The concept of "imperialism": the history of the development*

Iuliia Gudova

Mrs., Ural Federal University, Russia, jgudova@mail.ru

Abstract

In the context of politics in the contemporary world, the concepts of "empire" and "imperialism" are increasingly used. The study of imperialism becomes an important and urgent issue. We propose to consider the concept of "imperialism" as a notion and a phenomenon.

The notion of "imperialism" appeared in the second half of the XIX century. "Imperialism" was understood as "the desire of the state to expand its territorial (colonial) possessions, mainly in other parts of the world".

Speaking of the nature of the word "imperialism", it appeared to refer to the dominant policy of the empire. Then the notion of "imperialism" began to be used to refer to the policy of colonial empires. Through this concept has acquired independent features and later separated from the phenomenon of the empire. In the post-colonial world, we can talk about the imperialism of territories that are not empires; including scientist can speak about internal imperialism in the territory of one country.

At the turn of the XIX and XX centuries. Imperialism began to be understood as the equivalent of colonialism, including as the colonialism of maritime powers. This led to two basic provisions for understanding "imperialism": political and economic. The concept of "imperialism" has acquired a new meaning in the Marxist approach, where imperialism has become synonymous with capitalism.

In Russian science, imperialism is more often understood as an economic phenomenon - the highest stage of capitalism with a negative connotation, and in foreign science it is understood as a political phenomenon - the desire of the country to expand its territory or zone of its influence.

In the middle of the twentieth century a new round of development of the concept of "imperialism" began. In addition to political and economic meaning, the military and the cultural have begun to be singled out. They talked about military imperialism and cultural imperialism. In addition to cultural imperialism, Galtung singles out communication imperialism, which has become increasingly intense due to actively developing globalization.

After we observed the history of the concept of imperialism, we can conclude that due to the formulation of the contextual variety of the "imperialism" concept it is used in different historical contexts, and not only in relation to the colonial and post-colonial period. Today the notion of imperialism is filled with new meanings connected with the domination of the four most important aspects of interstate interaction: military, political, economic and cultural.

Keywords: imperialism, cultural imperialism, economic imperialism, political imperialism, military imperialism

 

* The reported study was funded by RFBR according to the research project № 18-311-00273.