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Abstract
The recent revival of interest in the relationship between aristocratic and gentlemanly elites and the evolution of the British empire suggests the need for a revaluation of some of the ‘classical’ theorists of imperialism whom a number of prominent historians of British imperialism have acknowledged as important precursors. The major figures considered here are: Hobson, whose roots in British anti-aristocratic radicalism are being re-examined at present; Joseph Schumpeter whose early essay on imperialism is famous but whose later writings have received scarcely any attention at all; and Thorstein Veblen, the American social scientist. Arguably, the last produced a more complex and multi-layered theory of imperialism than either Hobson or Schumpeter but his work in this field is very little known in Britain. Norman Angell's ideas are also considered, not only because he had an influence upon some of Hobson's later writings but because he is a significant figure in his own right. The article ends with a few reflections on the present relevance of this strain of imperial thought.
Notes
1. Cain and Hopkins, British Imperialism, 1688–2000.
2. C. A. Bayly, ‘The First Age of Global Imperialism’, 28–47.
3. Cannadine, Ornamentalism.
4. Cain, ‘Character and Imperialism: the British Financial Administration of Egypt, 1878–1914’. This builds on earlier studies including Field, Toward a Programme of Imperial Life.
5. Porter, The Absent-Minded Imperialists, esp. chs 3 and 10.
6. Cain and Hopkins, British Imperialism, 31–14; Bayly, ‘The First Age of Global Imperialism’, 37, 38, 43; Cannadine, Ornamentalism, xviii, 126; Porter, The Absent-Minded Imperialists, 63–64, 243–47. In his most recent book Bayly has also made extensive use of Arno Mayer's work on the persistence of aristocratic power and influence in Europe up to 1914 and Mayer himself was inspired by both Schumpeter and Veblen. See Bayly, Birth of the Modern World, 418–30; Mayer, Persistence of the Old Regime, 11–12, 21–22.
7. Kennedy, ‘Imperial History and Post-colonial Theory’.
8. See here Cain, Hobson and Imperialism.
9. Cramer and Leathers, ‘Veblen and Schumpeter on Imperialism’, provide a useful comparative introduction but they do not sufficiently point up the differences between Veblen's early and late writings and they take no account of Schumpeter's later thoughts.
10. Apart from the fact that Hobson and Angell knew of each other's work, there are other connections between the thinkers dealt with in the paper. Hobson was an admirer of Veblen's work though not an uncritical one as his little book Veblen indicates while Veblen used Hobson's work in his own critique of imperialism. See Edgell and Tilman, ‘John R. Hobson: Admirer and Critic of Thorstein Veblen’. Neither Hobson nor Veblen seems to have taken account of Schumpeter but the latter was critical of their heretical economics while showing some regard for their talents. See Schumpeter, A History of Economic Analysis, 795, 802, 823, 832, 896, 911, 1108, 1130; also Dorfman, Thorstein Veblen and his America, 499–500.
11. On Montesquieu see Hirschmann, The Passions and the Interests; Pangle, Montesquieu's Philosophy of Liberalism, ch.7.
12. Paine, The Rights of Man, 215, 219.
13. A particular concern of Adam Ferguson's An Essay on the History of Civil Society.
14. See the extracts from the writings of Lord Kames in Broadie, The Scottish Enlightenment, 519–31. Adam Smith's worries on this score are discussed in Winch, Adam Smith's Politics.
