regions of Belgium....
    , France
    France

    France , officially the French Republic , is a country whose Metropolitan France is located in Western Europe and that also comprises various Overseas departments and territories of France....
    , and the Netherlands
    Netherlands

    The Netherlands is a country that is part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It is a parliamentary democratic constitutional monarchy. The Netherlands is located in North-West Europe, and bordered by the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east....
     in Africa
    Africa

    Africa is the world's second-largest and second most-populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km? including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area....
    , Asia
    Asia

    Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent. It covers 8.6% of the Earth's total surface area and, with over 4 billion people, it contains more than 60% of the world's current human population....
    , and the Americas. Imperialism not only describes colonial, territorial policies, but also economic and/or military dominance and influence.

    Definitions from some other sources

    Definition 3 in the Shorter Oxford Dictionary (2007) is particularly apropos to our second (attitude) meaning above ; and also to the issue of how far non-military and not-overtly-territorial control can be called imperialism:
    [Imperialism:] The belief in the desirability of the acquisition of colonies and dependencies, or the extension of a country's influence through trade, diplomacy, etc. Usu. derog.
    Also on the issue of non-military control, we have this from the first paragraph of the article, "Imperialism", in the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (second edition):
    . . . Commonly associated with the policy of direct extension of sovereignty and dominion over non-contiguous and often distant overseas territories, it also denotes indirect political or economic control of powerful states over weaker peoples. Regarded also as a doctrine based on the use of deliberate force, imperialism has been subject to moral censure by its critics, and thus the term is frequently used in international propaganda as a pejorative for expansionist and aggressive foreign policy. (End of paragraph.)
    The following passage, from Wm. Roger Louis, Imperialism (1976) is also informative. He is discussing an influential theory of 19th century European imperialism by the historians John Galllagher and Ronald Robinson:
    More specifically, Robinson and Gallagher attack the traditional notion that "imperialism" is the formal rule or control by one people or nation over others. In their view, historians have been mesmerized by formal empire and maps of the world with regions colored red. The bulk of British emigration, trade, and capital went to areas outside the formal British Empire. A key to the thought of Robinson and Gallagher is the idea of empire "informally if possible and formally if necessary." [This last phrase referring to the fact that the British government was often reluctant to entangle itself with formal colonies. -- Wikipedia.]


    See also

    • Colonialism
      Colonialism

      Colonialism is the extension of a nation's sovereignty over Territory beyond its borders by the establishment of either settler or exploitation colony in which Indigenous people populations are direct rule, Population transfers, or Genocide....
    • Cultural imperialism
      Cultural imperialism

      Cultural imperialism is the practice of promoting, distinguishing, separating, or artificially injecting the culture or language of one culture into another....
    • Empire
      Empire

      Empire derives from the Latin word imperium, denoting ?military command? in Roman. Politically, an empire is a geographically extensive group of states and peoples united and ruled either by a monarch or an oligarchy....
    • Feudalism
      Feudalism

      Feudalism, a term first used in the early modern period , in its most classic sense refers to a Middle Ages European political system composed of a set of reciprocal law and military obligations among the warrior nobility, revolving around the three key concepts of lords, vassals, and fiefs....
    • Hegemony
      Hegemony

      Hegemony first denoted the dominance of a Greek city-state over other city-states, then denoted the dominance of one nation over others. The political scientist Antonio Gramsci developed the former conceptions to identify the dominance of one social class over the other social classes in a society by means of cultural hegemony....
    • John A. Hobson
      John A. Hobson

      John Atkinson Hobson , commonly known as John A. Hobson or J. A. Hobson, was an English economist and imperial critic, widely popular as a lecturer and writer....
    • List of empires
      List of empires

      This is an alphabetical list of empires that stretched far beyond their geographical and cultural limits to govern other parts of the world. The list includes empires that may only have had cultural and economic influences....
      • List of Muslim empires
        List of Muslim empires

