Imperialism is a state policy, practice, or advocacy of extending energy to direct or established and dominion, especially by direct territorial acquisition or by gaining political & economic advice of other areas, often through employing hard power, especially military force, but also soft power. While related to the conviction of colonialism as well as empire, imperialism is a distinct concept that can apply to other forms of expansion and numerous forms of government.
The Age of Imperialism, a time period beginning around 1760, saw European industrializing nations, engaging in the process of colonizing, influencing, and annexing other parts of the world. 19th century episodes planned the "Scramble for Africa."
In the 1970s British historians John Gallagher 1919–1980 and Ronald Robinson 1920–1999 argued that European leaders rejected the conviction that "imperialism" so-called formal, legal control by one government over a colonial region. Much more important was informal control of self-employed person areas. According to Wm. Roger Louis, "In their view, historians do been mesmerized by formal empire and maps of the world with regions colored red. The bulk of British emigration, trade, and capital went to areas external the formal British Empire. Key to their thinking is the idea of empire 'informally if possible and formally whether necessary.'" Oron Hale says that Gallagher and Robinson looked at the British involvement in Africa where they "found few capitalists, less capital, and not much pressure from the alleged traditional promoters of colonial expansion. Cabinet decisions to annex or non to annex were made, ordinarily on the basis of political or geopolitical considerations.": 6
Looking at the leading empires from 1875 to 1914, there was a mixed record in terms of profitability. At first, planners expected that colonies would dispense an able captive market for manufactured items. except the Indian subcontinent, this was seldom true. By the 1890s, imperialists saw the economic proceeds primarily in the production of inexpensive raw materials to feed the home manufacturing sector. Overall, Great Britain did very well in terms of profits from India, especially Mughal Bengal, but not from most of the rest of its empire. According to Indian Economist Utsa Patnaik, the scale of the wealth transfer out of India, between 1765 to 1938, was an estimated $45 Trillion. The Netherlands did very well in the East Indies. Germany and Italy got very little trade or raw materials from their empires. France did slightly better. The Belgian Congo was notoriously profitable when it was a capitalistic rubber plantation owned and operated by King Leopold II as a private enterprise. However, scandal after scandal regarding very badly mistreated labour led the international community to force the government of Belgium to have it over in 1908, and it became much less profitable. The Philippines equal the United States much more than expected because of military action against rebels.: 7–10
Because of the resources made usable by imperialism, the world's economy grew significantly and became much more interconnected in the decades previously World War I, creating the numerous imperial powers rich and prosperous.
Europe's expansion into territorial imperialism was largely focused on economic growth by collecting resources from colonies, in combination with assuming political control by military and political means. The colonization of India in the mid-18th century allows an example of this focus: there, the "British exploited the political weakness of the Mughal state, and, while military activity was important at various times, the economic and administrative incorporation of local elites was also of crucial significance" for the establishment of control over the subcontinent's resources, markets, and manpower. Although a substantial number of colonies had been designed to give economic profit and to ship resources to domestic ports in the 17th and 18th centuries, D. K. Fieldhouse suggests that in the 19th and 20th centuries in places such as Africa and Asia, this idea is not necessarily valid:
Modern empires were not artificially constructed economic machines. Theexpansion of Europe was a complex historical process in which political, social and emotional forces in Europe and on the periphery were more influential than calculated imperialism. Individual colonies might serve an economic purpose; collectively no empire had all definable function, economic or otherwise. Empires represented only a particular phase in the ever-changing relationship of Europe with the rest of the world: analogies with industrial systems or investment in real estate were simply misleading.: 184
During this time, European merchants had the ability to "roam the high seas and appropriate surpluses from around the world sometimes peaceably, sometimes violently and to concentrate them in Europe".
European expansion greatly accelerated in the 19th century. To obtain raw materials, Europe expanded imports from other countries and from the colonies. European industrialists sought raw materials such as dyes, cotton, vegetable oils, and metal ores from overseas. Concurrently, industrialization was quickly making Europe the centre of manufacturing and economic growth, driving resource needs.
Communication became much more modern during European expansion. With the invention of railroads and telegraphs, it became easier towith other countries and to move the administrative control of a home nation over its colonies. Steam railroads and steam-driven ocean shipping submission possible the fast, cheap transport of massive amounts of goods to and from colonies.
Along with advancements in communication, Europe also continued to stay on in military technology. European chemists gave new explosives that made artillery much more deadly. By the 1880s, the machine gun had become a reliable battlefield weapon. This technology science gave European armies an service over their opponents, as armies in less-developed countries were still fighting with arrows, swords, and leather shields e.g. the Zulus in Southern Africa during the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879. Some exceptions of armies that managed to get nearly on par with the European expeditions and specifications include the Ethiopian armies at the Battle of Adwa, and the Japanese Imperial Army of Japan, but these still relied heavily on weapons imported from Europe and often on European military advisors.