The New Imperialism

The New Imperialism Daniel W. Blackmon AP European History Coral Gables Senior High

Darwin and Social Darwinism • Spokesmen for Imperialism • Critics of Imperialism • Interpretations of Imperialism • Africa • Asia

Charles Darwin (1809-1882) • The Origin of Species (1859) • The Descent of Man (1871),

Darwin • "survival of the fittest." • Natural Selection

Darwin • Process in response to the environment is the key to Darwin's theory. • For a Darwinist, reality is never static; it is always dynamic.

Darwin • With Darwin providing the impetus, science becomes the dominant mode of thought.

Darwin • Darwin places Man firmly among the animals--more successful perhaps, or more intelligent, but still an animal, the product of a long process of evolution from continuously simpler organisms.

Darwin • This view appears to contradict the traditional Christian view that Man is the special creation of God, endowed with a soul which distinguishes him from all other creatures

Darwin • If Man is indeed descended from the apes, then all philosophies which base the rights of Man upon a deity or upon inherent rights collapses. • One must either find another basis for rights (such as the State) or deny that Man has inherent rights.

Darwin • Since the universe is a disorderly jostling chaos without purpose or design, then the basis of all values is undermined.

Darwin • The search for meaning, especially a meaning which the individual imposes upon the world, will be a prominent feature of 20th century politics.

Social Darwinism • Herbert Spencer(1820-1903) • Conflict is good in itself, and progress is achieved only through struggle, whether the competition is between individuals, corporations, nations, or races

Herbert Spenser: Survival of the Fittest • “Pervading all nature we may see at work a stern discipline, which is a little cruel that it may be very kind.

Herbert Spenser: Survival of the Fittest • That state of universal warfare maintained throughout the lower creation, to the great perplexity of many worthy people, is at bottom the most merciful provision which the circumstances admit of.

Herbert Spenser: Survival of the Fittest • “The poverty of the incapable, the distresses that come upon the imprudent, the starvation of the idle, and those shoulderings aside of the weak by the strong, which leave so many "in shallows and in miseries," are the decrees of a large, farseeing benevolence.

Herbert Spenser: Survival of the Fittest • “. It seems hard that an unskilfulness which with all its efforts he cannot overcome, should entail hunger upon the artisan. It seems hard that a labourer incapacitated by sickness from competing with his stronger fellows, should have to bear the resulting privations.

Herbert Spenser: Survival of the Fittest • “It seems hard that widows and orphans should be left to struggle for life or death. Nevertheless, when regarded not separately, but in connection with the interests of universal humanity, these harsh fatalities are seen to be full of the highest beneficence--

Herbert Spenser: Survival of the Fittest • “. the same beneficence which brings to early graves the children of diseased parents, and singles out the low_spirited, the intemperate, and the debilitated as the victims of an epidemic.”

William Graham Sumner • "We can find no sentiment in whatever in nature; that all comes from man. We can find no disposition at all in nature to conform her operations to man's standards, so as to do what is pleasant or advantageous to man rather than anything else.

William Graham Sumner • “Before the tribunal of nature a man has no more right to life than a rattlesnake. He has no more right to liberty than any wild beast;

William Graham Sumner • “his right to the pursuit of happiness is nothing but a license to maintain the struggle for existence if he can find within himself the power with which to do it."

Lord Alfred Milner, (1854-1925) • "This country must remain a Great Power or she will become a poor country; and those who in seeking, as they are most right to seek, social improvement are tempted to neglect national strength, are simply building their house upon sand."

Friedrich von Bernhardi • War is a biological necessity of the first importance, a regulative element in the life of mankind which cannot be dispensed with,

Friedrich von Bernhardi • since without it an unhealthy development will follow, which excludes every advancement of the race, and therefore all real civilization. . . .

Friedrich von Bernhardi • “The struggle for existence is, in the life of Nature, the basis of all healthy development. . . . . So in the life of man the struggle is not merely the destructive, but the life-giving principle. . . .