        Scholars debate what exactly constitutes an Empire. Generally, they may define an empire as a state that extends dominion over areas and populations distinct culturally and ethnically from the culture/ethnicity at the center of power....
    • Neocolonialism
      Neocolonialism

      Neocolonialism is a term used by post-colonial critics of developed countries' involvement in the developing world. Critics of neocolonialism argue that existing or past international economic arrangements created by former colonial powers were or are used to maintain control of their former colonies and dependencies after the decoloniza...
    • New Imperialism
      New Imperialism

      New Imperialism refers to the colony expansion adopted by Europe's power and, later, Japan and the United States, during the 19th and early 20th centuries; approximately from the Franco-Prussian War to World War I ....
    • Oil imperialism
    • Scientific imperialism
      Scientific imperialism

      Scientific imperialism is a term that appears to have been coined by Dr Ellis T Powell when addressing the Commonwealth Club of Canada on 8 September 1920....
    • Theories of New Imperialism
      Theories of New Imperialism

      Hobson's accumulation theory The accumulation theory, conceived largely by Karl Kautsky and J.A. Hobson, then popularized by Lenin, centres on the accumulation of surplus capital during the Second Industrial Revolution....
    • Ultra-imperialism
      Ultra-imperialism

      Ultra-imperialism, or occasionally hyperimperialism, is a potential phase of capitalism described by Karl Kautsky.Kautsky elucidated his theory in the September 1914 issue of Die Neue Zeit....
    • Uneven and combined development
      Uneven and combined development

      Uneven and combined development is a Marxist concept to describe the overall dynamics of human history. It was originally used by the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky around the turn of the 20th century, when he was analyzing the developmental possibilities that existed for the economy and civilization in the Russian empire, and the likely...


    Further reading

    • Guy Ankerl, Coexisting Contemporary Civilizations: Arabo-Muslim, Bharatai, Chinese, and Western, Geneva, INU PRESS, 2000, ISBN 2-88155-004-5.
    • Robert Bickers/Christian Henriot, New Frontiers: Imperialism's New Communities in East Asia, 1842-1953, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2000, ISBN 0-7190-5604-7
    • Barbara Bush, Imperialism and Postcolonialism (History: Concepts,Theories and Practice), Longmans, 2006, ISBN 0582505836
    • John Darwin, After Tamerlane: The Rise and Fall of Global Empires, 1400-2000, Penguin Books, 2008, ISBN 0141010223
    • Niall Ferguson, Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World, Penguin Books, 2004, ISBN 0141007540
    • Michael Hardt and Toni Negri, Empire, Harvard University Press
      Harvard University Press

      Harvard University Press is a publishing house, a division of Harvard University, that is highly respected in academic publishing. It was established on January 13, 1913....
      , 2000, ISBN 0-674-00671-2
    • E.J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire, 1875-1914, Abacus Books, 1989, ISBN 0349105987
    • E J Hobsbawm, On Empire: America, War, and Global Supremacy, Pantheon Books, 2008, ISBN 0375425373
    • J A Hobson, Imperialism: A Study, Cosimo Classics, 2005, ISBN 1596052503
    • Michael Hudson, Super Imperialism: The Origin and Fundamentals of U.S. World Dominance, Pluto Press, 2003, ISBN 0745319890
    • V I Lenin, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, International Publishers, New York, 1997, ISBN 0717800989
    • Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism, Vintage Books, 1998, ISBN 0099967502
    • Simon C Smith, British Imperialism 1750-1970, Cambridge University Press, 1998, ISBN 052159930X


    External links

    • 1902.
    • by Hans-Hermann Hoppe
      Hans-Hermann Hoppe

      Hans-Hermann Hoppe is an Austrian school economist of the anarcho-capitalism tradition, and a former economics professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas....
      . November 2006.
    • Quotations
    • by Joseph Schumpeter
    • by A.J.P.Taylor