Monopoly capitalism, throughout its entire history, has tended to
function internationally, moving across frontiers in search of raw
materials, markets, and fields of profitable investment. Inter-group
trade has been carried on between and through "foreign" markets, cities
and states. Not only has the flag followed the investor, but the
investor has used governmental agencies, including the military, to
protect economic interests, promote them and expand them. Early in their
history, western nations subsidized private organizations like the Dutch
East India Company and the British Hudson Bay Company and authorized
them to exercise quasi-public authority. International banking and
insurance paralleled international trade.
Western civilization, from its earliest beginnings in foreign business
relations and ideological adventures like the Crusades, has spilled
across national frontiers in its search for adventure, for experience,
for information, for pelf and power. A part of the expansionist drive
was "strictly business" in character. Another part--international
conferences, public and private; tourism; the export of artifacts and of
information, were promoted by mixed motives, from missionary zeal for
the propagation of The Faith to international business for profit,
public and private.
One of the most spectacular aspects of European expansion during modern
times has been the growth of production and trade; the rapid increase in
"foreign" investment; and governmental efforts to tie together
geographically and ethnically remote places and peoples into neat
bundles tagged Spanish Empire, British Empire, French Empire, Russian
Empire.
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