Defining Imperialism, Colonialism, and Neo-Colonialism
Brief: Climate Vanguard, 16 March 2024
Definitions at a glance:
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The arrangement that enables the systematic transfer of value from the Global South to the Global North, or, in other words, from the periphery to the imperial core of the capitalist world system.
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The forced integration of a nation’s economy and society into the capitalist world system, administered through the formal political control by one nation over another nation or territory.
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A political arrangement in which Southern states appear to have political independence, but are economically subordinated to the dictates of Northern capital.
Introduction
Imperialism, colonialism, and neo-colonialism have recently been brought to the forefront of popular consciousness through the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Equally, these systems have increasingly featured in the discourse of progressive movements in the Global North. Nevertheless, it can be difficult to understand what these systems actually are and how they relate to each other.
In this brief, we define imperialism, colonialism, and neo-colonialism in relation to the capitalist world system. A strong analysis of these systems is essential for developing revolutionary organising strategies.
Imperialism
Imperialism arises from the capitalist mode of production (Patnaik & Patnaik, 2021). It is, therefore, essential to grasp capitalism’s central laws of motion in order to understand imperialism.
Capitalism is a system based on private ownership and elite control over the means of production (e.g. land, factories, machines, finance). Under this arrangement, individual capitalists are in constant competition with each other to maximise profit. The resulting process of perpetual capital accumulation requires cheap inputs (such as labour, raw materials, land, and energy), an ever-growing supply of those cheap inputs, and new markets in which to sell commodities (Marx, 1976).
Such an expansionary system cannot operate for long within an isolated economy. It requires an “outside,” a peripheral area from which it can acquire inputs as cheaply as possible and where it can dump the vast waste it produces – an area where lives, labour, and land are deemed to be worth less, both economically and in light of the ease with which they are destroyed, an area in which resistance can be cracked down upon with impunity (Amin, 1974; Kadri, 2023).
Because of this dynamic, capitalism is an uneven world system comprised of an imperial core (i.e. the Global North), where capital accumulates, and a periphery (i.e. the Global South), from which value is systematically drained (Amin, 1974). This appropriation has allowed for the development of the core, including its industrialisation and provisioning of public services, at the expense of the periphery, which remains deliberately under-developed and thus exploitable (Rodney, 1972, Patnaik & Patnaik, 2021).
Imperialism can thus be defined as the arrangement that enables the systematic transfer of value from the Global South to the Global North (Clelland, 2020; Emmanuel, 1972).
In practice, 'value' is embodied in natural resources and labour appropriated from the South to the North. This drain has shaped capitalist development from its beginning – producing and reproducing the core-periphery dynamic – and remains a world-shaping force today (Patnaik and Patnaik, 2021).
It is because of imperialism that the average annual income in Pakistan is $1,560 while it is $49,240 in the UK (World Data, 2024). It is because of imperialism that 24% of the world’s agricultural land is in Africa, yet the continent is a net food importer and is the hungriest in the world (Kamande, 2022). And it is because of imperialism that in 2023, life expectancy at birth in France was nearly 20 years greater than in Haiti (Woldometer, 2024).
If imperialism is the drain of value from the periphery to the core, colonialism and neo-colonialism are the real historical political systems that have enabled the realisation of this dynamic. We now address each in sequential order.
Colonialism
Colonialism can be defined as the forced integration of a nation’s economy and society into the capitalist system, administered through the formal political control by one nation over another nation or territory (Chandra, 2008). This form of domination includes the imposition by the coloniser of particular kinds of institutions and norms designed to maintain the subordination and exploitation of the colonised.
The first period of colonial expansion dated from the late 15th century until the end of the 18th century, coinciding exactly with the rise of capitalism (Englert, 2022). This stage began with the violent expansion of Spanish and Portuguese settlements across the Americas, as well as the mass enslavement of Africans. In the 19th century, as the Industrial Revolution – itself powered by imperial appropriation – gave European powers new capacities (e.g. steamboats, railroads, telegraph lines, etc.) to conquer lands previously beyond reach, colonial domination reached its peak (Ibid).
The turn of the 20th century saw the final expansion of European colonialism into the interior of Africa and the Middle East (Ibid). Importantly, the history of colonisation was also shaped by resistance from the colonised. For example, it was the Haitian Revolution (1791 - 1804) which spearheaded the end of legal slavery (Ibid).
