Essay on How Did Social Darwinism Contribute to Imperialism

Nationalism is an intense form of patriotism or loyalty to one’s country. Nationalists exaggerate the value or importance of their country, placing its interests above those of other countries. The ideology of nationalism is strongly connected to the revolutionary turmoil that began in France at the end of the 18th century and thereafter spread across Europe. The end of Bourbon rule in France offered a glimpse of a political order in which sovereignty was not concentrated in a single monarch, but instead resided at a popular level, with the people: the “nation.” The radical challenge of the French Revolution to the absolutist order throughout Europe provoked a response, a “counter-revolution”, in which various international coalitions attempted to halt the revolution’s progress. In these conflicts at the beginning of the 19th century, the counter-revolution was eventually triumphant, and absolutist rule was re-asserted and confirmed at the Congress of Vienna in 1815.

The emergence of Germany, in particular, dramatically altered the balance of power in Europe and changed the nature of international relations in the last quarter of the 19th century. The unification of Italy, however, came first in 1859-1860, following important military victories for Italian nationalist forces (in alliance with imperial France) over the Habsburgs at Magenta and Solferino. It marked the culmination of the Italian “Risorgimento” of the second half of the 19th century, a nationalist awakening with political, social, and cultural dimensions. The Risorgimento had two main tributaries in the political sphere: the liberal, political vision of Camillo di Cavour (1810-1861), Prime Minister of Piedmont-Sardinia (the Kingdom of Sardinia), who hoped that the economically and socially disparate Italian territories would coalesce under the liberal tutelage of Piedmont; and the popular, romantic, and revolutionary vision of Giuseppe Mazzini (1805-1872), founder of the secret society “Young Italy”, a group that hoped to galvanize the Italian masses through revolutionary action. Whereas Cavour believed that Piedmont, with its liberal politics and its constitutional monarchy, should serve as the nucleus of the new unitary Italy, enlarging its political system and institutions to cover the entire country, Mazzini saw such political traditions as too sterile to ignite the passions of the masses. The other great national unification of the second half of the 19th century, that of Germany, took place under very different circumstances. Whereas Italy was unified largely through the efforts of the constitutional monarchy of Piedmont-Sardinia, and thus came to adopt the liberal traditions of that state at a national level, the German principalities came together by the force of the largest pre-1871 German state, Prussia, and with the political, diplomatic, and military efforts of the Prussian Prime Minister Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898), Prime Minister from 1862.

Prussia was a far more conservative state than Piedmont and a far more conservative state than many of the remaining German principalities. The sources of political power in Prussia were almost uniformly conservative in outlook: the ruling Hohenzollern dynasty was supported by the ambitious and powerful “Junker” class, a group of large landowners vehemently opposed to liberal politics within their state. This class was well represented in the officer corps of the Prussian army. Bismarck’s goal of national unification was not shared by all Junkers, many of whom remained skeptical about the subversion of Prussia within Germany. The arrival of a powerful industrial state hailed a new balance of power in European international relations: a new force with which the Great Powers would have to reckon. II. Imperialism Imperialism is a system where a powerful nation controls and exploits one or more colonies. In most cases, the imperial nation, euphemistically referred to as the ‘mother country’, establishes control over its colonies by coercion – for example, through infiltration and annexation, political pressure, war, and military conquest. European expansion started in the early modern period, but most historians agree that at the end of the 19th century, new forms of imperialism appeared. Between the early 1880s and 1914, the map of the world was redrawn, especially in Africa. With the founding of Germany and Italy, two rather aggressive and aspiring new powers appeared on the scene. After the turn of the century, two non-European states – Japan and the United States – also became imperial powers.

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The enormous progress in communications (railways, trans-oceanic telegraph lines, steamships), the Second Industrial Revolution (steel, electricity, energy, chemistry), and the technical progress in weapon technologies (modern artillery, Maxim-guns or machine guns) had enabled Europeans and North Americans to occupy and control territories and states which were either unknown (the African interior) or even perceived to be culturally superior (like China) some decades before the First World War. Except for the Russians, ruling liberal and conservative elites were increasingly influenced by vague forms of Social Darwinism. Many statesmen before 1914 were convinced that the concept of the struggle for existence was also valid in foreign policy. Empires and nation-states were seen as entities that could rise and fall. According to the principle of Social Darwinism, only the strongest states would survive. Colonial expansion was therefore viewed as a precondition for gaining access to necessary resources. This imperialist mood was directly influenced by the idea of the “survival of the fittest”.

