I m p e r i a I i s m is the policy or practice of extending national power over other states or areas of the world, often by annexing territory. Imperialism has existed in every age. The Zhou (Chou) and Qin (Ch'in) dynasties in ancient China (c.1027-206 BC) and the Maurya in India (c.321-c.185 BC) provide early examples of empire building. Attempts by Athens to establish political and military hegemony over the Greek city-states led to its ultimate defeat in the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC). Alexander the Great of Macedonia created an empire reaching beyond Persia in the east that signaled the end of the Greek city-state as the basic political unit of the ancient world. In the Roman Empire, policies implicit in Alexander's rule were developed further. Although Rome remained the imperial center, rights of citizenship were extended throughout the empire, in line with Stoic and Christian ideas. From AD 395 the Roman Empire was permanently divided into eastern and western halves. In the east, the Byzantine Empire remained in existence until 1453, when it finally fell victim to the expanding Ottoman (Turkish) Empire. The Roman Empire in the west collapsed in AD 476, but the imperial ideal was revived by the Frankish ruler Charlemagne, who was crowned emperor by the pope in 800. This event is sometimes taken as the founding of the Holy Roman Empire, but the imperial coronation (962) of the German King Otto I marks the beginning of that entity as a continuing institution. The Holy Roman Empire survived until 1806, although it was a weak confederation for much of the time.
In 16th-century Europe, the centralization of political power in the hands of absolute monarchs was accompanied by the growth of a new social class, the bourgeoisie, or merchant class, and by the quest of European explorers for precious metals and other trade goods in the New World and the Orient. MERCANTILISM, seapower, and the establishment of powerful national armies provided impetus for a new wave of imperialism both within continental Europe and far beyond its boundaries. The Italian diplomat and political thinker Nicolo Machiavelli, writing at the beginning of the 16th-century, interpreted such expansion as a natural expression of human aggression; the pursuit of power and glory, he believed, is an instinctual and inevitable drive.
The term i m p e r i a l i s m is most commonly identified with I9th-century colonialism and the carving of the globe into "spheres of influence" by the European powers. One of the leading figures of 19th-century imperialism was the British financier and South African statesman Cecil Rhodes. Colonies in Asia and Africa supplied cheap labor, raw materials, and ready markets for European manufacturing, spurred on by the Industrial Revolution. They also enhanced the image of European powers; much of France's empire, for example, was acquired after its defeat by Germany in 1870. Imperialism was also linked to concepts of racial and moral supremacy, rationalized as "the White Man's Burden"--the so-called duty to bring civilization to backward peoples. In the Western Hemisphere, much of Latin America came under the sway of commercial and financial interests in the United States.
Economic imperialism, as this type of expansion is called, was first criticized severely by John A. Hobson, who viewed it as the attempt of the capitalist classes in industrial nations to achieve economic gain. Vladimir llich Lenin later elaborated this theory, as did subsequent Marxists. Marxist theory maintained that imperialism leading to war was the inevitable and final result of economic competition. A necessary corollary of the Marxist theory explained imperialism as a temporary phenomenon that characterized relations among capitalist states and that would be superseded by a communist world order. Marxist theory, however, fails to account for imperialism before the existence of capitalism as well as for those imperial policies that the Soviet Union subsequently pursued.
After World War 11 imperialism took a new form. The old empires no longer existed; the former colonies became independent states, often after prolonged national liberation struggles. Until the 1990s the United States and the USSR competed for influence over these new nations, usually through economic and military aid to their governments. Direct military intervention was usually a last resort; certain prominent examples include American intervention in Vietnam, the Dominican Republic, and Panama; Soviet use of Cuban troops in Africa; and the Soviet invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Britain and France also continued to exert economic influence over some of their former colonies in Africa. Less developed countries decry modern economic imperialism (called neoimperialism), asserting that it seriously hampers the efforts toward economic growth and independence. Many poor Arabs considered the 1991 PERSIAN GULF WAR imperialist, charging that it was waged to ensure that the industrialized world would continue to have access to cheap oil.