序章
What Woolf viewed as the ‘new imperialism’ of the forty years before the outbreak of war in 1914 was in many ways an extension of existing imperial structures. Britain, France, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands had a hodge-podge of territories worldwide – colonies, protectorates, spheres of influence, entrepôts, areas of privileged treaty rights – long before the ‘new’ imperialism. Yet this new wave of empire was different. It derived from a growing sense of competition between the modernizing nations, partly because they were searching for new sources of materials and food and for new markets, partly because ‘empire’ came to be seen as a way of defining the identity of the late-century nation state as a progressive ‘civilizing’ agent for the rest of the world, and partly as a symbol of national prestige. This last was especially the case for the new nations, whose identity was fragile, divided by regional loyalties and social conflicts. In December 1894 the German chancellor, Prince Chlodwig zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst, announced that the ‘maintenance of our colonial possessions is a demand of national honour and an indication of our national reputation.’In Italy in 1885, the Foreign Ministry claimed that in the ‘veritable steeplechase for colonial acquisitions in all parts of the world’, Italy had to find ‘its destiny as a great power’ by acquiring colonies of its own.For the Japanese reformers running the new Meiji state, some form of imperialism was regarded as an essential demonstration of the new ‘national way’ (kokutai), and the occupation of the Kurile, Ryūkyū and Bonin islands in the 1870s was the first step in building what was now called the Great Empire of Japan (Dai Nippon Teikoku).Over the half century that followed, these were the three states whose wish to create major empires would result in world war in the 1940s.
机翻：伍尔夫所看到的1914年战争爆发前四十年的“新帝国主义”在很多方面是现有帝国结构的延伸。英国、法国、西班牙、葡萄牙和荷兰已经有世界各地杂乱无章的领地——殖民地、保护国、势力范围、转运站、享有特权条约权利的地区——远在新帝国主义之前。然而，这股新的帝国主义浪潮是不同的。它源于现代国家之间的竞争日益加剧，部分原因是因为他们正在寻找新的原材料和食品来源以及新市场，部分原因是因为“帝国”被看作是定义世纪末民族国家身份的一种方式，即作为进步的“文明”力量来塑造世界的其他部分，部分原因则是作为国家威望的象征。这一点尤其适用于新成立的国家，这些国家的身份是脆弱的，被地区忠诚和社会冲突所分割。1894年12月，德国首相霍亨洛黑-席林斯福特亲王宣布，“保持我们的殖民地是国家荣誉的要求，也是我们国家声望的标志。”1885年在意大利，外交部声称，在“世界各个部分进行真正的殖民争夺赛”中，意大利必须通过获得自己的殖民地来找到“作为大国的命运”。对于运行新明治国家的日本改革者来说，某种形式的帝国主义被视为“国家之道”（kokutai，一种新的“国家之道”）的重要展示方式，1870年代对库页岛、琉球和波恩群岛的占领是建立所谓的大日/本帝/国（Dai Nippon Teikoku）的第一步。在接下来的半个世纪，这三个国家渴望建立主要帝国，最终导致了1940年代的世界大战。
