User:Evarenon/sandbox/Approaches to Knowledge/Seminar Group 4/Imperialism

What is imperialism?
The term imperialism historically has referred to dynasties or kingdoms under the rule of an emperor, or in other words, any empire was characterized as an imperial power. This definition of the word has mainly been associated with the Chinese, Roman, and Greek empires. Now, however, imperialism alludes to the desire and practice of extending ones reach, which can take one of two forms: the first, physical acquisition of land, usually involves the use of violence and the second, through gaining economic and political power over others. This interpretation of the word came to prominence in 1870s Britain and has since carried with it negative undertones, stemming from both its morally dubious nature and from uncertainty about motivations behind imperialism.

Imperialism is a state policy, practice, or advocacy of extending power and dominion, especially by direct territorial acquisition or by gaining political and economic control of other areas. Because it always involves the use of power, whether military force or some subtler form, imperialism has often been considered morally reprehensible, and the term is frequently employed in international propaganda to denounce and discredit an opponent’s foreign policy.(Caroline and Muyao) --C lmy (discuss • contribs) 18:48, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

In the sense of modern economy imperialism is capitalism in that stage of development in which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital has established itself; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun; in which the division of all territories of the globe among the great capitalist powers has been completed (Lenin, 1916, 89). Lcosier1 (discuss • contribs) 21:22, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

Possible research questions on imperialism
To what extent did imperialism manifest itself in scientific practice and output? Tmlweigel (discuss • contribs) 17:54, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

What is the relationship of inequality and imperialism?C lmy (discuss • contribs) 20:22, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

What does imperialist dominance look like nowadays? Lcosier1 (discuss • contribs) 21:13, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

What traces of imperialism are still present in modern society? Amberk23 (discuss • contribs) 11:03, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

How do we recognise imperialism in contemporary institutions, and how do we counter it? Leewenyi (discuss • contribs) 11:39, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

To what extent is our current knowledge based on systems of imperialism? Leewenyi (discuss • contribs) 12:14, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

To what extent is liberal imperialism legitimate? Teobogatu (discuss • contribs) 14:41, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

How does imperialist ideology establish itself through institutions? (eg museums) Olliedixon148 (discuss • contribs) 14:58, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

What is the role of military power in imperialism? Juliechea (discuss • contribs) 17:49, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

How does the Commonwealth reflect a continuity in British Imperialism? Sunnivaminsaas (discuss • contribs) 22:42, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

In what ways are constructed hierarchies dangerous? Sunnivaminsaas (discuss • contribs) 22:46, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

What does imperialist domination look like today?
(Lucas, Henri, and Apara)

The foundation for the imperial dominance system today was established centuries ago through the British Empire. Amongst its biggest contributions to the current world domination systems is the founding of the first world bank. In 1844 Britain established the first world currency, where one sterling pound was allocated a certain weight of gold. This meant that London became the centre of world trade and finance allowing the British ruling class to accumulate vast amounts of wealth. The accumulation of wealth is the basic philosophy of a capitalistic economy and is what drives the desire for imperialistic pursuits today and arguably even throughout history. During the British rule, and even more so now, everything in the world has been turned into a commodity. As a result, those with wealth control the world and those without are subordinate to the wealthy. This means that wealth and capital are the keys to attaining dominance today. The world currency is now a symbol of power. In the 1920’s post-war Britain was severely weakened and in serious debt to America, this allowed the US dollar to take over as the world currency, symbolizing and solidifying the transition of power. Thus, in our study we will look at two of the most important economic powers in the world, the imperialist US and China.

After World War II and the Bretton-Woods system, the USA has become the richest power and the centre of world's economics and finance. This allowed it to rule a part of the world and to become one big empire: the west block, and to influence many African and Asian countries. However, the post-Vietnam trauma, the oil crisis in 1973, and the fall of USD as the uncontested leader, due to the fall of Bretton-Woods, made the USA realise that imperialism needed and still needs more than ever a great military power to protect it and to gain more power. The nation which has nuclear weapons and is strong enough to attack every country on the globe stays the world's centre. In fact it can settle in countries which present important resources, like Iraq in 2003, and it can overpass international institutions' obstacles, like the United Nations.

