Abstract
History is full of examples of the annexation of foreign territory and the domination of weaker by stronger powers. Nevertheless, there is a vital difference between the empire-building of precapitalist times, such as the Iberian conquest of Latin America, and that of capitalist times. Apart from outright pillage, the precapitalist colonizers benefited from their domination by exacting a continuous flow of tribute. On the whole, though, they did not interfere with the economic basis of the conquered territories: the tribute skimmed off the economic surplus that was produced traditionally in the subjugated areas.
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Notes
A. Toussaint, Archives of the Indian Ocean; as quoted in G.S. Graham, The Politics of Naval Supremacy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), p. 37.
Clive Day, A History of Commerce (New York: Longman, 1938), p. 166.
E.J. Hobsbawm, “The Crisis of the Seventeenth Century,” in Trevor Aston, ed., Crisis in Europe 1560–1660 (New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1967), p. 24. The entire paragraph is based on Hobsbawm’s path-breaking articles (originally appearing in Past and Present) in which, among other things, he clearly spells out the historical significance of, and the differences between, the earlier colonies of plunder and the subsequent plantation and settlement colonies.
Some interesting data on the correlation between the ups and downs of British trade and its power at sea are given in J. Holland Rose, “Sea Power and Expansion 1660–1763,” The Cambridge History of the British Empire, vol. 2 (New York: Macmillan, 1929), p. 537.
On this, see the useful study by Bernard Semmel, The Rise of Free Trade Imperialism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970).
Grover Clark, The Balance Sheets of Imperialism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936), pp. 5–6.
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© 1982 Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Magdoff, H. (1982). Imperialism: A Historical Survey. In: Alavi, H., Shanin, T. (eds) Introduction to the Sociology of “Developing Societies”. Sociology of “Developing Societies”. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-16847-7_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-16847-7_2
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