A History of Imperialism
Book Details
Author(s)Irwin St. John Tucker
ISBN / ASIN1501041223
ISBN-139781501041228
AvailabilityUsually ships in 3 days
Sales Rank99,999,999
MarketplaceUnited States 🇺🇸
Description
From the FOREWORD:
EMPIRES are as old as history itself. When the misty curtain first parts for us upon that stage whereon the drama of life is played, emperors occupy the center of the scene. They have held the leading role ever since.
Around successive rivalries for that coveted part, the wars of the world group themselves like endless murders around a chain of Hamlets. What is the meaning of that mad plot, so wild, so bloody, so continuous, so undetermined? For it is not yet played out. We have entered upon a new act, it is true, with the old Imperialisms prostrate in the dust. But a new one rises triumphant over its fallen rivals. We have seen the powers of autocracy rent from the shoulders of Czar and Kaiser, only to behold them wrapped around the figure of a President.
There is a straight line of descent from the throne of Menes to the chair of Wilson; a straight course of Empire from that far off day when Upper and Lower Egypt were united beneath the crown of the first Empire, to the day when the expanding credits of America forced her imperial merchants to create an imperial figurehead. Our symptoms of imperialism are identical with those which all budding empires have displayed.
It is time that we analyze ourselves in the light of what physicians call the "etiology" of the disease.
We entered the war, theoretically, to bring autocracy to an end. Did the war bring autocracy to an end? Can a war end autocracy?
The Treaty of Versailles, it was promised, would bring democracy to the world. Can democracy be created by a treaty? What is democracy? What is an Empire? More important still, because less often asked, Why is Democracy, and Why is an Empire? Much nonsense has been uttered about certain accompanying products of each, namely the dominant art and unifying religion.
Imperialism is not a product of certain crafty and scheming brains, nor is Democracy the result of noble convictions uttered by high-minded, pure-souled leaders of the people. Both are expressions of the Life-Current, dashing against certain cliffs or flowing smoothly past certain meadows.
Art is intimately connected with Empire, both as a cause and an effect. So is literature. So is religion. All of them are inevitable expressions of human nature, working diversely outward from a fundamental unity.
In this book we shall take up separate nations and study their history as a whole, both before and after the great spotlight of imperial power picks them out for the stage of some particular act. We may thus better understand what Imperialism is, and what it leaves behind, and why it moves on: and so may comprehend with increasing clearness the steps our land is even now taking, upon the road down which went Egypt, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome, and the Caesars, Kaisers and Czars whose ambitions, methods, tricks of speech and very cast of thought we in our turn have inherited.
EMPIRES are as old as history itself. When the misty curtain first parts for us upon that stage whereon the drama of life is played, emperors occupy the center of the scene. They have held the leading role ever since.
Around successive rivalries for that coveted part, the wars of the world group themselves like endless murders around a chain of Hamlets. What is the meaning of that mad plot, so wild, so bloody, so continuous, so undetermined? For it is not yet played out. We have entered upon a new act, it is true, with the old Imperialisms prostrate in the dust. But a new one rises triumphant over its fallen rivals. We have seen the powers of autocracy rent from the shoulders of Czar and Kaiser, only to behold them wrapped around the figure of a President.
There is a straight line of descent from the throne of Menes to the chair of Wilson; a straight course of Empire from that far off day when Upper and Lower Egypt were united beneath the crown of the first Empire, to the day when the expanding credits of America forced her imperial merchants to create an imperial figurehead. Our symptoms of imperialism are identical with those which all budding empires have displayed.
It is time that we analyze ourselves in the light of what physicians call the "etiology" of the disease.
We entered the war, theoretically, to bring autocracy to an end. Did the war bring autocracy to an end? Can a war end autocracy?
The Treaty of Versailles, it was promised, would bring democracy to the world. Can democracy be created by a treaty? What is democracy? What is an Empire? More important still, because less often asked, Why is Democracy, and Why is an Empire? Much nonsense has been uttered about certain accompanying products of each, namely the dominant art and unifying religion.
Imperialism is not a product of certain crafty and scheming brains, nor is Democracy the result of noble convictions uttered by high-minded, pure-souled leaders of the people. Both are expressions of the Life-Current, dashing against certain cliffs or flowing smoothly past certain meadows.
Art is intimately connected with Empire, both as a cause and an effect. So is literature. So is religion. All of them are inevitable expressions of human nature, working diversely outward from a fundamental unity.
In this book we shall take up separate nations and study their history as a whole, both before and after the great spotlight of imperial power picks them out for the stage of some particular act. We may thus better understand what Imperialism is, and what it leaves behind, and why it moves on: and so may comprehend with increasing clearness the steps our land is even now taking, upon the road down which went Egypt, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome, and the Caesars, Kaisers and Czars whose ambitions, methods, tricks of speech and very cast of thought we in our turn have inherited.
