ABSTRACT
Today development is the successor to what earlier generations of Europeans called Progress, a concept inspired by the eighteenth-century Enlightenment and meaning all-around advance in everything that makes up civilization. Wars of conquest inside Europe represented one form of imperialism, which in protean shapes pervades all history, from the first tribal raid to the latest Wall Street conspiracy. It cannot reasonably be doubted that modern European annexations, and their successor neo-colonialism (with the U.S.A. as chief exponent) have been intimately connected with the appetites of capitalism. Capitalism as it evolved in early modern times led on, though not in any straight line, toward the second “big leap,” industrial revolution, or the harnessing of mechanical power to production. If Britain was not industrializing India, the question arises why India was not industrializing itself. In Asia what may be termed “military capitalism,” pioneered in many ways by Japan, has been in the limelight.
