Concept Of Imperialism Research Articles

The changing face of anti-globalization politics: Two (and a half) tales of globalization and anti-globalization

This article argues that two key ‘moments’ can be used to indicate the changing nature of anti-globalization politics. The first was the protests at Seattle in 1999, the ‘coming out’ event for the movement. The second was the ‘war on terror’ in response to the terrorist attacks in the US on 11 September 2001. I argue that Seattle and the war on terror represent two ways of thinking about contemporary globalization. The first can be linked to notions of transnational capitalism and Empire, the second to notions of imperialism. The paper therefore deconstructs these concepts, relating them to the concrete politics of anti-globalization. The first section critically discusses the transnational capitalism thesis, while the second section examines the concept of imperialism. The third section then attempts to integrate the critical account in the first two sections. It defends the idea that globalization is in some respects a contingent process, but contrary to some accounts (the ‘half tale’) it is also one with dominant centres of power. Finally, the political implications are discussed, where I outline two positions based on globalizing resistance and anti-imperialism. I suggest that these positions are not mutually exclusive, but also that one does not neatly fit into the other, and that progressive politics operates both within and between local, national and global spaces. This argument is addressed in the conclusion in the context of the debate over the war in Iraq, the role of the United Nations, and the principle of cosmopolitanism.

LAWRENCE DAVIDSON, America's Palestine: Popular and Official Perceptions from Balfour to Israeli Statehood (Gainesville: University Press of Florida). Pp. 264

The last chapter in Lawrence Davidson's book is titled “Colonizing the American Mind,” with a purpose to reverse the interpretation of Peter Grose's famous book Israel in the American Mind (1983). Actually, the whole of Davidson's book aims to revise the traditional historiographical approach, which has highlighted the strong bond between American values and those of the Jewish state. Davidson has been criticizing this approach since the beginning, focusing his argument on the concept of imperialism, which has produced, according to him, a serious alteration in the West's attitude toward the East. However, as will be shown, the concept of imperialism—based on the traditional separation between a civilized, advanced, and efficient West and an East in need of protection and leadership, which Davidson uses as a basic negative criterion for all his interpretation—is weak, outdated, and, above all, too ideological.

From Miami to Quebec and Beyond: Opposition to the Free Trade Area of the Americas

This article examines the emergence of what popularly is called the antiglobalization movement. Rather than looking at the worldwide movement, the focus here is on the opposition to the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), which first was proposed in 1994 and is to be implemented by 2005. While briefly examining the efforts to negotiate the FTAA, the main focus is on the gradual emergence of the anti‐FTAA forces, their main critique of the agreement and corporate globalization in general, and how the forces aligned against the FTAA fit into the larger antiglobalization movement. Finally, the article analyzes the concepts behind the movement for free trade and how it fits in with traditional concepts of imperialism.

The Rediscovery of Imperialism

The concept of imperialism was considered outside the acceptable range of political discourse within the ruling circles of the capitalist world for most of the twentieth century. Reference to imperialism during the Vietnam War, no matter how realistic, was almost always a sign that the writer was on the left side of the political spectrum. In a 1971 foreword to the U.S. edition of Pierre Jalee's Imperialism in the Seventies Harry Magdoff noted, As a rule, polite academic scholars prefer not to use the term 'imperialism.' They find it distasteful and unscientific.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

Toward an International of Resistance Against Capitalist Globalization

Contrary to the claims of neoliberal ideologues, capitalist globalization does not contribute in the least to creating a pacific and harmonious new world order-on the contrary, it fosters ethnic-identity panic and tribal nationalism. The false universality of the world market unleashes particularism and hardens xenophobia; the market cosmopolitanism of capital and aggressive nationalist impulses are mutually supportive (see Bensaid, 1997). Thanks to the concept of imperialism, Marxism is able to escape the pitfalls of false Eurocentric-or Western-universalism, which claims to impose on all the world's peoples, notably those on the periphery, the domination of the modem bourgeois/industrial way of life in the guise of civilization: private property, the market economy, unlimited economic expansion, productivism, utilitarianism, possessive individualism, and instrumental rationality. This is not a matter of denying the universal value of certain achievements of European culture after 1789, such as democracy, secularism, and the rights of man. It is simply a matter of rejecting the false dichotomy between socalled Western universalism and the limited cult of cultural differences-or, in the case of European unification, between supranational capitalist/market unity and the nationalist recourse to existing fatherlands. For Marxism the fundamental value of universality is the liberation of human beings from all forms of oppression, domination, alienation, and degradation. This is a utopian universality and not the ideological pseudouniversality that lauds the Western status quo as already embodying the human universal, the end of history, and the realization of the human spirit. Only a critical universality of this type, one that is oriented toward an emancipated

