Editorial Note, Mar-Apr, 2021

Traversing across ten centuries, Amiya Kumar Bagchi, in the lead article in this issue, covers five phases of ‘imperialism’ involving different forms of conquest, plunder and aggrandisement by the dominant powers of the day. In this history, he identifies forms of imperialism starting with the capitalist, Italian city-states and stretching to the present day, all of which had some combination of the following features: subjugation of foreign territories as colonies and of their people; constant engagement in violent wars; use of naval prowess; extortion of extra-territorial privileges; genocide of local and indigenous populations; integration of manufacturing and agrarian states; and resort to a system of ‘protection’, for a price, against the violence that imperialism perpetrated. The article examines the historically specific ways in which one or more of these features has dominated the nature of imperialism through the history of capitalism.