IMPERIALISM, the national policy which( tends toward the expansion of national domina ;ion and national ideas over a geographical area, wider than that of national boundaries. As a policy, it is as old as civilization itself ; an em pire was established by the Hvskos which ex tended from Euphrates to the Nile, and a great empire was established by Thothmes III. Thus ancient Rome extended her dominion and system of government, her laws and lan guage first over the whole of Italy, then over Sicily, northern Africa, Spain, Gaul, Britain, Greece and parts of Asia. Charlemagne's idea was to hold France, Germany and Spain under one imperial head. Napoleon wished his em pire to comprise all Europe. English national ism has been partly a wide scheme of coloniza tion, and partly, as in India, a plan for bringing under British rule, a cluster of Oriental races, while leaving them free in regard to local laws, customs and beliefs. Nothing has been more remarkable within the last 40 years than the overseas expansions of territory on the part of the greater powers. Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Italy, Belgium, Japan and the United States have all engaged in the quest for territory. Germany's rise as a colonial power dates from 1880, with the founding of the Ger man Commercial and Plantation Association of the South Seas and the first territorial acquisi tion in Samoa. The impulse to expansion was given by the great wave of protection that fol lowed after the Franco-Prussian War, and by the desire to arrest the tide of German immi gration to the United States by affording room for adventurous youth under its own flag. Land hunger, the control of markets for raw material and the exploitation of native races, the seeking of outlets for surplus population, and the neces sity for defensible and scientific frontiers, are among the motives which impel the powers to seek expansion. In the case of the United States, the succession to the colonial estate from which Spain was dispossessed as a result of the Spanish-American War, the shrinkage in the size of the world from what it was in the days of the Founders of the Republic, and the legiti mate fear that the island outposts of the Americas, or even part of the South American continent, might be seized on by such an aggres sive and overmastering power as the German Empire, has caused the departure from its former position of splendid isolation to be ac quiesced in by the people of the United States. °Bearing the white man's burden,* to quote Kipling; °pegging out claims for posterity,' in the words of Lord Rosebery; and the arrogant image of the Emperor Wilhelm II, °seeking a place in the sun,' are some of the phrases em ployed descriptive of modern Imperialism. But, in the opinion of its adversaries, it is held to evoke a spirit of aggressive and exclusive nationalism, protectionist in its trade policy,— and that too, while it is admitted that the policy of the British Empire, the largest holder of overseas estate has up to the present time been to grant to foreign nations in the colonies and dependencies equal trading privileges with its own subjects. But the Imperialism Movement
with which the name of Chamberlain is asso ciated was frankly exclusive and protecticknist, and the majority of the more enthusiastic British Imperialists are ardent protectionists. And there is no doubt that the national jealousies excited by the scramble for markets and the passion to acquire colonial possessions have been a fruitful source of international suspicions and perturbations, and contributed not a little to the jealous and acquisitive temper that found its culmination in the disastrous struggle that broke on the world in August 1914. In the United States the term imperialism has been used in a more or less factitious sense. The avowed object of the government at Washington in the Spanish War was the liberation of Cuba from the Spanish yoke. The term °imperialism° was employed as a political catch-word in the Presidential campaign of 1900, especially with regard to the purchase of the Philippines. The other extra-territorial possessions of the United States are Alaska, Porto Rico, Hawaii, Guam, Samoan Islands and Virgin Islands of the United States (formerly Danish West Indies). The Supreme Court on 2 Dec. 1901 decided on the constitutionality of expansion. The principles settled by the de cision are thus to be stated: (1) The Constitu tion does not follow the flag till it is planted on new territory by special act of Congress. (2) The extension of the sovereignty of the United States to new territory guarantees the enjoyment of liberty, the right to property and the protection of the United States to the peo ple thus affected in securing justice and public order and promoting peaceful progress. (3) The islands acquired from Spain by the Treaty of Paris are °property of the United States,)° and Congress can dispose of these islands in any way conducive to the interests of the peo ple of the United States and of these islands.
A corollary of these propositions finds ex pression in the statement that the territory of the United States may be described under three heads: (1) The States. (2) Incorporated Ter ritories. (3) Unincorporated territory, belong ing to the United States.
This gives to the nation three . different classes of people dependent upon it: (1) Citi zens vested with full political power, or the residents of the States. (2) Citizens of the incorporated Territories, who are not vested with full political power as long as they are residents of the incorporated Territories. (3) The people of the territory belonging to the United States,D as such, who cannot become citizens of the United States till Congress ex tends to such territory they occupy the privi leges of the Constitution.