Imperialism and "Empire"

Only a little more than a month ago at this writing, before September 11, the mass revolt against capitalist globalization that began in Seattle in November 1999 and that was still gathering force as recently as Genoa in July 2001 was exposing the contradictions of the system in a way not seen for many years. Yet the peculiar nature of this revolt was such that the concept of imperialism had been all but effaced, even within the left, by the concept of globalization, suggesting that some of the worst forms of international exploitation and rivalry had somehow abated.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

Globalisation or imperialism?

The article details and criticises both the theoretical and empirical weaknesses of the widely used concept of globalisation. The article sets out and discusses three arguments concerning the phenomenon of globalisation: first, that globalisation is a novel phenomenon; second, that the state has become an anachronism; and third, that the technological revolution is the main impetus behind globalisation. The article challenges these contentions, and argues, to the contrary, that the concept of globalisation obscures more than it reveals; that the macro‐dynamics of the world economy can best be understood through an analysis of the active role of the imperial state and the opening up of overseas opportunities via political power; and that developments associated with the new information technology are subordinate to more important developments grasped with reference to the concept of imperialism.

Dynast und Kirche. Studien zum Verhältnis von Kirche und Staat im späteren Mittelalter und in der Neuzeit by Alfred A. Strnad

BOOK REVIEWS73 beyond Valencia and the mendicants and so makes a valuable contribution to our consideration of these issues. James William Brodman University ofCentralArkansas Dynast und Kirche. Studien zum Verhältnis von Kirche und Staat im späteren Mittelalter und in der Neuzeit. By Alfred A. Strnad. Edited by Josef Gelmi und Helmut Gritsch in collaboration with Caroline Baldemair. [Innsbrucker Historische Studien,Vols. 18/19·] (Innsbruck: Studien Verlag. 1997. Pp. xxxii, 688. ÖS 650.00.) This is a collection of twenty-three studies, six of which were hitherto unpublished , by the Ordinarius for modern history at the University of Innsbruck, the chair established originally in 1887 for Ludwig Pastor, the well-known historian of the popes. The anthology was edited by his students on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday. It reflects the honoree's distinguished career as a historical researcher. Having obtained his doctorate under Alphons Lhotsky, the Nestor ofAustrian medievalists, he then worked in the Institut für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung, that nursery of painstaking diplomatics, as assistant to its director, Leo Santifaller. In 1964 he transferred to the department for historical studies at the Austrian Cultural Institute in Rome,where he remained for thirteen years before he took up his present appointment in 1976. Much of his time there was spent in the Vatican Archives, particularly for his study of the earlier career of the humanist Enea Silvio de' Piccolomini, the later Pius II, and the Piccolomini family,who were closely involved in Austria. While most of this collection deals with the later Middle Ages, some articles spill over into the early modern, particularly the Counter-Reformation, period. The last one takes us even to the end of World War I. One of the purposes the editors had in mind in pubUshing these studies was to fill a perceived gap in the historiography of the late medieval Habsburgs, especially their ecclesiastical policy. Whereas this work may not fulfill the desideratum completely, it certainly lays the groundwork for such a book. With the possible exception of the first study, the essays reflect a good old-fashioned German approach to the writing of history ,namely, a conscientious and minute search for, and examination of,relevant sources, including what to us may seem trivial biographical data of semiobscure personalities. But in a surprising manner Strnad is able to use these details to shed light on broader issues. Sometimes he finds it even necessary to correct his old mentor, Lhotsky. The only truly interpretative study is the first one, his unpublished "The Holy Roman Empire in the Late Middle Ages: Insights into Imperial Concepts." In it we have a sweeping but acute interpretation of the notion of the medieval Empire and the part that the Habsburgs played in it from the death of the Hohenstaufen Emperor Frederick II to the Imperial reformulation at the time of the Habsburg Emperor Charles V Using the overarching idea of a universal Empire 74BOOK REVIEWS that would bring about peace and justice as found in Dante's De Monarchia, Strnad gives us an outline, albeit subjective at times, of the character and policy of the various German kings or emperors. His account clearly shows that his sympathies lie with the Habsburg dukes in their rivalries with the Imperial rulers of the Luxemburg line. It does not prevent him from disapproving the vacillations and indecisiveness of the Habsburg Frederick III. This survey sets the tone for much that is to follow in the subsequent articles, many ofwhich are concerned with the attempt of the Austrian territorial rulers to seize control over the church within their lands, a struggle that involved them, inter alia, with the prince-archbishop of Salzburg, the see of Passau, and the Luxemburg Emperor Charles IV, not to speak of their own intra-family quarrels. For example, in his second study, also unpublished, the author traces the history of the diocese of Seckau in the province of Styria, which was started ostensibly as a suffragan see of the metropolitan of Salzburg in 1 164, but became a point offriction between the archbishop and the territorial ruler over the appointment of the bishop. Somewhat similarly the see of Passau became a pawn in the power...

