Imperialism: a look at the book behind the Corbyn furore

John Atkinson Hobson’s work is a signature text on colonialism, but is inseparable from his antisemitism

In his 1902 book Imperialism, the radical journalist John Atkinson Hobson called out the “house of Rothschild” as an example of the “single and peculiar race” of men whose monetary manipulations lay behind the curse of the rampant colonialism of the era. Nowhere in the book did Hobson refer specifically to Jews, but his kneejerk antisemitism was a common feature of political rhetoric in the period. Just the previous year, the rightwing, anti-immigration campaigner Arnold White wrote of a Jewish conspiracy at the heart of the British political establishment in his bestselling Efficiency and Empire. Similarly, Keir Hardie, one of Labour’s first MPs, spoke out in 1900 against Jewish financiers.

But Hobson’s range was narrower. Without naming him, Hobson’s actual target was Nathan Rothschild, head of the banking family, and a prominent public figure in Edwardian Britain. A former MP, ally of Benjamin Disraeli, and the first practising Jew to join the House of Lords, Hobson’s readers would have known immediately at whom Hobson’s invective was directed. Undoubtedly, Lord Rothschild was up to his ears in British imperialism; one of his best friends was Cecil Rhodes, and he helped bankroll the British South Africa Company, which smashed and grabbed its way across the continent in the 1890s.

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