Thorstein Veblen
Review author of: 'The New Empire'. By BROOKS ADAMS. New York: The 
Macmillan Company, 1902. 12mo, pp. xxxvi + 243.
The Journal of Political Economy, vol. 11, No. 2 (Mar., 1903), pp. 314-315.
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Pursuing a line of argument already worked out in his Law of Civilization 
and Decay, Mr. Adams offers an explanation, a theory it may be called, of 
the rise and decline of successive "empires" from the dawn of history to 
the present. The objective point of the argument is to account for the 
present, or imminent, supremacy of America as an imperial power. This 
supremacy has, in Mr. Adams's mind, all the certainty of an accomplished 
fact. While it takes the form of a political supremacy, its substantial 
ground is the commercial leadership of the new imperial organization; the 
reason for commercial leadership being, in its turn, the possession of 
superior material resources, particularly mineral resources, together with 
the convergence of trade routes upon the territory in which the seat of 
empire lies.
Mr. Adams's explanation of the growth of imperial power, in all ages, is 
altogether a geographical one. From the beginning trade routes have 
determined where accumulations of wealth would occur, and they have thereby 
determined where the greater masses of population would congregate and so 
where the seat of political power would be found. Whereas, trade routes 
have largely been determined by the [315] provenance of the minerals most 
useful or most sought after at the time. Within historical times this means 
the metals - the precious metals primarily, and secondarily that one of the 
useful metals which has for the time chiefly served the industrial arts. 
Today it is steel and coal. In the early times, before navigation 
developed, the trade routes lay overland, chiefly between the east and the 
west of Asia; and where these overland routes converged the ancient cities 
and the ancient monarchies grew up - as Egypt, Babylonia, or Persia - and 
power shifted from the one to the other as the path of commerce shifted. 
Later, when great improvements in navigation had taken place, the sea 
routes gradually supplanted the land routes, and the question of empire 
became a question of the convergence of the routes of maritime commerce. 
Today these routes cross and blend within the domain of the United States, 
and radiate from this as a center, at the same time that this domain 
contains the largest, most valuable, and most available supply of the 
mineral wealth upon which the fortunes of commerce ultimately hang. Mr. 
Adams also finds that in some way, mysterious so far as his discussion 
goes, energy springs up where the trade routes cross, and slackens abruptly 
when the routes depart. So that now, for some half-a-down years past, 
America holds over all competitors in point of energetic and sagacious 
administration.
Cogent as Mr. Adams's presentation of the case is, it has an air of one 
sidedness, in that it neglects other than geographical factors; and even 
within the range of geographical factors it places the emphasis almost 
exclusively on the circumstances which condition commerce, as contrasted 
with other economic factors. It may be noted, for instance, that the 
element of race is left out; whereas it would not be a hopeless task to 
construct an equally plausible theory of the facts considered by Mr. Adams 
on grounds of race alone. It may also be noted that so striking a case as 
that of China does not come within the explanation offered. China has all 
the mineral resources on which Mr. Adams throws emphasis; her territory 
lies also at the meeting of the overland and the maritime routes of the 
East; the Chinese people have from time immemorial been highly skilled and 
diligent workmen; but, great as China has been, she has never taken the 
leadership except locally; the industrial revolution did not come through 
Chinese initiative; the development of navigation and the expansion of 
modern commerce are not due to Chinese enterprise and ingenuity, although 
the material circumstances have, on Mr. Adams's theory, for some thousands 
of years apparently favored the rise of China to the position of an all-
dominating world-power.
V.