The advent of social imperialism was originally understood as the moment in the late nineteenth century when socialists and the working-class movement became collaborators in imperialism. Its origin has been linked to the depression of the 1870s and 1880s and efforts by governments to recuperate economic losses while simultaneously frustrating socialist and labor agitation. Advocates of imperialism such as Jules Ferry and Joseph Chamberlain justified it by arguing that the fruits of empire would subsidize social reform, remedy the stagnation and instability of late-nineteenth-century European economies, and ameliorate the plight of the poor--''the cry of our industrial population,'' in Ferry's words--by affording steady employment producing goods for captive colonial markets. Hobson debunked such arguments: overseas investment, whether in formal colonies or informal spheres of influence, he argued, drained resources from European domestic economies. More cynical politicians such as Otto von Bismarck merely invoked imperial ''crisis ideology,'' using overseas military adventures and a focus on external enemies to divert popular attention from the deficiencies of domestic political and economic arrangements. Privileging the pursuit of empire enabled the German state to postpone the democratization of political power and evade redistribution of wealth.

Perhaps because, unlike Britain, France lacked a substantial informal empire in the mid-nineteeth century, French imperial gains in the ''scramble for Africa'' late in the century did succeed in generating markets and profits unavailable in the domestic economy. This success afforded France economic parity with Germany, the Ottomans, and Russia. But in the course of the twentieth century the importance of these economic resources diminished. . .

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