PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
This study of modern Imperialism is designed to give more precision to a term which is on everybody’s lips and which is used to denote the most powerful movement in the current politics of the Western world. Though Imperialism has been adopted as a more or less conscious policy by several European States and threatens to break down the political isolation of the United States, Great Britain has travelled so much faster and farther along this road as to furnish in her recent career the most profitable guidance or warning.
While an attempt is made to discover and discuss the general principles which underlie imperialist policy, the illustration of that policy is mainly derived from the progress of British Imperialism during the last generation, and proceeds rather by diagnosis than by historical description.
In Part I the economic origins of Imperialism are traced, with such statistical measurements of its methods and results as are available.
Part II investigates the theory and the practice of Imperialism regarded as a “mission of civilization,” in its effects upon “lower” or alien peoples, and its political and moral reactions upon the conduct and character of the Western nations engaging in it.
The book is addressed to the intelligence of the minority who are content neither to float along the tide of political opportunism nor to submit to the shove of some blind “destiny,” but who desire to understand political forces in order that they may direct them.
