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these other phenomena have important normative and social scientific implications, they are not
the key consideration of this project. We solely focus on the question of formal territorial
acquisition.
We examine the choice between conquest and commerce indirectly, not directly. What
are the conditions under which conquest obtains, and obversely, what are the conditions under
which commerce is possible? The theory is one of sufficient, but not necessary, conditions. We
acknowledge there are other causal mechanisms that will produce formal conquest; we only
model one. We propose a theory of institutional incentives to explain the pattern, formalize the
argument into a game theoretic model, and illustrate the model at work in a single regional
historic case using primary source material. We conclude by showing how the institutional
model not only accounts for variance in patterns of imperialism across both space and time not
accounted for by previous literature, but what policy implications it holds for the present.
Previous Literature
In the political economy tradition, attempts to explain formal imperialism have focused
largely on the attributes of the powerful actor (the imperial state). The Marxist tradition,
stemming from the writings of the liberal economist Hobson and Lenin posit concentrated
wealth in a capitalist state seeks higher rates of return in underdeveloped locales. The state’s
military forces are hijacked by the capitalist elite to secure these enterprises, gaining foreign
colonies as a consequence. Despite empirical evidence to counter the Hobson-Lenin thesis (for
surveys see Eckstein 1991; Smith 1955; Stokes 1969), it remains a popular account of
imperialism in the eyes of many who claim that “[d]espite all that has changed, the essential
features of imperialism as it was described by Hobson and Lenin remain” (Evans 1979: 50).
Another powerful state argument attributes sociological pathologies to states engaged in formal
Convention