ABSTRACT
Hobson was not alone among contemporaries in regarding the contest for influ ence in China at the close o f the nineteenth century as being the prelude to an economic division or even a territorial partition w hich w ould alter the course o f world history." In the event, China defied the odds: her vast econom y was insufficiently penetrated to be either developed or underm ined by W estern forces; formally at least, she managed to retain her political independence, despite the manifest frailty o f successive C h ’ing governments and the ultimate collapse o f the M anchu dynasty in 1911. This outcom e contrasts w ith the experience o f the South American republics, w hich were drawn into the W est’s economic and cultural orbit, and o f Africa, where indigenous states lost their independence and became colonies o f the European powers. However, this does not mean that China escaped from imperialist impulses. The public sector, especially fin ance, fell under external control and this, in turn, curtailed the political indep endence o f the central government. The Chinese case is therefore closer to that o f the O ttom an Empire than it is to South America or Africa, and it raises the question o f w hether imperialist designs on these centralised but also sprawling polities sprang from different impulses or w hether broadly similar intentions were frustrated by a series o f drawn games o f diplomatic chess or by forces w ithin indigenous society w hich remain, despite the advances o f m odern research, in part inscrutable.
