Imperialism, Post-Imperialism and Neo-Imperialism

Abstract

A conspicuous feature of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was the way in which several of the Western European countries such as France, Britain, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium took control of large parts of the world. Thus, at its peak, the British Empire alone consisted of more than a fifth of the world’s land surface. Some states such as France and Britain had had imperial ventures before, though Germany, as effectively a new state, was a newcomer. However, the burst in the nineteenth century was remarkable. There is little that remains today of formal empire in the sense of territory directly ruled by a foreign power. However, there are those who hold that empires exist in reality as much as before but that now the imperial control is more insidious and circumspect. Even if this is not so, recent imperial history has left such a mark on the present world that an awareness of it is necessary in order to understand present structures.