was driven not only by features widely shared throughout west­ ern Europe but also by the region’s deep divisions.

Europe was fragmented into states, each of which felt insecure because it was embedded in a larger system of units

much like itself.¹ Each state claimed sovereignty, the legal and moral authority to

steer its own course.

tions to ensure that the regional status quo would be maintained or that disputes

among member states would be peacefully adjudicated.

Insecurity caused by the dispersal of political power within a single economic and cultural system generated enormous amounts of nervous energy. Much of this energy was recycled within the region. Preparing for defensive or offensive war against a nearby foe, waging war, recovering from it, and financing its unexpectedly heavy costs—these have historically been the principal challenges facing European rulers. Indeed, state building was more likely driven by the need to counter external threats than by rulers’ desires to repress or coopt domestic challengers. By one estimate, during the past seven centuries between 70 and 90 percent of European states’ financial resources were deployed to prevent or fight wars among themselves.²

At first glance these expensive, destructive efforts to cope with the region’s problems seem at odds with initiatives elsewhere. In several respects, however, Eu­rope’s political disunity was conducive to imperialism. First, the security problems all states faced gave them strong incentives to adopt new military technologies.

As Europeans became more aware of distant lands, overseas aggression became attractive as a way of easing, though never ultimately resolving, a metropole’s se­curity dilemma. The cost of surviving as a state within the European system in­creased dramatically over time as rulers felt obliged to replace small ad hoc forces with large standing armies equipped with the most advanced weapons. If revenue a colony generated for a metropole’s government exceeded the cost of setting up and maintaining a colonial administration, the net gain could help finance wars fought on European soil. Moreover, revenue from overseas sources reduced pressures to extract funds internally. Rulers knew that increases in domestic taxes might trigger unrest or outright revolt among their subjects. Repressing these challenges was politically risky, both in its own right and because it diverted resources from defense. The revenue-raising imperative, driven by military insecurity, encouraged European rulers to seek lucrative possessions abroad.

The same factors led them to articulate mercantilist doctrines justifying em­pire. The model in this respect was phase i Spain, whose Habsburg rulers used New World bullion to finance numerous wars throughout western Europe.

Interstate competition also stimulated imperialism by increasing the stakes of engaging in conquest. When one state advanced an overseas claim it typically did not know whether the gains it expected or desired would be realized. But whatever they might turn out to be, they were in effect doubled by the fact that the state’s rivals were deprived of access to them. Conversely, if a state did not act when rivals were making overseas claims it risked a double loss: deprivation of potentially valuable resources and the expense of fending off a rival strengthened by access to them. Empire building was a competitive process driven as much by anxiety over loss as by hope of gain. Referring to inter-European rivalries in Asia in phase i, David Fieldhouse notes that “fear of exclusion generated aggression which ambition might not have done.”⁶ A similar dynamic was at work in phase 3 when Cecil Rhodes lobbied to place the Tswana under British South Africa Company protection to forestall direct territorial links between Germany’s colony in South West Africa and the independent Boer republics.⁷

Interstate competition accelerated the pace of overseas activity, leading at times to scrambles for territory whose dynamics resemble a spiraling arms race.

In such a situation it is not enough for A’s citizens to exercise informal influ­ence overseas, for example, through trade or missionary work in an area unclaimed by an outside power. Influence A’s citizens exert there must be translated into formal power by A’s government lest takeover of the area by B lead to replacement of A’s traders and missionaries by those from B. Referring to the late nineteenth-century scramble, William Langer notes that Britain’s needs for new markets and investment opportunities “had been met in the past without any corresponding expansion of territory. It was the embarkation of France, Germany, and other countries in the course of empire that brought the British to the conviction that only political control could adequately safeguard markets.”⁸

A scramble may prompt prominent actors in A’s private profit and religious sectors who have been operating overseas on their own to change their tune, calling upon the home government to guarantee their future operations by advancing impe­rial claims.⁹ When externally generated competition for territory activates domesti­cally based sectoral actors to become pressure groups for expansion, A’s government is pushed in an aggressive direction from within its borders as well as outside them.

Once a scramble gets under way it can take on a life of its own, driven by the growing sense of insecurity each party feels should it fail to assert itself as vigorously and quickly as possible.

In the contemporary reality of Europe, in this competition among so many rivals that we see ever-intensifying around us... a policy of introversion or abstention is nothing more nor less than the road to decadence! Nations in our time only become great by the activity which they generate.

