in command of a territory and a capacity to mobilize its human and natural resources towards political, economic, and military ends” and the economic – “imperialism as a diffuse political-economic process in space and time in which command over and use of capital takes primacy” (Harvey 2003: 26). There are fundamental differences between the two (political interest in territory and capitalist interest in command, and use, of capital), but the “two logics intertwine in complex and sometimes contradictory ways” (Harvey 2003: 29). For example, to the American government the Vietnam War made sense from a political point of view, but it hardly made sense from an economic perspective and may even have adversely affected the American economy. More generally, Harvey wonders whether we are now seeing an increase in US political imperialism (e.g. Iraq and Afghanistan) while it is declining in importance from the perspective of economic imperialism (e.g. the rise in economic power of China, the EU, India, etc.).
To Harvey, the new imperialism is the uncomfortable mix of these two types under the broad heading of capitalist imperialism. In addition, what is “new” here, at least in reference to the classic imperialism of say the British, is that it is the US that is the paradigm for, and the leader in, the new imperialism. Harvey not only describes US imperialism, but is highly critical of it. He sees it as burdened by a series of internal and external contradictions and problems which make it unsustainable in the long term (and perhaps even in the short term).
Ghosh (2019) adds that another new element of the new, twenty-first century imperialism is less about direct control of land and more exercised through global institutions (see Chapter 6), international regulations, and multilateral agreements. Imperialism continues to be shaped by large capital controlling the economic territory of smaller capital, but it is now more subtle. It includes, for example, the privatization of services (e.g. water, health, education, sanitation) that were once administered by local and national governments, and are now controlled by large corporations in more powerful countries. Ghosh is less concerned with the US as a sole imperial power and instead argues that, with the exception of China, the relative power of geopolitical regions within global capitalist imperialism persists. In other words, the new imperialism largely maintains global inequalities and power relations, but through different means.
COLONIALISM
Colonialism is clearly related to imperialism, and is sometimes used interchangeably with it,3 but it has a more specific meaning (Steinmetz 2016). At the most extreme, imperialism involves a control without the creation of colonies (Harvey 2006). Colonialism generally involves settlers as well as much more formal mechanisms of control than imperialism (Ashcroft 2012a). Thus, colonialism often entails the colonizer creating an administrative apparatus to run its internal affairs, including its settlements, within the colonized country (or geographic area). Edward Said well describes the key differences between imperialism and colonialism, as well as their relationship to one another: “imperialism means the practice, the theory, and the attitudes of a dominating metropolitan centre ruling a distant territory; ‘colonialism’, which is almost always a consequence of imperialism, is the implanting of settlements on distant territory” (cited in Ashcroft et al. 1998: 45). While both imperialism and colonialism involve economic and political (as well as cultural) control, imperialism is (following Lenin) more defined by economic control (and exploitation), while colonialism is more about political control.
Although colonialism has an ancient history, it can be said to have had two great and more recent ages. These occurred during and after the Renaissance (fourteenth through seventeenth centuries) and are associated mainly with European societies. The first, beginning in the fifteenth century, was led by European powers, especially Spain and Portugal, and involved creating colonies in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. The second, or modern, phase lasted roughly between 1820 and the end of WW I. It involved other European powers (most importantly Great Britain, France, and Germany), as well as the US and Japan. For an example of this, see Figure 3.1 of colonial powers and their colonies.
Figure 3.1 Colonial empires and their colonies: 1920. Source: Data from World 1920 empires colonies territory. Retrieved from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:World_1920_empires_colonies_territory.png.
Some colonies (e.g. India as a colony of the British) persisted well into the twentieth century. However, during that period the momentum shifted in the direction of decolonization, or “the process of revealing and dismantling colonialist power in all its forms. This includes dismantling the hidden aspects of those institutional and cultural forces that had maintained the colonialist power and that remain even after political independence is achieved” (Ashcroft et al. 1998: 63). Decolonization movements began to succeed with greater frequency as the twentieth century unfolded. They were followed by decolonization and the achievement of political independence (Grimal 1978). Decolonization was particularly important after the close of WW II. That was followed by a period of neo-colonialism (Nkrumah 1965), where efforts at control over the former colonies, and other nation-states, grew much more indirect, subtle (e.g. through cultural and educational institutions), and focused on economic control and exploitation. Like the new imperialism noted above, the subtlety of neo-colonialism made it more insidious and harder to detect and therefore more difficult to resist and combat. Furthermore, neo-colonialism has been very uneven with African countries having been impacted to a greater degree than other regions (Young 2017).
POSTCOLONIALISM
Today, few, if any, colonies remain with the result that we can now think in terms of postcolonialism (Ashcroft 2012b; Mulcahey 2017).4 Clearly, this implies the era in once-colonized areas after the colonizing power has departed (although postcolonial thinking and work could already be well under way before the colonizing power departs). However, in recent years it has come to take on more specific meanings that relate to various developments that take place in a former colony after the colonizing power departs. For example, it relates to a critical issue in globalization studies today, that of national identity, especially the difficulty of gaining identity (as an Indian, for example) after a colonial power (the British in the case of India) has departed. The most notable work on this is Edward Said’s Orientalism (1979/1994: 93) which deals with this problem in the context of both overt and more subtle negative stereotypes developed in the West about those who live in the East. The issue raised is the difficulty experienced by “Orientals” in developing a positive identity in light of all of the negativity about them in the West which, of course, dominated the East in various ways (imperialism, colonialism, etc., until very recently). This negativity is especially clear in the history of Western literature5 (and film) about the East (and, as a result, this issue is of special importance in Edward Said’s field of literary criticism). In fact, it is argued that “postcolonial theory was a creation of literary study” (Ashcroft et al. 2006: 5).
Postcolonial theorists focus on literary texts for several reasons. For one thing, literary texts can be used as a way of exercising cultural control over the “natives” (Janmohamed 2006). For example, textbooks written by the colonial power will reflect its perspective including its right to be in power, its superiority, and the inferiority of the “natives.” For another, those texts can be subverted by those who oppose the colonial power and can be used to help bring down its regime. Finally, knowledge of the importance of texts can lead to new texts that can be used by newly freed colonies to portray themselves positively and to better understand, critique, and overcome the often continuing legacies of postcolonialism. These postcolonial texts can be an important base for the new society created in the aftermath of colonialism.
However, the focus on texts by postcolonial theorists has been criticized on several grounds. For one thing, it
