importance of immigrants in (re)defining
contemporary economic, political and cul-
tural systems. For example, non-white people
are about to become the majority of the
population in the state of California, the
first time in history where a white society
has voluntarily become a minority in a terri-
tory under its control (Maharidge, 1996).
Similar cultural transformations are occurring
in large cities throughout the Western world,
which are becoming more multi-ethnic and
polyglot than ever before (e.g. nearly 200
languages are spoken in the area served by
the municipal government of Toronto).
There are few studies of the cultural dynam-
ics of living in multi-ethnic cities (though see
Jacobs, 1996; Germain, 1997), but it is clear
that these new contexts raise fundamental
questions about the meaning of equity, public
participation, and even citizenship itself
(Jacobson, 1996). dh
Suggested reading
Castles and Miller (2003); Global Commission
on International Migration (GCIM) (2005);
Richmond (1994); Segal (1993).
imperialism An unequal human and terri-
torial relationship, usually in the form of an
empire, based on ideas of superiority and
practices of dominance, and involving the
extension of authority and control of one
stateor people over another. Derived from
the Latin wordimperium(‘sovereign author-
ity’), imperialism is closely affiliated with
colonialism. Both are intrinsically geogra-
phical – and traumatic – processes of expro-
priation, in which people, wealth, resources
and decision-making power are relocated
from distant lands and peoples to a metropol-
itan centre and elite (through a mixture of
exploration, conquest, trade, resource extrac-
tion, settlement, rule and representation),
although the latter differs from the former in
terms of the intensity and materiality of its
focus on dispossession. ‘Imperial’ is used to
denote attitudes and practices of dominance
befitting anempire.
The term was originally used in the second
half of the nineteenth century to describe a
state-centred ethos of territorial expansion –
epitomized by the imperial partition of Africa
between 1885 and 1914 – that involved both
aggressive national competition for prestige
and a more general rationalization of imperi-
alism as a ‘civilizing mission’. This era of
‘classical imperialism’ drew old and new im-
perial powers (Britain, France, Portugal and
Belgium; Germany, Italy, Japan and the USA)
into an expanding and volatile capitalist world
system, and two world wars that precipitated
the swift disintegration of the sprawling
colonial empires that had been built over the
previous four centuries (Baumgart, 1982; cf.
decolonization). Geography – as both a dis-
cipline and wider discourse - forged an intim-
ate relationship with imperialism during this
period (cf.geography, history of). Projects
of exploration and mapping, geopolitical
models and climatic arguments for European
superiority and racial difference played espe-
cially important imperial roles (Bell, Butlin and
Heffernan, 1995; cf.climate;heartland).
Yet the idea and practice of imperialism has
a longer history, and attempts have been made
to explain it in more systematic terms. It has
been traced back to Antiquity and into what
David Harvey (2003b) has called ‘the new
imperialism’ (or ‘neo-imperialism’) currently
being expedited through American military
and economic overlordship (especially in the
Middle East), and justified as a ‘war on terror’.
The Romans left some important imperial
precedents, such as the imperative to legitim-
ize colonization by recourse to divine or
secular law. However, a series of advances –
initially in navigation and military technology,
and then in commerce, administration and
methods of knowledge production – helped
European powers to create overseas empires
on ascalenever imagined or deemed feasible
before; and recent work on imperialism em-
phasizes how the imperial prerogative of the
West (and especially the USA: seeamerican
empire) now resides in the power to circum-
vent international institutions and law (see,
e.g.,exception, space of) and thus in some
measure leave behind the moral and political
legacy of Rome.
Critical approaches to imperialism empha-
size its innately exploitative and dehumanizing
nature (evidenced, for instance, byslavery),
and – at the risk of oversimplification – have
come in three main forms and phases. First,
and beginning with the early-twentieth-
century work of J.A. Hobson, V.I. Lenin and
Joseph Schumpeter, imperialism has been
analysed in economic and political terms – as
central to the evolution ofcapitalism and
thenation-state. A large historical and geo-
graphical literature seeks to account for the
specificity of imperial power, and examines
how different phases of capitalist accumula-
tion (mercantile, industrial, monopoly) have
been connected to different forms of imperial-
ism (maritime and land-based, formal andGregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_I Final Proof page 373 31.3.2009 7:05pmIMPERIALISM