MANN, Michael - The Sources of Social Poer ...2 - Globalization Imp

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or subsystems of a given socio-spatial network of interaction. Each has dif-ferent boundaries and develops according to its own core internal logic. Inmajor transitions, however, the interrelationships and very identities of organi-zations such as economies or states, are metamorphosed. So my IEMP modelis not a social system; rather, it forms an analytical point of entry for dealingwith messy- real societies. The four power sources offer distinct organizationalnetworks and means to humans pursuing their goals. The means chosen. andin which combinations, depends on interaction between the power configura-tions historically given and institutionalized and those that emerge interstitiallywithin and between them. This is the main mechanism of social change inhuman societies: preventing any single power elite from clinging indefinitelyonto power. Institutionalized power relations are being constantly surprised bythe emergence of new interstitial power configurations. The sources of socialpower and the organizations embodying them are promiscuous - they weavein and out of each other in a complex interplay between institutionalized andemergent, interstitial forces. I am unwilling to initially prioritize anyone ofthem as ultimately primary in determining social change, although at the end ofVolume IV I draw some conclusions on the question of ultimate primacy.

2 Globalization imperiallyfractured: The British Empire

lntroductinn: TYJlcS of empire

Empires have provided the most dominant type of rule across the large-scalesocieties of'history. This is because social groups can attain many of their goalsby expansion through force of arms. In a sense, empires need no further expla-nation. They help the more powerful groups achieve goals that humans gen-erally desire, and so they have been ubiquitous through history - at least untilwar became too destructive to achieve such desired goals. Because Europeanswere greatly increasing their powers in the early modem world, they naturallysought to conquer the world, as they were heavily armed and driven by bothmaterial and ideal interests. Imperialism has been a core feature of modernity.

Our modern English word "empire" derives from the Latin imperium, "thepower wielded by a general commanding an army and a magistrate armed withthe law" - that is, a combined political and military power. Modem usages adda geographical element - power exercised over peripheral regions by a corepower. I define an empire as a centralized, hierarchical system of rule acquiredand maintained by coercion through which a core territory dominates periph-eral territories, serves as the intermediary for their main interactions, and chan-nels resources from and between the peripheries.

Note, therefore, that empires blend political and military power at theircores. Empires initially grow through military power, deployed or threatenedby the core, and force is then intermittently repeated whenever the peripheryresists. Empires often claim that they are charities, selflessly bringing goodto the world. They may indeed bring benefits to those they rule, but these areonly possible by-products. If you want to helpothers, you do not march intotheir homes, ki II many of their young men, rape many of their young women,and then impose an authoritarian political regime from which some benefitmay later flow. The initial point of empire is to plunder the land, possessions,bodies, and souls of others precisely because one has the military power to doso. Acquiring empire is therefore essentially an expression of military authori-tative power. It is commanded. The preconditions for empire are more varied;after conquest, empires may rule by wielding other sources of power - polit-ical, economic, and ideological - and indeed benefits may then flow. Modernempires are distinctive in containing a great deal of economic imperialism,because capitalism is much more effective at integrating the economies ofcore and periphery than previous modes of production were. Some make the

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plausible argument that today, capitalism has largely replaced military expan-sion as the way to profit and global integration, and I consider this in laterchapters as well as in Volume IV.

Because empires vary, I distinguish several main types.(1) Direct Empire occurs where conquered territories are incorporated into

the realm of the core, as in the Roman Empire and the Chinese empires at theirheight. The sovereign of the core also becomes sovereign over thc periphery,After military conquest, much political power is wielded, nt first despotically.Once institutionalized, authoritative political power radiates outward fromcenter to periphery, and more diffuse economic and ideological power followsit. Finally, the empire may do a disappearing act when the conquered pco-pIes acquire a Roman or Han Chinese identity themselves and political powerbecomes less despotic and more infrastructural. Power may thus move sue-ccssivcly through military to political to economic to ideological forms - thenatural sequence among the most successful of empires. Most historic empiresexpanded over the territories of neighbors, the Russian Empire being the lastof these. Most modem empires, however, spread overseas, and they are moredifficult to integrate. Moreover, racism prevented these overseas empires fromperforming this disappearing act, for it prevented the conquered peoples fromidenti fying themselves as British, Japanese, or American. In modern times,without large numbers of settlers, direct rule has been difficult to accomplishand expensive to maintain. So modem empires have turned to more offshorekinds of empire.

