CHAPTER XIX

CONCLUSIONS

THE MEASURE OF IMPERIALISM

To view modern imperialism in proper perspective, one must in some way sum up the aggregate results of such varied events as the partition of Persia, the conquest of Tunis, the Hawaiian revolution, the Agadir crisis, the Riffian revolt, intervention in Haiti, the Boer War, the Twenty-One Demands, and the thousand and one other episodes that have gone into the making of this chapter in contemporary world history. What these things have meant in terms of human hopes and fears, of cultural enrichment, of spiritual stimulus and strife, no statistics can ever reveal, nor can the historian do much more than guess. One can measure, however, some aspects of imperialism. One can gauge the size of empires, at any rate.

Ten imperialist nations of to-day possess colonies and protectorates which, taken together, are seven times the size of Europe and half the earth's total land surface. Six hundred million human beings, a third of the human race, are directly subject to imperialist domination. Even these figures, astonishingly large as they may appear, are admittedly incomplete. Yet it is problematical whether one should add Norway's recent acquisition of Spitsbergen, or Denmark's colony of Greenland, or Iceland. On the other hand, we have omitted countries such as China, Persia, Turkey, Abyssinia, Afghanistan, and several Latin-American states which have been very definitely affected by imperialism, though at the moment they may be considered independent. If they were included in our totals, we would have about two-thirds of the world, with more than a billion inhabitants, in colonies, protectorates, and "backward countries" which have been subject to European, American, or Japanese imperialism.

The relative importance of modern imperialist conquests may

be suggested by comparing them with achievements which bulk large in conventional histories. Republican France has outdone the warlike Charlemagne. The "New World" discovered by Columbus was less extensive than the realm conquered by modern imperialism. The empire of Julius Cæsar was much smaller than that of George V. More extensive than Napoleon's conquests were the territories won for Britain by Cecil Rhodes. A survey of existing empires (see Tables I and II) discloses the fact that while in general modern imperialism has accompanied industrialism, the results have not been proportionate to the economic importance, or to the size and power, of the empire-building nations. The present distribution of colonies can be explained by no simple principle, but only by that complex interweaving of forces which-for want of a better namewe sometimes call chance.

While Spain has lost all but a poor remnant of her vast dominions, Portugal, her less powerful neighbor, retains two very large African colonies, besides several smaller possessions. Though she ranks fourth on the list of empires, Portugal is unable to develop her colonies or even to give them good government, for the mother-country is lacking in the industrial and financial resources and the political capacity for large-scale imperialism. Indeed, the Portuguese colonies are being invaded by British and other foreign capital and are so insecurely held that before 1914, as we have seen in another connection, Great Britain and Germany planned their partition.1

Holland, too, possesses in the East Indies an empire quite out of proportion to her own magnitude in area, population, or industry. In population the Dutch empire ranks third, in commerce fourth, in area seventh. It is doubtful whether the Netherlands could have secured so generous a portion in the nineteenth-century rivalry of world-powers, had the East Indies not been inherited as a legacy from the period, centuries ago, when Holland had one of the foremost navies.

Belgium has in Congo an empire even larger, though much less valuable, carved out of virgin territory by a foresighted king, before the appetites of the Great Powers had been thoroughly whetted. Belgium was able to purchase the Congo from her king in 1908, because rivalry among the Great Powers permitted 1 Cf. supra, p. 119.

none to interfere, but had there been interference Belgium would have been too weak to defend her claims. In such fashion Belgium fell heir to a colonial empire larger than either Japan, or Italy, or the United States possesses, and almost as large as the one Germany held before the Great War.

Perhaps one should include also the Norwegian possessions of Spitsbergen archipelago and Bear Island; the Danish possession of Greenland as well as the "independent" kingdom of Iceland, which is bound to Denmark by a personal union; and other minor quasi-colonial possessions. These, however, seem hardly to belong in a class with the empires given above.

'These terms are used in a broad sense, regardless of technicalities.

* Comprising the Dominions and all parts of the Empire as listed in the Statesman's Year-Book, excepting Great Britain and Ireland. Egypt is included though nominally independent. Mandates also are added.

