anti-communism and social order. More importantly, fascist regimes
emerged in Italy and Germany that delineated a new and radical right-
wing project, putting forward a previously unseen mix of conser-
vative values, mass mobilization, aggressive nationalism, militarism,
and racism. However extreme and criminal, this project remained an
avatar of the right’s fight against socialism. Without socialism, notes
Hobsbawm, “there would have been no fascism.”^71
The colonial enterprise
The period between the American Revolution and the Second World
War was also an age of worldwide Western expansion and domin-
ation. This expansion climaxed between 1880 and 1914, when most
of the world outside Europe and the Americas was under the formal
or indirect rule of fewer than ten states (namely the United Kingdom,
France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, the United States,
and Japan). The entire Pacific and most of Africa were split into formal
colonies of the great powers, most of Asia was divided into zones of
influence, Latin America was in effect under American domination, and
the main settlers’ colonies (Canada, Australia, New Zealand) belonged
to the British Empire.^72
It has often been argued that imperialism and colonialism defied the
left–right cleavage, because they stemmed from a broad consensus
among the elites of the great powers. This is partly true. The idea that
Western societies were more “civilized” and bound to lead the world
was indeed common, and it often led political actors and thinkers, on
both the left and the right, to accept colonialism. Even among European
socialists and pacifists, notes Partha Sarathi Gupta, “a condescending
attitude to non-European civilizations and an implicit assumption of
leadership”generallycohabitedwith“anabhorrenceofcolonialwars.”^73
The full picture, however, requires nuances. First, in the era of the
American and the French Revolutions, a strong anti-colonial current
was already associated with the left’s fight for democracy. Second,
(^71) Eric J. Hobsbawm,The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century,
72 1914–1991, London, Abacus, 1994, p. 124.
Eric J. Hobsbawm,The Age of Empire: 1875–1914, London, Abacus, 1987,
73 pp. 56–59.
Partha Sarathi Gupta,Imperialism and the British Labour Movement,
1914–1964, New York, Holmes & Meier, 1975, p. 8.
The rise of the modern state system (1776–1945) 101