(2) indirect Empire is a claim of political sovereignty by the imperial core,but with rulers in the periphery retaining some autonomy and in practice nego-tiating the rules of the game with the imperial authorities. There is continuingmilitary intimidation, although not usually repeated conquest, and the imperialstate rules more lightly, possessing lesser despotic and infrastructural power.As Lord Cromer said of the British, "We do not govern Egypt, we only gov-ern the governors of Egypt" (Al-Sayyid, 1968: 68). Americans attempted thisin the Philippines in 1898, but massive resistance forced a partial climbdown.The United States did not subsequently attempt indirect empire other than intemporary circumstances. In indirect empire, locals staff most of the army andadministration and dominate provincial and local governments. The Britishwould retain central political power and a military monopoly so that they couldrepress native revolts, but everyday rule required collaboration with nativeelites and some deference to their economies, polities, and cultures.

These first two types, unlike the others, involve territorially delimitedoccupation - colonies.

(3) Informal Empire occurs where peripheral rulers retain full formal sov-ereignty, but their autonomy is significantly constrained by intimidation fromthe imperial core, which combines varying degrees of military and economicpower. This has become the predominant form in modem empires, as capitalism

can add considerable economic coercion. R. Robinson (1984: 48) explainedthis in the speci fie case of the-British Empire as

coercion or diplomacy exerted for purposes of imposing free trading conditions on aweaker society against its will; foreign loans, diplomatic and military support to weakstates in return for economic concessions or political alliance; direct intervention or influ-ence from the export-import sector in the domestic politics of weak states on behalf offoreign trading and strategic interests; and lastly, the case of foreign bankers and merchantsannexing sectors 01" the domestic economy of a weak state.

Because lISCS of the term "informal empire" are often imprecise about thenature of coercion, I distinguish three subtypes, involving differing forms ofcoercion.

(3a) Informal "Gunboat" Empire is where military power is deployed inshort, sharp interventions. The gunboat and its equivalents cannot conquera country. hilt thcy can administer pain by shelling ports (more recently bybombing) and then landing troops for brief incursions. The European empires,Japan, and the United States all jointly administered such pain to China in thelate nineteenth and early twentieth centuries:·The resulting unequal treatiesbetween them and China were routinely enforced through political controlsover Chinese customs revenues and budgets, reinforced by military interven-tions where necessary. American "Dollar Diplomacy" at the beginning of thetwentieth century was another example of direct military intimidation, butwithout colonies. These military and political interventions involve authorita-tive, commanded power.

(3b) Informal Empire through Proxies uses local proxies to do the coercion.In the 1930s, the United States shifted toward subcontracting coercion to localdespots who supported U.S. foreign policy, giving them economic and militaryaid in return. Then, in the post-World War II period, the United States addedcovert military operations to aid its local clients, mainly through the newlyformed Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). This is indirect military intimida-tion, in which the authoritative power is not directly commanded from thecore.

(3c) Economic Imperialism replaces military coercion with economic coer-cion. In the second half of the nineteenth century, Britain saw that the logisticsof launching gunboats across the globe was too daunting and turned towardpurely economic coercion. In Argentina, for example, Britain used its domina-tion of imports, exports, and investment to enforce free trade and strict paymentof debts. The United States later expanded this, intervening inside peripheraleconomies through international banking organizations that it leads. In such"structural adjustment," the peripheral country is free to say no, but the deter-rents are powerful - the denial of foreign investment and trade. Because thereis little or no military force or indeed authoritative power of any sort, under mydefinition this is not strictly imperialism, yet the term "economic imperialism"is widely used and I will continue using it.

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(4) Hegemony herein is used in the Gramscian sense of routinized leader-ship by a dominant power over others, which is regarded by the latter as beinglegitimate or at least normal. Hegemony is built into the everyday social prac-tices of the periphery and so needs little overt coercion. Whereas in indirectand informal empires peripheral regimes feel constrained to serve the imperialmaster, under hegemony they defer voluntarily to the hegemony's rules ofthe game, which are seen as normal, natural. Hegemony involves more thanNye's notion of "soft power." He defines this as purely ideological, "the abil-ity to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion or payments.It arises from the attractiveness of a country's culture, political ideals, andpolicies" (2004: x). Although there is undoubtedly an element of such "soft"ideological power in hegemony, I doubt whether Britain in the nineteenth cen-tury or the United States today could command other states merely by offeringattractive values and policies. Sweden and Canada have not been able to doso. Britain and the United States have been different because some of theirpractices have been built diffusely into the everyday lives of others, compel-ling them to act in certain ways, as those of Sweden or Canada have not. Inthe nineteenth century, the rule of the pound sterling and today the rule ofthe U.S. dollar have involved economic seigniorage, whereby other countriesbuy pounds sterling or dollars at low rates of interest, benefiting the Britishor the Americans, respectively, more than themselves. This has been seen byforeigners as simply what one does with one's export surpluses. It is diffuse,not authoritative power; no one is directly commanded. Weaker states mayalso pay for a hegemonic state to establish military bases in their territoriesto defend them from others - as the Europeans have done by inviting in the

