page_title: Imperialism
section_title: Colonialism versus imperialism
hierarchical_section_title: Imperialism / Colonialism versus imperialism
caption_attribution_description: English: Major-General Lazarev's 17th Jagger Regiment entering Tiflis on November 26, 1799
context_page_description: Imperialism is a policy or ideology of extending the rule or authority of a country over other countries and people, often by military force or by gaining political and economic control. While related to the concepts of colonialism and empire, imperialism is a distinct concept that can apply to other forms of expansion and many forms of government.
  The concept of imperialism arose in the modern age, associated chiefly with the European colonial powers of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries and New Imperialism. However, expansionism and centralisation have been pursued throughout recorded history, with the earliest examples dating back to the mid-third millennium BC. Following the retrenchment of European colonization, the concept has further evolved and has been broadly used to identify as well as criticise a range of policies and a number of states, including even supposedly anti-imperialist states.
context_section_description: The term "imperialism" is often conflated with "colonialism"; however, many scholars have argued that each have their own distinct definition. Imperialism and colonialism have been used in order to describe one's perceived superiority, domination and influence upon a person or group of people. Robert Young writes that while imperialism operates from the center, is a state policy and is developed for ideological as well as financial reasons, colonialism is simply the development for settlement or commercial intentions. However, colonialism still includes invasion. Colonialism in modern usage also tends to imply a degree of geographic separation between the colony and the imperial power. Particularly, Edward Said distinguishes the difference between imperialism and colonialism by stating; "imperialism involved 'the practice, the theory and the attitudes of a dominating metropolitan center ruling a distant territory', while colonialism refers to the 'implanting of settlements on a distant territory.' Contiguous land empires such as the Russian or Ottoman have traditionally been excluded from discussions of colonialism, though this is beginning to change, since it is accepted that they also sent populations into the territories they ruled.
  Imperialism and colonialism both dictate the political and economic advantage over a land and the indigenous populations they control, yet scholars sometimes find it difficult to illustrate the difference between the two. Although imperialism and colonialism focus on the suppression of another, if colonialism refers to the process of a country taking physical control of another, imperialism refers to the political and monetary dominance, either formally or informally. Colonialism is seen to be the architect deciding how to start dominating areas and then imperialism can be seen as creating the idea behind conquest cooperating with colonialism. Colonialism is when the imperial nation begins a conquest over an area and then eventually is able to rule over the areas the previous nation had controlled. Colonialism's core meaning is the exploitation of the valuable assets and supplies of the nation that was conquered and the conquering nation then gaining the benefits from the spoils of the war. The meaning of imperialism is to create an empire, by conquering the other state's lands and therefore increasing its own dominance. Colonialism is the builder and preserver of the colonial possessions in an area by a population coming from a foreign region. Colonialism can completely change the existing social structure, physical structure, and economics of an area; it is not unusual that the characteristics of the conquering peoples are inherited by the conquered indigenous populations. Few colonies remain remote from their mother country. Thus, most will eventually establish a separate nationality or remain under complete control of their mother colony.
  The Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin suggested that "imperialism was the highest form of capitalism, claiming that imperialism developed after colonialism, and was distinguished from colonialism by monopoly capitalism". This idea from Lenin stresses how important new political world order has become in the modern era. Geopolitics now focuses on states becoming major economic players in the market; some states today are viewed as empires due to their political and economic authority over other nations.
  Empires are distincted through the amount of land that it has conquered and expanded. Its political power grows from conquering land; however, cultural and economic aspects flourished through sea and trade routes. A distinction about empires is "that although political empires were built mostly by expansion overland, economic and cultural influences spread at least as much by sea". Some of the main aspects of trade that went overseas consisted of animals and plant products. European empires in Asia and Africa "have come to be seen as the classic forms of imperialism: and indeed most books on the subject confine themselves to the European seaborne empires".
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caption: Entrance of the Russian troops in Tiflis, 26 November 1799, by Franz Roubaud, 1886
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