To radiate influence without acting, without involving oneself in the world’s affairs, staying aloof from all the various European [diplomatic] com­binations, seeing as a trap or misguided adventure all expansion into Africa or the Orient—to live in this manner for a great nation, I tell you, is to give up, and in less time than you would think possible it is to fall from being a first-rate power to the third or fourth rank.¹⁰

The premier warned, “If the French flag should be withdrawn... from Tonkin, Germany or Spain would replace us within the hour.”¹¹

Rulers may enter the fray out of resentment at rivals’ efforts to keep them out of a rapidly globalizing competitive arena. Francis I of France is said to have reacted to the Spanish-Portuguese Treaty of Tordesillas by remarking wryly, “I should very much like to see the clause in Adam’s will that excludes me from a share of the world.” As the pace of overseas acquisitions accelerates, so does the tendency of competing parties to extend the scope of their activities. Suddenly it seems sensible to include areas previously considered unimportant. A frontier once deemed safe now needs to be protected by another frontier, which in turn has to be protected by a third.¹² The admonition to “Grab now; check later to see if what you took was worth grabbing” rings ever louder in the ears of harried decision makers.

States in a territorial scramble engage in “defensively aggressive” behavior. Actions that from the victims’ perspective look unmistakably like aggression are driven from the aggressors’ perspective by the opposite motivation: desire for protec­tion against threats to key interests. Objectively powerful actors exert themselves to counteract a subjectively feared loss of power and prestige.

This point suggests a more general one. Competition among states in the same system leads each unit continually to compare itself to its rivals. Its sense of self­worth depends greatly on where it believes it is ranked relative to the other units. Imperial expansion can be driven by desire to reflect the high standing a state thinks it possesses: Spain, for example, in the sixteenth century, Britain in the nineteenth. But expansion can also be driven by desire to compensate for a real or perceived decline in status. A phase 1 example of compensatory imperialism was the arrival in the East Indian islands of well-armed Dutch ships as a result of Spain’s decision in the 1590s to exclude Dutch merchants from the Lisbon spice market.¹³ Perhaps the clearest phase 3 example was France’s burst of activism in Africa and Southeast Asia following defeat in its war with Prussia. Gains in the Sahara or Tonkin might make up for—and momentarily deflect public attention from—the humiliating loss of Alsace and Lorraine. Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, one of France’s most ardent imperialists, wrote an article in 1881 urging annexation of Tunisia. Referring to the lost territories, he admitted that “all hopes of forcefill revenge are vain dreams in the face of a Germany of 55,000,000 inhabitants.” In contrast, “Africa is open.”¹⁴ Britain’s success at excluding France from Egypt in 1879-82 only fueled the desire of French policy makers to stake ambitious claims elsewhere.

But Britain itself offers a pertinent illustration. Its economic preeminence at the outset of phase 3 permitted it to break with mercantilist doctrine and concentrate on exerting informal influence. Why, then, did it revert later in the nineteenth century to the traditional pattern of claiming territory? A clue is provided by com­paring its manufacturing output to the combined total of that of France and Ger­many (or Germany’s predecessor states). The ratio rises dramatically from.28 in 1750 to 1.09 in 1830 to 1.55 in i860. But after that point it declines—to 1.4 in 1880 and.93 in 1900.¹⁵ The Berlin Conference took place when Britain equaled France + Germany and was starting to fall behind them. Britain’s participation in the scramble suggests that its rulers considered formal empire necessary to protect an economic hegemony that its major continental rivals were swiftly undermining.

Another effect of interstate competition is imperial inertia. Once a colony has been established the metropole comes to value it for more than the economic bene­fits it confers. If in fact the only consideration driving imperialism were narrow cost­benefit calculations, one would expect a metropole to shed possessions whose costs, contrary to expectation or hope at the moment of acquisition, turned out to exceed benefits. Virtually all Germany’s colonies fit this description. But governments do not voluntarily abdicate power at home or abroad even if it makes eminent economic sense to do so. At some point colonies become important as symbols of international status. To abandon even one unviable colony might signal to competitors a declining capacity or will to behave assertively and thereby weaken the metropole’s interna­tional position.

Inertia played a role in late phase 3 expansion into North Africa. British forces invaded Egypt in 1882 at the invitation of its ruler, Khedive Tawfiq, who at the time faced serious domestic threats to his authority. Tawfiq expected the British to depart after they had imposed order, and the London government itself initially assumed it was carrying out a brief rescue and retire mission. But once in place as de facto rulers the British refused to leave even though they repeatedly assured others they would. France was particularly upset at Britain’s refusal to leave a country—and a canal—in which substantial French funds had been invested. The Marchand expedition that reached Fashoda in 1898 deliberately challenged British control of the Upper Nile. London’s determination to stand firm, coupled with some embarrassment over its unwillingness to honor its promises to leave, led to the Anglo-French Entente of 1904. In exchange for French recognition of British primacy in Egypt, Britain sup­ported France’s plans to intervene in Moroccan affairs. Imperial inertia in one terri­tory thus contributed to imperial advance in another.