United States.These types involve descending levels of military and ascending levels of

political, economic, and ideological power as we move from direct to indirect,through the informal subtypes of empire to hegemony. In fact, mere hegemonyis not empire at all, as it is not experienced as coercion. Because these are idealtypes, no actual empire fits neatly within anyone of them. Indeed, empirestypically combine several of these forms of domination.

How do we explain the spread of empires? Doyle (1986: 22-6) notes thatthe explanation must blend together forces from within the core power, forcesfrom within the periphery, and forces from the overall international relationssystem. Empire does give an opportunity for its dominant groups to increasetheir rewards, whatever they may be -loot, steady profit, status, the conversionof souls, and so forth. However, we must go beyond metro centric explana-tions based on the core, such as the HobsonlLenin theory of imperialism, the"gentlemanly capitalism" thesis of Cain and Hopkins (1986), and the excep-tionalism often deployed to analyze the American empire. Equally limitedare peri centric explanations focused on the periphery, such as Gallagher andRobinson's (\953) explanation of informal empire in terms of instability in the

periphery luring on imperial expansion and structural realist theories reducingempires to the systemic properties of international relations. Mixtures of allthree are required.

Imperial beliefs are required, too. First comes a perception that one has pre-ponderant power over the target region, with no great rival power blocking theway. This will enable seizure by force. Confidence in success is thus a precon-dition of imperial expansion, and military success is usually, albeit not always,its cutting edge, Historians debate the relative weight of three further motives:for economic gain, geopolitical strategic security, and an ideological sense ofstatus or mission. One may gain economically, not through market exchange,but by seizing economic resources by military force. In Volume 11(1993: 33), Idistinguished two main conceptions of economic profit and interest. A diffusemarket logic sees interests and profit served by activity within markets; anauthoritative territorial logic sees them as secured by direct or indirect controlof territory and its 'resources. The latter generates most imperialism, althoughthere arc also intermediate forms, such as mercantilism and informal empire.A similar distinction has been made recently between a "logic of capital" anda "logic of territory" by David Harvey (2003), although as a Marxist he tendsto downplay the latter.

The motive of strategic security is usually seen by imperialists as defensiveexpansion against threats from other states or empires. The bigger the empire,the less secure it feels! H. James l2006: )0 I) believes strategic insecurity tobe the major motive of empires, but I would rate it alongside the lure of profitthrough seizure. Ideological motives seem somewhat less dominant but comein two main types. The first involves a strong emotion to assert status domi-nance by force, which, judging from their monuments, seems to have drivenforward many ancient rulers - as it did Napoleon or Hitler (for whom it wasalso a racial status). The elites of great empires often felt slights and rebellionsas humiliations (often racial humiliation) to be revenged in spades (we willsee examples of this from both the British and-American empires). More ori-ented to values than to emotions is an ideological sense of mission. Empiresalways develop mission statements. The Romans said they brought order andjustice to the conquered, the Spanish brought the word of God, the British-free trade and prosperity, the French fa mission civilisatrice, the Americansdemocracy and free enterprise. In fact, modem Western empires have also sub-scribed to a broader sense that they collectively were bringing civilization andEnlightenment values to the world, although this was also often inflected withracism. Mission statements typically strengthen after expansion has begun, forthey offer more elevated motives than mere profit or insecurity; they deflectattention from the militarism of the project, and they are useful in giving asense of moral uplift to the imperialists themselves. Once elevated, however,a mission may take on a life of its own and drive on further expansion. Thesemotives involve military, economic, strategic/geopolitical, and ideological

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power sources - and of course, they are usually mixed together, if in di fferent

combinations.These are the concepts 1 use in this volume to discuss all modem empires. I

start with the extraordinary European expansion into the globe. I ask why theEuropeans were so good at acquiring empires, whom they benefited, and whythey collapsed so quickly. After a general introduction, [ focus on the BritishEmpire, the biggest of them all.

Why were the Europeans so good at imperialism?

