Imperialism, History of

Smith, Simon C.

Abstract

© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. The word 'imperialism' is one of the most powerful concepts of our time. Originally coined as a term to describe and analyze the expansion of the European powers over the rest of the world in the last quarter of the twentieth century, the term was soon employed to also characterize a particular stage in the development of capitalism, especially by Marxist thinkers, and later developed into an invective for describing the activities of one's political adversaries. In scholarly writing, the word mostly indicates the extension of what was largely European formal or informal political rule over Asian and African countries in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It also serves more generally to describe some other forms of Western predominance during and after the colonial period. Prior to the end of the Second World War, an economic interpretation of imperialism was prevalent, but after that time, other theories were brought forward giving more attention to other aspects, particularly political ones. More recently, the primacy of economic interpretations, especially of British imperialism, has been reasserted. In the vast literature on British, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Dutch imperialism that developed from the 1960s onward, the various national forms of this general European phenomenon have been studied. The rather different cases of Russian, American, and Japanese expansion have also been analyzed from the perspective of the theory of imperialism. In modern scholarly literature, imperialism is no longer conceived of as a unilateral process imposed by a dominating power but as a process of interaction between the metropole and the periphery.

Citation

Smith, S. C. (2015). Imperialism, History of. In J. D. Wright (Ed.), International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (685-691). (2nd ed.). Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-097086-8.62046-9

• Online Publication Date: Mar 12, 2015
• Publication Date: Mar 26, 2015
• Deposit Date: Apr 27, 2022
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Pages: 685-691
• Edition: 2nd ed.
• Book Title: International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences
• ISBN: 9780080970875; 9780080970868
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-097086-8.62046-9
• Keywords: Capitalism; Empire; Formal empire; Gentlemanly capitalism; Imperialism; Imperialism of free trade; Informal empire; J.A. Hobson; Lenin; Marxism
• Public URL: https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/3628147