Colonialism facilitated imperial value flows in two ways. First, it enabled the drain of surplus value from the periphery to the core through slave rents (i.e. free labour) and by taking over existing mechanisms of surplus extraction – as exemplified by the British taking control of revenue collection in India which was previously controlled by Mughal emperors, and diverting these resources to the North (Patnaik & Patnaik, 2021). Between 1765 and 1938, trillions of dollars worth of goods were appropriated from Indian producers by British colonists (Chakrabarti & Patnaik, 2019).
Second, colonialism enabled Europeans to control production and consumption in the Global South. Colonisers destroyed local subsistence economies through enclosure and dispossession, and/or imposed taxation in colonial currency, thus forcing people to seek wages on European mines and plantations or to produce goods for export to Europe (Patnaik & Patnaik, 2021). Colonisers also sought to destroy industrial producers in the Global South, which eliminated competition and created dependencies on Northern industrial goods.
Thus the co-constitutive relationship between capitalism and colonialism should be understood as both producing development in the core and driving underdevelopment and de-development (i.e. the destruction of the productive forces) in the periphery (Kardi, 2023; Rodney, 1972).
It is then clear that colonialism is an enabling tool of imperialism based on formal political control by the coloniser. However, colonialism also involves extra-economic dynamics, including racism, the production of social trauma, and the distortion of the indigenous or national identity of the colonised, which cannot be captured through the lens of value flow alone (Dabiri, 2021; Fanon, 1952).
Settler Colonialism vs Franchise Colonialism
A final note needs to be made on the distinction between colonialism’s two basic forms: settler colonialism and franchise colonialism.
Settler colonialism is a process in which the settler population is “intent on making a territory their permanent home while continuing to enjoy metropolitan living standards and political privileges” (Elkins & Pedersen, 2005). Examples include the colonisation of the US, Canada, Australia, Israel, South Africa, Mexico, Peru, Algeria, and Kenya.
By contrast, franchise colonialism forcibly attaches itself onto an existing social, political, and economic base to extract value, depending, therefore, on the collaboration of local elites (Englert, 2023). Examples include the British in India and the Dutch in Indonesia.
Patrick Wolfe (2006) distinguishes the two forms by describing settler colonialism as the drive to eliminate the native population (either by displacement or genocide) and franchise colonialism as the drive to exploit the native population. While this can be a helpful way to theoretically conceptualise the central logic behind each form, the elimination/exploitation divide is not so clear in practice.
The exploitation of native peoples, for example, through forced labour regimes, was central to the establishment and reproduction of many settler colonies (e.g. Algeria, Bolivia, South Africa) (Englert, 2023). Equally, the elimination of native populations was a much more general phenomenon which also occurred in franchise colonies (e.g. the Bengal famine) (Ibid). In practice, both the exploitation and elimination of Indigenous communities has been used at different times in settler and franchise colonies “depending on strategic necessities, interactions with indigenous resistance, or changing economic relations with the metropolis” (Englert, 2020).
Without understanding this historical reality, we risk only focusing on the most advanced forms of settler colonialism (e.g. US, Canada, Australia) where the process of elimination is most extreme. In turn, we obscure cases where settler colonialism was defeated, as in many African and South American nations (Ibid). This more complete view of colonial history is crucial because it shows that it isn’t such a stable system, and the trajectory of less developed settler colonies, like Israel, is far from pre-determined.
While colonialism still exists, the post World War II period saw a wave of decolonisation in which over 80 nations won political sovereignty (United Nations, 2024). This, however, was not the end of global imperialism.
Neo-Colonialism
The retreat of formal colonialism opened the door for its successor: neo-colonialism. Ghanaian revolutionary and political theorist Kwame Nkrumah defines neo-colonialism as a system where Southern states appear to have political independence, but are economically subordinated to the dictates of Northern capital (1965).
Under neo-colonialism, value transfer occurs through unequal exchange in international trade, whereby Southern labour and resources are systematically cheapened relative to Northern prices. This “hidden transfer of value” is estimated at $10.8 trillion per year (Hickel et al., 2022).
There are three primary methods used by the North to establish and perpetuate this neo-colonial arrangement: regime change, debt, and trade institutions.
