Author: John Hobson, English economist and English diplomat in southern Africa.
Context: During the middle of an economic depression in England which he attributed to the unsustainability in imperialist expansion.
Language: Language is very direct and highly critical. He was very well educated and the language in the document is not for an uneducated audience.
Audience: For the middle and upper classes mainly, ones who would understand simple to complex economics. Also for all modern economists at the time, especially in England.
Intent: To change economic policies in england from an unsustainable imperialist system to a system which abandons destructive expansionism for a more reliable, inwardly shifted national focus.
Message: Imperialism must be destroyed through the means of understanding its economic downfalls. Imperialism destroys public relations through infiltration and aggression, and due to its unsustainable nature in which the original national boundaries are left to wither, ends up creating more problems. To help come out of this depression, we need to stop imperialism which will allow England to build itself back up and stimulate foreign trade markets.
Hobson also noted that in addition to the domestic problems that occur in a country like England that utilized imperialism, the annexed areas were practically useless for enforcement of markets. He saw the protectorates as wasteful additions of unassimilable population to the empire.