Imperialism arose from oversaved capital seeking foreign investment, not territorial motives

Evidence

WHAT IMPERIALISTS actually wanted was expansion of political power without the foundation of a body politic. Imperialist expansion had been touched off by a curious kind of economic crisis, the overproduction of capital and the emergence of “superfluous” money, the result of oversaving, which could no longer find productive investment within the national borders. For the first time, investment of power did not pave the way for investment of money, but export of power followed meekly in the train of exported money, since uncontrollable investments in distant countries threatened to transform large strata of society into gamblers, to change the whole capitalist economy from a system of production into a system of financial speculation, and to replace the profits of production with profits in commissions. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 366

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes the core definition of imperialism as political expansion without a body politic, and the causal mechanism of superfluous capital.
• XREF: Connects directly to later readings on colonial economic exploitation and how economic ‘superfluity’ drives exclusionary politics. — connects to: Nineteenth-century European imperialism often worked through debt rather than direct rule