User:Manuela.Irarraz/sandbox/Approaches to Knowledge/ Seminar Group 7/ Imperialism

The term imperialism refers to a system or a situation in which an entity of superior power exerts its influences over a submissive one. This phenomenon is usually associated in politics as a consequence of colonialism when the colonisers take over the indigenous population's economic, administrative, and cultural aspects. It is often associated with agressive and prepotent manners. Today imperialism is associated with a variety of fields, including academia, languages, and cultuaral tradition.

Introduction

Definition of Imperialism

Imperialism is a term widely used to describe the extension of power in a field, or sovrasting influence of an entity over a less powerful one .

Most commonly, imperialism is used in reference to practices by powerful nations to extend influence over and acquire less powerful territories across the globe via means of direct conquest or other forms of subjugation. This extension of power frequently involves military force, political transition, and shift in socioeconomic systems. . Although the term is usually used in politics to describe the effects of colonisation or foreign policies from dictatorships, this concept can also be applied in other contexts. Some examples are: linguistic imperialism, epistemological imperialism, economic imperialism and cultural imperialism.

The term imperialism is commonly confused with colonialism. Both words are used to indicate a form of control over a territory. The difference lies in the etymology of the terms, although the uses of both changed over time. The term colonialism refers to a practice in which foreign governments establish settlements called colonies in order to control and influence a subjugated country. Imperialism is a broader term that refers to any direct or indirect economic and political influence of a culture or government on a foreign body; in other words, imperialism is the motivating ideology behind such domination. Therefore, colonialism can be understood as a form of imperialism in which significant land is settled and established.

Etymology

The term imperialism originates from the word "imperial" which refers to the possession of commanding quality and influence.

In ancient Latin, the term imperium was used to describe pertinence to the (Roman) empire, and is commonly found as a noun and translated as authority, command, or the state , as well as a verb that indicates the action of issuing orders and commands. Consequently, imperialism began to be used to indicate attributes of grandiosity. In the 14th Century Old French it was used to describe ideas of strength and power. . In English language, the term imperialism has not been commonly used until the 19th century, although the Elizabethans were referring to themselves as the British Empire. The extension of the use of this term increased with the size of the empire, and it was understood as a system of sovereignty over territories. The daily administration of the territories was left to the indigenous bodies that were paying tributes, but the sovereignty belonged to the empire.

Imperialism in other languages In Western European and American Languages the world imperialism has Latin roots referring to the European ideas of superiority and influence of a state. This is due to the spread of Latin language during the Roman Empire (eg. Dacia becoming Romania), as well as Hispanic languages spreading in southern America post Colonisation. Analysing the origin of the words translated as Imperialism in non-latin cultures, and aboriginal, pre-colonial languages can give us an idea of the perception and subjective definition of Imperialism and cultural influences in other populations.

Urdu

The correct meaning of Imperialism in Urdu is برطانیہ کی توسیع, written in roman as Bartania Ki Tosee. The literal translation of this world is "Britain's Annexation". Saltanat Ki Policy can also be used, and it translates as "the policy of the Sultan". The use of the world imperialism therefore, appears to be dependant on a culture's history. There are also several similar words to Imperialism in the Urdu dictionary, which are Development, Progress and Economic Expansion.

Ancient Greek

In ancient Greek there appears to be no direct translation of the world imperialism, nor empire. Basileos, which translates as Kingdom, is usually used as an alternative. In some dictionaries, however, empire is translated as "arche", which translates as beginning.

History

Age of Old Imperialism (1400-1800)

Imperialism began in the early fifteen century with the Age of Discovery, a period In which various European powers engaged in overseas exploration and widespread land acquisition. Throughout sailing expeditions to find trading routes to China, many European nations landed in coastal cities in Africa, India, the East Indies, and the Americas and settled territories.

The first major player in this age was the Portuguese Empire, which solidified as a dominant power in Europe in the early 1400s and sought to expand its power and influence across the globe. Portuguese explorers initially aimed to expand trade routes to the spice markets in the East, but ended up landing in and settling many African coastal cities. Explorers first landed in Northern Africa and seized the coastal city of Ceuta in 1415. Through the rest of the century, the Portuguese continued to explore further South and settled many coastal cities along West Africa. Altogether, these expeditions allowed Portugal to establish colonies, a slave trade, and various trading ports in Africa.

Imperialism in Latin America

Following Portugal's example, Spain was inspired to explore trade routes in the westward direction and consequently settled much land in South and Central America through a series of expeditions. There was also a purported religious element to the Spanish expeditions, justifying their conquests by claiming it was to spread the word of God and civilise native savages. The Treaty of Tordesillas, signed in 1494, dictated that the Portuguese could expand their empire to the region of modern-day Brazil, where they used the land for sugar production, and gave Spain the rest of South America.