However, another view of American "new imperialism" is that even though imperialism now uses economic, financial and political power more than military power to influence other countries, a declining empire uses more and more military power in an attempt to retain its status, and delay its inevitable fall (The Rise and Fall of The Great Powers, Paul Kennedy). Furthermore, states gave a part of their sovereignty to financial markets, and multinational corporations have become more and more powerful and independent from states. Thus, when speaking about economic power and economic imperialism, we should admit that one point of view is that countries are a political and military tool for economic powers - like corporations - to gain or to protect their influences throughout the world.

The decline of US imperialism is inevitable. Exporting inflation - flooding the world with US dollars to keep the US economy afloat, while the rest of the world pays the price - is just the latest example. The Americans under the Trump administration are currently trying to consolidate the dollar and their position in the international markets to maintain their influence, because there's another emerging superpower threatening to overturn them - China. The Chinese didn't have a smooth road to begin with, and that was partly because of their rivals (the Russians and Americans). Following the Chinese revolution of 1949, the US-imposed blockades cut off China from the worldwide capitalist system. As a result, China had to build its own industry from scratch. However, this played out in their favor. Since it joined the WTO at the end of 2001, China has had the most important role of a developing country in the internationalization of production, occupying all sectors of labor-intensive production in the last two decades. With an average GDP growth of 10% during the 1990s and the 2000s, and by providing a seemingly inexhaustible labor supply, a vast space to invest in global capital, and a market with high liquidity, the active cooperation of China with other developing countries has significantly alleviated the crisis of capitalist production and accumulation.

However, China’s quest to become the first economic power has had serious consequences for the Chinese people, its resources and environment, and it has also divided the Chinese society and negated China's long-term sustainable development. The insatiable need for capital has led to over-production, over-fishing in the rivers and seas, destruction of land, and spillage of waste into ground, air, and water, causing irreversible damage to the planet. Moreover, the majority of the Chinese people lack educational opportunity, a safe social environment, and proper healthcare. Imperialism immensely benefited monopoly capital but is devastating the majority of the world’s population, deteriorating its resources and destroying its natural environment.

What is the relationship of inequality and imperialism? (Muyao and Caroline)
James Caporaso has defined imperialism as "a state of inequality and dependence in interstate relations where both the inequality and dependence are maintained by exploitation"1. Although there is little doubt about the claim that inequality is a non-essential attribute of imperialism, its relationship with the general concept of imperialism needs furthermore discoveries and explanations. To begin with, inequality is the cause of imperialism. This argument has a solid foundation in economy domain. To be specific, the economic inequality leads to the inevitable imbalanced power contrast between different nations, the idea of foreign assets transfer as well as the competition of military capacity. Because imperialism is a dominance relation between two collectivities (most of the time between nations), the two collectivities involved in this relation cannot be equal, the dominated collectivity is always more unequal than the dominating one.

Secondly, on the one hand, inequality, with imperial power and incapacities, affects societies in distorting their economic-social-cultural-political development, and with the growing polarization, the inequality helps to strengthen imperialism; on the other hand, however, if the inequality continues to expand, it can threaten the imperialism system. In this sense, inequality can be seen as an essential attribute of imperialism because it has the power to strengthen it or weaken it.

Thirdly, from a different angle, imperialism can nourish the idea of inequality or even exacerbate it. In the imperialist system, different ideologies of inequalities are quite popular like: the racism, Xenophobia, etc. One of the major example of this kind of inequality is the apartheid which was a policy or system of segregation or discrimination on grounds of race (Oxford Dictionary) that took place in South Africa from 1948 until the early 1990s.

1 Caporaso, J. "Methodological issues in the measurement of inequality, dependence, and exploitation." In S. J. Rosen & J. R. Kurth (eds.) Testing theories of economicimperialism, Toronto: Heath, 1974, pp. 87-114.

To what extent is our current knowledge based on imperialism? ( Wen and Julie)
Different societies each have a framework of knowledge that is often in line with their core values and civilisation. However, systems of imperialism have an influence on the plethora of types of knowledge, all around the world. Our current knowledge, that shapes the way we see the world, through lenses of economy, human sciences, math, philosophy and other disciplines, is influenced, or based, on systems of imperialism to an extent. ~

Imperialism has had pervasive impacts on academia; in its historical origin, colonial powers typically implemented their own systems of education within the colonies, and that imperial relation was responsible for the "tutelage, conformity, secondary role of dominated intellectuals and scholars, rationalisation of the civilising mission, and the inferior talent of scholars from the home country specialising in studies of the colony" (Atalas, 2003).

