Informal Empires

7 Key excerpts on "Informal Empires"

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  Chartering Capitalism

  • Emily Erikson(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Emerald Group Publishing Limited

    (Publisher)

  Of course, “informal empire” is not without its critics. Certainly, in spe-cific case studies, such as Thompson (1992) has shown for nineteenth-century Argentina, the concept does not necessarily prove to be the most helpful way to understand the influence of Europe’s role regionally. 1 Over the years, many have suggested the concept is too much of a caricature, and leaves little room for taking seriously at least the claims of these pro-moters of “informal” imperialism that their goals were to restrict rather than expand empire. Conversely, it may give far too much credit to the intentions of colonial designs; as Matthew Brown has noted, “informal empire was part of the imperial project, but one that differed in practice from the policy dreamed up by imperial guardians and colonial officials” (2008, p. 17) . Moreover, such a heuristic also often presupposes that infor-mal empire could comprehend and sanction its own alternative: namely, that if commercial and political pressure failed to achieve the proper modes of domination or influence, formal structures of rule would inevitably fol-low ( Platt, 1968 ). It is also increasingly difficult to see informal empire as a coherent and consistent policy, applied uniformly and globally, rather than the consequence of regional pressures and contextually-derived decision-making. As John Darwin has observed, the use of “informal” influence was often the consequence not of strength but real limitations on British power abroad: “the force majeure of circumstance [rather] than the triumph of a principle” (1997, pp. 617 620) . As Thompson has suggested more recently, informal and formal empire are better understood not as mutually exclusive 17 The Ideology of the Imperial Corporation “categories” but rather as nodes on a global imperial “continuum,” ideal types that in practice in fact existed in negotiation with one another at dif-ferent times and different places (2008, pp. 231 234) .

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  Export Empire

  German Soft Power in Southeastern Europe, 1890–1945

  • Stephen G. Gross(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  23 This has allowed historians to identify characteristics of informal imperialism, which advance into view or recede depending on the needs of the imperial power and the larger context of what is and is not possible. First, in Informal Empires the stronger state often maintains military advisors to influence the weaker state’s armed forces. Second, nationals of the stronger state might occupy a preponderant presence in the domes- tic economy or the foreign trade of the weaker state. This approaches a monopoly position of owning or supplying the latter’s most critical sec- tors, or a monopsony position in purchasing its most strategic exports. Third, the stronger state, or banks representing the stronger state, can exercise control over the public finances of the weaker state. Fourth, the weaker state is frequently a net importer of capital from financial institutions in the stronger state, to the point of becoming dependent on this inflow of investment. Fifth, the weaker state may develop a group of indigenous elites who willingly collaborate and “share a com- mon ‘cosmology’” with the stronger state, which often revolves around some project of modernization or development. Through these tactics the stronger state avoids direct political control but nevertheless exercises the sixth and most important aspect of informal imperialism: veto power over the domestic or foreign policies of the weaker state. These characteris- tics of informal imperialism, in other words, create a power gradient or hierarchy between two states that the stronger one can exploit. 24 Informal imperialism is often economic in nature. Take foreign trade, for example, which Albert Hirschman identified in 1945 as a potential instrument of informal power, and which Germany used to great suc- cess in the Balkans.

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  Informal Empire and the Rise of One World Culture

  • G. Barton(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  2 The Idea of Informal Empire

  The idea of informal empire is largely about the rationalization of the world and the responses that rationalization has produced. As this chapter illustrates, scholars, politicians, public intellectuals and others have handled with dexterity the idea of informal empire while never using the term or, in many cases, while utilizing a variety of terms or phrases to describe the same concept. It seemed inevitably bound up with the process of the European concept of the rule of law, the development of science, Enlightenment ideals and industrial and professional modernization. Applying these revolutions to human society outside of Europe, and establishing elite formations that reflected these developments, were integral to the process of building an imperial network.

