They did so in pursuit of precious metals and stones, for settlement and defence (of other lands already seized), for points of supply to their ships, in order to demonstrate their power, and [to Christianize the heathen.]
Actually, the imperial age started with the Portuguese and the Brits trading with India, because it was cheaper to run the new ocean-going sailing ships around the Cape of Good Hope to India and back than pay for the camels and taxes of the overland route through Arabia etc. Indeed I had it confirmed from a guide in Jaisalmer, in the desert of western India a couple years ago, that the whole place went to the dogs once the Portuguese and the Brits appeared on the scene. Nobody needed their stinkin' camels and gorgeous havelis any more. So John Lloyd got it a bit wrong.
Yes, there was a lot of terra nullius argument where the humans in question were pre-agricultural hunter-gatherers or horticulturalists. But not in India and China.
Where India was concerned the Brits were forever dealing with the predatory robber lords just out of town of Calcutta or Madras. Like the Maratha Confederacy. Or the princes just up the road from Bombay in Pune, who were no doubt advised by the Brahmin ancestors of Seattle Brahmin politician Kshama Sawant.
The point is that the Brits weren't in India to loot and plunder it. They were there to trade.
But, of course, the Brit ruling class still lived in a feudal culture. So in due course you got Brit imperialists in India saying, up at the Royal Simla Club in the usual haze after tiffin, "Good Lord chaps, we've got to pacify Afghanistan before the Russkies get there."
It is my belief that the old order of loot and plunder is over. The reason is simple: wealth no longer adheres in land and "precious metals and stones," but in intangible capital, ideas and processes that create the stuff we buy in stores and the SUVs we take it home in. After World War II the Soviets looted and plundered eastern Germany of all its physical capital, factories and machines, and took the whole caboodle off to Russia. How did that turn out, Tovarich Brezhnev? Yeah. German per-capita GDP in 2018: $46, 241; Russia per-capita GDP: $11,289.
All we need is for our politicians and activists to catch up with us, and stop playing at chimp border warfare.
The point of empires is to send the Roman legionaries out for loot and plunder and bring the plunder and the slaves back to Rome and parade them through the streets in a Triumph. And it worked a treat for the Romans until the borders of the Roman Empire were so far from Rome that the old system didn't work any more, probably because the slaves all died on the journey back to Rome.
Now that the US is withdrawing from its post-WWII imperialism, John Lloyd writes, we may be at the dawn of a new imperial age dominated by China and Russia.
Russia’s authoritarianism and China’s totalitarianism (the second a harder version of the first), now allied, present a formidable front of two states dedicated to increasing their global power, in a fashion increasingly similar to the imperial strategies of Europe.
Now President-for-almost-life Putin is a former KGB guy, and President-for-life Xi is a Commie apparatchik. What the heck do they know about the modern world?
Most likely they are like the Brit chaps at the Club up in Simla in the 1830s worrying about Russkies after tiffin. Or they are like the idiots-all-round in the run-up to World War I. They only know politics and political power. They do not understand that wealth and power do not come from a big fat empire with ostrich-feather hats and impressive parade uniforms, or from regime-sponsored "activists" painting the streets with trite slogans. Or from gubmint programs that take from productive people to give to regime supporters.
But the problem is that, if you are a politician or an activist, the only thing you know is the game of political power. If the game of political power and empire is over, passé mon vieux, what does the poor wren do then, poor thing?
Well, that is what we are setting up the bleachers right now to find out. My feeling is that Russia and China are backing the wrong horse. I think that Russia and China are going to find out that the the whole world will combine against them. Because whether you are Vietnam or the Philippines or Australia or Japan or Crazy Rich Asians in Singapore, or the poor bloody Germans in Central Europe, you don't want to be under the thumb of some thug Commie bastard from Beijing or Moscow.
And, of course, now we don't care about Mid-East oil any more, because fracking. Yay frackers!
No, the Big Problem of the coming era is what to do with people that have a mania for social moralizing. See, I think that primitive men were all about defending the border -- or looting the neighbors -- and primitive women were all about naming and shaming and shunning that awful witch living alone just out of town.
I think that we have about pacified men and taught them to fight for market share instead of their share of slaves. But women?
The problem is a bit like the problem with Harvard graduates: You can always tell a Harvard man; you just can't tell him anything.
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