Over the course of the post-colonial period, academic imperialism has evolved into a scholarly landscape in which information is largely monopolised by a Western perspective, and non-Western scholars are highly dependent upon Western institutions and ideas despite political independence. Western institutions often possess the funding, technology and infrastructure required for research, and are usually the publishers of recognised journals; academic dependency, according to Atalas, extends to dependency on ideas, media of ideas, technology, financial aid and investment (for research and education), and a dependency on demand in the West for the skills of “third-world” social scientists (Atalas, 2003).

There is also a division of labour that perpetuates the cycle of dependency and psyche of intellectual inferiority, whereby non-Western scientists typically carry out empirical work or studies in their own countries, while Western scientists are responsible for more theoretical and international research. Insofar as our knowledge is founded on our education, it is thus necessary to consider the extent to which imperially-produced ideas permeate our way of thinking and how we perceive the world.

Imperialism has had a particularly dominant in the construction of perceptions about non-Western cultures and, where the colonising population is now the majority demographic, its indigenous peoples.

Even when research is conducted into non-Western social groups, there is a risk of a ‘silencing’ methodology, wherein the study is disengaged from Indigenous epistemologies and participants (Deckert, 2014). Furthermore these groups have a systemic inability to autonomically represent themselves in academia, given the aforementioned academic dependency.

Efforts to decolonise curriculums--from post-Apartheid South Africa (see Grange, 2016) to the Anglophone Carribean (see Johnson, 2002) to institutions in the former imperial power of the United Kingdom--recognise the effect that imperialism has had on the way information is structured and elided and made into general consensus. Leewenyi (discuss • contribs) 11:16, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

What traces of imperialism are still present in modern society? (Amber and Sunniva)
Imperialism can be defined as the expansion of power and control (traditionally, over a specific territory or people). The assertion of control over regions by European imperialists effected the development of culture, social values and hierarchies within colonies and still does despite the end of their imperialism. We looked to explore what traces of imperialism are still present in modern society, in both colonised and colonising countries. Researching this, we focussed our attention on three topics: how European colonialism has effected the development of colonies, how imperialism has influenced geopolitics and our view of the world, and how the idea of imperialism has been applied to disciplines within academia.

How traces of imperialist thinking are present in modern society is very evident when looking at previous colonies. Previous colonies have had their economy, politics and beliefs fundamentally shaped by colonial powers. One example of this is the case of Haiti and The Dominican Republic. These two nations share the island Hispaniola but their standard of living is vastly different. Haiti is a poor and struggling country, whilst The Dominican Republic is relatively stable and prosperous. The difference is mainly due to how the countries were treated differently by those that colonised them. Haiti was colonised by the French who exploited land and people, whilst Spain who colonised the dominicans intermarried with the population.The traces of imperialism today can be seen by Haiti’s struggle to develop and the Dominicans believing themselves to be racially superior to Haitians as they believe their heritage to be more european. Blackness is by many Dominicans "widely viewed as a negative attribute” . These notions reflect the idea that people can be divided into different categories based on e.g. racial characteristics and then ranked accordingly. This creation of a racial hierarchy has strong roots in Imperialism and the belief that some are more superior. Thus, in the case of Haiti and the Dominican Republic Imperialism has not only left traces but complex problems that remain unsolved. Sunnivaminsaas (discuss • contribs) 21:51, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

Geopolitics looks at how political relationships are influenced by geographical factors. Key to geopolitics is the concept of the geopolitical imagination, which is the way in which countries perceive their own and others’ place in the world, influencing how we interact with people and places on a global scale. Agnew explains that the foundations of the geopolitical imagination lie in European imperialism of the early 16th century with exploration in the Americas and Asia through the construction of maps from a Eurocentric perspective. Europeans viewed themselves as the centre of ‘civilisation’ and the world order leading them to order civilisations they came into contact with in a hierarchy of social and geopolitical significance. This hierarchy of civilisations is still present in modern society; evident in the division between the developed and the developing, the west and the east. The geopolitical imagination is still very much centred around European/Western values and perspectives of the world - demonstrating how there are still traces of imperialism in modern society. Amberk23 (discuss • contribs) 22:10, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