The first group of expeditions were led by Christopher Columbus and landed in the Caribbean in 1492, which were later followed by four further expeditions to settle other Caribbean islands. Spain also acquired much of Mexico, starting with the conquer of the Aztec Empire by a group of Spaniards led by Hernan Cortes in 1519. This conquest then served as the basis for further expansion into South America throughout the century

Another sizeable Spaniard conquest in the Americas occurred in Peru in 1532. Inspired by Cortes' success over the Mayans and the vast riches procured, a group of Spaniards, led by Francisco Pizarro, fought and defeated the Inca Empire. The Incas were the largest reigning empire in Latin America at the time, stretching from Southern Colombia to Northern Chile. The Spanish conquest of the Incas was incredibly lucrative, as at one point they took a whole room full of gold and two more of silver for the ransom of an Inca Emperor, who they refused to release and actually hung for behaviours incongruent to Catholic values.

Despite initially arriving with only 180 soldiers, Pizarro and his men were able to defeat an Incan army of an estimated 100,000 due to metal armoury, superior weaponry and cavalry. Bizarrely, however, a key factor behind this victory came 6 years before the conquest actually started. In 1926, during Pizarro's first expedition, the Spaniards unwittingly introduced smallpox into the Inca Empire, which spread aggressively due to a lack of immunity and even killed the Inca Emperor. This sparked a civil-war between his two children, which was barely resolved by the time Pizarro returned, greatly weakening the Empire.

The Incas then staged a rebellion in the mountainous region of Vilcabamba before eventually being defeated in 1572 to complete the Spanish conquest.

Spain settled Paraguay in 1537 and explored land in New Granada from 1537 to 1543. Ultimately, Spain governed these new territories in the Americas by setting up the Viceroyalty of New Spain, the Viceroyalty of Peru, the Viceroyalty of New Granada, and the Viceroyalty of Rio de la Plata.

While Spain remained dominant for much of the 1500s, they were eventually overtaken in power by other Western European powers. In 1588, King Phillip II of Spain lost the Armada to Queen Elizabeth I of England, which set the stage for the downfall of Spain and its expansionism. The 1600s saw the rise of growing European powers such as Great Britain, the Netherlands, and France.

During European imperialism in South America came the emergence of 'race' as a biological construct used to distinguish between superior colonisers and inferior, colonised populations. This was used as racial discrimination of occupational opportunities in newly-formed societies. Whilst previously there had been a plethora of indigenous, Latin American groups, including the Aztecs, Mayas, Quechuas, Aymaras, Incas and Chibchas, each with their own unique cultures, they were homogenised into a single racial label: 'Indians'. These 'Indians' were unable, for example, to serve in the colonial administration, which was exclusively available to Spanish noblemen, nor were they able to work as independent merchants or artisans. 'Negroes' were condemned to a life of slavery; 'whiteness' was associated with high salary and prestigious social positions . Much of this was justified by missionaries, who assumed European culture as being superior, thus justifying colonial subjugation. They saw it as their incumbent duty to 'civilise' these 'Indians' and teach them the law of God, whilst simultaneously making indigenous populations feel shame at their primitive cultural past.

Due to this hierarchical categorisation of races and their control of the Atlantic Basin, Western Europe were able to establish a monopoly of American commerce. These capitalistic powers were therefore able to expand their trading markets for economic advances.

Europeans were also extremely brutal in their treatment of natives. During their South American tenure, it is estimated they killed a total of three-million from war, slavery and overworking; it is known that natives were used by Europeans to test the sharpness of their blades and that fugitives would be hunted down by dogs and murdered.

To preserve the purity of Latin American Christianity, those who wanted to travel to there had to prove their faith at the House of Trade in Seville. It is this strict adherence to Christianity which is thought to have enabled European imperialism to persist for so long.

Inspired by the French and American revolutions in the late 18th century, the majority of Latin American countries had regained their independence by 1825; however, their economies were dependent on foreign financial investment from industrialised European countries, particularly France and the UK, enabling them to maintain a certain level of economic control. Latin American had to forge new cultural identities, however when doing so they failed to involve indigenous populations in the process, rather taking inspiration from French and other European Catholic models.

By 1800, Britain is the leading colonial power.

Imperialism in India

In the first half of the nineteenth century, the European world saw a move away from imperialism, largely due to the Napoleonic Wars and the growth of democratic governance, and the Industrial Revolution.

Age of New Imperialism

During the late nineteenth century, dominant Western European countries pursued aggressive policies overseas in what is now known as the age of New Imperialism.

