508
ARTHUR SCHLESINGER. JR.
It
was Lenin who promulgated the "Marxist" theory of imperialism,
and he drew his inspiration on this subject not from Marx but from the
British Radical
J.
A. Hobson. (Indeed, there is a curious passage in
Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism
when Lenin scathingly
attacks the view,
which
he attributes to Cunow, that imperialism is
progressive.) Lenin explained imperialism primarily in terms of capital–
ism's need to find investment outlets for its surplus capital; but this
theory did not work especially well for the United States, which was
still a capital-importing nation
in
its moment of colonialist frenzy. Ac–
cordingly the economic interpretation of American expansion has gen–
erally,
as
with Professor Williams and with Professor Walter LaFeber in
The New Empire,
concentrated on the search for markets. (A notable
exception is Professor Gabriel Kolko who oddly fastens on the search
for raw materials as the mainspring of American imperialism
in
his
little tract
The Roots of American Foreign Policy.)
In
The Roots of
the Modern American Empire,
however, Professor Williams is innocent
of any interest
in
the Leninist
view,
or indeed
in
any
theoretical view,
of the nature of imperialism.
But, if Professor Williams is not possessed by general
theories
of
imperialism, he is possessed by an impassioned vision of the all-powerful
role of markets
in
the American drive for empire. This vision leads him,
I am sure unconsciously, to
distort
his
evidence
to suit his thesis. Let us
take one example. He has made a great deal here and elsewhere of
the fact that Madison wrote in the Tenth Federalist, "Extend the
sphere," and
in
the Fourteenth Federalist of "one great, respectable and
flourishing empire." From such statements he deduces that Madison
"clearly understood that foreign markets were part of the sphere that
had to be enlarged to insure the continuation of republican institutions
and of prosperity." Professor R. W. Van Alstyne advanced a similar
argument in
The Rising American Empire
when he triumphantly cited
the fact that Washington referred to the United States as a "rising Em–
pire" in a letter of March 1783 as proving that the United States was
"by its very essence an expanding imperial power."
This mayor may riot have been so; but the evidence adduced by
Professors Williams and Van Alstyne proves nothing of the sort. Their
case turns on the meaning of the word "empire" in the seventeen eighties.
If
one consults a contemporaneous dictionary - say the first edition of the
Encyclopedia Britannica,
published in 1771 - one finds "empire" defined
as "a large extent of land, under the jurisdiction or government of an
emperor." "Emperor" is defined as "a title of honour among the
ancient
Romans . . . now made to signify a sovereign prince, or supreme ruler
