The Crumbling of Empire

The Disintegration of World Economy

M. J. Bonn

• Editore: Routledge
• Anno: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351799034
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Business
• Categoria: Business General

This book concerns the end of the age of colonization and the inherent changes in the world economy. It discusses the author's perception of the disintegration of free trade and ideas on the solution of federation. Starting with an introduction to economic thought and history the author then presents the state of the world at the time of writing in terms of colonies and dependencies and looks at economic nationalism and economic separatism. This discursive text is an important account of the global economic issues of the early twentieth century by one of the most well-known economists of the age who became a foremost expert in international financial affairs.

PART I

COLONIZATION

CHAPTER I

CONQUEST AND COLONIZATION

I

THE period preceding the war has been called “The Age of Imperialism” on account of the last-hour scramble for the few unappropriated slices of hitherto independent backward countries and for the remainder of the once mighty, now crumbling, empires, Turkey and China. It did not initiate a new policy, nor herald a new age; it was terminating rather an era which had begun with the Crusades and had reached its natural time limit with the Declaration of Independence. Once mankind accepted the doctrine that “men were created equal,” the physical, as well as the moral, basis of Imperialism collapsed—the right of the stronger to rule the weaker.

Imperialism is a creed as well as a policy. As such, it sees in force, mainly physical force, the chief instrument for shaping human destinies. By the relentless use of this weapon scattered tribes had been compressed into compact states and states had been expanded into empires. This process has gone on without interruption since the dawn of history. But empire building is only one phase of a never-ending cycle, for empire makers are succeeded by empire breakers, who sometimes smash mighty existing structures into crumbling fragments, and sometimes, with a turn of the wheel, fuse these splinters into new empires. That the great Powers of the West as well as of the East were once again pursuing a policy of creating, organizing, maintaining and expanding empires merely showed that once again force had come into its own.

An Empire is a state of vast size, composed of various more or less distinct national units, but subject to a single centralized will.¹ This conception of a super-state,² composed of many nations leading diverse lives, but united under a common ruler, is at least as old as Alexander the Great’s dream of a European-Asiatic union, ruled by a monarch indifferent to the distinctions between Greeks and Barbarians, who would be looked upon by both Persians and Macedonians as their own king. In building this empire out of highly heterogeneous nationalities, Alexander was merely following the example of his Persian predecessors. They too had assembled various nationalities under a centralized rule. They had allowed them complete cultural independence and had tried to unite them, not by imposing compulsory national uniformity upon them but by securing common loyalty to a central head. National diversity, not national uniformity, has been the distinctive feature of empires. They were not held together by conscious racial unity, common origin, identity of language and of institutions, but by the personality of a deified emperor, by a universal faith (as in the Church after Constantine), or by the knowledge of a common past and the desire for a common future, which often included the consciousness of a spiritual mission. The snapping of a common spiritual link has often led to the break up of empires.

The growth of modern communications, which reduced distances and permitted the transportation of bulky commodities on a large scale, added an economic note to the concept of “empire”; it raised the vision of a self-sufficient super-state which is capable of living in splendid isolation from the rest of the world. It represents a combination of diverse nations and countries, each possessing a distinct economic character of its own and each contributing its particular natural resources to a common end and helping to accomplish complete economic independence of other nations and complete economic security, such as no mere state could achieve, either by territorial aggrandizement or by international commerce.

On its economic side, Imperialism represents a particular type of “predatory economics”—in contrast to mere “exchange economics.” Since every age has its own method of widening the territorial base of national wealth and of winning domination or additional external resources by one or the other method of coercive pressure, it has its own brand of Imperialism. Coercion is either physical (military), spiritual (fear or intimidation) or economic (supply or denial of goods or services). Frequently enough Imperialist policy has used all three of them severally or collectively.¹

The Imperialism of the Feudal Ages relied on conquest and land grabbing as appropriate means for widening and enriching society. Its methods were resumed in the nineteenth century, when the backwoodsmen spread over the prairies in the United States, and the Voortrekkers over the South African veldt, or when Russian peasants wedged themselves into Siberia, between Mongols, Tartars, and Kalmuks.

The Imperialism of the Mercantile Ages, on the other hand, did not go after territorial possessions; its objects were goods, particularly precious metals and rare spices. Where it could not get them by regular reciprocal exchange-operations, it resorted to monopolist control of trade-settlements and oversea routes; it became “quasi-territorial” only when the normal flow of these goods from trade or piracy was no longer sufficient, and when it had to apply pressure to native governments to make them turn out an adequate supply. This brand of mercantile Imperialism was shot with a very strong streak of military or naval coercion.