  Theories of imperialism

  A classic treatment on empire, Imperialism: A Study (1902) by John A. Hobson, contains many of the key ideas that later scholars discuss concerning informal empire.1 While Hobson did not elaborate a theory of informal empire or of financial imperialism outside of formal empire, many scholars have taken his critique of aggressive state-sponsored imperialism and applied it broadly to other areas of the world. Hobson believed that money lay at the heart of imperialism. Imperialism represented a mosaic of forces – the mission to civilize, promote good government, spread Christianity, exterminate slavery, elevate the lower races. Nevertheless the desire for financial gain motivated the business class to venture outside national boundaries in search of a higher rate of return than could be found at home. At the centre of this investment class lay hidden a ganglion of commercial tentacles. These were the:

  parasites upon patriotism . . . men of a single and peculiar race, who have behind them many centuries of financial experience, they are in a unique position to manipulate the policy of nations . . . Does any one seriously suppose that a great war could be undertaken by any European state, or a state loan subscribed, if the house of Rothschild and its connections set their face against it?2

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  The debate on the rise of the British Empire

  • Anthony Webster(Author)
  • 2024(Publication Date)
  • Manchester University Press

    (Publisher)

  Imperialism thus implied 'formal' rule, the direct governance of territories acquired usually by armed intervention, and main- tained by the imposition of direct rule by British officials and institutions, backed by force if necessary. Gallagher and Robinson argued that Britain's empire stretched much further than just the territories under such formal rule; that large swathes of the world were subject to indirect forms of British domination, which did not involve conquest or rule through imposed British personnel or official structures. This 'informal empire' was held together by a variety of means, some of which rested upon the actions or strategies of the British state, and others which relied upon unof- ficial channels of influence and power. The main pillar of informal imperialism was Britain's spectacular economic expan- sion after the industrial revolution. Gallagher and Robinson argued that the development of Britain's export trades in manu- factures, capital and people were powerful forces which placed the country at the centre of the international economy. In most instances, the relations with other countries which emerged from this were peaceful and conducted more or less on a basis of equal- ity. In a few cases, however, the relationships were far from equal. Some less developed countries and territories became economically dependent upon the Britain for capital investment, supplies of manufactures or as an export market. This depen- dency delivered political leverage into British hands, enabling various agencies of British imperial power, private or official, to compel local rulers to accommodate British requirements and demands. In the Victorian period, this frequently entailed the opening of the less developed country's market to British commerce. Such concessions were extracted from polities all over Asia and Africa, argue Gallagher and Robinson, but with particu- lar success in Latin America.

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  Archaeologies of Empire

  Local Participants and Imperial Trajectories

  • Anna L. Boozer, Bleda S. Düring, Bradley J. Parker, Anna L. Boozer, Bleda S. Düring, Bradley J. Parker(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • University of New Mexico Press Published in Association with School for Advanced Research Press

    (Publisher)

  Empires incorporate ecological, social, and cultural diversity and thus are heterogeneous polities in which varied ecological con-ditions, social structure, and cultural traditions may be evident and in close proximity yet still make up integral components of a single complex polity. Spatial discontinuity combined with natural and human heterogeneity dictate that imperial authorities must vary administrative systems to suit interregion-al, regional, and local idiosyncrasies (Schreiber 1987; D’Altroy 1992; Sinopoli 1994; D’Altroy 2002; Matthews 2003; Alcock 2005; Lightfoot 2005; Schreiber 2005a; Covey 2006c; Alconini 2008; Parker 2009; Boozer this volume). Thus, the archaeological and historical signatures of empire are likely to be regionally Re-modeling Empire 233 specific, and in many cases, few polity-wide patterns may exist (Sinopoli 2001). Finally, regionally specific chronological cycles that may take place within the broad developmental categories of expansion, consolidation, and collapse affect the archaeological and historical records in a variety of ways. Given the above discussion, it is no wonder that over the last several decades, archaeologists working on the Inka, Wari, Vigayanagara, Assyrian, and recently the Persian empires have offered various interpretations of how to define the term empire . 3 A synthesis of the numerous views on this term that considers the issues discussed above might read something like this: Empires are expan-sive polities that impose various levels of control over foreign peoples and landscapes through conquest, coercion, diplomacy, and/or appeasement. Such polities construct, transform, or interconnect sociopolitical structures to create integrative systems that transcend local political, social, and ethnic boundaries in order to both incorporate and exploit the demographic, economic, geo-graphic, political, and social diversity of annexed regions.