Coxian Historicism as an Alternative Perspective in International Studies

Robert W. Cox's work may be considered as a major influence in the development of an alternative to mainstream approaches to international relations. Indeed, it can be argued that Coxian historicism is growing in appeal because of its explanatory power and openness. In this article, I will draw together Cox's core analytical propositions. Notwithstanding the publication of his 1996 anthology, some of his important papers are still not well known, and I will supplement them with references to his unpublished work.1 Another purpose of this article is to probe the tensions and ambiguities in his framework and attempt to offer a constructive critique. To a degree, in North American theorizing, there has been a move away from problem-solving theory and its preoccupation with great-power politics, associated with the intellectual hegemony of neorealism and neo-utilitarian rational-choice approaches. Two moments of theoretical innovation helped to promote this shift. In a seminal essay, Cox not only developed a critical notion of the meaning and purpose of theory, but also linked it to an examination of a range of problems and issues in international relations, including a reconsideration of the concept of imperialism (the latter concept had effectively vanished from the theoretical lexicon of mainstream theory).2 Another key challenge to this orthodoxy was offered in Richard Ashley's pathbreaking piece entitled The Poverty of Neorealism.3 Drawing on the work of English social theorists such as E. P. Thompson, the political philosophy of Jurgen Habermas, and the

The Waning of the Sovereign State: Towards a New Paradigm for International-Law?*

The concept of an international community made up of sovereign States is the basis of our intellectual framework for international law. A look at history, however, tells us that conceptions of world order have by no means always been shaped by the model of sovereign co-equal actors with a territorial basis. Although there are old historical precedents for relations between territorial communities on an equal footing, the imperial conceptions of Roman times and of the Middle Ages were based on entirely different ideas. They were strongly hierarchical and paralleled religious or secular concepts of subordination and dependence. Sixteen forty-eight, the year of the Peace of Westphalia, is usually given as the decisive date for the transition from the vertical imperial to the horizontal inter-State model.' Needless to say, in historical terms this is an oversimplification. The Empire existed until 1806 and the process towards sovereign equality was gradual. It culminated with the collapse in the early twentieth century of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires, and the displacement of the Concert of Europe as the most important international arena by an open global community of States. Colonialism was not really a deviation from this movement The existence of different forms of social organization in other parts of the world was a welcome excuse for European powers with colonial ambitions to deny statehood to these communities and to annex the territory inhabited by them. Decolonization consisted basically of the extension of European political structures to these

Sovereignty and Tabu: Evolution of the Sanction against Communication with Excommunicates. Part 1: Gregory VII

Gregory VII’s pontificate is acknowledged as the starting-point for, as Professor Wilks has termed it, ‘the vigorous expression and application of hierocratic principles’, the foundation stone of the medieval papal monarchy and its sovereignty. Gregory revived once and for all, as earlier leaders had succeeded in doing only temporarily, the imperial concept of sovereign legislative authority. Though deeply aware of the limitations imposed by tradition, Gregory raised the pope’s power of lawmaking to a unique sovereign act: ‘He alone can compose new laws to meet the needs of the times’, as it was expressed in the Dictatuspapae, the twenty-seven declarations on papal power that were entered into the papal register in March 1075.

