CHAPTER III

WHY EUROPE SHOULDERED THE WHITE MAN'S

BURDEN

THE LOGIC OF ECONOMIC NECESSITY

EUROPE was converted to imperialism not by logic alone, nor by economic "necessity" alone, but by a combination of argument and interest, arising from an almost revolutionary alteration of economic and political conditions. The old order, the good old mid-Victorian order, had passed away, and if not a new heaven, at least a new earth was seen by the keen eye of business and politics.

First consider the alteration of economic conditions. Four signal changes appear, and first of these is the waning of the comfortable supremacy which English cotton mills and iron works had achieved by the inventions of the Industrial Revolution. As long as other nations worked with their hands, while Englishmen worked with machines and steam, England was secure from serious competition. And other nations were slow to install machinery. For approximately three-quarters of the nineteenth century English industry was as mighty as Gulliver in Lilliput. Even as late as 1870 Great Britain was smelting half of the world's iron, and more than three times as much as any other nation; she was making almost half of the world's cotton goods; her foreign commerce was more than twice that of any rival. But during the last quarter of the century the industries of Germany, United States, France, and other powers, after a long period of infancy, suddenly waxed mighty. England's share of the iron industry diminished with startling rapidity until, before the close of the century, United States had won first place and Germany was about to forge ahead of England into second place.

The following table tells the story:

Even more important-and this needs emphasis-than the absolute volume of production is the rate of increase, because a high rate means reinvestment of surplus profits in the industry, whereas a low rate means either that profits will be low and work slack, or else that profits must seek other opportunities,1 for investment. From this point of view, the figures are startling. During the period 1870-1903-the period of the great outburst of imperialism-the British iron masters were able to expand their business by a meagre 50%, as compared with 966% for their aggressive American competitors and 609% for the Germans.

Though Great Britain's monopolistic grip on the cotton industry seemed more secure, American and German, not to speak of other foreign competition, began to make itself very uncomfortably felt in the 1870's, 1880's, and 1890's. The following table shows the percentage increase in ten-year periods:

2

Export trade tells the same tale. In the three decades from 1870 to 1900, while American exports were almost quadrupled and German exports doubled, English exporters increased their business by only forty-five per cent. While American captains of industry were accumulating fabulous fortunes, in England the pace was on the whole much slower. This fact is particularly impressive for England's two major export industries, iron and cotton goods. In the former, the exports (of iron and steel) during the decade of the eighties were slightly less than in the seventies; for expansion, the British iron industry had to rely wholly on domestic consumption, and that increased only by 'Cf. infra, pp. 30-32, 535.

2 Using consumption of raw cotton as an index.

forty-one per cent. Cotton exports in the nineties stood at almost the same figure as in the late seventies; here again Great Britain failed to secure her share in the growth of the world market, and, as the table on the preceding page shows, the domestic market did not afford compensation.

This situation meant cut-throat competition. Each of the M great industrial nations was making more cloth, more iron and steel, or more of some other manufacture, than its own inhabitants could possibly consume. Each had a surplus which must be sold abroad. "Surplus manufactures" called for foreign markets. But none of the great industrial nations was willing to be a market for the other's surplus, at least in the major competitive fields. All except Great Britain built around themselves forbidding tariff walls. United States, solicitous for "infant industries," took the lead in establishing a protective tariff during and after the Civil War, and raised it still higher in 1890 and 1897. Russia built up her tariff by degrees from 1877 onward. Germany began the erection of her tariff wall in 1879; France in 1881; and other countries followed the lead.1 Business men and statesmen were not slow to take alarm. A French prime minister, Jules Ferry,2 described the situation in 1885 clearly enough:

...

What our great industries lack.. what they lack more and more, is markets. Why? Because Germany is covering herself with barriers; because, beyond the ocean, the United States of America have become protectionist, and protectionist to an extreme degree.

