Review: International Economics: Economics and Empire 1830–1914
| DOI | 10.1177/002070207402900414 |
| Date | 01 December 1974 |
| Published date | 01 December 1974 |
| Author | Kevin H. Burley |
| Subject Matter | Review |
REVIEWS/INTERNATIONAL
ECONOMICS
657
dealing
primarily
with
political
analysis
as
the
title
promises
would
have
explained
the
greater
concern
of
Britain and
France
as
world
shipping
powers
rather
than
lingering
colonial
ones
in
wanting
to
keep
open
the
Suez
Canal
before
and
during
the
1956
Arab-Israeli
War
in
which
they
were
belligerents.
Some
interesting
but
hard-to-follow
data,
under
a
subhead
of
chapter
6
titled
'Analysis
of
Behavior
at
the
Actor
Level,'
break
a
little ground
in
explaining
the
growing
political
role
of
state
mer-
chant
fleets
of
Third
World nations.
But
surely
Brazil,
which
the
author
styles
a
'non-traditional high
seas
participant'
(p
129)
and
which
now
has
the
second
largest
merchant
fleet
in the
western
hemisphere,
should
have
been
studied
in
a
separate
context,
namely
how
it
is
using
shipping
in
its
current
commercial
aggrandizement
and
in
the
Brazilian
push
towards
a
future
great
power
status.
John
Harbron/Toronto
ECONOMICS
AND
EMPIRE
1830-1914
D.K.
Fieldhouse
Ithaca:
Cornell
University
Press,
1974,
xvi,
527PP,
$16.50
In
this
'attempt
at
historical
revision'
the
author
returns
to
an
area
he
first
explored
in
an
article, published in
1961,
which
rejected
the
concept
of
economic
imperialism
encompassed
in the
Hobson-Lenin
thesis.
Mr
Fieldhouse
argued
instead
that
in
origin
the
'new
im-
perialism'
was
a
'specifically
political phenomenon.'
The
work
here
reviewed
is
broader in
scope,
however,
and
moreover
differs
from
the
earlier
article
in
that
the
author
(correctly
in
my
opinion)
'attempts
to
reinstate
the
economic
factor
...
though
as
only
one
among
a
num-
ber
of
forces.'
The
central
core
of
the
work
consists
of
detailed
case
studies of
the
European
annexation
of
territories
which,
except
for
Algeria,
were
unsuitable
for
permanent European
settlement.
Hence
it
ignores
the
massive
intercontinental
migration
of
European
labour
and
touches
only
in
passing
on
the
territorial
expansion
of
non-European
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