Gentlemanly Capitalism and British Expansion Overseas I. The Old Colonial System, 1688-1850

In an earlier survey of the history of imperialism we suggested that closer attention should be given to the connexions between the slow and uncertain development of industry and the pace and direction of overseas expansion.1 We also argued that insufficient regard had been paid to the influence of non-industrial forms of capitalism on both overseas development and imperial policy. In the course of that survey, the former problem was dealt with in some detail, whereas the latter was treated briefly and tentatively. The purpose of the present article is to correct this deficiency and to advance a new perspective on imperialism for the period between the Glorious Revolution and the Second World War. We begin by emphasizing that, despite their many differences, Marxist and non-Marxist historians share a conception of imperialism which is derived from certain broad assumptions about the place of the industrial revolution in modern history. These assumptions are made explicit in Marxist theories, which attempt to relate empire building to stages in the evolution of industrial capitalism. They also underlie the leading non-Marxist explanations, which emphasize the diverse commercial, political, and cultural forces brought to the fore by industrial progress. Thus, Gallagher and Robinson, though concerned to refute Marxist claims and to avoid charges of economic determinism, nevertheless started from the position that British industrialization caused an ever-extending and intensifying development of overseas regions, and they proceeded to interpret the rise of free trade and the growth of informal empire from this standpoint.2 The implications of this common approach, based on the story of the triumph of industry, extend well beyond the boundaries of the nineteenth century. Historians as far apart ideologically

Imperialism and decline: Britain in the 1980s

This article examines the international movement of British capital in an attempt to assess the strengths and weaknesses of Britain as an imperialist power. Based on a Leninist concept of imperialism as the capital export phase of capitalism, it argues that the decline in the UK's industrial base, the flight of British capital to Europe and the United States and the involvement of foreign investment in the restructuring of the UK economy are all facets of the continuing imperialist role of British capital and the British state. The response of the labour movement and socialists should be premised on a recognition of how the working class is also being restructured, and strategies and policies should be reformulated to encompass the changing reality, both internally and internationally.

The entelechies of mercantilism

Abstract Mercantilism is not an easy concept to delimit. With mercantilism, as with the concept of imperialism, one finds that ‘the same term is customarily used to designate diverse, and in certain respects antithetical concepts. Indeed theoretical controversy is often based on nothing more than a failure to grasp what is the object of reference.’1 Controversy surrounds the concept of mercantilism, and debates about it turn on the question, ‘what objects or ends does the concept refer to?’

The Context of Foreign Aid: Modern Imperialism

Foreign aid is seldom seen by bourgeois economics for what it actually is — one method by which capital and capitalism are internationalized. Bourgeois economists argue over aid's effectiveness in promoting development, while in business and political circles its defenders make the only really telling arguments; that markets and resources are secured, and a climate conducive to world wide private investment is created and strengthened. Those arguments fit quite well into the Marxist concept of imperialism, an analysis of which is in cluded here, while a study of U.S. aid flows from 1958 to 1974 confirms such a hypothesis.

Changing concepts of imperialism

Changing concepts of imperialism

Essai critique sur l’esthétique de K. N. Leont’ev

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image sizeRésumé/AbstractA most articulate advocate of the concept of idealistic aesthetics, the writer Konstantin Lont’ev, appears on the literary scene of the 19th century at a time when Russian Intelligentsia was imbued with humanitarian and liberal ideas and, when, from another vantage point, a utilitarian interpretation was paramount in most minds. For Leont’ev, the concept of beauty cannot be separated from that of life and it becomes its very substance. What he had in mind was a life taken in its luxuriant variety, a life made of suffering, inequalities, turmoil and struggles; the aesthetic criterion always dominates the moral one. Moreover, for him “there is no morality or immorality as such, but only in an aesthetic sense,” he states in one of his writings. It is therefore in the aesthetic element that one must look for the basis of Leont’ev’s political, social, historical or religious views. He was a conservative because to him Beauty appeared to be on the side of the Church and Monarchy. He thought that the imperial concept, patterned after the Byzantine Empire, transcended all racial or nationalistic connotations as the supreme expression of statehood. Thus, Leont’ev considered Panslavism as a particularly harmful trend for Russia and preferred the Turks, Greeks, and Germans to the Southern and Western Slavs as he considered them to be an unavoidable evil for the Russian Empire. The various nationalistic liberation movements of the 19th century were, in his eyes, the forerunners of an undiversified democracy, i.e., the end of all life made of variety an inequality which, according to him, is the mandatory condition for Beauty’s safeguard. As a tangible manifestation of such egalitarian and uniform tendency “the petit bourgeois” is likely to emerge, either Russian, French or German, who to him symbolizes the decline of all aesthetic values. According to the most pertinent remark made by Basil Rozanov, Leont’ev “was the true Nietzche, as, after all, the German one was not a real one – he was weak-hearted.”

