“They make it a desert, and call it peace”: Anti-imperialism in world history
In our world history courses, we focus a lot of attention on examples of colonized peoples resisting empire. Rightly so. Still, people within the core of empires—in London, New York, and elsewhere—also resisted imperialism. Their reasons were varied, and their history is a lot longer than you might think.
Across history, every empire has had citizens and leaders who questioned the wisdom of imperial expansion. Sometimes these resistors were deeply troubled by the violence and exploitation inflicted on colonized peoples. Often, though, they were concerned that empire, much like other forms of oppression, would corrupt their own society. So, resistance falls into two broad categories: resistance against what empire does to us, and what empire does to them1. Let’s look at some examples of each.
What empire does to us
Many critics feared that conquest would undermine the moral, political, and economic foundations of the conquering society itself.
In ancient Rome, many resisted the transformation of their republic into an empire. The historian and senator Gaius Sallustius Crispus (Sallust) argued that conquest destroyed Rome’s civic virtue. Looking back on the empire’s great victory in the Punic Wars, he wrote, “Before the destruction of Carthage, the Roman people governed quietly and moderately. But [after it], leisure and wealth—things ruinous to morals—grew strong.” Thousands of miles away, Han Dynasty scholars and officials raised similar concerns about the cost of expansion. The historian Sima Qian criticized the endless campaigns against the Xiongnu. “The people are exhausted by transport and military service,” he wrote, “while the granaries stand empty.” Expansion, in other words, weakened the state from within.
Centuries later, British critics of empire made strikingly similar arguments. John A. Hobson, in Imperialism: A Study (1902), argued that the British Empire benefited only a small group of wealthy Britons and it twisted British society. He warned that imperialism placed “the entire military, political, and financial resources of this nation at the beck and call of private interests looking for profit or adventure,” rather than serving the public good.
Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1902), often misunderstood, carried a related warning. Conrad’s central message was not one primarily of sympathy for the Congolese, but a warning that empire destroys Europeans themselves. The descent into madness of his character Kurtz happens because imperial power removes moral limits. “His soul was mad,” Conrad writes. “Being alone in the wilderness, it had looked within itself, and, by heavens, I tell you, it had gone mad.”
Across centuries, critics returned to the same fear: Empire corrupts virtue, distorts politics, drains resources, and erodes moral limits.
What empire does to them
Other critics focused less on the corruption that empire caused in their own societies, and more on the suffering imposed on those at the other end of the spear. Nor was this just a modern human rights concern. The Roman writer Tacitus offered a famous condemnation in his biography of Agricola almost two thousand years ago: “The Romans plunder, slaughter, and steal: this they falsely call empire, and where they make a desert, they call it peace.”
Thousands of miles across Eurasia, Han Dynasty historian Sima Qian had already unfavorably compared imperial morals to those of the “barbarians.” He recounts the words of the official Zhonghang Yue, who rejected the emperor’s constant hunger for expansion. “The Han exhaust their people for distant glory,” he reportedly said, “while the Xiongnu rule with simplicity.” In this quote, then, the historian sees both the cost of empire to the imperial society, and at the same time mourns the loss of a simpler way of life among those on the receiving end.
Of course, such sentiments are also common in the modern world. In nineteenth-century Britain, William Gladstone spoke out forcefully against the First Opium War. Addressing Parliament in 1840, he called it “a war more unjust in its origin, a war more calculated to cover this country with permanent disgrace, I do not know, and I have not read of.”
Gladstone opposed Britain’s effort to rescue the British East India Company and expand its empire through the opium trade. “Justice,” he argued, “is with [the Chinese], while we enlightened and civilized Christians are pursuing objects at variance with both justice and with religion.” The British Parliament even voted to condemn the war, passing a motion against it by 271 votes to 262. Unfortunately, the government ignored the vote and proceeded with the war. Britain ultimately imposed the unequal Treaty of Nanking on the Qing Empire.
Half a century later, opponents of the genocidal horrors of Belgian rule in the Congo made similar humanitarian arguments. King Leopold’s regime was designed to extract enormous wealth, and it unleashed violence and famine that killed millions. African American historian and minister George Washington Williams was among the first to document this brutality, forced labor, and murder. He called it a “crime against humanity”—one of the earliest uses of the phrase. Following close on his heels, British journalist E.D. Morel exposed how the Congo exported vast quantities of rubber and ivory while importing almost nothing but guns and chains. Reformers came together in the Congo Reform Association, which included writers like Mark Twain. In King Leopold’s Soliloquy, Twain had Leopold admit, “I have caused millions of people to be mutilated, flogged, imprisoned, enslaved, starved, and slaughtered.”
Anti-imperialism, an all-American tradition
Twain’s suspicion of imperialism extended to his own country’s adventures, as well. When President McKinley began to plan for a vast overseas empire that included Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines, Twain joined the Anti-Imperialist League, which argued that conquering overseas territories betrayed the principles of self-government and liberty on which the United States was founded. He reduced this equation to a single principle, simply stating: “America cannot have an empire abroad and a republic at home.” The League included voices as diverse as the industrialist Andrew Carnegie, the labor leader Samuel Gompers, and the social reformer (and Nobel Peace Prize winner) Jane Addams. While members of the League were unable to stop this vast expansion of American empire, they joined a long tradition of conservatives and liberals who believed that empire was good for nobody—neither colonizer nor colonized.
Do these examples constitute a pattern? Is it a pattern we should think about today? This is a question you might want to ask your students. Twain himself gives us a clue: It was he who said, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”
Helping students identify the two recurring arguments against empire—what it does to us and what it does to them—gives them a tool for analyzing debates, past and present. In 1898, Americans asked whether expansion would undermine republican government or violate the rights of others. Today, when expansionist geopolitics reenters political discourse, students can listen carefully and ask: Which argument is being made? Is the concern about corruption at home? Or about harm abroad?
Across history, some people have had the courage to challenge the imperialist projects of their own societies and say: This isn’t right—for us, or for those we’re conquering.
Or, as Conrad put it, “The horror! The horror!”
1 Of course, we like to avoid the use of “us” and “them” as simplistic and often divisive, but here it provides a useful and straightforward categorization.
About the authors: Bennett Sherry holds a PhD in history from the University of Pittsburgh and has undergraduate teaching experience in world history, human rights, and the Middle East. Bennett writes about refugees and international organizations in the twentieth century and is one of the historians working on the OER Project courses.
Trevor Getz is Professor of African History at San Francisco State University. He has written eleven books on African and world history, including Abina and the Important Men. He is also the author of A Primer for Teaching African History, which explores questions about how we should teach the history of Africa in high school and university classes.
Cover image: Image critical of European colonialism, printed in the 1904 German left-wing magazine Simplicissimus. From Trevor Getz’s collection