Modem empires effected the greatest transformation when accompanied bysettlers. Crosby's (1993) theory of "ecological imperialism" identifies fourtypes of settler. First, the humans, the greatest predators, bent on ruthless con-quest, stealing natives' land, goods, and trade, and often enslaving or massa-cring them and settling on their lands. Second, their domestic animals - pigs,cattle, horses, dogs - which came to dominate animal husbandry in the NewWorld. Those animals that turned feral soon dominated its wildlife, too. Third,their weeds. European ploughs were often the first to turn over New World top-soils, and European weeds had evolved to thrive in their wake. Weed seedlingsbrought on boots and animal hides drove out indigenous plants. More than halfof all weed species found today in the Americas and Australasia originated inEurope. Fourth, European disease microbes, against which many natives hadno immunity. Ethnocide resulted - massive death-dealing, largely unintended.Humans, weeds, animals, and microbes together constituted a ferocious eco-logical imperialism that transformed the globe.

There was also a more beneficent side to such species empires. In theColumbian exchange, apples, bananas, peaches, pears, coffee, wheat, carrots,and turnips went west and maize, potatoes, sugar, tomatoes, squash. cocoa,pineapple, and tobacco came east to Europe (and Asia). More than squarekilometers conquered, number of souls converted, or trade volumes achieved,these exchanges brought the greatest transformation of everyday material li fesince the original transition to agriculture. It diversified the human diet andwas a significant factor in extending the human life span. It specifically aidedthe agricultural revolution in England, which was a crucial precondition forits industrial revolution. Those who point today to McDonaldization or theall-season supermarket as indicating food globalization highlight the triv-ial in comparison. The Europeans also changed the languages of continents,and their tri-continental Atlantic trade (manufactures, slaves, sugar/cotton),linking European ports with Africa and America, provided distinctivelycapitalist integration from the late seventeenth century onward, as thc firstIberian imperial economies had not done. At first, penetration outside theAmericas was confined to sea coasts and navigable rivers. Later, the powersunleashed by the Industrial Revolution enabled Europeans to extend empire

over land, as well. By 1914, 400 years after Columbus, Europeans ruled mostof the world.

This was the first phase of modern globalization, but it offered only a lim-ited integration. The unique feature of this era of imperialism was the exis-tence of multiple, rival empires - Spain, Portugal, Holland, Britain, France,Russia, Germany, Belgium, the United States, Japan, Italy. Each constituteda distinct global slice, the leading edge ofjractured globalization. It also pro-duced racial fracturing as the imperialists struggled to understand their evidentpower superiority. Although capitalist markets, production chains, and ideolo-gies strained to break transnationa lIy through political boundaries, there wasno single global market, as can be seen from the fact that prices did not con-verge much before the end of the nineteenth century (O'Rourke & Williamson,2002). Each empire granted monopoly licenses and pricing power to its owntrading companies, Each power traded disproportionately within its ownempire and sphere of interest, protected by mercantilist practices that weresomewhere between market and territorial conceptions. Wallerstein's "capital-ist world system," beginning in the sixteenth century and governed by singularprinciples, was potentiality, not actuality. What he called the "periphery" of theworld system had only marginal contacts with what he defined as "core" and"semi-periphery." Much of the daily life in the nonwhite colonies remainedlargely unchanged by imperialism, because imperialism was spread so thinly.Most colonized peoples in the nineteenth century saw ruling elites as rarely aspeople in medieval Europe had. Empires were extensive but not intensive.

The Europeans did not conquer the whole world. The strongest civiliza-tions and those at the edge of the European logistical reach adapted Europeanpractices and survived. Japan, China, the Ottoman Turks, and Persia held ontotheir core historical territories. Although India was conquered, its Hindu andMuslim cultures remained. highly resilient, as did the Muslim Middle East.Only Japan managed to join the imperialist club.

The proximate cause of European success was superior military power, not ah ighcr level 0 r civi Iizat ion. scientific rcvolut ions, or capitalism. Its proficiencyat war was already long-lived (Bayly, 2004: 62). Over the second millenniumAD, Europeans were probably more warlike than the inhabitants of any othercontinent. Europeans were from Mars. Rough statistics of global wars areavailable from 1494, better ones [om 1816. European wars dominated bothperiods (1.S. Levy, 1983; Gleditsch, 2004; Lemke, 2002). Although these datamay undercount early nineteenth-century wars in Latin America and precolo-nial wars in Africa, a contrast with East Asia is on firmer ground. This regionsaw a 300-year period of peace between the 1590s and 1894, broken only bybarbarian incursions into China and five fairly small two-state wars. Duringthe preceding 200 years, China was only once at war, with Vietnam. In Japan,firearms were banned for two centuries from 1637 onward. In contrast, theEuropean powers were involved in interstate wars in nearly 75 percent of the