How far does the British state conform to, or depart from, the ideal Essay

How far does the British state conform to, or depart from, the ideal of an enterprise association, as opposed to a civil association - Essay Example The Marxist interpretation of Colonialism will be our point of departure, due to its scientific validity in our estimation. Thereafter, the Marxist stand point losses its relevance for our paper as it tends to adhere to a meta-analytical perspective and tends to be clichà ©d, lacking a predictive quality, whereas the paper requires to focus on British Colonialism and its reverse influence on the state structure of Britain. To fascilitate our argument we have appropriated and borrowed David Easton’s Systems’ Approach to comprehend the complexity of the reverse interaction in focus. Thereafter we will further our argument by referring to the useful categorization of Hanrieder to demonstrate that how colonial interests ultimately shaped the British state at the institutional level. Great Britain was a relatively late entrant on the world stage as a colonial power. The Spanish and Portuguese seaborne empires preceded Britain. These colonial empires were built on the linchpin of maritime power and subsequent colonial acquisitions. The dominance of Iberian Peninsula lasted roughly till late 16th century (Brewer.1989). This was what the Marxist call ‘Mercantile Period’. Britain as a mercantile state par-excellence began to dominate world colonial matrix by the end of 16th Century. One reason for emergence of Britain’s dominance was that the ‘industrial revolution had centered on Britain, thereby necessitating an â€Å"organization of production and accumulation†, designed to fascilitate a merchant capitalist economy, looking for raw material, cheap labour and markets for finished products’ ( Luxemberg.1951). Britain’s colonial expansion was propelled by the emerging needs of a nascent political economy which needed co lonies. Thus at the outset of this epoch, British State geared itself to colonize and acquire territories to safeguard the interests of a mercantile state, thereby as a corollary almost canonizing principle of free trade and