If imperialism was the result of the 'selfish interests of certain industrial, financial and professional classes', he asked, then why did it garner such broad support? His answer was that imperialists attached themselves to those movements that portrayed themselves as doing good in the world, and represented their own motives in humanitarian terms. … Hobson did not question the sincerity of what he framed as these 'disinterested' aims, but did argue that imperialists latch onto these elevated sentiments in order to create a 'moral justification' for their actions. The combination of strong interested forces with weak disinterested ones, he wrote, 'is the homage which imperialism pays to humanity'.

Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, loc. 253