The British Imperial Establishment, Post Imperial Era, and the ‘Churchillian’ World View, 1945-2016. (Adjustments & Challenges in Contemporary British Diplomatic Strategy)

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over time,
the trade internally and externally becomes more diversified and
voluminous. These developments increase the
sum of the claims or interests
which governments have to promote and defend in the international system,
and
yet often without any conscious or formulated desire for that increase. In addition
to the interest
of individuals in, foreign trade, the defence of foreign markets and
investments in fact become national
interests because they are sources of income
and economic security for many more besides the actual traders
and investors.
Developing interests which are blocked in one area try to find an outlet in another.
To
this impulse which is as a result of physical growth of the state and the contacts
brought about because of
that growth, the name ‘imperialism’ has been given,
though in the period since the First World War
that word has become in negative
connotations and its value as an academic concept has come to be
questioned.
According to F. S. Northedge, the need to expand or imperialism (in this context)
is an
“acquisitive capacity of man, a permanent inclination of human nature, and
evidence for this is
certainly all about us, both in the contemporary world and in
the records of the past. When we make the
seemingly innocuous statement, which
is normally made without question in modern industrialized society, that
if taxes
are raised too high, the incentive to work will be reduced, we are in effect taking
it for
granted that men will not do what they have no inclination to do, unless
their acquisitive interests (we call
them such) are thereby satisfied. Moreover,
appeals to the citizen’s sense of civic duty will not, we
assume, act as a sufficient
incentive to work unless there is some cash benefit, and perhaps the promise
of
more cash benefit in the future.”2 In literature and history
many examples of this
famous and familiar theme can be found. Thucydides in his ‘History of
the
Peloponnesian War’ details the well-known dialogue between the Athenians and
the Melians in the
sixteenth year of the war with Sparta: “when the Athenians
were asked why they wanted to conquer Melos
they replied that it was a ‘law of
nature’ that the strong should conquer the weak and that was all
that needed to be

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