The Sociology of the Colonies [Part 1] by Rene Maunier

Author:Rene Maunier [Maunier, Rene]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Reference, General, Social Science, Sociology
ISBN: 9780415863407
Google: iyiOSwAACAAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-05-15T05:49:12+00:00

CHAPTER XXII

MATERIAL IMPERIALISM: DETAILS

We must analyse in detail all the various aims of expansion which in reality are almost invariably intertwined. Montchrestien, who was in his own way an imperialist, and in his own way a nationalist, wrote in 1615 the Treatise which I have already quoted1. In it we clearly see how closely interwoven are the various interests which justify expansion. If he desires colonies, it is, he teils us, first to enrich the King; but also to enrich the people, the subjects of the King; also to get rid of evildoers, to give employment to the poor and the idle, and to remedy over-population; for in our country, he says, “people are stifling each other”. Thus, many calculations enter in, and many aims. This is a point we must not overlook as we proceed to our analysis.

We have already said: material imperialism is first and foremost transplantation. Its first aim is to settle men in a distant country. Amongst the Ancients it already took the form of what we might call settlement colonies or transplantation colonies. The Ancients had two needs: to transplant their excess population, and to transplant their malcontents.

Transplanting excess population. The first aim of the colonies was to settle excess population on overseas shores2. The Greeks were wont in their cities to draw lots for superfluous men, who then went off to build colonies at a distance. The Romans, both under the Republic and under the Empire, pursued a deliberate policy of transplanting to Mauritania their excess men: encour-aging emigration by offering free estates to fathers of families who had at least three children. Population policy was therefore familiar to the Romans.

Coming to the West, and first of all to the Middle Ages, we find a similar calculation formally expressed. The unknown poet (perhaps Robert Wace) of the Roman de Brut, which is believed to date from the 13th Century, puts the following verses into the mouth of a Saxon chief, who was supposed to have founded a settlement in Brittany about the year A.D. 800:

Our folk at home too fecund are,

Our families too large by far;

Too many of us there appear

And that is why you find us here …

We thus divide the multitude

For whom our land can find no food,

For infants more our country yields

Than beasts to graze upon our fields.1

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