Rational Empires: Institutional Incentives and Imperial Expansion
218
Rational Empires: Institutional Incentives and Imperial Expansion
218Overview
The nineteenth century marked the high point of imperialism, when tsarist Russia expanded to the Pacific and the sun was said never to set on the British Empire. Imperialism remains a perennial issue in international relations today, and nowhere is this more evident than in the intensifying competition for global resources.
Leo J. Blanken explains imperialism through an analysis of the institutions of both the expanding state and its targets of conquest. While democratic states favoring free trade generally resort to imperialism only to preempt aggressive rivals—or when they have reason to believe another state’s political institutions will not hold up when making bargains—authoritarian states tend toward imperialism because they don’t stand to benefit from free trade. The result is three distinct strategies toward imperialism: actors fighting over territory, actors peaceably dividing territory among themselves, and actors refraining from seizing territory altogether. Blanken examines these dynamics through three case studies: the scramble for Africa, the unequal treaties imposed on Qing Dynasty China, and the evolution of Britain’s imperial policy in India. By separating out the different types of imperialism, Blanken provides insight into its sources, as well as the potential implications of increased competition in the current international arena.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780226056753 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Chicago Press |
| Publication date: | 03/19/2012 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 218 |
| File size: | 849 KB |
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Rational Empires
Institutional Incentives and Imperial ExpansionBy LEO J. BLANKEN
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
Copyright © 2012 The University of ChicagoAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-226-05673-9
Chapter One
The Enduring Puzzles of Formal ImperialismPeccavi. (I have sinned.)–Charles Napier, 1844
Introduction
At the time of this writing, United States military forces have been occupying Iraq and Afghanistan for nearly a decade. And for that time, these two occupations have dominated the popular media, political discourse, as well as academic debate around the nation and around the world. Were these occupations justified? Have the costs outweighed the benefits? Are they being conducted in an ethical manner? As the debate drags on, public support for these interventions has buckled (Montopoli 2010; Quinnipiac University 2010), and critics have smeared these two territorial occupations and their attendant policies with the charge of "imperialism": "We are not ... the first country to face the choice between republic and empire, nor the first to have our imperial dreams stretch our means to the breaking point and threaten our future. But ... [by choosing empire] we are choosing the suicide option" (Johnson 2010, 7; on the debate over the United States as an "empire," see Cox 2004 and the essays collected in Calhoun et al. 2006).
It is fascinating to contrast this situation to one from recent history. Just over a century ago, the international system was managed by a comparable hegemon, as Great Britain similarly strove to maintain its political and economic dominance around the globe. In sharp contrast to the two US occupations noted above, however, Britain fought at least 230 distinct colonial military campaigns around the world during Queen Victoria's reign (Farwell 1972, 364–71); this constituted a tremendous military effort, one which categorically dwarfs current US commitments and was conducted with far less impressive military resources. The sharpest contrast between these two examples, however, is that average Britons were comfortable with—even proud of—their empire, rather than exhausted and disillusioned.
The comparison of these two cases shows us that, in some fundamental way, things have changed. Why has most of human history been characterized by large formal empires, and why do such empires seem to have disappeared? Finnemore summarizes this shift:
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, powerful states understood their interests to be served best by creating empires and exercising direct political control over Asia, Africa, and Latin America. By the late twentieth century, strong states understood their interests to be best served by devolving political control to people who live in these areas and creating a world of independent sovereign states. These are two very distinct kinds of international systems. (2003, 19)
Many have noted this profound change but we still lack an adequate explanation. The most common response to these two questions comes in the form of two short answers that are largely treated as distinct from one another:
• Empires existed throughout most of history as a manifestation of bloody competition for wealth and power.
• Empires no longer exist because of changed norms, among which territorial conquest is no longer considered acceptable policy.
In this book, I seek to contribute to our understanding of these phenomena by linking these two research agendas together. To do so, I will build and test a model of imperial behavior that both seeks to explain past patterns of territorial expansion and, further, provides an intuitive explanation for the change in norms that has occurred over the past century.
