understand to be in their interest. Joseph Chamberlain described imperial-
ism as ‘knowledge in place of ignorance, civilisation in place of barbarism’.
This is not the historian’s interpretation of imperialism but the imperialists’
attempts to justify the morally questionable if not indefensible. The reality,
according to Barratt Brown, was vastly different:
Establish and maintain a native feudal aristocracy, hold back the emer-
gence of a truly entrepreneurial class, divert the nationalist movement
into safe channels, hold down the peasant in debilitating poverty – it is
not too much to say that these have been the harsh realities, often openly
pursued, behind the lofty phrases about the white man’s burden and
preparation for self-government. (1963, p. 181)
Two hundred years of British rule in India left over 80 per cent of the peo-
ple illiterate, a record repeated throughout Asia and Africa. Seventy-five
years of British rule in West Africa left one fever hospital for 30 million
Nigerians, a ratio of doctors to inhabitants of 1 : 60,000, and only half the
children of one province surviving beyond their fifth year.
It has also been argued that imperialism was sometimes engaged in for
domestic political and ideological objectives, such as France’s reaction to
defeat in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 and her need to reassert national
glory and rebuild the army; or Germany’s consolidation of the fatherland
between the World Wars. Sometimes there was the motive of counter-
expansionism against states that threatened to disturb the balance of power
in Europe. Imperialism was thus as much a function of international politics
in Europe as of national economic advantage. The argument that imperial-
ism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was much more a
political than an economic phenomenon has been forcefully put by
B. J. Cohen. Colonies were attractive to the European powers in their strug-
gle for international supremacy to protect their national security. As
Germany, France and Italy threatened Britain’s imperial interests in their
attempts to gain prestige and diplomatic advantage, so Britain retaliated by
further annexations to protect her existing possessions and sea routes. ‘The
contest for colonies became general’ (Cohen, 1973, p. 79).
Technological developments in communications, transportation and
weapons also affected Europe’s relationships with the rest of the world.
Progress in technology provided opportunities for acquisition of and control
over other parts of the world. Technology made it possible to develop new
trade routes and new routes into interiors (by, for example, the construction
of railways) when hitherto European contact had been limited to coastal set-
tlements. Advances in medicine enabled Europeans to survive inhospitable
Theories of Imperialism and Colonialism 35