Some of these methods survived the Mercantilist Age—witness the attempts to expand exports by opening up the Chinese and Japanese ports through war or naval demonstrations, or the diplomatic pressure used by rival Powers to force loans upon reluctant foreign governments, or the collection of debts from them by blockades and naval threats.

Imperialism can be tribal, feudal, mercantile, capitalist, and even communist. Its main feature is not expansion, but expansion by force. Regular trade expansion in foreign countries, be they independent or dependent, is not imperialist; it becomes so only by the application of force.

Economic exploitation by capitalists may be quite as ruthless as military exactions at the point of the sword; but it is different. Capitalism has been imperialist whenever it has accomplished its objects by conquest; it has been semi-imperialist at other times, when it has raised profits by coercion (forced labour); the application of military coercion for gainful purposes by way of expansion, not the profits or the expansion as such, is imperialist.

Imperialism does not constitute the last stage in capitalist development; it is much older than capitalism in most countries and will probably outlive it. Its place in the capitalist structure is mainly due to the survival of feudal and militarist groups in capitalist societies, who cling to their old traditions. Any national or social system in need of territorial or economic aggrandizement becomes imperialist when it resorts to military or semi-military coercion against its neighbours. There is no reason whatsoever why a Communist state, placed in such a situation, should refrain from doing it.

Communism is not a pacifist creed. Its devotees advocate the ruthless use of force for missionary purposes. They have employed violence, terror, and fear against their internal opponents; they cannot be expected to refrain from using them externally, if and when economic or political necessities may demand it. The Bolshevist creed is strongly imbued with missionary Imperialism. And the Soviet policy in Chinese Turkestan or Outer Mongolia differs little from capitalist interventionism. It ignores nationality in the same way as Rome and Byzantium ignored it: all nations were equally subject to the Emperor. Russian absolutism took over this concept from Byzantium and bequeathed it to its Soviet successors: they put the party and its tenets in Caesar’s place.¹

Imperialist methods might fall into disuse in a world federation of Communist states; they might be equally well dispensed with in a world-federation of Capitalist states. As long as diversity of social systems, of cultural standards, of wealth and of power prevail among nations, missionary Imperialism is likely to survive.

Irrespective of its social structure, a state will seek relief by more or less aggressive methods at the cost of its richer neighbours whenever it feels cramped, provided it sees a chance of easing the pressure successfully. A Communist state may denounce predatory methods at home; there is ample room for them in its relations with foreign non-Communist bodies.

II

Empires have been created either by voluntary association or by forcible annexation. In rare instances a nation, threatened by foreign attack, has chosen to throw in its lot with an alien neighbour who was strong enough to defend it. Such was the origin of the Hungarian connection with the House of Habsburg, under whose wings the Magyars sought protection against the onslaught of the Turks. Otherwise only political groups related to each other by race, origin, language, and social institutions, have been federated in a peaceful way, and then nearly always at the end of a long period of internecine war.

The faith in peaceful voluntary confederation as a substitute for war is of recent origin. The great success of federation in the United States has made this powerful commonwealth the advocate of a more or less hazy doctrine of voluntary confederation between several nations, not merely between the fragments of one nation which have splintered into several states. Their spokesmen have frequently enunciated it in glowing language. “The way of force is not the way to achieve the union of mankind.” “We are fighting to end the Roman method of world consolidation and to substitute in its place the method of agreement. We are fighting not necessarily to beat Germany, certainly not to crush Germany … but to make it clear to anyone who reads history hereafter that the Roman method no longer pays.”¹ These views, which seemed to be oblivious of the fact that the United States had not accomplished their present unity without conquest and civil war, lay at the root of President Wilson’s conception of a League of Nations.

Most empires have been founded by conquest and annexation. Countries of superior military, economic, or cultural strength have conquered other countries and incorporated them in their dominions. But when fresh expansion beyond the established borders is no longer desirable, and when the consolidation of the divergent parts into a more closely-knit imperial unit is of prime importance, Imperialism has frequently adopted peaceful methods. British Imperialism was distinctly aggressive when it conquered India or wrested South Africa from the Dutch or Canada from the French. It can scarcely be called so at present when it is attempting the establishment of a commonwealth of free and kindred nations within the framework of the existing British family of nations.