This approach is novel in that it attempts to relate these two competing modes of analysis—rationalist-materialist and constructivist—that currently are pursued in isolation from one another. David Lake, for example, eschews norms; he argues that
analysts of social power ... tend to give great weight to the role of ideas and norms in shaping identity.... Nonetheless, I maintain that at its root authority rests on the largely material exchange of order for compliance and legitimacy. If the ambition is to understand hierarchy in the modern world, I do not believe that ideas and norms are a particularly promising avenue down which to travel. (2009, xi)
Neta Crawford, however, chooses to take the opposite path:
I give an account of the end of colonialism that stresses factors other than profit, capabilities, and the rational calculation of costs and benefits. It is certain that those factors were important.... But what mattered more in the long run was ... normative beliefs about what was good and right to do to others.... The engine for this change was ethical argument, not force, or changing modes of production, or declining profitability. (2002, 4)
In contrast to both of these prominent scholars, I craft a model with both of these competing approaches in mind. First, I build a rationalist-materialist model of formal territorial expansion and test its empirical implications. Second, I assess the degree to which the model's equilibria can provide a basis around which norms may have coalesced in the post–World War II era, thereby assisting in our understanding of this dynamic change in system structure.
My argument focuses on the role that domestic political institutions play in regulating relations among actors in the international system. I do not focus on the formal or juridical power of institutions or arrangements, however, but rather on the informational aspect that domestic political arrangements may play in conditioning the beliefs of other actors, as well as the incentives that institutions create for leaders at home. In other words, how do these arrangements shape the expectations of outside observers? I argue that by focusing on the institutions of both the target territories and the rival powerful states we can better explain and predict broad patterns of territorial acquisition as well as the degree to which rivals will fight or cooperate over such acquisitions. Further, we can use this parsimonious model to then provide a reasonable basis for understanding changes in international norms in recent decades. Before introducing the argument, however, it is first useful to show the inability of general international relations theory to account for past patterns of imperial behavior. To illustrate this lacuna, I return to the case of the Victorian Empire.
The Curious Case of the Victorians
This chapter opens with the single-word epigraph: "Peccavi" (I have sinned). General Sir Charles Napier is reported to have sent this single-word pun as a dispatch to declare his conquest of the Sind, a region on the Indian subcontinent, in 1843. The (most likely apocryphal) tale of General Napier not only exemplifies the dry wit of Queen Victoria's soldiers but also the self-reflection of a liberal nation as it embarked on building the world's largest formal empire. The growth of the British Empire should fill us with questions as well. Why would the most economically developed state of the nineteenth century rely on the archaic tool of formal territorial acquisition in an era of industrialization, liberal trade, and plunging transportation costs? Displaying all the attributes of a burgeoning liberal democracy, and contrary to all existing theory on such attributes, it not only participated in late nineteenth century imperial expansion but also led the pack.
The more closely we probe Victorian England with existing theory, the more puzzling the choice for formal colonies becomes—given its political, economic, and social environment. Politically, England was becoming more democratic. The monadic strain of the democratic peace literature argues that democracy has a pacifying effect on states' foreign policy (Boehmer 2008). Rummel, for example, argues that "the more democratic a regime, the less its foreign violence" (1995, 460) and that democratic states should involve themselves in war only as "reactive and defensive violence against the initiatives of nonlibertarian states" (1995, 458). This logic would imply a decrease in aggressive foreign policy as a state like Britain became more democratic; it certainly would not accord with the stark record of Britain seeking out and conquering lands and peoples far from its shores.
Economically, the story of Britain's empire becomes even more perplexing. The liberal theories of Smith and Ricardo had become dominant in British intellectual and policy discourse by the nineteenth century (Platt 1973–74; Klug 2001; Cain 1999, 38–42; MacDonagh 1962). The relation between the principles of economic liberalism and the policy of formal imperialism is summarized as follows:
The new liberal economic doctrine taught that colonies served no purpose. The old monopolistic practices were anathema to the new disciples of free trade. If colonies, according to the economic gospel of the day, had to be open to the services and goods of all countries, then they were nothing but a burden to the home country, which after all had to pick up the bill for administration and defense without receiving very much in return. (Wesseling 1996, 77)
Therefore, peaceful exchange was coming to be seen as the optimal and natural form of interaction by Britons—both among and within states—replacing centuries of predatory conflict associated with classic mercantilism (Magnusson 1994). Why would Britain, the first industrialized nation, confront the lesser-developed regions of the world with sword in hand? Would trade not make better sense—particularly in this scenario of near perfect complementarity? Even if her initial lead against emerging industrial rivals such as the United States and Germany was slipping, by what logic could a reversion to formal empire make sense?
