andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>
> Anyway, he throws off
> the observatiuon that most 18th, 19th and 20th century
> empires have been net economic losses to the
> metropolis and have been maintained for reasons of
> prestige -- sort of a Hobson-Schumpter theory. Is
> there a good review of whether that is true?
>
There is a nonsequitur here.
The first proposition (empires have been net economic losses) does _not_ establish the second (have been maintained for reasons of prestige).
Personally, I think Marxists should accept the first (empirical) proposition. The English _nation_, as a whole, probably spent more on India than it ever got out of India _directly_. But it was far from a simple exchange between the English Nation as a whole and India as a whole. Certain (crucial) sub-units of the English nation profited immensely. (E.g. the textile manufacturers and the capitalists that produced their means of production. Also the British Civil Service. The toll of WWI on the latter group is the basis for Ford Madox Ford's great novel.
But the _cost_ of maintaining the Empire was born not by these groups but by the working people of England. That seems to be what the chapter on the Working Day in _Capital_ is all about. This is implicit, incidentally, in _Mansfield Park_.
The claim that "prestige" was the motor of empire seems utterly frivolous to me -- though doubtless prestige was greatly involved in what moved various agents of empire.
Carrol