ABSTRACT
Hardly had the Boer War ended than J. A. Hobson launched an attack on all things imperial. Beginning with the oft-quoted remark that 'Although the new Imperialism has been bad business for the nation, it has been good business for certain classes and certain trades within the nation',7 Hobson's conclusions have provided the basis for three-quarters of a century of neo-Marxist rhetoric. Engels wrote: ' . . . colonization today is merely a subsidiary of the stock exchange'; Rosa Luxenburg argued that: 'Imperialism is the political expression of the accumulation of capital'; but it was Lenin whose definition of imperialism included,'... the merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation on the basis of this 'finance capital' of a financial oligarchy, [and] the export of capital which has been extremely important as distinguished from the export of commodities .. .'.8 It was also Lenin who focused his attention on the concentration of British overseas finance in the empire. He argued: 'The principal sphere of investment of British capital are the British colonies', and he put the empire's share at almost 50 per cent.9