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  The Limits of Universal Rule

  Eurasian Empires Compared

  • Yuri Pines, Michal Biran, Jörg Rüpke(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  clear how to apply the distinction between empires and smaller-scale states in pre-modern periods. This may lead to some questionable conclusions, such as the one reached by Reinhard (2015b, 15): “in the period 1350–1750, there are only ‘empires’ throughout the world.” One of the most sophisticated recent discussions of empires and states is that by Goldstone and Haldon (2009). They concluded that empire is: A territory . . . ruled from a distinct organizational center . . . with clear ideological and political sway over varied elites, who in turn exercise power over a population in which a majority have neither access nor influence over positions of imperial power. (Goldstone and Haldon 2009, 18–19) Goldstone and Haldon’ s construct is surely more impressive than a minimalistic definition according to which certain states were empires “because they identified themselves as empires” (Kagan 2010, 9). However, it still poses an immediate problem, well identified by Goldstone and Haldon themselves: it turns an empire into “the typical formation by which large territorial states were ruled for most of human history.” Once again, the definition becomes so inclusive as to undermine the possibility of meaningful discussions of imperial peculiarity. 6 The inclusiveness of the above definitions is mirrored in a great variety of recent volumes that discuss imperial formations (e.g., Alcock et al. 2001; Reinhard 2015b; and even, despite their attempts to narrow the definition of empires, Bang and Bayly 2011a). This inclusiveness is understandable and even laudable as an antidote to the narrow Eurocentric discussions that domin- ated studies of empires until the relatively recent past (of which Doyle 1978 is a paradigmatic example). However, eagerness to recognize a great variety of pre-modern and early modern polities as “empires” creates a new set of methodological problems.

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  Disciplinary Conquest

  U.S. Scholars in South America, 1900–1945

  • Ricardo D. Salvatore(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Duke University Press Books

    (Publisher)

  Apparently, the cultural policies of Pan- Americanism first and Good Neighbor-hood later had failed to produce a convergence in political and social ideas. By 1948, Bowman was disillusioned with the whole hemispheric idea. The informal empire had produced neither domination nor hegemony. Some Empires Are Better than Others In the interwar period U.S. scholars were clearly redefining the nature of em-pire. Modern empires had to provide public goods to their extraterritorial sub-jects, and in order to exert technological and cultural influence, they had to engage more closely with the life and history of their hinterlands. This entailed Chapter 9 228 moving the question of imperial influence or hegemony to the territory of cul-ture and knowledge. Haring was an expert on the comparative history of empires. He consid-ered European expansion overseas since the sixteenth century to be a “stupen-dous achievement” of Western civilization. In 1921 he offered his Yale students a course on the “Expansion of Europe” (History 169), which focused on the question of empires. 20 In this course, he presented as the central dynamic of history the evolution from “old” to “modern” empires. At the beginning, it was discovery that gave some nations (Spain and Portugal) the right to colo-nial possessions. With time, however, naval power became the decisive force in inter-imperial competition. At that point, France, England, and Holland displaced the older Iberian empires. During the nineteenth century, the Brit-ish empire achieved the largest expansion of sovereignty ever known. Over time, Great Britain shifted from an “old empire” built on naval supremacy and commerce to one based on the emigration and colonization of new lands. The settler colonies in Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, and Canada were part of Britain’s “new empire,” which reflected a less aggressive type of imperialism.

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