CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS
Focusing on the connection between hegemonic war and decolonization enables one to see the importance of political and military factors in phases 2 and 5. The role played by economic trends, actors, and interests is somewhat less clear.
David Strang reaches a similar conclusion in a statistical study of twentieth-century decolonization, arguing that it “arises from characteristics of the larger political context, while more purely economic factors have a modest impact. Metropolitan political institutions and military power clearly matter, as do the pronouncements of the United Nations. The economic transformation of the dependency and global economic conditions seem less relevant.”19In contrast, imperial expansion was strongly influenced by economic considerations, as evidenced by the explore-control-utilize syndrome and the key role private profit sector institutions played in phases i and 3. An implication is that expansion was more driven by economic factors than was contraction. “It may thus be fruitful,” Strang writes, “to separate the conditions that produce colonization from those that produce decolonization. The processes that lead to the breakdown of empires maybe intrinsically different from those that construct them.”20
My discussion of the rise of European empires began by referring to the international system. My discussion of imperial decline concludes by referring to the international system. But the two systems are not the same, precisely because of the expansionist dynamic in modern European life. Whereas the system referred to in chapter 8 consisted of west European countries, the political setting for events discussed here was transcontinental. Creation of overseas empires was the process by which a regionalized system became a global one. Wars over the global distribution of power were the only events of sufficient magnitude to impact the imperial edifice from outside. When metropoles trying to counter slowly evolving forces for internal dissolution were forced to confront rapidly moving external threats as well, it is not surprising that cracks appeared in the edifice of domination.