(^428) THE WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS
about 1500 to 1800: the American dominions of Spain, the English
and French holdings in North America, the Portuguese, Dutch, and
British grabs in the Indian Ocean. Then, around the turn to the nine
teenth century, almost all of the American portions of these "oid em
pires" broke away from the mother country. For many in Europe,
these losses proved the folly of the whole enterprise: was ever so much
wasted by so many on so few? As a result, we were taught, the appetite
for colonies abated. For a century after 1763 (Treaty of Paris between
Britain and France), imperialism was said to be marking time.
British domestic politics gave substance to this chronology. The
Whigs, ever practical, called the whole business a mistake, money
thrown away on uncivilized, ungrateful, disloyal subjects (George
Washington and company)—"shrewd, artful, and cunning people."^7
Some even advocated freeing colonies that had not asked for indepen
dence.
But of course not. Something so clearly the expression of power was
not going to stop just as the Industrial Revolution was empowering
Europeans and enhancing their ability to survive in once fatal envi
ronments. To the contrary, imperialism was very busy during these
decades, as the French Algerian venture (1830), the British occupation
of India and advances in Burma, the Russian conquests in Siberia and
the Caucasus, and the American expansion westward—among oth
ers—all showed. It was the historians who had a blind spot; that, and
a doctrinaire notion that empire had to wait for the call of a mature
(fading?) capitalism.
This call, we were taught, explained the "New Imperialism." Be
ginning in the late 1860s, the growing indocility of the proletariat at
home turned covetous eyes toward exploitable workers abroad. Africa
in particular, but also pieces of Asia and Pacific islands, became targets
of opportunity for all the major European nations. Among them, Ger
many, which belatedly decided that it could not be a world power
without overseas possessions. When the dust had settied, all of Africa
lay under one or another European government. The only exceptions:
Liberia, an American project for returning blacks to their home; and
Ethiopia, which the Italians tried to grab and failed.
This "New Imperialism" differed from the Old. It too was suppos
edly based on rational, material interest, but in fact these late acquisi
tions promised little. To be sure, some of the lands did contain
potentially valuable resources, but these treasures were generally un
known at the time of annexation. Much of the land-grabbing was
strategic (cf. Cape to Cairo) or preemptive (better mine than yours).
nora
(Nora)
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