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History Notes Imperialism Notes

Imperialism Notes

Updated Imperialism Notes

Imperialism Notes

Imperialism

Approximately 96 pages

These notes tackle the concept of imperialism - what is an empire, how have historians explained them, why do they rise, stagnate, and fall. As well as comparing how great imperial thinkers - Marx, Hobhouse, Schumpeter and many others - have written about imperialism, they look in detail at five practical examples - the British Empire, the Napoleonic Empire, the Belgian Empire, and the Austrian Empire. Complete with quotes, maps, and timelines.

Note that there is significant overlap with my ou...

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Imperialism

Contents

  • Past questions

  • Quotes

    • Historiography

    • France

    • Britain

    • Austria

    • Belgium

    • Japan

  • Maps

    • The First French Empire in 1812

    • The British Empire in 1921

    • Austria-Hungary in 1914

    • The Belgian Empire in 1920

    • The Japanese Empire in 1914

  • Chronology

    • France

    • Britain

    • Austria

    • Belgium

    • Japan

  • Historiography

    • Definition

    • Informal empire

    • Overview

    • Lenin

    • Hobson

    • Schumpeter

    • Hildebrand

    • Robinson and Gallagher

    • Fieldhouse

    • Cain and Hopkins

    • Porter

    • Diplomatic explanations

    • Financial explanations

    • Militaristic explanations

    • Social imperialism

    • Religious imperialism

    • Men on the spot

    • Technology

    • Imperialism and nationalism

    • Imperialism and globalisation

  • Colonial rule

    • Oppression

    • Enlightenment

    • Collaboration

    • Administration

    • Technology

  • The First French Empire

    • Empire

    • Reasons for expansion

    • Rule

    • Domestic response

    • Fall of empire

  • The British Empire

    • Formal empire

    • Informal empire

    • Reasons for expansion

    • Rule

    • Domestic response

    • Fall of empire

  • The Austrian Empire

    • Empire

    • Reasons for expansion

    • Rule

    • Domestic response

    • Fall of empire

  • The Belgian Empire

    • Formal empire

    • Reasons for expansion

    • Rule

    • Domestic response

    • Fall of empire

  • The Japanese Empire

    • Empire

    • Reasons for expansion

    • Rule

    • Domestic response

    • Fall of empire

Past questions

  • Can military over-extension provide a satisfactory explanation for the decline of empires?

    • Specimen paper

  • Are there any patterns in the rise and fall of empires?

    • Tutorial essay

  • How has the meaning of empire changed over time?

    • Tutorial essay

  • Are empires mainly viewed by contemporaries in material terms?

    • Trinity 2013

  • Is the rise of one empire usually dependent on the fall of another?

    • Trinity 2012

  • Is imperial expansion really driven by economic considerations?

    • Trinity 2011

  • In what circumstances do subordinate territories rebel against imperial power?

    • Trinity 2011

  • What roles have hierarchical conceptions of either gender or culture played in legitimising imperial rule?

    • Trinity 2010

  • Do all empires follow similar patterns of historical development?

    • Trinity 2010

  • Has the primary purpose of obtaining an empire been the increase in military resources that an empire provides?

    • Trinity 2009

  • Do Empires promote tolerance?

    • Trinity 2009

  • To what extent have ideas of racial hierarchy supported or subverted imperialism?

    • Trinity 2008

  • Have empires been doomed by the fiscal burdens they create?

    • Trinity 2008

  • ‘The most effective grave-diggers of empire are usually the imperialists themselves’ (JH Eliot). Discuss.

    • Trinity 2007

  • Have ideologies of empire had much in common?

    • Trinity 2007

  • Can ‘military overextension’ (Paul Kennedy) provide a satisfactory explanation for the decline of Empires?

    • Trinity 2006

  • Imperialist exploitation or the benefits of integration: which better describes the economic systems of empires?

    • Trinity 2006

  • Were European imperialisms more than superficially similar?

    • Trinity 2005

Quotes

Historiography

  • “Imperialism is capitalism in that stage of development in which the domination of monopolies and finance capital has taken shape”.

    • Vladimir Lenin.

  • Imperialism is “the objectless disposition on the part of a state to unlimited forcible expansion”.

    • Joseph Schumpeter.

  • ‘Europe was pulled into imperialism by the magnetic force of the periphery’.

    • DK Fieldhouse.

  • ‘Foreign policy-makers have never operated in a vacuum’.

    • Andrew Porter.

  • ‘Behind this question lies the tacit assumption that once Europeans wanted to spread their influence, they could readily do so’.

    • Daniel R Headrick.

  • Empire was ‘omnipresent in the lives of ordinary people’.

    • Catherine Hall and Sonya Rose.

  • That ‘the empire had no everyday relevance’ for the British majority.

    • Frederick Madden.

France

  • A ‘declaration of total war’.

    • TCW Blanning on the Levée en Masse.

  • “They are laying the country waste”.

    • Lieutenant Villiers, 1795.

  • “From this day and this place commenced a new epoch in the world’s history”.

    • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Valmy, 20th September 1792.

  • The Revolution “set in motion new means and new forces”.

    • Carl von Clausewitz.

  • The ‘rape of Europe’.

    • Charles Esdaile.

  • “You must ensure, as a matter of principle, that war feeds war”.

    • Napoléon to Marshal Soult in 1810.

  • “The French soldier is not an automaton”.

    • Report to the Military Committee of the Constituent Assembly.

  • “Les aristocrates à la lanterne!”

    • Cries of the mutineers at Brest.

  • “It is revolution, not insurrection”.

    • The Captain of Le Northumberland, when asked if his crew was in mutiny.

Britain

  • “People seem wonderfully spirited to go out after the Indians”.

    • Reverend Thomas Smith.

  • “I called the New World into existence to redress the balance of the Old.”

    • George Canning.

  • “Spanish America is free, and if we do not mismanage our affairs badly, she is English”.

    • George Canning, 1824.

  • “We have the power in our hands, moral, physical, and mechanical; the first, based on the Bible, the second, upon the wonderful adaptation of the Anglo-Saxon race to all climates, situations, and circumstances… the third, bequeathed to us by the immortal Watt”.

    • Macgregor Laird

  • “Afghanistan must be ours or Russia’s”.

    • Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston.

  • As “almost an empire, in all but name”.

    • Herman Merivale of the Colonial Office on commercial dominance of East Asia.

  • “I have added two provinces to Your Majesty’s dominions”.

    • Cecil Rhodes, 1895.

  • “Take your banner! Onward go! / Christian soldiers, seek your foe, / And the devil to refute, / Do not hesitate to shoot.”

    • Satirical hymn from Truth, 16th April 1891.

  • The “Oriental generally acts, speaks, and thinks in a manner exactly opposite to the European”.

    • Evelyn Baring, Earl Cromer.

  • “Why worry about the rind, if we can obtain the fruit?”

    • Nathaniel Curzon, 1st Marquess of Kedleston on informal empire.

  • Of “carrying the glad tidings of ‘peace and good will toward men’ into the dark places of the earth which are now filled with cruelty”.

    • Macgregor Laird.

  • “The...

Buy the full version of these notes or essay plans and more in our Imperialism Notes.