The international turn in the study of the origins of late-19th-century imperialism: achievements, limits and new directions in the theory of uneven and combined development

The late 19th century witnessed an unparalleled spasm of imperial expansion that redrew the world map into a handful of colonial empires. The first attempt to explain what caused this epoch was the Hobson-Lenin classical theory of imperialism. Nonetheless, over the past century, interwoven between other criticisms, many have problematised the theory’s ‘internalism’ – its negligence of the undeniable impact of interactive multi-societal co-existence (or, simply, the international) towards this outburst – and correspondingly rectified it. These critiques have constituted an international turn on the topic, which indeed seeks to incorporate the causal significance of the international. Yet, this turn faces two key limitations: an over-reliance on thick and supposedly atheoretical historical description and, on the flip side, a lack of historical specificity in theorising. To rectify these issues and further the international turn, this article argues that Leon Trotsky’s theory of uneven and combined development is a fruitful starting point.