I have complained about it before but I heard on of the guests from guerrilla history on the deprogram make this argument and it made me want to gouge my eyes out. This kind of trans historical argumentation is both stupid and unmarxist, just stop! Sorry I felt the need to vent.
These states were not imperialist and they weren't settler colonies. This framing doesn't make any fucking sense when transfered to a medieval context. Like the best you could say is that the Italian city states represented an early firm of merchant capital, but even then that is an incredibly complex phenomenon that has only a tenuous connection to modern capitalism. Calling these city states early capitalism is just a fancy way of saying "lol u hate capitalism yet you exchange good or service! Curious!"
Seriously just stop. I don't know why this set me off but it was like a week ago and I am still mad about it.
So lenin called the eponymous process outlined in his Imperialism thusly certainly to be evocative of previous imperial projects but he was outlining a contemporary system that only can really exist under capitalist economy. Some empires could be argued that they engaged in a form of "proto-imperialism" within this definition because there are certainly through lines. All that being said, this is a semantic argument that I try to avoid by making clear what type of "imperialism" I'm evoking.
yeah, that should definitely be called Capitalist Imperialism, not just Imperialism or its simply not clear communication.