15. Hume, ‘Of Commerce’, in Broadie, Scottish Enlightenment, 385–97.
16. Bentham, ‘Emancipation Spanish’ (1821).
17. For an example, see the discussion of Benjamin Constant in Pitts, A Turn to Empire, 173–85.
18. On this nationalist imperialism in a global context, see Hopkins, ‘The History of Globalisation’, 11–46.
19. This analysis of Hobson's thought is based on Cain, Hobson and Imperialism.
20. Spencer, Principles of Sociology I, 536–96.
21. See Bright's speech on foreign policy of 1858, printed in Speeches on Questions of Public Policy II.
22. As an example see Speeches on Questions of Public Policy by Richard Cobden II, 193–95.
23. Cain, Hobson and Imperialism, 114–22.
24. Hobson, ‘The Ethics of Industrialism’, 92–94.
25. Hobson, Imperialism: A Study, 1988 ed., 187–88.
26. Hobson, Economic Interpretation of Investment.
27. Cain, Hobson and Imperialism, ch. 6.
28. On Angell, see Miller, Norman Angell and the Futility of War.
29. Angell, The Great Illusion, 167.
30. Ibid., 176, 177–79.
31. Ibid., 189–90, 216. Angell's verdict on military empire was ‘If it remains military it decays; if it prospers and takes its share of the work of the world it ceases to be military’ (183).
32. Ibid., 197, 208.
33. Ibid., 173–74, 176–77, 184, 199, 206–07. One referee has pointed out the interesting parallels between Angell's approach to imperialism and that of Ferguson, Empire.
34. Ibid., 200–05, 210, 222–23.
35. There is an analysis of that book in Cain, Hobson and Imperialism, 185–95.
36. Schumpeter, ‘The Sociology of Imperialisms’, 143, 214. See also Swedberg, Joseph A. Schumpeter, 98–102; Marz, Joseph Schumpeter: Scholar, Teacher and Politician, ch. 4; Semmel, The Liberal Ideal, 167–76.
37. See ‘Social Classes in an Ethnically Homogenous Environment’, 254–73. The essay was published in 1927 but Schumpeter was working on it before 1914.
38. Schumpeter, Theory of Economic Development, 93; Swedberg, Joseph A. Schumpeter, 35. I owe the origins of this train of thought to one of my Master's students, Mark Roberts.
39. ‘The Sociology of Imperialisms’, 187–88.
40. Ibid., 196.
41. Ibid. 197–202. Specifically, Schumpeter was responding to Hilferding, Finance Capital.
42. Schumpeter noted that Hilferding too did not believe that capitalism was near its end. Ibid., 201.
43. See ‘The Sociology of Imperialisms’, 197, 202–03, 212–13.
44. On Veblen in this context, see Etherington, Theories of Imperialism, ch. 8; Semmel, The Liberal Ideal, 121–27; Biddle and Samuels, ‘Veblen on War and Peace’.
45. For the radical element in one of the great American founding fathers, James Madison, see Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire, 45. See also Nelson, ‘The “Warfare Stateâ€â€™, 128–33.
46. The whole scheme is laid out in Veblen, The Instinct of Workmanship, but there is a shorter, more readable, summary in The Vested Interests and the Common Man .
47. Smith's distinction between productive and unproductive labour is implicit in Veblen's analysis as is Rousseau's idea of noble savagery.
48. See Veblen, Vested Interests, 27–36.
49. Expressed most plainly in his famous book The Theory of the Leisure Class.
50. Veblen, Theory of Business Enterprise, 251–57.
51. Ibid., 284–92, 294–96, 298–99.
52. Ibid., 300–01, 333, note 1.
53. Ibid., 300–05.
54. Ibid., 398–400.
55. Veblen, The Nature of Peace, 249–50, 287.
56. See Veblen, Engineers and the Price System.
57. Veblen, Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution, 158, 162, 168.
58. Ibid., 178–84. Veblen was sure that without these hindrances to industry Germany would have developed very differently. It would have been wealthier, more industrialised, more dependent on the international economy and thus less likely to support war and imperialism.
59. Veblen, The Nature of Peace, 189–90.
60. Ibid., 79–99, 105–08.
61. See especially ‘The Opportunity of Japan’. This argument is also touched on at different times in The Nature of Peace, for example, at 79ff., 313.
62. The Nature of Peace, 173–74, 291–97.
63. Ibid., 244–58.
64. Ibid., 140–41, 205–13.
65. The Vested Interests, 114–18, 125.
66. Ibid., 128–32, 134.
67. Ibid., 135. See ‘The Passing of National Frontiers’ as an example of Veblen's passionate cosmopolitanism.
68. ‘Between Bolshevism and War’.
