5
Informal Imperialism in Europe and
the Ottoman Empire: The Consolidation
of the Mythical Roots of the West
‘Informal colonialism’ and ‘informal imperialism’ are relatively common
terms in the specialized literature. The term ‘informal colonialism’ was
coined—or at least sanctioned—by C. R. Fay (1940: (vol. 2) 399) meaning a
situation in which a powerful nation manages to establish dominant control
in a territory over which it does not have sovereignty. The term was popu-
larized by the economic historians John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson
(1953), who applied it to study informal British imperial expansion over
portions of Africa. The diVerence between informal and formal colonialism is
easy to establish: in theWrst instance, complete eVective control is unfeasible,
mainly due to the impossibility of applying direct military and political force
in countries that, in fact, are politically independent. They have their own
laws, make decisions on when and where to open museums and how to
educate their own citizens. Yet, in order to survive in the international
world they need to build alliances with the main powers, and that comes at
a price. Many countries in the world were in this situation in the middle and
last decades of the nineteenth century: Mediterranean Europe, the Ottoman
Empire, Persia, and independent states in the Far East and in Central and
South America. A simple classiWcation of countries into imperial powers,
informal empires and formal colonies is, however, only a helpful analytical
tool that shows itsXaws at closer look. Some of those that are being included
as informal colonies in Part II of this book were empires in themselves, like
the Ottoman Empire and, from the last years of the century, Italy (La Rosa
1986), and therefore had their own informal and formal colonies. The reason
why they have been placed together here is that in all of them there was an
acknowledgement of a need for modernization following Western-dominated
models. They all had the (northern) European presence in their lands—atWrst
primarily British and French, followed by Germans and individuals of other
European states, mainly from other empires either alive such as that of Austria-
Hungary or in decline like Sweden and Denmark. Some of these Europeans were