Empire without Sovereignty

This chapter investigates the political economy of French informal imperialism, revealing a little-known facet of the intellectual origins of globalization, and confirming that the pursuit of empire and the emergence of global consciousness were inextricably linked. It highlights lesser known thinkers, which helps recover what the prevailing attitudes of the informed liberal-leaning public towards empire actually were. After 1815, once the word “liberal” entered the political lexicon, Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand, the Abbé Dominique de Pradt, and Michel Chevalier described themselves as liberals — with some justification, since they admired Britain's balanced constitution and were stalwart advocates of free trade. Recovering their views on empire therefore helps to suggest that French liberals did not become imperialistic in the mid-nineteenth century, but instead consistently harboured imperial ambitions, even if, for pragmatic reasons, they tended to shun territorial expansion after 1815. Focusing on these neglected but influential figures also helps correct the common perception of France as having withdrawn from the international stage after the fall of Napoleon.

American Sociology and Colonialism, 1890s–1960s

American sociologists nowadays tend to see their discipline as being focused mainly on domestic social problems. This overlooks US sociologists’ widespread engagement in questions of colonialism and empire during the first eight decades of the discipline’s existence. The story of American sociologists’ involvement in US empire has been discussed for the first decades of the discipline, but little is known about the key period 1945–75, which saw the rapid expansion of universities, foundations, and social science disciplines such as sociology. This chapter traces the main lines of sociological involvement in colonialism, formal empire, and informal imperialism, offering a complete picture of American sociological involvement in empire through a wide range of universities, foundations, organizations, and institutes.

Railroads, Germs, and Gold

This chapter covers the introduction of more assertive policies to govern the international border at the turn of the twentieth century that were replacing long-pursued laissez-faire practices. It examines the framing of local disputes over territorial boundaries in national terms as well as the reorganization of customs and sanitary borders as part of a general evolution toward a territorial boundary. In particular, the chapter takes a look at how the introduction of railroads not only reorganized space but also cross-border relations and national development. After the construction of the Great Siberian Railroad had begun in 1891, Russia made use of railroad diplomacy to wield imperial influence in China's Northeast—at a time when a number of powers began to compete fiercely over influence in Northeast Asia. Russia's vehicle in this struggle for supremacy, the Chinese Eastern Railroad, was not simply a joint Sino-Russian railroad company that happened to operate on Chinese soil, but a colonial railroad, which in its Russian (and later Soviet) comanagement represented a typical expression of informal imperialism.

Conclusion

This book has demonstrated the insights that can be found in the analysis of British-Chilean relations in the independence period, which in the case of Chile have been mostly studied relating to the second half of the nineteenth century. The fact that British investments and flows of peoples and goods became increasingly important after 1850, has led scholars like John Mayo to maintain that ‘informal imperialism’ is the appropriate term to describe the ‘anatomy’ of such a relationship. However, such a view is restrictive, allowing an examination of the traditional ambits by which informal empire has been regarded as an analytical tool when approaching the relations between Britain and Latin America. This is to say, the economic and diplomatic means that helped to preserve the subordinate condition of the former Spanish colonies to the interests of the British Empire. In recent years, approaches to the problematic nature of informal imperialism have made it clear that these elements are not enough, that they cannot be the only aspects imbricated in this problem. The cultural dimension must also form part of the analysis of a relationship that, at first glance, seemed to be determined by informal imperialism. This is particularly relevant in a period like the independence era, in which the economic and diplomatic means used by Great Britain to exert its dominion were not as evident as in subsequent years. Indeed, as I showed in the ...