ÖAW | Institut für Kulturwissenschaften / Institute of Culture Studies

The term “informal Empire” has a long history. It dates back at least to a classic article by two British historians in 1953, in which the concept was first explicitly formulated. In the British imperial context, it referred primarily to the ways in which British firms established quasi-imperial economic relations in other parts of the world without creating a formal sovereign regime. As Gallagher and Robinson declared in their original article, the term was meant to make visible imperial economic practices that otherwise remained invisible because of the lack of formal state control. 

While the term “informal empire” itself has largely remained tied to this British imperial understanding, historians have fruitfully applied it to analyze a range of other practices that either involve or are initiated by non-state actors. These forms of involvement go well beyond the purely economic activities conceived by Gallagher and Robinson, and they include cultural activities from missionary work to scientific voyages of exploration, ethnographic projects and practices that rely on imperial networks or resources of another empire to create, and profit from, relations of power and advantage. These activities and practices may also involve the limited participation of a state, where a state uses indirect means to try to extend its cultural, political, or economic influence. Indeed, as David Todd has shown for the French example, one important element of informal empire is the degree to which its practitioners often blur classic boundaries between specifically state initiated actions and actions initiated by actors in society.

Why use informal empire as an approach? What work can it do for us? By analyzing imperial practices through this approach we can make evident a range of imperial activities that would otherwise remain invisible and outside the realm of empire studies. In the past decade this approach has been particularly important for analyzing the imperial practices engaged in by societies without formal global empires, or societies that have claimed historic “innocence” of colonialism. This approach to informal empire may share elements with a “soft power” approach, but we should not imagine that an assertion of informal imperialism makes these practices any less violent or destructive. Quite the contrary. An informal empire approach reveals the often-violent character of practices engaged in by non-state actors, firms, and institutions. Hence, an informal empire approach helps us to re-categorize certain cultural practices (exploration, ethnographic description) in terms that reveal key power-oriented elements.