There appeared, however, one bright ray of hope, one solutioncolonies. How earnestly the rulers of Europe in the eighties and nineties viewed this situation, and how hopefully they sought to acquire colonies whose markets could be monopolized by the mother-country's industries, cannot fail to impress any reader of the political debates and imperialistic literature of the period. I cannot forbear to add one more quotation, from The Rise of Our East African Empire (1893), by Sir Frederick Lugard, who was at the time an influential advocate of imperialism as well as an administrator most active in securing new domains for his country :

'See Moon, Syllabus on International Relations, pp. 160 ff., and references there cited.

'Dubois et Terrier, op. cit., p. 405.

As long as our policy is one of free trade, we are compelled to seek new markets; for old ones are being closed to us by hostile tariffs, and our great dependencies, which formerly were consumers of our goods, are now becoming our commercial rivals. It is inherent in a great colonial and commercial empire like ours that we go forward or backward. . . . We are accountable to posterity that opportunities which now present themselves of extending the sphere of our industrial enterprise are not neglected, for the opportunities now offered will never recur again.1

"Surplus manufactures," then, provided the chief economic cause of the imperialistic expansion of Europe in the last quarter of the nineteenth century.2

And "surplus manufactures" still provide an incentive to imperialism, though other factors have surpassed this one in importance. Colonies to-day proved a market for one-fourth, perhaps more, of the manufactures exported by industrial nations; and colonial markets are growing more rapidly than all other markets. Nations owning colonies are striving to monopolize their trade by means of tariff barriers. Even Great Britain, strong as the British tradition of free trade may be, has in the last few years quietly introduced into a number of the British crown colonies tariffs giving British goods a preference over foreign goods; and the British self-governing colonies are likewise practising imperial preference. Rivalry for colonial markets is a consequence of surplus manufactures.

The second great change in the economic world, to be noted as an explanation of Europe's conversion to imperialism in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, was the revolution in means of communication. To make colonial produce profitable, on a large scale, steamships were needed. To make commercial and military penetration of the interior wilds of Africa and Asia possible, railways were required. To bind colonies close to mother-countries, the telegraph had to be invented. To be sure, steamship, locomotive, and telegraph were invented long before the age we are considering; but their effect was not felt, in the world at large, until the last two or three decades of the nineteenth century. The following table offers the reason:

'Lugard, op. cit., II, p. 585.

The tendency of some writers to ascribe imperialism wholly or chiefly to capital investment is unhistorical.

The victory of steam and electricity over space made possible the gigantic increase of colonial trade between 1870 and the present; it also made possible the extension of empires, by transporting the troops that conquered the tropics. Incidentally, as it will later appear more clearly, the building of railways, the laying of cables and telegraphs, the operation of shipping lines, were economic enterprises which themselves were and still are prizes of imperialism.

The third economic factor to be examined is the demand of industrial nations for tropical and subtropical products. Cotton factories in Lancashire, England, are one of the reasons for British troops in Egypt and India. The millions of bales of raw cotton devoured by busy British spindles and looms had to be produced in southern United States, or in colonies. When the American Civil War cut off supplies of American cotton, England and other countries looked about for other sources of supply, and since that time colonies have become increasingly important as cotton-producers. Egypt, for example, produced only 87 thousand bales in 1850, but by 1865 this quantity had been multiplied by five; by 1890 it had been multiplied by nine, and Egypt had become the chief producer of fine, longstaple cotton. British India likewise multiplied its production, and in many another colony plantations were laid out.

Rubber affords another instance, spectacular in its effects. When the civilized world began to wear rubbers and raincoats, to put tires on its wagons and bicycles and automobiles, Europeans had to invade tropical jungles and, by persuasion or by force, induce the natives to tap the wild rubber trees and vines which grew in the Congo and Amazon valleys. The Congo became a colony, where natives were compelled to labor, and its rubber output increased from about thirty thousand dollars in 1886 to eight million in 1900. The Amazon, protected by the Monroe Doctrine against European annexation, was subjected to economic imperialism, almost as if it were a colony. And as the demand for rubber grew still more insatiable, vast rubber plan