V. Late Nineteenth-Century Colonial Expansion and the Attack on the Theory of Economic Imperialism: A Case of Mistaken Identity?

The concept of imperialism which Hobson, Lenin and the combined force of the international socialist movement forged into anidée fixeof the twentieth century was roughly handled by Western scholars long before 1945. But since then the attack has grown more precise and its character has altered. Among the first of the post-war historians (writing in English) to attempt the dethronement of imperialism as the demi-urge of the period between 1870 and 1914 was Richard Koebner. He determined on a semantic approach and put the term's linguistic history to rigorous scrutiny. On the philosophical assumption that a term's meaning is to be defined by its actual use and provenance in the political discourse in which it arose, he found that the modern concept of economic imperialism sprang out of a limited, local controversy over the nature of the Boer War. He concluded that it had been illicitly mated with other forms of militarism and economic expansion to spawn a hybrid, mythical monster that had been allowed to sprawl its length over more than half a century of world history.1

The New Left in France

THE saying that France has stupidest right in the world was demonstrated again by the Algiers coup of April 1961. What the quartet of generals hoped to achieve that might or could have been durable is difficult to imagine. The French right is still nourished largely on the philosophy of Charles Maurras and the Action Fran?aise; and in recent years it has moved progressively toward fascism, a political develop ment closely linked to phenomena of decay and obsolescence inherent in the social structure of France. This was expressed in laconic fashion by the former Catholic premier, Georges Bidault, when he said, Tout se d?grade; je me sens devenir fasciste? Everything is debased; I feel myself becoming a fascist. As some elements of the center parties and the army have joined the right, elements of the non-Communist left have been moving from an independent position promised under the leader ship of Mend?s-France in 1954 into closer ideological alignment with the Soviet bloc. Ignoring the lessons of past history in gen eral and of Soviet history in particular, the left, too, clings to out dated concepts of imperialism and nourishes illusions about social evils in the West.

Lenin's "Imperialism": A Study in the Unity of Theory and Practice

N O THEORETICAL CONTRIBUTIONS to revolutionary Marxism in twentieth century have been more widely and noisily proclaimed than those of Lenin. High upon list of those contributions is his celebrated theory of Imperialism. Yet, in days still vexed and plagued by Lenin's political legacy, that theory is too commonly either dismissed or misconstrued. This essay is an endeavor to suggest some measure of significance of Lenin's concept of Imperialism, to elaborate and document its genesis and evolution, and to examine several of its most distinctive and important elements. The treatment falls most naturally into three parts. The first is a statement of Imperialism as a systematic doctrine-Imperialism as highest stage of capitalism-and of consequences that Lenin drew from his analysis of Imperialism. The second describes what appears to have been actual genesis of Lenin's theory. The concluding section discusses theoretical difficulties left unreconciled by Lenin's hasty doctrinal patchwork and most vital pragmatic implications of Imperialism for strategy of Communism. Imperialism, as a Marxist theory, is particularly intriguing because it is highly ambiguous in argument and synthetic in construction. It is neither a simple thesis about the highest stage of capitalism, nor is it merely Marxism for colonies and underdeveloped areas. At same time, Lenin combined and confused both of these arguments, found new and better reasons for despising opportunist and anti-Bolshevik strains in international socialism, shored up tottering structure of orthodox Marxism, and supplied a plausible theoretical framework for his evolving conception of strategy and tactics. In achieving this result, he involved himself in a series of theoretical difficulties. On other hand, he did succeed in elaborating a doctrine that for practical purposes served Bolshevik strategy and tactics even more congenially than traditional Marxism. But Lenin's Imperialism also merits renewed consideration for