capitalist imperialism had anything in common with the empires of the past.

Since the beginning, mainstream historians of empire were puzzled: as the highest stage of capitalism, imperialism cannot exist before 1876. Such a concept is not very helpful "if we do not know for certain whether it fits the facts of two millennia or... two generations." Kenneth Waltz believed that the cause of imperialism was capitalism, but appears much younger than the effect (imperialism). He believed that it is as