Introduction

If imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism, marked by the growth of monopoly and finance capital, and the mechanism by which capitalism was diffused (Lenin, 2010), it is legitimate to enquire what type of capitalism was transmitted across the world, and when. It is also relevant to speculate about forms of capitalism that may have been ‘globalized’ by earlier expressions of colonialism. In the age of precocious commercial capitalism – the so-called Age of (European) Discoveries and Exploration beginning in the early 14th century, what was the impact of Portuguese encounters with African and Asian societies, and what form of capitalism was carried to the Americas by Iberian adventurers around 1500? Indeed, how capitalist were the seaborne empires of the Iberian kingdoms of the period, and how did the impact of these encounters differ from such later examples as the scramble for Africa and deepening penetration of Asia by Europeans at high points of the ‘old’ and ‘new’ imperialisms of the 18th and 19th centuries, successively characterized by mercantile, industrial and financial capitalism? How did these expressions of capitalism and imperialism meld and interact?

Speculating about expressions of capitalism that emerged in Western Europe, this chapter will explore the nature of overseas expansion from the North Atlantic world. It offers a stylized assessment of interactions with other regions of the global economy from the old and new imperialisms to the post-colonial (or neo-colonial) era, considering the extent to which specific manifestations of capitalism shaped the political economy of successive state– market formations. Modern capitalism, marked by the agricultural and industrial revolutions of the late 18th century, involved the internationalization of industry, and patterns of trade and investment that were quite different from earlier mercantilist overseas adventures. Changes in the nature and form of industrialization – from early North Atlantic expressions to 20th-century models such as those observed in Latin America and Asia, along with the restructuring of global trade and investment flows, have provoked renewed debate about the usefulness of the term ‘imperialism’.