What is imperialism?

In order to understand imperialism we must first realize that in most forms of society it was considered a wonderful thing to conquer other people and take their wealth. For most of human history the easiest way for one group to increase its wealth was to conquer others and seize wealth from them. It was not just something that occasionally happened. People dreamed about it. They longed for it. The ruling class of large, aggressive empires strutted around like superior beings. Just sixty-five years ago countries that were too weak to conquer others were often looked down on as genetically inferior.

The modern age of imperialism began when Columbus discovered America, but it reached its peak in the last half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. For a long time it was known as European Imperialism, but in the late 19th century the United States joined the game with the conquest of the Philippines and Puerto Rico, and Japan began a much larger program of imperial conquest in Asia.

The British were by far the most successful imperialists in the modern age. They conquered and ruled about one fourth of the world’s land and people, and they took large amounts of wealth from them. France and the Netherlands were in second place, followed by Russia, Belgium, Portugal, Japan, the United States, and Italy.

World War I was fought mostly by the great imperial nations over imperial issues. Germany and Austria-Hungary wanted to conquer large empires in Central and Eastern Europe, and the Russians, French, and British wanted to stop them. Germany was defeated and lost the few African colonies that they had previously owned. They also lost control over some ethnic German territories that were given to the newly created countries of Poland and Czechoslovakia.

World War II started partly over the issue of German unification, but it escalated and spread because Germany once again was determined to conquer a large empire in Central and Eastern Europe. Germany did not want to fight Britain and France. They wanted to reunify their nation and conquer a large and wealthy empire. This empire was to be located primarily in Poland, White Russia, and the Ukraine. This would inevitably require war with the Soviet Union, but they hoped to avoid conflict with the Western Powers.

It did not turn out that way. In 1939 England and France declared war on Germany over the issue of Polish independence. Their combined armies, navies, and air forces were larger than the German forces. They did not realize the extent to which Germany had been studying modern mechanized warfare, or the value of the experience it had gained in the Spanish Civil War, and in Czechoslovakia and Poland. In an extraordinary, lightening fast campaign in the spring of 1940, France, the Netherlands, and Belgium were occupied and forced to surrender. Britain suffered a major defeat and was furiously trying to rebuild its military to defend itself from German forces just twenty miles away across the English Channel.

The Japanese were amazed and delighted by this turn of events. For three generations they had been envious of the wealthy British, French, and Dutch colonies in Southeast Asia. Now, France and the Netherlands were totally defeated and their colonies were defenseless. Britain had suffered a major setback and its colonies were nearly defenseless. Japan quickly began mobilizing its military to seize these wealth-producing colonies.

The United States became aware of the Japanese intentions and acted to stop them. The American battle fleet was moved to Pearl Harbor, and the Japanese were told to keep their hands off Southeast Asia. The Japanese were perplexed. The Americans did not seem to want the valuable colonies for themselves, but they had clearly placed themselves squarely in the way of Japan’s ambitions. Then, the Japanese thought they had found a solution to their dilemma. On December 7, 1941 the Japanese fleet arrived off Hawaii and sank the American battleships at anchor.

The attack on Pearl Harbor cleared the way for the Japanese to seize all the major colonies in Southeast Asia. In the next few months they quickly conquered the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Burma. It is important to note that Japan destroyed the American fleet only for the purpose of seizing the wealthy colonies of Southeast Asia. They did not want to conquer any part of the United States, and they did not want war with America. They wanted the colonies.

Germany declared war on the United States after Pearl Harbor. Like Japan, they had no desire to make any conquests in the Americas. They were angry about the large amount of war supplies that the U. S. was shipping to Britain. Their submarine fleet was very successful in 1941, and they badly wanted to sink the American ships that were carrying oil and munitions to the British.

The United States had been attacked, defeated, and humiliated. Now they were at war with both Japan and Germany, and they devoted all of their energy to winning that war as decisively as possible.

