Wallace G. Mills Hist. 316 19 The Scramble and Motivations

European Motivations in the Scramble

- the readings in Historical Problems of Imperial Africa Problem I, pp. 7-56 illustrate some of the interpretations discussed in this lecture.

- while this is a Euro-centric approach, I think it is necessary and the correct approach. [It is a bit like spousal abuse or date rape; I don’t think the real issue is what the victim did or didn’t do which ‘provoked’ the perpetrator.]

- in the scramble and partition of Africa, European governments and societies were very much the aggressors, and therefore, understanding why means focusing on their motives. [This is not to argue that there is no value in examining the specifics of individual cases or that one should or can ignore Africans and their responses.]

The “New Imperialism”

- several questions are involved and we can approach it much like a detective story or Clue:

Capitalist imperialism

1. if they invested in foreign areas and their investments became endangered by instability or bankruptcy, investors usually demanded that the government step in to save their investments (e.g., Egypt). This is the ‘Cat’s Paw’ argument. Financiers and capitalists were using gov’ts to pull their investment chestnuts out of the fire.
   
2. many areas did not provide many profitable opportunities for investments unless annexed as colonies; then, after annexation, the new colonies required railways, ports, etc. (Hobson pointed out that railway investments in India were guaranteed 5% interest by the Indian and British gov’ts while investments and British government bonds at home paid 2-2 l/2 %).
   
   

1. raise wages of workers; this would increase consumption (because workers had lots of needs and would spend the extra wages) and reduce overproduction. This might also reduce the incomes of the rich somewhat and relieve the pressure of excess savings.
   
2. raise taxes; this would again reduce excess savings and would allow increased services and social reform (education, etc.) which would provide employment and increased consumption.
   
3. as consumption rises, overproduction would disappear, more workers would be hired, etc.; companies would become profitable again and as they needed to expand, profitable investment opportunities would again arise at home. A ‘virtuous’ circle would be created. Imperialism would no longer be necessary.
   
   

1. almost all foreign investment was controlled by a very small number of financiers and capitalists; Hobson argued that almost every area of life and of the nation was being manipulated by this group for its own benefit.
   
2. the financiers (the engineers on the imperialist train) were assisted (aided and abetted) by a number of ‘harpies’ (arms manufacturers, the military, aristocratic families who provided governors and colonial officials) who also benefited and had careers from imperialism.
   
3. many groups and institutions were bought and corrupted by the above groups into supporting imperialism—the press, the schools, the churches, the gullible missionaries, professors, politicians.
   
4. Hobson even argued that imperialism tended to revive deep-seated and primitive urges (“blood-lust”) which centuries of civilisation had been reducing. He compared imperialism to the Roman circuses. The newspapers wallowed in colonial wars and imperial ventures.
   - imperialism encouraged ‘jingoistic’ nationalism which provoked wars (Hobson was bitterly opposed to the South African War).
   
5. all the nation was required to pay the very heavy costs of imperialism (wasted resources, higher taxes, lower standards of living, wars and lost lives) while only a few reaped the profits or the benefits.
   
   

1. Hobson made the same blunder that he accused others of making; he failed to break down the investment statistics geographically. When that is done, results are similar to trade statistics; i.e., most foreign investments were made in other European countries, in the U.S.A. and in the ‘white’ dominions; very little investment was being made in Africa and the other newly acquired colonies of the ‘new imperialism’.
   
2. a relatively recent study of British overseas investments in the 1870-1914 period has contradicted Hobson’s assertions. This study claims that there were not huge amounts of savings being sent abroad. A substantial pool of overseas investment had built up by 1870; most of the increase in the value of overseas investments in the next 40 years or so was simply the effects of compounding, reinvestment of profits and increase in the value of assets held—not new savings.
   
   

1. Concentration of production and of capital developed to such a high stage that it created monopolies which became decisive in economic life.
   
2. The merging of bank capital with industrial capital and the creation, on the basis of this ‘finance capital’, of a ‘financial oligarchy’.
   
3. The export of capital as the most characteristic feature as distinguished from export of commodities.
   
4. The formation of international capitalist monopolies which share the world among themselves.
   
5. The territorial division of the whole world among the greatest capitalist powers is completed.
   
   

1. Investment capital did not in fact go in large quantities to colonies annexed in the ‘new imperialism’.
   
   
2. ‘Cat’s paw’ Argument (i.e., that capitalist investors used governments to salvage endangered investments; thus governments were the servants of the capitalist imperialists). There are cases where this argument is plausible (Egypt is the best example). However, there are other examples where the opposite is true; governments sometimes encouraged (almost coerced) bankers and capitalists to make investments in order to give the government an excuse and justification for intervention (both France and Germany were doing this in Morocco during the period of the two Moroccan crises in the 1st decade of the 20th C).
   
   
3. ‘Monopoly Stage’—many Marxist arguments emphasise the development of monopolies, cartels, trusts, and tariffs. These developments arose primarily in Germany and the U.S.A.; they were not a prominent feature in France and were almost totally absent from Britain, the two most vigorous imperialist powers in the period! In fact, the amount of colonies acquired is almost opposite to the degree of these ‘monopoly’ elements.
   
   
4. Lenin and later Marxists redefined ‘imperialism’ to make it a further and unique stage of capitalism. This carries the assertion that the late 19th century empire expansionism was entirely different from any previous forms of expansionism (there had never been imperialism before); i.e., late 19th century expansionism had nothing in common with earlier empires or empire building. But, is the ‘new imperialism’ really so totally new and different from all other empires and expansionism?
   
