Britain as an Imperial Power in South-East Asia in the Nineteenth Century

Abstract

THE word ‘imperialism’ has had a somewhat chequered history,¹ but to many, including Asian and African nationalists, it remains indelibly associated with the concept of ‘economic’ imperialism popularised by the writings of J.A. Hobson and V. I. Lenin.² Both men focused particular attention on the period from about 1870 to 1900 when there was an enormous increase in Western territorial holdings in Africa and Asia:³ Lenin, for example, noted that in Africa the area under European control rose from less than 11 per cent in 1876 to more than 90 per cent in 1900, and Hobson emphasised the point that one-third of the territory of the British empire in 1900 and one-quarter of its population had been acquired since 1870.⁴ The acquisition by Great Britain during these years of 4 3/4 million square miles of territory and 88 million people was regarded as a phenomenon of especial significance,⁵ and the fact that during approximately the same period British capital investment overseas increased more than ten-fold¹ provided both writers with the key for explaining imperialism, Hobson interpreting the process as a consequence of ‘under-consumption’, as the pressure of declining domestic rates of interest requiring profitable fields of investment abroad,² and Lenin as the necessity of monopoly finance capital to export to limited markets protected by the political apparatus of the metropolitan state.³