Paul Leroy Beaulieu,
Colonialism and Modern Peoples, 1891
Beaulieu was a French economist who published works on a series
of topics, including workers’ rights, women’s work in the 19th
century and the nature of the modern state. He first published De
la colonisation chez les peuples modernes in 1874; the following
passage comes from the fourth edition of the work in 1891.
It is impossible not to consider imperialism as one of the tasks
imposed on the civilized states for the last four centuries, more
particularly in our own age.
The present-day world is composed of four different parts in terms
of types of civilization. That of Western civilization—our own part.
A second part [is] inhabited by people of a different civilization,
but organized in compact, coherent and stable societies and destined
by their history and present character to govern themselves—the
Chinese and Japanese peoples for example. In the third part live
peoples advanced enough in some respects, but ones that either
stagnated or had not been able to constitute themselves as unified,
peaceful, progressive nations, following a regular development....
India ... before the British conquest, Java, and the Indochinese
peninsula represent particularly this third type.
Finally, a great part of the world is inhabited by barbarian tribes
or savages, some given over to wars without end and to brutal
customs, and others knowing so little of the arts and being so
little accustomed to work and to invention that they do not know how
to exploit their land and its natural riches. They live in little
groups, impoverished and scattered, in enormous territories that
could nourish vast numbers of people with ease. This state of the
world implies for the civilized people a right of intervention ...
in the affairs of the peoples of the last two categories.
It is neither natural nor just for the civilized people of the West
to be cooped up indefinitely and jammed into the restricted spaces
that were their first home. Nor is it natural and just that they
there accumulate the marvels of science, the arts and civilization,
that they see the rate of interest fall more each day for lack of
good investment opportunities, while they leave perhaps half the
world to little groups of ignorant, ineffectual men who are like
feeble children…or to exhausted populations, without energy, without
direction, who may be compared to old men . . . Imperialism is often
confused with commerce or with the opening of commercial markets....
Imperialism means something quite different from the sale or
purchase of commodities. It entails a profound action on a people
and a territory, providing the inhabitants with some education and
regular justice, teaching them the division of labour and the uses
of capital when they are ignorant of these things. It opens an area
not only to the merchandise of the mother country, but to its
capital and its savings, to its engineers, to its overseers, to its
emigrants…Such a transformation of a barbarian country cannot be
accomplished by simple commercial relations.
Imperialism is thus the systematic action of an organized people
upon another people whose organization is defective, and it
presupposes that it is the state itself, and not only some
individuals, which is responsible for the mission....
Colonization by capital is a very important phenomenon.... European
capitalists—and by this word we mean not only a banker, but every
person putting aside a little money, a modest employee, a peasant, a
worker, a spinster or a widow—can work effectively at colonization,
the exploitation of the globe, without leaving their firesides...
All they need do is place their savings in an industrial enterprise
that constructs railroads, digs canals, erects factories, clears the
land in the young countries. In putting their savings to this use,
the inhabitants of the old world are not in any way delinquent in
their duty to their home country. The countries where civilization
is old, like England or France, are enormous producers of capital,
and the difficulties in employing their colossal annual savings
remuneratively in their own lands becomes great. Of course, the
substantial funds of the old countries can always be put into
industrial, agricultural or social improvements [in the home
country]; but the export of a part of these funds across the seas to
the adolescent countries, is much more productive for the entire
human race. The same capital that will produce 3 or 4 per cent when
invested in agriculture in France brings 10, 15, or 20 per cent in
an agricultural enterprise in the United States, in Canada, on the
Plata River [i.e., along the River Plate outlet bordering Argentina
and Uruguay] in Australia, or in New Zealand. It is the same for
funds put into building railroads.... in general terms, the old
countries thus are becoming investors to which the rest of the world
offers growing profit . . .
The great value of colonies ... is not only that they serve to catch
the overflow population of the mother country, nor even that they
open a particularly reliable area of investment for excess capital,
it is also that they give a sharp stimulus to the commerce of the
country, that they strengthen and support its industry and furnish
to its inhabitants - industrialists, workers, consumers - a growth
of profits, of wages, or of interest). But.... these advantages
resulting from the prosperity of the colonies, are not limited just
to the mother countries; they extend to all the countries of the old
world [i.e., Europe] and in fact there is not a nation which does
not derive a real benefit from this increase in the productivity of
humanity.... Imperialism has caused the opening of new sources of
production…It is thus that unknown products have been brought to the
consumers of Europe to increase their comfort… That is the first and
incontestable result of imperialism. And this is the second: It is
to open the new markets for the sale of products manufactured in
Europe, markets more profitable and more expandable than those we
have been limited to previously, because the new societies have an
ability to grow and to create and accumulate riches infinitely
greater than the old societies. Thus trade is stimulated and
extended, the division of labour is augmented; industry having
before it wider openings can and must produce more and such
production on a greater scale calls for new improvements and new
advances. .
The advantages of which we have been speaking so far are general and
apply not only to the mother countries, but to all the civilized
countries, even those without colonies.... [But] it appears to us
incontestable that the home countries gain a special advantage from
their own colonies: first, it is the capital of the citizens of the
mother country which is sent there, and in this more productive
field it is assured of higher interest, which improves the fortunes
of the investors, of which a good number without doubt remain in the
mother country. Further, the community of language, habits, and
traditions, gives an advantage to the home country over all foreign
nations even in free trade with the colonies. The colonists retain
for a long time the tastes of the mother country.... [and] their
relations with her have a degree of intimacy that she rarely has
with other nations....
It is extremely rare that a colony furnishes a net revenue to the
mother country: in infancy it is not able, in maturity it does not
want to.... Inasmuch as a colony must be administered by
functionaries, and defended by soldiers and sailors, drawn from the
mother country, it is probable that the mother country will be out
of pocket a considerable sum....
Thus it is a great illusion to found colonies in the hopes of
revenue: But on the other hand, the costs of colonies to the
metropole [the mother country] have been singularly exaggerated by
the adversaries of colonization....
The English colonies today cost the country nothing, on the whole at
least.... Today only her possessions in South Africa require at one
time or another substantial expenses.... In the not too distant
future, perhaps 15 or 20 years, one can hope that the English
colonies of Africa ... no longer will be a charge on the budget even
in the least measure.... And after all, what are the few hundred
thousand pounds which Great Britain actually pays for the upkeep of
colonies as against the immense material and moral advantages that
they procure for her?
Source: http://people.umass.edu/hist101/imperialism%20documents%202008.pdf