In the meantime, Germany had launched its attack on the Soviet Union. Three million highly professional and experienced soldiers and airmen and all the tanks and aircraft that could be collected were launched against an inexperienced and divided nation. The Germans expected another easy victory. Instead they became ensnared in the bloodiest and most vicious campaign in the history of warfare.

The German intention was not just to defeat the Russians, as they did the British and French, but to enslave them. Large parts of the Soviet Union were to be retained permanently in a new German Empire. Educated Russians were to be killed. The remaining population was to be reduced to the status of barely literate peasants who would work the land and the mines for their German masters.

It was this imperial policy of national extinction that galvanized the Soviet Union to an extraordinary feat of military heroism. They forgot their differences and united in a truly massive effort to defend their nation and their lives. Hundreds of factories were moved east to the Ural Mountains and beyond. The normal inefficiency of communist industry came to an end. The problem of a lack of incentive was solved. The Russian people realized that defeat meant death or enslavement. They worked 12 hours a day to manufacture the weapons needed for victory.

Thirty million Soviet soldiers were mobilized for the army. They often fought under the most appalling conditions it is possible to imagine. The unity of purpose, combined with the vast size of the Soviet Union, its large industrial capacity, and extreme weather, made it possible for the Russians to prevail. Three quarters of all German soldiers that were killed in action during World War II died while fighting on the Eastern Front. Both Germany and Japan failed in their bid for empire and were decisively defeated.

This explanation of World War II as a war fought for empires and colonies may sound a little strange to most Americans. Allied war propaganda seldom focused on the idea of empire. When Britain was at its lowest point after the evacuation from Dunkirk, it needed a rallying cry to help mobilize the population. They did not say: we must fight the Germans because they want to conquer an empire like ours. Instead they proclaimed: we must fight the Germans because the evil dictator, Adolph Hitler, hates democracy and wants to conquer the world.

When the Americans joined the war, they adopted this same propaganda strategy. They did not say: we must fight the Japanese because they sank our fleet in order to clear the way to conquer an empire in Asia, and we must fight the Germans because they declared were on us to prevent our weapons from getting to the British. They declared: we must fight the evil dictators in Germany and Japan because they hate democratic countries, and they are trying to conquer the world. This was not true, but it was effective wartime propaganda. It has often been said that the first casualty in war is truth.

World War II, just like World War I, was about what countries would have empires and which colonies they would control. There had been earlier wars between imperial powers over colonies. The Netherlands had seized control over the Spice Islands of Indonesia from the Portuguese. The British and French had fought over Canada and India. The United States had taken the Philippines and Puerto Rico from the Spanish.

Some of these wars had been large and bloody, but they were not anything like twentieth century warfare. Modern industrial technology had allowed wars to grow totally out of control. The two world wars had cost the imperialists much more than their colonies were worth.

The vast increase in modern industrial production that was partly stimulated by the wars had another effect. Many people began to realize that industry and technology could produce much more wealth than could ever be squeezed from a colony.

Many colonies were also acquiring a sense of national identity and demanding independence. The writing was on the wall. The age of imperialism was drawing to a close. In 1947, the British granted independence to India, the largest and richest of all colonies. After a brief effort to defeat rebellion in Kenya in the early 1950s, they adopted the policy that colonies could have their freedom when they demanded it. The Netherlands made a feeble attempt to regain Indonesia but then gave up and allowed it to become independent. The French made a much stronger effort to retain their colonies, but bloody wars for independence broke out in Vietnam and Algeria. The colonies were not worth the effort required to hold them, and French colonies were allowed their independence.

Since 1945 about one hundred former colonies have become independent nation-states. Some have done well and prospered. Others are still in the early stages of national development. The problems that they face in the transition from colonial societies to nation-states are very similar to the difficulties already overcome by the Netherlands, Great Britain, the United States, France, Germany, Japan and all other modern nations. In time, all of these countries will overcome their problems, one way or another, and become prosperous nations.

Since World War II, no countries have tried to conquer new empires. The age of imperialism is over.