Page:Imperialism, A Study.djvu/8

 problems of equity and humanity involved in a maldistribution of income which places the vast bulk of purchasing power beyond the requirements of a bare living in the. possession of a small proportion of the population in Great Britain, the United States and other advanced industrial countries. Our concern here is with the urgent drive this situation impels towards the acquisition of foreign markets and areas of lucrative overseas investment. Here we are confronted with the question to what extent this need for increased foreign markets and investment is a true cause of Imperialism. Now it may be admitted at the outset of any discussion of this question that other motives than trade-profits consciously occupy the mind of the statesmen who pursue an imperial policy, and that the term Empire does not connote commercial gain to the mind of the rank and file of imperialists. Power, pride, prestige are prevailing sentiments in an imperialist policy. Territorial expansion, the control over backward peoples, the mission of civilisation, the safe-guarding of existing colonial possessions, are not indeed dissociated from the belief that “trade follows the flag” and that by helping to establish order and develop the resources of the peoples and countries which come under our rule, we shall increase our trade and enlarge our national income. Indeed, the history of our empire, acquired, as Sir John Seeley once stated, “in a fit of absence of mind,” attests clearly enough the confused sentiments and the opportunism which underlie the process of acquisition. But, when we study the particulars of the process, we recognise that “mind” in the sense of conscious motive was not entirely absent, and that trade played an important part in most of the early acquisitions. For though it is true that we do not need to own a country in order to trade with its people, the establishment of permanent trading arrangements with primitive or backward peoples