Imperialism is also still present in modern society in the form of academic imperialism - the domination of one discipline over another in a competition for superiority. This looks at imperialism as a concept in a slightly different way to the previous two examples, focussing more on ideological rather than territorial expansion. In his article, Stillman explores the issues that academic imperialism creates in interdisciplinary research, as academics dedicated to one discipline are less open to others’ theories as they challenge their way of looking at the world (which they believe to be correct). However, Lazear takes a slightly different approach to academic imperialism, looking specifically at economic imperialism. He suggests that, ineconomics, the expansion of the discipline to explain things in other areas of social sciences has encouraged interdisciplinary study within economics (viewing imperialism as a positive attribute of the subject). The imperialism of economics as a discipline shows how the ideology is still present in modern society in more ways than one - in the lasting impacts of colonial imperialism of the past and in the study of academic disciplines. Amberk23 (discuss • contribs) 22:10, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

The examples of geopolitical imagination, colonialism in Haiti and The Dominican Republic, and academic disciplines highlight how traces of imperialism is still present in modern society. These examples illustrate how the categorisation of aspects such as people, disciplines and geopolitical imagination are organised in hierarchies in which one thing is considered superior to another. These constructed hierarchies influence how we interact with other people and the world around us. Thus, traces of imperialism are evident in most aspects of life. Sunnivaminsaas (discuss • contribs) 22:13, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

How does imperialist ideology establish itself through museums?
Imperialism has traditionally created a subconscious division in people's minds between different cultures, based on race, religion or gender (Willinsky, 1998 p. 27). It is this division that maintains the strength of imperialist ideologies within a society, museums being one such tool to help further impose these divisions on people. As James Clifford claims, the rise of museums in the nineteenth-century 'was part of a general attempt to purvey and organise "culture" from the top down' (1997 p.214). For example, The Great Exhibition, a Victorian international exhibition of culture and industry was used to display the technological, political, and intellectual project of Western imperialist powers and, in doing so ' insisted on the perfectibility of all peoples (under European guidance)' (Buchli, 2002 p.6). The culture chosen to display to the world, was one of progress and innovation, as opposed to any parts of British culture which might tarnish Britain's reputation. This shows how institutions were utilised to assert the superiority of the Western, European or even 'white' culture, over other cultures which imperialists desired control over. The superiority of Western culture that was displayed, is one way in which divisions were created in people's minds between the superior intellect of West versus East, or civilised peoples versus savages. This suggests museums were a key tool in creating an acceptance of imperialism within society, by contributing to the divisions in peoples' minds that allowed this. Olliedixon148 (discuss • contribs) 16:31, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

The height of imperialism was inextricably linked to the Age of Enlightenment, the dominant philosophical and intellectual movement of 18th century Europe (Foley, 2000). During this period, systems of measurement and classification based on 'scientific' principles became increasingly important in human understanding of the world. This led to the formation of categories delineating differences between groups of people. At the same time, increasing contact with colonized populations impacted the establishment of categories of race, which became a primary classifier of difference.

Institutions such as museums developed in parallel with European imperialist expansion. As empires acquired new territories, they took away objects from those territories and placed them in museums. Such collections of objects were perceived as exotic, and they exemplified places or populations unknown to Europeans (Foley, 2000). Museums were historically used by imperialist regimes as a means of propaganda that aimed to classify society into certain divisions that would fit with the beliefs and customs of the regime. Thus they had the effect of dividing the world into hierarchical categories based on racial and cultural backgrounds. Teobogatu (discuss • contribs) 16:18, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

The Macau Museum of Art

An example of imperialism in modern museums is the Macau Museum of Art whose exhibitions undergo political appropriation that fit the messages supported by the The Communist Party of China (CPC), thus supporting the argument that imperialism is present in museums under the form of government dominance. The museum’s exhibitions and collections that focus on traditional Chinese pieces clearly aim to establish a Chinese cultural identity in regards to Macau and thus put forward nationalistic beliefs. In the past the museum exhibited pieces regarding the presence of Portuguese colonialism in Macau, which is currently excluded from the museum’s exhibition timeline in order to overlook its existence, thus proving the political appropriation present in Chinese museums. Teobogatu (discuss • contribs) 16:52, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

In addition to producing a hierarchy of art and objects through classification and curation, the strategic manipulation of a museum's architecture played an important role in maintaining imperialist ideologies. Svasek cites the construction of vast, imposing exhibition spaces in 1870s Britain as salient in reinforcing a successful, economically as well as militarily efficient, vision of the Empire. Within this space the displayed casts of ancient Indian monuments referenced their own production and transportation, which in turn demonstrated a 'powerful British superiority'. (Svasek, 2007) Tmlweigel (discuss • contribs) 17:29, 30 October 2018 (UTC)