69. See his essay ‘Dementia Praecox’.
70. The Vested Interests, 153.
71. Ibid., 133, 135–36.
72. The Great Illusion – Now, 18, 22, 95
73. Ibid., 92–94.
74. Hobson, German Panic, 20–23.
75. Hobson, Democracy after the War.
76. Cain, Hobson and Imperialism, 200–29.
77. Imperialism: A Study 3rd ed., xiv–xxi; 1988 ed. [53–59].
78. 3rd ed., xx; 1988 ed. [59].
79. 3rd ed., xxi–xxiv; 1988 ed. [60–63].
80. 3rd ed., xxv; 1988 ed. [63–64].
81. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, 52. Bayly uses a similar argument in ‘The First Age of Global Imperialism’.
82. Schumpeter, ‘An Economic Interpretation of Our Time’, 345. See also, Schumpeter, Business Cycles, 696 and fn. 1. There are brief recognitions of Schumpeter's change of mind in Bottomore and Goode, Austro-Marxism, 36, and in Semmel, The Liberal Ideal, 175–76, but in neither case is the change analysed.
83. ‘An Economic Interpretation of Our Time’, 342–43. See also Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy for a full analysis, and Swedberg, Joseph A. Schumpeter, ch.6 for a discussion of the book. Even in 1919 Schumpeter had recognised that capitalism would eventually be superseded ‘because the achievements of capitalism are likely to make it superfluous’. ‘The Sociology of Imperialisms’, 218, n. 31.
84. ‘An Economic Interpretation of Our Time’, 368. For references to the emergence of socialism as a ‘new religion’, see pp. 354, 381. Although Schumpeter does not say so, what may have added to capitalism's unpopularity was ‘the perennial gale of creative destruction’ he saw at the heart of it in Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, 84.
85. ‘An Economic Interpretation of Our Time’, 348–53, 361.
86. Ibid., 343–44.
87. Ibid., 343–44. 360, 393. Elsewhere he called the bourgeoisie ‘unheroic’ and therefore incapable of exercising leadership outside the economic sphere itself. Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, 137–38.
88. Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, 136.
89. Ibid., 139.
90. ‘An Economic Interpretation of Our Time’, 343–44. In his earlier work Schumpeter had argued that entrepreneurship was about making ‘new combinations’ of factors and these included finding new markets and sources of supply, activities often associated with imperialism. Theory of Economic Development, 66.
91. ‘An Economic Interpretation of Our Time’, 345, 347–48, 361, 363, 381, 384.
92. Bottomore and Goode, Austro-Marxism, 36.
93. Schumpeter, ‘Max Weber's Work’.
94. Max Weber, ‘Structures of Power’, 159–71.
95. Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, 404, note 36. He described this definition as ‘utterly inadequate’ but it does indicate the Weberian cast of his later thought.
96. ‘An Economic Interpretation of Our Time’, 387, 394, 397.
97. As is argued in Cain and Hopkins, British Imperialism.
98. Barnes, Empire or Democracy? Barnes is one of the instigators of the ‘Hobson-Lenin’ theory of imperialism that flourished after 1945 but he also deserves re-reading in his own right.
99. In British Imperialism, Cain and Hopkins devote nearly a third of the text to the period 1914–45 and make some of their most novel suggestions regarding it, but most of the comment and criticism it has attracted is concerned with pre-1914 developments.
100. See especially Beitz and Herman, Peace and War, 288–315, 333–40. Mills, The Power Elite was a highly influential text in this discourse and Mills was in a direct line of descent from Veblen.
101. Johnson, Sorrows of Empire, 23–24. Johnson is aware of Hobson as a precursor.
102. Ibid., 284–85. For a milder but similar analysis see Schlesinger, War and the American Presidency. Also interesting in this context is Vidal, Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, which discusses America policy before 2000.