Regime Change
Liberated from the shackles of colonialism, many post-colonial states pursued an ambitious programme of sovereign development. This included economic protection via tariffs, subsidies, and capital controls, land reform, industry nationalisation, public services, and real wage increases (Hickel, 2021). Gains in the South meant higher costs for the North, imperilling unequal exchange, eroding profit margins, and straining the social-democratic compromise (Ibid).
In response, the North used “hybrid war” tactics (economic blockades, sanctions, cultural propaganda, assassinations, coup d'etats) to depose popular leaders pursuing sovereign development, including Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran, Jacobo Árbenz in Guatemala, Sukarno in Indonesia, Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana, and Salvador Allende in Chile (Hickel, 2021; Novaez, 2023). More recently, the arch-imperialist US has engaged in an unhinged spree of regime change, most notably in Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Venezuela (Becker & Majidi, 2018; Gilbert, 2023; Goodman, 2022).
Debt
Equally effective for establishing control over Southern economies has been the neo-colonial instrumentalisation of debt. Flush with cash, Wall Street pumped money into the post-colonial South, which was “hungry for capital” to fund sovereign development (Hickel, 2018). In the early 1980s, these loans became unpayable after US interest rates (which the loans were based on) were hiked to curb domestic US inflation (Ibid).
With the South in a state of economic turmoil, the North conditioned emergency debt relief on the International Monetary Fund’s and the World Bank’s Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) (Ibid). SAPs required that public spending be cut, public assets privatised, capital controls abolished, and labour and environmental regulations axed (Ibid). This re-oriented Southern economies in service of capital accumulation in the North.
Those who resisted, like Burkinabé revolutionary president Thomas Sankara, were swiftly ousted by imperialist powers, evidencing the 1-2 knockout punch of the neo-colonial order (Talton, 2021).
Between 1980 and 2015, Southern countries paid over $4.2 trillion in interest payments to the North, far outstripping total aid received over the same time period (Hickel, 2017). Today, the South is in “the worst debt crisis since global records began” (Bretton Woods Project, 2023).
Trade Institutions
Trade institutions are a third vector for the perpetuation of neo-colonialism. In 1995, imperialist powers restructured the global economy through the World Trade Organization (WTO). The WTO conditioned country membership on the reduction of tariffs, elimination of subsidies, and deregulation of capital flows. This deprived the entire South of the exact tools which the North had used for its own development (Hickel, 2018). Adding insult to injury, Northern agricultural subsidies (totalling $374 billion/year) were exempted from WTO rules, leading to an intrusion of Northern food products and the undermining of Southern food sovereignty (Ibid).
The creation of the WTO was flanked by a profusion of free trade agreements (FTAs) between the North and South. Most FTAs include a provision known as Investor-State Dispute Settlements, which allows a private corporation to sue a state over sovereign policy action that threatens future profits (e.g. a wage increase) (Ibid). Investors win 57% of cases, with an average taxpayer-funded payout of $438 million (UNCTAD, 2021; Hodgson, 2021). If states refuse to foot the bill, then their foreign assets can be seized (Transnational Institute, 2021).
This brings Nkrumah’s formulation into sharp relief: Southern political sovereignty is subordinated to neo-colonial imperialism.
Conclusion
Imperialism, colonialism, and neo-colonialism are world-shaping systems responsible for unequal development, the denial of Southern sovereignty, widespread immiseration, famine, systemic poverty, and genocide, including the ongoing one in Gaza. Colonialism and neo-colonialism – both expressions of imperialism – are integral to the development, maintenance, and reproduction of global capitalism, combining to form the ‘system’ that is oppressing the global majority and driving ecological collapse.
Armed with this analysis, it is clear that all movements struggling for eco-socialist liberation must be ruthlessly anti-imperialist. In the North, this means unconditional support for national liberation struggles, a sharp focus on demilitarisation, and strong calls for debt cancellation and ecological reparations.
Thankfully, there are countless contemporary and historical movements from which to draw inspiration and leadership: the Palestinian liberation movement, Landless Workers' Movement (MST) in Brasil, Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement-200 in Venezuela, the African Independence Party in Burkina Faso, and the Black Panther Party in the US.
Recalling Thomas Sankara, “The only thing you need to remember is that when the people stand up, imperialism trembles.”
Acknowledgement
We would like to thank Jason Hickel for his generosity of time and invaluable feedback on this report.
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