Imperial Nations

10 Pages 2497 Words

In The Decades Prior To 1914, The Culture Of The European Great Powers Was Profoundly Marked By Their Self-image As “imperial” Nations, With All That Implied. Discuss
To address this question an understanding needs to be established of what is meant by imperialism prior to 1914. Then European events that had occurred will need to be clarified paying special attention to Britain and France. To illustrate the culture of Britain and France and how it related to their self-image as an imperial nation a case study on the events in Africa will be included.

Imperialism changed towards the latter part of the 19th Century towards what is now referred to as New Imperialism. New Imperialism has no set definition but has many views such as the Marxist capitalist view taken by Luxemburg and Lenin for example that capital was the seed to imperialism. Woolf however believes that there was a more nationalistic view towards new imperialism. New imperialism is believed to be the internal development of society and relations with other countries, this is a simplistic form of the term however. The more accurate description is a system in which countries gather acquisition or maintenance of territories and claim sovereignty over that territory and the people inside the boundaries . This is often to facilitate economic domination over their resources, labour and goods markets. This definition therefore supports the Marxist idea of new imperialism being based on the culture of money and capitalism.

The tradition of empire is also important to the definition of new imperialism. This is because for an empire it was vital to be the most powerful and therefore be the one idolised by other countries. Britain is a good example in this century. The tradition of empire meant there was great economic and political rivalry between countries especially in Western Europe to become a member of the European great powers . Cultural changes took place that would...