Chapter 69: The New Imperialism

**Dave Broker** (0:06)
By 1900, the Kingdom of Italy had changed considerably. As I mentioned back in Chapter 53, the unification of the Peninsula was not so much about creating a new nation as it was about expanding the Piedmont State across the rest of the country. As a result, the new government introduced certain economic policies that were clearly much more beneficial to the North than to the South. By the early 1880s, an agricultural crisis had begun, leading to millions of southern Italian peasants fleeing their new nation, emigrating to countries like the United States and Argentina. Northern Italy, meanwhile, experienced its Miracolo Industriale, a boom period, not only for the existing textile mills, but also for new heavy industry, chemicals, and machine production. The Pirelli rubber plant and the continent's first electric power plant were introduced in Milan. Shipbuilding, with locally produced steel, began in Genoa. The food producer, Cereo, opened a canning factory in Turin. And by the start of the First World War, the region had become home to several major automakers. In fact, across Western Europe, most places that had not yet industrialized were now industrializing. Lumber and pulp production, smelting, and the refining of other goods took off across Scandinavia. In the Netherlands, companies like Philips, the lightbulb maker, joined the ranks of other manufacturers churning out foodstuffs, chemicals, and more. Steel shipbuilding took off in Bilbao and Belfast. Switzerland tapped its hydroelectric power potential, to open new silk mills, chemical plants, and factories producing electrical equipment. But most of the world had more in common with southern Italy, exploited by the empires they now found themselves in. In these countries, the mineral and agricultural resources were being extracted for far away markets. As French Prime Minister Jules Farie put it, quote, colonial policy is the daughter of industrial policy. But the introduction of machinery and modern infrastructure were limited to those investments that would profit the Westerners. It was not to grow any domestic industry. In 1880, per capita income in the West was roughly twice that of the global South. By 1913, it was more than thrice that, and the gap was continuing to widen. By 1900, famine had become a thing of the past in the West, but in the rest of the world, it was going to become more and more common.
Of course, this is what empires have always been about. The Assyrians, Chinese, Romans, Mongols, and Ottomans all conquered other peoples to profit at their expense. But this new age of empires was different in scale and scope. Capitalist colonialism led to a rapid, competitive race for power and influence around the globe. As our old friend, Erich Hobsbawm, noted, quote, between 1876 and 1915, about one quarter of the globe's land surface was distributed or redistributed as colonies among a half-dozen states. Britain increased its territories by some four million square miles. France by some 3.5 millions. Germany acquired more than one million. Belgium and Italy just under one million each, end quote. With the collapse of free trade agreements following the Panic of 1873, a topic I have briefly mentioned in the past, merchants needed access to new markets. The only way to do that within closed economic systems was to expand such systems by expanding the empires. As British Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, told the French ambassador in 1897, quote, If you were not such persistent protectionists, you would not find us so keen to annex territories, end quote. The technological supremacy and economic greed of the imperial powers obviously help explain why this happened, but they do not fully explain it. Cultural supremacism was also at play. The Westerners believed their religion, Christianity, was superior to the beliefs of the indigenous peoples they conquered. They used their faith to both explain and justify their conquests. Not only would the introduction to Christ save souls, it would, in time it was believed, improve the material well-being of the natives too. And of course, there was a great deal of racism at play. Building off the ideas published by Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer, it was in the late 19th century when the construct of race was really solidified. Anthropologists like Thomas Henry Huxley introduced complex theories of racial categorization. Infographics were published with pictures of Europeans at the top, Asians in the middle, and indigenous Africans and Americans at the bottom. Several world's fairs included exhibits of supposedly exotic people that reinforced stereotypes about the kinds of human beings who were most or least inclined toward human progress.
These attitudes help explain why even less industrial European countries, such as Portugal and Spain, picked up new territories in Africa, why Western powers resisted Japan's imperial ambitions, and why the British legitimately tried to introduce quote-unquote civilization to the peoples they conquered, rather than just stealing their wealth and running away. But, just as it was in the 16th and 17th centuries, competition between European powers was probably the greatest factor of all. As the UK spread its empire, the French felt the need to keep up. And as the French spread their empire, the Germans felt the need to keep up. Et cetera, et cetera. Even today, there remains debate about the overall impact of colonialism. Many argue that the conquered lands saw benefits. They argue that introduction to industrial societies ultimately brings with it all kinds of development. This is famously parodied in Monty Python's Life of Brian, when Judean radicals are discussing their exploitation at the hands of the Romans, and then listing all the great things the Romans have done for them. Others, meanwhile, argue that colonialism has done much more harm than good. Such arguments tend to focus on the very real violence and trauma exacted on indigenous peoples by mostly Western powers. But even this kind of colonialism doesn't paint the full picture of what happened. Because from China to Chile, imperialism was evolving. And in many ways, it laid the foundation of the modern world order.