** Asiatic Russia, estimated, not including portions of Mongolia occupied by Soviet forces.

† Including mandates and Algeria, although the latter is in certain matters considered an integral part of France. Including also the French zone of the Moroccan protectorate.

tt Including areas listed in Table IV.

§ Including Chosen and Port Arthur on the mainland; and Formosa, southern Sakhalin, the Pescadores, and the mandated islands in the Pacific. Perhaps one should add the Manchurian sphere of interest.

§§ Including Malay Archipelago, Australasia, and all islands of the Pacific.

While Portugal, Holland, and Belgium have disproportionately large shares, three Great Powers-Germany, Japan, and Italy-were peculiarly unsuccessful in attempting to occupy their proper places in the sun. In the period from 1871 to 1914

TABLE II

PRESENT-DAY COLONIAL EMPIRES-POPULATIONS

Populations (in millions) of colonial possessions and protectorates1

x indicates population of less than one million. 'For explanation of interpretation of these terms, see notes to Table I. Cf. Table IV.

Germany was clearly superior to France in power, population, and industrial development, and yet this puissant Germany could obtain hardly more than a fourth of the colonial area that a weakened and humiliated French Republic was able to appropriate. In population, in commerce, in potential value, the German colonies were not to be compared with those of France or those of Britain. In part this anomaly was due to Bismarck's caution; in part, to clumsy diplomacy which enabled France, Russia, Britain, and Italy to combine against Germany on colonial questions. The hope of rectifying the situation was one of the will-o'-the-wisps that German statesmen pursued during the Great War, but the will-o'-the-wisp vanished "somewhere in France." After 1919, having lost even her former colonies, Germany stood alone among the industrial giants of Europe, the only Great Power without an empire.

Japan's phenomenal rise to power and dramatic entry into the area of world politics might easily give rise to the false impression that the vigorous island empire of the East has made large conquests. As a matter of fact, despite the three wars she fought at ten-year intervals, Japan still stands at the foot of the list as regards the area, and in fifth place as regards the population and commercial value, of her colonies, whereas her popula

tion of sixty millions and her rank among the Great Powers might entitle her-if there were any principles in the matterto as large an empire as the French, or at least as valuable an empire as the Dutch. To be sure, if we include the Japanese sphere of interest in Southern Manchuria and Eastern Inner Mongolia, Japan's share appears less niggardly, and if Japanese imperialists had succeeded in their design of bringing China under Japanese tutelage, as the Twenty-One Demands of 1915 stipulated, their empire would have been second only to that of Great Britain.

The most striking case is that of Italy, a Great Power second to none in national pride or imperial ambition, boasting an African empire-Libia, Eritrea and Somaliland-which impressively covers 780,000 square miles, as seen on the map, but which includes so much desert land that its total population is less than two million souls. Commercially, it is the least valuable of all the ten empires. If the Fascisti have set apart April 21 as a "National Colonial Day," and if in 1926 no less a personage than il Duce, Mussolini himself, visited Tripoli with pomp and circumstance, urging Italian emigrants and Italian capital to develop the empire, it is because Italian imperialism is founded less on accomplished facts than on a faith which sees populous provinces and prosperous plantations in a parched and unpopulated wilderness.

By way of contrast, we turn to the more successful empires of France, Britain, Russia, and America. Considering the handicaps under which it labored, the French Republic has achieved miracles. The dawn of the imperialist age found France weak, isolated, overshadowed by victorious Germany. In shipping she was inferior to Germany and Britain, and likewise in the "heavy industries" such as cotton and iron, which have been such dynamic factors in imperialism. But France had francs for investment, and gallant soldiers and explorers, and astute diplomats. Francs paved the way for soldiers in Tunis and Morocco. Soldier-explorers penetrated jungle, desert and prairie, rounding out French Equatorial and French West Africa, and connecting them with French North Africa in one unbroken realm. Other soldiers subdued the large island of Madagascar, and admirals conquered province after province in Indo-China.