Britain's own experience with overseas empire argued against new colonial acquisitions. After losing a bitter and expensive war of secession with their North American colonies, the British found that it was more profitable to trade with the newly independent American nation than it had been to formally possess it (Marshall 1998a, 1998b; Parry 1971/2000, 276–77). This sentiment was colorfully expressed by the famed British admiral Sir Jackie Fisher, who exclaimed "it was a d____d fine old hen that hatched the American Eagle [and] George Washington was one of the greatest Englishmen, because he made England prosperous, by teaching us how to manage our colonies!" (quoted in Bacon 1929, 125). Therefore, the military defeat of 1777 would seem to fit the criteria as a "formative event" in Britain's imperial policy. Learning models of international relations argue that such sharp experiences, particularly decisive military defeats, should systematically shape policy by steering decision makers away from repetition of past failures (Reiter 1996). According to this logic, British leaders should have been dissuaded from choosing the path of formal imperialism again in the nineteenth century.
Socially, colonies were popularly seen not only as a millstone around the neck of England's treasury by the mid-nineteenth century but also as a morally abhorrent anachronism (Schuyler 1921 and 1922; Bodelsen 1925). In this vein, religious and ethical weight was piled on top of the political, strategic, and economic arguments outlined above. In fact, the conventional view that the British people wanted to see a return to the trappings of empire is misplaced to the extent that the English "up to 1870, with the exception of one very small group of thinkers, were not only opposed to any extension of the empire, but were also strongly in favor of emancipating the colonies" (Ram 1926, 106).
Despite all of these factors militating against a British push to acquire new overseas territories, we know that a rapid change was to occur in British policy in the second half of the nineteenth century: "within a generation, such [anti-imperialist] views were seldom voiced, and both the necessity and the practicability of a strong, integrated, and durable imperial polity was proclaimed loudly across the political spectrum" (Bell 2007, 31). This is important to note; British expansion in the second half of the nineteenth century was not the product of inertia but rather bears the markings of a distinct and calculated turn in policy. The Victorian British Empire, then, remains a compelling puzzle. Exhibiting all the attributes of an enlightened, liberal democracy that had learned harsh lessons regarding formal empire, it not only became involved in the wave of "new imperialism" but also was the most prolific participant. How might one understand or have predicted this?
Three Patterns of Imperial Behavior
Stepping back from the specific case of the Victorian Empire, we can discern general patterns of imperial behavior in the international system over the centuries that raise important theoretical questions. First, we can date the modern era of intercontinental territorial acquisition as beginning with the establishment of the Portuguese North African colony at Ceuta in 1415 (Abernathy 2000, 3, 45–63). This occurred when innovations in charts, naval instruments, ship design, and firearms made the projection of power for a small number of nascent European states feasible in a manner that had been hitherto impossible (Parry 1961; Cipolla 1965; Raudzens 1999). Since that time, a growing club of states have had the capability to project colonizing force far outside of their borders. The patterns of their resultant imperial and commercial behavior have followed three general trends that are not readily explained in the existing literature. These three patterns in chronological order might be labeled pugnacious imperialism, courteous imperialism, and finally refraining from imperialism.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Rational Empires by LEO J. BLANKEN Copyright © 2012 by The University of Chicago. Excerpted by permission of THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
1. The Enduring Puzzles of Formal Imperialism
2. An Institutional Theory of Formal Imperialism
3. The Curiously Courteous Scramble: The Case of Tropical Africa
4. Failing to Carve the Dragon: The Case of Qing Dynasty China
5. From Plunder to Public Goods: The Case of British India
6. Conclusions: The Past and Future of Rational Empires
Appendix: An Institutional Model of Imperialism
Notes
Works Cited
Index