'Imperialism' began as an insult, then became a boast within a decade
In the late 1870s critics of Benjamin Disraeli brought imperialism into English to attack his showy, aggressive empire-building. Supporters such as Joseph Chamberlain promptly claimed the label for themselves, and by the 1880s it carried a positive ring across the West. Few political words have flipped their meaning so fast.
The root is the Latin imperium, meaning command or sovereign rule. The word was first coined in the nineteenth century for Napoleon III's habit of courting popularity through foreign invasions, and by the century's end it described the conduct of empires in every era. Imperialism means holding and extending power over foreign nations, through armies and money but also through diplomacy and culture, and unlike colonialism it need not involve settlement or even formal rule.
Explanations for the urge compete. Kenneth Waltz blamed great power itself, arguing that strength tempts states to use it. Hannah Arendt and Joseph Schumpeter saw expansion pursued for its own sake. John Hobson and, in 1917, Lenin recast it as capitalism's highest stage, with firms exporting capital rather than seizing land, and in 1965 Nkrumah described neocolonialism as its final phase. In the 1970s the British historians John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson argued that informal influence mattered more than territory painted red on maps, since most British emigrants, trade and capital went outside the formal empire.
Historians usually end the Age of Imperialism in 1914 but start it anywhere from 1760 to 1870. Industrialising European states intensified colonisation and annexation, joined late in the century by the United States and Japan, in episodes including the Scramble for Africa and the Great Game. Railways, telegraphs and steamships moved goods cheaply and let home governments administer distant colonies, while new explosives and, by the 1880s, dependable machine guns gave European armies a lopsided edge.
Whether it paid is another matter. Planners hoped colonies would buy manufactured goods, but apart from the Indian subcontinent that seldom happened. By the 1890s the case rested mainly on cheap raw materials such as cotton, dyes, vegetable oils and metal ores. Britain drew profits from India, particularly Bengal, but not from most of its other possessions, and one view holds that no empire, taken as a whole, served any definable economic purpose.
Source: Imperialism