The advocates of Imperialism sought to justify the use of force or intimidation by a philosophy which stressed its moral qualities: Power to them is a blessing, it is of divine origin, and those who wield it are instruments of Providence, who carry out its decrees. Starting from a fixed belief in the natural right of the stronger to exterminate or enslave the weaker, Imperialism frequently assumed a missionary character. Nations or groups who are endowed with superior strength must use it at the behest of Providence, in order to transfer to the conquered the creeds and institutions with which they have been blessed. Conquest has often been naïve and spontaneous. Lust of wealth, love of power, and war have made a master-nation fall upon weaker neighbours and ruthlessly enslave them. But, on the other hand, its passions have often been fanned to white heat by a call arising from some mystical depth, which told of a great vocation and of manifest destiny. “If the empire of a commonwealth be an occasion to ask whether it be lawful for a commonwealth to aspire to the empire of the world, it is to ask whether it is lawful for it to do its duty, or to put the world into a better condition than it was before,”¹ queried one of the great writers of the Commonwealth.

This type of missionary Imperialism may well become a greater trial to subject races than a more primitive and not self-conscious form of exploitation. The latter may be satisfied with the annexation of foreign territory and the tributes of conquered nations. They will be permitted to live their own lives and to preserve their own language, their own institutions and even their own gods, so long as their loyalty can be depended upon—provided they do not fall under the rule of a chosen people. For a chosen people whose nationalism flows from mystical tribal emotions, rather than from arrogant theories of its unique position, must not mix with the race it has conquered, or its blood would be defiled. The only way in which it can spread its culture and fulfil its mission is by ruthless extermination. It cannot confer on the conquered the blessings of its own ways, for these are the inheritance of the chosen. Its superiority is exclusive, not communicative. Less arrogant conquerors, who are not enjoined by the divine power to spread “like the sand of the sea” have been more gentle. They would not prevent the conversion of their subjects to their way of living, but they would not compel them to it. They would rely on the “infectious quality” of their victorious civilization and not force it upon the conquered.² Such was the attitude of the Greeks in the Alexandrian Empire, whose highly civilized city settlements spread Greek culture among the barbarians. They offered it to them as the highest reward for voluntary spiritual effort. And the Romans, under the Republic as well as under the Empire, latinized the world, not by compelling subject nations to accept Roman civilization, but by generously admitting them to its blessings when they had proved worthy of them. This “tolerant” nationalism of the conqueror was met half way by an “imitative” nationalism on the part of the conquered.

But when the temporal power was the exponent of an exclusive spiritual creed, as the Roman Emperors after the conversion of Constantine or some great Moslem rulers, Imperialism became exclusive and missionary. It was no longer content with the uncontested political domination of subject nations. As it represented a unique and exclusive faith, on the acceptance of which depended loyalty in this world and salvation in the next, it demanded the religious assimilation of its subjects. It desired spiritual uniformity and insisted on conformity; it uprooted ideas and destroyed institutions which stood in the way, or might be thought to stand in the way, of attaining this goal. As most native religions were closely interwoven with the cultural and institutional life of the country, a process of compulsory assimilation followed; had it succeeded completely, it would have transformed the agglomerations of disconnected, diversified, and composite elements, hitherto called “Empires,” into unified and uniformed super-states. The advent of the great monotheistic religions with their creed of exclusiveness changed the nature of Imperialism: it became propagandist. Recalcitrant peoples, who objected to being converted, were either exterminated or expelled. The easy-going pluralism of the classical heathen world was succeeded by the rigid monism of Christianity or Islam. Such toleration as was shown in particular instances was not so much the result of a spirit of tolerance, as of a statesmanlike appreciation of political difficulties and economic losses compulsory conversion would entail, were it to involve the extermination or expulsion of non-conforming elements.

III

Some empires have grown laterally by horizontal incorporation. They are combinations of political groups which have reached the same level of economic, institutional, and cultural advancement. Others, including the colonial empires of the nineteenth century, were composed of political units whose levels of social attainments ranged from those of primitive races living under tribal chiefs on the outer fringes of the empire to the highly complex societies of motherland and dominions. These have expanded downwards by vertical incorporation. Their rulers represent more and less advanced civilizations; the gap between the social achievements of the metropolis and those of its lowest dependency is often very wide.

Social advancement may be measured by diffe...