ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the territorial aspect of Imperialism, especially as it affected Africa, and the extent to which that continent in turn served as a safety-valve for the Industrial Revolution. It traces the origin and growth of mercantile capitalism into the imperialist stage, as it occurred in England. Lenin, the greatest political thinker of the twentieth century, describes Imperialism as the “monopoly stage of capitalism”. Imperialism emerged at a particular historical stage in the development of the capitalist system in Europe. The Industrial Revolution which ushered in the modern capitalist system, approximately in the ’sixties of the eighteenth century, developed around the textile and woollen industries. The imperialist orientation of Germany soon brought her into open conflict with England and France, for it was on the colonial front, especially in Africa, that the political and economic interests of all the great Western Powers clashed.
