I understand how the free trade policies lead to monopoly, and I understand how financial monopolies take over industrial monopolies. But I don't really get the jump from monopolies to imperialism.

  • emizeko [they/them]
    ·
    4 years ago

    a lot of good answers in this thread. let me add this candid description by President Wilson

    Since trade ignores national boundaries and the manufacturer insists on having the world as a market, the flag of his nation must follow him, and the doors of the nations which are closed must be battered down. Concessions obtained by financiers must be safeguarded by ministers of state, even if the sovereignty of unwilling nations be outraged in the process. Colonies must be obtained or planted, in order that no useful corner of the world may be overlooked or left unused.

    —Woodrow Wilson in an unpublished paper of 1907, as quoted in The Rising American Empire (1960) by Richard Warner Van Alstyne, p. 201