Class 3: Beginning

 So now we come to imperialism. 

Let's start with something obvious:

"Expansion is everything... these stars, these vast worlds which we can never reach. I would annex the planets if I could." - Cecil Rhodes

Now who the fuck does that sound like?...

In the 1890s, Cecil Rhodes was co-founder and chairman of DeBeers Consolidated Mines. He had a literal world monopoly of diamonds: controlling 80 to 85% of the world's diamond mines and could name any price in any country. Any purchaser who wanted even the smallest diamond would have to buy what he dictated. 

He was also, wait for it, the Prime Minister of the Cape Colony, one of Britain's four colonies that comprised what we now call South Africa. In order to stymie native black Africans from having a political voice in the Cape Colony he increased the from their land being worth 25 pounds sterling in order to vote to 75 pounds, and then he set limits on the amount of land black Africans could own. His view was that "Black people need to be driven off their land to stimulate them to labour. It must be brought home to them that in future nine-tenths of them will have to spend their lives in manual labour, and the sooner that is brought home to them the better." Ten years after his death, the now united South Africa implemeted a plan for which he was one of the chief architects: which allowed black Africans to only own land on 10 percent of the country's land while whites were entitled to the other 90 percent. It prohibited interracial marriage, created white-only spaces, and segregated bathrooms, fountains, parks and beaches. While the Apartheid era technically begins in 1948, many of its rules were already in place by 1913. 

From the beginning, modern imperialism has been so bound up with corporate control that the border between the two is often invisible. 

Which do you think holds more power in an imperium? Is it countries or corporations? How, if at all, can you tell the power of one from the power of the other?