Imperialism and Its Critics

This chapter provides a broad overview of the literature on economic imperialism. The first part of the chapter defines the concept of economic imperialism and the distinctive heuristics according to which related phenomena may be analysed. The second part of the chapter describes five modes of economic imperialism, namely, colonialism, internal colonialism, settler colonialism, investment imperialism, and unequal exchange. Each of these is both predicated upon and reinforces national oppression, that is, the de facto or de jure denial of self-determination to national groups and their capacity to democratically determine their own economic development. The chapter concludes by highlighting the limits of much contemporary ‘anti-imperialism’, and the tendency for ‘anti-imperialist’ discourse to provide cover for authoritarian and imperialist states outside ‘the West’.