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Locating the Age of Imperialism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2010

Thomas August
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Extract

The publication of Africa and the Victorians in 1961 challenged the prevaling orthodoxy regarding the European scramble for territory during the last decades of the nineteenth century. In it, Ronald Robinson and John Gallagher argued that what had been traditionally viewed as qualitatively new was merely a difference ol degree and not kind. Subsequent studies, especially the work of David Fieldhouse, effectively laid to rest the assumption that new developments in Europe were the cause of the rush for colonies after 1880. And yet historians generally have been reluctant to abandon the ‘age of imperialism’ as an appropriate epithet for late-Victorian Europe. The sheer amount of territory conquered by Europeans in so short a span ol time seemingly compels teachers ol modern history survey courses to view the period 1880–1914 from a traditional perspective and with resort to established nomenclature. Does the historical rubric, ‘age of imperialism’, still have pedagogic value? The answer is a qualified affirmative, provided that its chronological moorings are anchored elsewhere.

Information

Type
Modern imperialism and decolonisation
Information
Itinerario , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , July 1986, pp. 85 - 98
Copyright
Copyright © Research Institute for History, Leiden University 1986

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References

Notes

1 Barratt-Brown, Michael, After Imperialism (London 1963) 111. Between 1870 and 1913 the proportionate share of the empire as placements for capital export hovered between 40% and 50% of the total volume.Google Scholar

2 Sauvy, Alfred, Histoire économique de la France entre les deux guerres, vol. 2 (Paris 1967) 453.cf. alsoGoogle ScholarThobie, Jacques, La France impériale, 1880–1914 (Paris 1982) 64Google Scholar.

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