Dependency Theory Of Imperialism

In this essay, I will argue that despite some political reasons such as prestige of the countries or nationalism, the motives for territorial expansion of imperialism were primarily economic. The most compelling evidence for this is that there were demand new raw materials, natural resources and cheap labor to develop their growing industrial economies. In addition, industrially developing countries were searching for new markets to sell their product.
There are different interpretations of the economic imperialism. Koebner identified three main explanations: “Fabian, Marxian and American, where each of these is a mixture of varied currents” (S. Landes 1961, 496-512). However, this essay is looking for interpretation of imperialism through dependency theory. There are many ways of describing dependency theory, one of which is actually more of an assembly of different theories including world system theory, historical structural theory and Neil Marxist theory. Dependency theorists first of all argue that there are a number of different kinds of state in the world that performs different functions in the world economy. The richest and most powerful core countries, semi-periphery countries; these are modern industrialized wealthy countries,

Since European South Africa region started to industrialize, later in 1841 the British explored golds and diamonds reserves. After British Empire colonized South Africa, it eventually evolved into a major supplier of gold and diamonds. Gold especially was important to maintain national currencies and make sure that there is a constant expansion of an international trade. In this case, commercial and industrial companies received huge profits, therefore their representatives were active supporters of the colonial policy and territorial expansion in other countries and regions (Hobsbawm 1987,