Interstate competition assumed its most dramatic form when two or more states scrambled for new lands, as in the following examples from phases 1 and 3: in the late fifteenth century, when Spain countered Portugal’s steady advance around Africa toward India by supporting Columbus’s proposal to reach Asia by an alterna­tive route. Rival claims of Portugal and Spain following Columbus’s first voyage were only temporarily resolved by the Tordesillas Treaty of 1494 dividing the non­European world between them;

in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when England and Holland chal­lenged the Iberian powers and each other, producing new settlements in North and South America, South Africa, and Java;

in the eighteenth century, when England and France penetrated the interiors of North America and India in a duel for global hegemony;

in the late nineteenth century, when newly formed states joined the original phase 1 metropoles in occupying territory in Africa, Southeast Asia, and Oceania.

Sometimes a scramble was triggered by a state’s entry into the imperial game: Spain in the first example, England and Holland in the second, Germany in the fourth. The assertive newcomer’s presence elicited defensively aggressive responses by others. Sometimes competition was played out far from the area where it began. The Tordesillas line, though initially drawn with the New World and Africa in mind, girdled the earth, leading Spain and Portugal to vie in the early sixteenth century for spice-rich islands off Asia’s southeast coast close to where the line supposedly passed.

In the first and fourth examples the scramble proceeded with little or no violence among metropoles. Indeed, the papal bulls preceding Tordesillas and the Berlin Conference some four centuries later can be seen as efforts to create an over­arching framework for interstate conflict resolution. By contrast, in the second and third examples warfare was the order of the day both in Europe and overseas. But the underlying competitive dynamic was similar in all four examples, whether or not it took the form of war.

After the Protestant Reformation created a permanent schism in Euro­Christianity, rivalry between two states on grounds unrelated to religion assumed greater intensity if one was officially Protestant and the other officially Catholic. This factor was operative when England and Holland encountered Spain in the New World in phase i.¹⁶ Dutch-Spanish rivalry was especially fierce because of the eighty years’ war the Dutch fought to rid themselves of Habsburg rule. Dutch leaders were products of the Reformation; Habsburg rulers took the lead in the Counter Refor­mation. Religious rivalry played a more muted but not insignificant role in British- French struggles during the eighteenth century and in their phase 3 contest for preeminence in Madagascar and Uganda. In these instances forces fragmenting Eu­rope along religious as well as political lines were at work. When domestic mobiliza­tion of support for expansion involved two sectors, it enhanced institutional capacity in both sectors and ensured more intense popular support for a metropole’s foreign policy.

Europe’s interstate system was unlike that in the Islamic world and in East Asia. The close proximity of many units within a small, self-contained area is the geo­graphical basis both for the system’s unifying features and for its disunity. By con­trast, Islamic states established by Arabs and other peoples stretched for thousands of miles along an east-west axis from Morocco through the East Indies. Physical disper­sion did not permit a dense network of continuous interaction, either cooperative or hostile, among polities sharing the same faith.

For most of the past two millennia the Chinese have not experienced the tension between cultural unity and political fragmentation that was such a distinctive feature of Europe. Rather, culture and politics reinforced each other to create a unit, the Middle Kingdom, considered the epicenter of civilized life. Polities around it, including Japan, were deemed inferior. Devising regular diplomatic interactions among neighbors on the basis of the sovereignty each possessed was not an option because the very idea assumed an equality of status rejected by the reigning ideology. The Chinese emperor was not just another ruler but the Son of Heaven, the link between humans and the cosmos.¹⁷

Had China been fragmented into two or more states during the past five centuries, as was the case earlier, it is conceivable that these units would have come to accept competition among themselves and other neighbor states as the norm. They might have vented shared insecurities by launching rival overseas expeditions. But this was not to be. Following Cheng Ho’s voyages the Ming and then Ch’ing imperial dynasties adopted a far less activist course in foreign policy. The court valued occa­sions when envoys of other polities arrived, bearing tribute and acknowledging inferior status by kowtowing. The ideal relationship was one in which the world outside the Middle Kingdom made its respectful way to the imperial capital. To reverse the procedure by dispatching emissaries abroad on a mission to change the rest of the world would be unseemly and undignified.

That the west European pattern of intense competition among polities com­prising a single economic and cultural system was not replicated in either the Arab/ Islamic or Chinese cases supports the proposition that interstate rivalry played a key role in the formation of European empires.