Friedrich von Bernhardi • “Struggle is, therefore, a universal law of Nature, and the instinct of self-preservation which leads to struggle is acknowledged to be a natural condition of existence. ‘Man is a fighter.’ “

Bernhard von Bülow Speech to the Reichstag, 1899 • “. . . we'll only be able to keep ourselves at the fore if we realize that there is no welfare for us without power, without a strong army and a strong fleet. (Very true! from the right; objections from the left )

Bernhard von Bülow • “The means, gentlemen, for a people of almost 60 million dwelling in the middle of Europe and, at the same time,

Bernhard von Bülow • “stretching its economic antennae out to all sides to battle its way through in the struggle for existence without strong armaments on land and at sea, have not yet been found.

Bernhard von Bülow • (Very true! from the right.) “In the coming century the German people will be a hammer or an anvil.”

Modern European Racialism • J. A. de Gobineau(1816-1882) • Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races • Houston Stewart Chamberlain(1855-1927),

Racialism: One Englishman’s view • "History shows me one way, and one way only, in which a high state of civilization has been produced, namely the struggle of race with race, and the survival of the physically and mentally fitter race . . . .

Racialism: One Englishman’s view • ". . . .This dependence of progress on the survival of the fitter race, terribly black as it may seem to some of you, give the struggle for existence its redeeming features; it is the fiery crucible out of which come the finer metal."

Gabriele D'Annunzio (1863-1938) Italian poet and novelist • "I glory in the fact that I am a Latin, and I recognize a barbarian in every man of non-Latin blood. . . .

Gabriele D'Annunzio [(1863-1938) Italian poet and novelist • ". . . . If the Latin races are to preserve themselves, it is time they returned to the healthy prejudice which created the grandeur of Greece and Rome--to believe that all others are barbarians.“

Houston Stewart Chamberlain • ". . . horses and dogs give us every chance of observing that the intellectual gifts go hand in hand with the physical; this is especially true of the moral qualities; a mongrel is frequently very clever, but never reliable; morally, he is always a weed."

Alfred Milner, (1854-1925) • "I have emphasized the importance of the racial bond. From my point of view this is fundamental. It is the British race which built the Empire, and it is the undivided British race which can alone uphold it."

Imperialists: Friedrich Fabri: 1879 • “Should not the German nation, so seaworthy, so industrially and commercially minded,.....successfully hew a new path on the road of imperialism?

Imperialists: Friedrich Fabri: 1879 • “We are convinced beyond doubt that the colonial question has become a matter of life-or death for the development of Germany.

Imperialists: Friedrich Fabri: 1879 • “Colonies will have a salutary effect on our economic situation as well as on our entire national progress.”

Paul Leroy Beaulieu 1891 • “It is impossible not to consider imperialism as one of the tasks imposedon the civilized states for the last four centuries, more particularlyin our own age.

Paul Leroy Beaulieu 1891 • “This state of the world implies for the civilized people a right of intervention ... in the affairs of the peoples of the last two categories.

Paul Leroy Beaulieu 1891 • “It is neither natural nor just for the civilized people of the West to be cooped up indefinitely and jammed into the restricted spaces which were their first home.

Paul Leroy Beaulieu 1891 • “Nor is it natural and just that they there accumulate the marvels of science, the arts and civilization, that they see the rate of interest fall more each day for lack of good investment opportunities,

Paul Leroy Beaulieu 1891 • “while they leave perhaps half the world to little groups of ignorant, ineffectual men who are like feeble children . . . or to exhausted populations, without energy, without direction, who may be compared to old men . . .”

Paul Leroy Beaulieu 1891 • “Imperialism is often confused with commerce or with the opening of commercial markets.... Imperialism means something quite different from the sale or purchase of commodities.

Paul Leroy Beaulieu 1891 • “It entails a profound action on apeople and a territory, providing the inhabitants with some education and regular justice, teaching them the division of labour and the uses of capital when they are ignorant of these things.

Paul Leroy Beaulieu 1891 • “It opens an area not only to the merchandise of the mother country, but to its capital and its savings, to its engineers, to its overseers, to its emigrants. . . .

Paul Leroy Beaulieu 1891 • “Such a transformation of a barbarian country cannot be accomplished by simple commercial relations.

Paul Leroy Beaulieu 1891 • “Imperialism is thus the systematic action of an organized people upon another people whose organization is defective, and it presupposes that it is the state itself, and not only some individuals, which is responsible for the mission....

The New Imperialism