   
5. Relative interest rates—Hobson argued that higher foreign investment returns were a proof of the push of capitalist investors for profitable investment returns. This argument can be turned around; the higher rates represent the need for incentives to persuade investors to send their money abroad. Thus, rather than investors pushing for overseas investments, they in fact have to be cajoled and bribed into making such investments.
   
   
6. Theoretical overkill—Marxist determinism insists that everything must be explained by economic factors; usually they start with the explanation (‘hypothesis’) and their ‘studies’ are not genuine attempts to test the hypothesis against the facts but merely to find the facts which fit their hypothesis (contrary facts frequently are ignored or dismissed as ‘illusory’). This is like Cinderella’s stepsisters who cut their feet to fit the shoe! Even when they do have valid evidence, they frequently tend to demand too much; thus, the economic element cannot be a factor, it must be the factor. While investments may have been a factor in some instances, it does not seem, in most cases, to be the only factor or even the most important factor.
   
   
7. Link between imperialism and World War I—Lenin especially argued that the war was a direct and logical outcome of imperialism. As we noted, Bukharin and others had argued that the war would come as a result of attempts to ‘repartition’ the world. Most non-Marxist historians reject this connection and argue that imperialism was always a peripheral matter; although passions sometimes ran very high, in the final analysis, Europeans had not been willing to go to war with each other over colonies. Also, the two nations which had shown the most hostility to one another in the imperialist scramble and which had come closest to war (the Fashoda incident in 1898), were Britain and France; yet by 1903, these two had begun to compose their differences and when war came, they fought as allies. The colonies were not a significant issue in the outbreak of war in 1914 and the validity of the theory of capitalist imperialism is severely undermined.
   
   

or

Was money-making primarily a means he used in order to pursue his imperialist activities?

Which was end and which was means?

- put another way: What were Rhodes’ primary motives—money making or empire building? Hobson, Lenin, et. al. are quite certain that his imperialist activities were primarily a smokescreen for his money-making, capitalist priorities.

- in fact the opposite seems to be true. Rhodes was first and foremost an imperialist and Anglo-Saxon racist; he wanted to see Anglo-Saxon world hegemony. See Rhodes’ “Confession of Faith”.

- his capitalist ventures were a means to pursue these aims (wealth gave power; his companies could sometimes be used to carry out expansion when the British government refused to do anything).

1. Rhodes was not interested in money for itself (he lived simply; he frequently had to borrow cash); he was not interested in a financial economic empire (he left financial aspects and running of his companies to other people). He was very late in getting into gold mining; in fact, he had only a relatively modest role in gold-mining in Transvaal.
   
   
2. See this statement of Rhodes’ motives in 1877 (John Flint, Cecil Rhodes:, pp. 32-3)
   
   “At the ripe age of twenty-four Rhodes drafted his first will on September 19, 1877, bequeathing his then nonexistent fortune, according to the first clause
   
   To and for the establishment, promotion and development of a Secret Society, the true aim and object whereof shall be for the extension of British rule throughout the world, the perfecting of a system of emigration from the United Kingdom, and of colonisation by British subjects of all lands where the means of livelihood are attainable by energy, labour and enterprise, and especially the occupation by British settlers of the entire Continent of Africa, the Holly Land, the Valley of the Euphrates, the Islands of Cyprus and Candia, the whole of South America, the Islands of the Pacific not heretofore possessed by Great Britain, the whole of the Malay Archipelago, the seaboard of China and Japan, the ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of the British Empire, the inauguration of a system of Colonial representation in the Imperial Parliament which may tend to weld together the disjointed members of the Empire and, finally, the foundation of so great a Power as to render wars impossible and promote the best interests of humanity.”
   
   

• Sir George Goldie who helped to organise all the British traders on the Niger River into one company; this might be seen as an economic aspect, but the company pushed on to get a royal charter which gave it the power to acquire territory and to govern it. Most of Nigeria was acquired by the Royal Niger Company until it was facing bankruptcy and had to be taken over by the British gov’t early in the 20th C.
  
  
• Frederick Lugard (a young army officer and someone we shall study more in Hist. 317) who played a role in Uganda and even bigger role in Nigeria, both with the Royal Niger Co. and after its takeover by the British gov’t;
  
  
• Sir Harry Johnston was active in central and east Africa for a long time;
  
  
• of course, Rhodes is in this category also and he gathered a coterie of such men around him—Leander Starr Jameson, Rutherford Harris and others.
  
  - Rhodes was especially critical of politicians and civil servants in London; he talked about ‘eliminating the Imperial Factor’ in South Africa. By that he meant that he wanted decision-making to be in the hands of imperial enthusiasts on the spot like himself rather than the timid, small-minded dimwits in London.
  
  - many of these cronies were like Rhodes, regarding it as their life’s mission to bring about the expansion of the empire in spite of the wishes of British gov’ts. Quite a few were also like Rhodes in other ways—never married or married late in life (ideal candidates for Freudian interpretations of sublimation of sexual drives and energies). Many people argue that the new ‘public’ schools were contributing to this; sexually segregated, boarding schools glorified sports and the empire and instilled the desire to emulate the earlier heroes of the empire such as Clive and Wolfe. Many of this generation of young men were never very comfortable with women or a settled domestic life; they thought they ought to be off doing macho things—hunting, exploring, fighting colonial wars and expanding the empire. It used to be that they were depicted as eunuchs, but recent research is also showing substantial numbers of sexual predators on indigenous women or young males in the colonies.
  
  

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