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Why Hobson's Choice?
[ Introduction | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | Conclusion | Resources]
The scramble for Africa and Asia has virtually recast the policy of all European nations, has evoked alliances which cross all natural lines of sympathy and historical association, has driven every continental nation to consume an ever-growing share of its material and human resources upon military and naval equipment, has drawn the great new power of the United States from its isolation into the full tide of competition; and, by the multitude, the magnitude, and the suddenness of the issues it throws on to the stage of politics, has become a constant agent of menace and of perturbation to the peace and progress of mankind This site is dedicated to J. A Hobson (1858-1940), a British economist and opponent of imperialism. During his lifetime, enormous portions of the human race fell under the direct control of ethnic Europeans; nations consolidated (Italy and Germany); and great waves of European immigration arrived in the Americas, Australia and S. Africa. Two new world powers, the USA and Japan, emerged, while older powers became front offices for the financial ventures of others. Hobson introduced us to the hidden actions and motives of imperialism. He lived in an era when the aggressive spirits and moneyed interests were solving bitter quarrels only by postponing them, when the scope of European dominion had filled the earth and the lot of human race was a burden of thirteen cities to dispute. The technological advances of the 19th century had enabled a small, ambitious group of men, always at bitter odds with each other, to subjugate virtually every society on earth. So Imperialism is an open letter to the one group of people this ambitious group of men had not yet defeated-the one group of humans left who might have stopped them. This was, of course, the great majority of their compatriots. It was written by a man of keen mind and patient disposition, a journalist and an economist. Because of his heterodox views he was to remain a veritable amateur in the field: guided by ardor, doomed to remain a nobody in the eyes of his colleagues. Decades later another economist named J.M. Keynes would revive his ideas in The General Theory, entirely transforming the field of political economics. Even so, it was in the field of political schemes and delusions that Hobson was an expert. In his day, there were several groups who agitated for imperialism - politically incompatible groups, with incompatible principles. These were the four main groups:
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