How do nationalism and imperialism

In Fig. We may depict this assessment of the relative stability of the respective forms of expansionism by assigning a direction to the segments represented in Fig. In this manner, we obtain the four directional or arrowed segments of Fig. Let us now take this arena towards the end of the 19th century. The disintegration of the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires were the clearest instances of this, but a similar process was discernible in Russia, Japan and China, where the imperial organization of the state remained formally intact.

To a varying degree, both these trends were present in all recently formed Nation-States, even if the former — the tendency to surpass enclosure into separate and exclusive realities and to open out in peaceful interchange of goods and ideas with other nations — was starting to be more typical of countries with a colonial past like the United States, while the latter tendency was starting to predominate in countries with an imperial past, like Germany cf.

This distinction will prove useful for a diachronic reading of Fig. In the USA, after nearly a century of inwardly concentrated effort to forge a single nation out of a multiplicity of colonial societies, Nationalism turned outwards at the end of the 19th century towards the external world, or rather towards an integration of that world within an Informal Empire. We shall explore these designations further in the course of our analysis. For the moment, their interest is merely one of exemplification.

However I hope that, in this respect at least, the reader may begin to glimpse the utility of the conceptual grid represented in Fig. That the grid has certain limits is self-evident: if it had none, it would not be a grid at all, that is, an instrument capable of retaining fixing one set of images, while allowing through obscuring another set.

However, as Stretton has pointed out in answer to historiographical criticisms of Hobson:. Meanwhile in all common sense there are enough very obvious patterns in reality, and enough values shared by investigators of the most diverse politics, to make sure that a lot of knowledge gathered in different interests will prove useful to everybody.

In the course of the next section, we shall attempt to circumvent some of the more striking limitations of the schema so far adopted, making clear its contours and content. But even when all these points have been specified, the grid will remain a grid — one, moreover, that is woven rather loosely.

Its utility depends not on the quantity of images which it fixes, but rather on their quality. In other words, it is a function of the goals which Hobson set himself in his study of imperialism and which we set ourselves in our study of Hobson.

Notes: 1. Hobson, Imperialism: A Study , London , p. This feeling of nationality may have been generated by various causes. Sometimes it is the effect of identity of race and descent. Community of language and community of religion greatly contribute to it. Geographical limits are one of the causes. But the strongest of all is identity of political antecedents, the possession of a national history and consequent community of recollections, collective pride and humiliation, pleasure and regret, connected with the same incidents in the past.

Hobson, op. The symbols which appear in Fig. Thus it should be kept in mind that S and N whether with a plus or minus refer to forms of expansion of the State Formal Empire and Imperialism and the Nation Colonialism and Informal Empire respectively. From a historical point of view, the Nation-State evidently does not represent the origin of either Colonialism or Formal Empire — or even of Informal Empire, if 17th-century Dutch imperialism is to be included in this category.

It will become clear as we proceed that the grid which we are constructing has a limited historical validity; and that, in particular, it has no meaning before the Nation-State has become the primary structure of the international system.

Its function is purely analytical — that is to say, it defines an object which has no empirical correlates before the second half of the 17th century and which is not fully visible until the end of the 19th century cf. Stretton, The Political Sciences , London , p. We use cookies to enhance your experience. Dismiss this message or find out more. Forgot your password? Don't have an account?

Sign up here for discounts and quicker purchasing. Giovanni Arrighi 18 March Hobson, which preceded it. Table of Contents Introduction Why Persuade? Accessed DD Mon. Skip to Main Content Search. Bending Lines Why Persuade? Nationalism and Imperialism.

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