Contemporary Social Darwinism was explained in a nutshell by the conservative British Prime Minister Lord Robert A. Salisbury (1830-1903) in a famous speech in 1898: “You can roughly divide the nations of the world between the living and the dying.” In his famous inaugural lecture in Freiburg, the German sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920) said that the founding of the German Empire in 1871 would have been only a prank if it had not led to further colonial expansion and German participation in world politics. This belief in the survival of the fittest in the field of international relations was not necessarily racist, since according to this view the struggle for existence was valid for the competition among the “white” European nations as well. However, the concept often had racist overtones, especially if non-white or non-European civilizations were competing with the European imperial powers. This fact might explain the popularity of the concept: imperialists and nationalists from rather different political camps could agree on the need for expansion. In most of the imperial powers (Britain, France, Germany, and Italy), elites with different backgrounds were convinced that only expanding countries with colonies or informal spheres of influence would be able to survive in the future. It was taken for granted that hierarchies of civilizations existed, with the industrialized European countries and the United States at the top. The Social Darwinist cultures of imperialism were rooted in different national and social traditions. Pro-colonial movements used a variety of arguments to promote national expansion.

Colonies were regarded as necessary because they offered access to raw materials and could serve as outlets for domestic industries, arguments that were used especially in times of economic crises. Other motivations for expanding overseas empires were based on more traditional forms of nationalism: colonies were seen as objects of national prestige, as Leon Gambetta once said: “To remain a great nation or to become one, you must colonize”. (Joll, 1982) European expansion was often justified by the idea of the so-called “civilizing mission”. In some cases, this was purely cynical colonial propaganda, but this concept also served as a powerful ideological framework to proclaim not only European technical and military superiority but also cultural superiority. In France, the “mission civilisatrice” became the official colonial ideology of the Third Republic after 1871. In Germany, this term was not used, but instead, Germans spoke about “cultural work overseas”. In Anglo-Saxon countries the idea of the civilizing mission was extremely popular, epitomized in Rudyard Kipling’s (1865-1936) famous poem about the “white man’s burden” (Joll, 1982). It was the destiny of the white races to lift mankind and to bring the lights of civilization even to the darkest places of the world. Since the end of the Napoleonic Wars, disputes over colonial or imperial issues had not escalated to the point where peace in Europe was threatened. This was in large part because conflicts did not touch on interests that the European powers regarded as vital. Otto von Bismarck’s (1815-1898) maxim was to keep good diplomatic relations with Britain, as good Anglo-German relations were central to maintaining peace in Europe. Indeed, before the turn of the century, no imperialist crisis occurred that led to serious or lasting tensions between London and Berlin. By 1877 (Kissinger Diktat) Bismarck had formulated the basic ideas for his foreign policy. He believed it was necessary to promote and support the aggressive tendencies among the European Great Powers, but that these tendencies should be directed towards the periphery. Consequently, at the beginning of the 1880s German diplomats encouraged the French government to expand in Africa, hoping for conflicts between the French, Italians, and British. Several times Bismarck promoted Russian or British expansion, knowing that Germany’s neutrality would bring certain advantages as long as it did not act aggressively on the imperialist stage.

The Anglo-German naval race became one crucial factor on the twisted road to World War I. The German battle fleet was unable to defend German overseas interests, having been built only to stop Great Britain. The strategic idea behind this navy has been described by the term “risk fleet”, i.e. the fleet should be able to deter Britain from attacking Germany. The German admirals were aware of the fact that a full victory in a naval battle would be impossible, but as an Anglo-German war would be too risky for Britain, she would be forced to maintain good relations with Germany and to grant colonial compensations. The navy was thus built to put pressure on Great Britain. Rolf Hobson analyzed Germany’s main strategic mistake in detail, arguing that the battle fleet was built for a great naval battle, but was unable to force England to fight such a battle and was useless against a blockade. It also did not deter Britain, but instead set in motion an arms race that worsened Anglo-German relations. It also forced the British government to reduce colonial rivalries elsewhere, for example by settling differences with France. This in turn led to more cordial relations between the two countries and paved the way for the future Entente Cordiale. Conclusion There can be no doubt that nationalism was a potent political force in 19th-century Europe: a means of mass mobilization embraced by many millions of people; an ideology of transformation and revolution born in the French Revolution, intrinsically linked to the rapid modernization of the continent, whose spread threatened to alter the political, social, and cultural landscape of Europe. So, it is quite right that we recognize nationalism as a historical agent of great force and consequence. Moreover, imperialism was one of the crucial factors that led to World War I. From this perspective, World War I began as a European war but then had global and imperial consequences because of the nature of the states that took part in it.