Today's imperialist countries

A country is considered imperialist if it shows economical and political domination over other countries using its authority. Nowadays, imperialist countries include the global triad (United States, Japan and Western Europe), Canada and Australia. Most of these countries acquired their imperialist character by territorial acquisition. For instance European countries and the United States used colonization during the XIXth century and were able to dominate countries by stopping their social and economical development. On the other hand, Japan became an imperialist country after its Meiji Restoration. « The global triad » refers to the historical imperialist countries which dominated economically, politically and socially during the XXth century. In fact, the global triad owned 90% of the financial operations in the world.

These countries remain imperialist and have a powerful influence over the world, however other countries, such as China and Russia, are emerging and may become in a few years the next imperialist countries. According to certain communist groups, after the implosion of the URSS, Russia became an imperialist country. Similarly, the rapid increasing economic growth of China, lets opinion think that China will soon become the most powerful country. The list of the next plausible imperialist countries which have large potential are the BRICS, an acronym that designs: Brasil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

Academic Imperialism

The term academic Imperialism refers to the political, economic and cultural factors that lead to the underdevelopement of academic disciplines and research in third world and post-colonial countries.

The directly affected higher education institutions in the East (including the Universities of Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Japan, Malaysia, Nigeria, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Tanzania, Thailand, Turkey, and Uganda) discussed in a conference hosted in Penang, Malaysia in 2011, the threat represented by academic institutions in the West ignoring their education and research systems. Their argument was that the quality of their university was being misjudged by culturally biased ranking systems, that can ultimately downgrade the percieved potential of the research conducted by their institutions. They addressed the issue of their own traditional university systems to be threatened by effects of globalisation that tend to favour the adoption of the Western University system. This appeared to be expressed by the prevalence of theories and methods of research developed in Europe and the US in their own institutions, as well as subtle tendencies of exclusion from contributions in debates underway in most higher education circles.

Epistemic Imperialism

Another form of academic imperialism is Epistemic Imperialism, which refers to the application of ‘expert’ knowledge as interventions into global crises that include climate change, language endangerment, and extinctions and losses of genetic diversity"

Scientific Imperialism

The academic field that has been associated with this phenomenon the most is Science, which lead to the origination of the expression scientific imperialism by Dr. Ellis T. Powell. The term Scientific imperialism aims to technically describe the attitude of science towards knowledge, which accords scientific method as the ideal method and the means towards truth. Many science philosophers criticised this academic omnipresence and argued that the argumentatory limits of good scientific ideas should be acknowledged. Science philosophers like Dupre' have criticised the excessive extrapolation of scientific concepts into humanistic fields. He argued that

“as scientific methodologies move further away from their central areasof application their abstractions become ever grosser, and their relevance to the phenomena become ever more distant,” and also that “. . . alien intellectual

strategies may import inappropriate and even dangerous assumptions into the colonized domains.

The reasoning behind this opinion of science is that it envisions objectivity, reality and truth through a methodology that is not dependent on social and historical conditions. Rationality, universality, certainty, systematization and objectivity are all assumed to be imbedded in the scientific discipline.

It has been argued, however, that the epistemological imperialism of science needs to be regulated by philosophy. An example of when this went wrong is the series of medical experiments in Nazi Germany, in which human rights have been neglected in order to aquire knowledge. According to Dupre, epistemic collaboration between different scientific fields can be fruitful, but an imperialistic approach to enforce scientific methodologies can be inappropriate.

Another academic field that has been accused of academic imperialism is economics. It has been argued that it has attempted to use the economic methods to understand social phenomena in the fields of political science, behavioural science, sociology, geography, and law This has received mixed opinions from both social scientists, regardless of their opinion on the economic's scientific methods.

Linguistic Imperialism

Linguistic Imperialism describes the phenomenon by which a language becomes become predominant internationally, and used for international communications in politics, science etc. In the 21 century, the most prominent example is English language, which is today known as the global language, and the ultimate 'lingua franca', that is a common language that is adopted by speakers whose native languages are different .

The exportation of English language to other parts of the world started with the explorers and traders' expeditions to the Eastern Continent and America, as a consequence of mercantilisation and colonisation by the British. The first expedition to the Americas was guided in 1497 by John Cabot. On the 31st November 1600, a group of English merchants had received by Queen Elisabeth I the permission of monopolistic trade with India. this is the date associated with the first British assediation in India. The insediation of English as the lingua franca in the British Colonies was part of the Colonial policies. With time, English became the language used in Socio-Economic settings and in the tertiary sectors of the British colonies, whilst initially, colloquialism was still dominated by the colonies' indigenous languages. This was a consequence of the policy by which English was only introduced to the school curriculum of the Elite's education system.

Educational Imperialism

Slavoj Zizek once said: “The true victory (the true ‘negation of the negation’) occurs when the enemy talks your language.”

Globalisation: Another Form of Imperialism?