Among Empires (1)

Question 1

The war of the Yom Kippur is also know as…?

When and why it happend?

Answer 1

The 1973 Arab-Israeli War.

It was a war fought by a coalition of Arab State (Egypt and Siria) against Isdrael from October 6 to 25, 1973.

It was caused by the rejection of the new State of Israel (1948) who also took in 1967 (with the 6 days war):

• the Sinai Peninsula (Egypt)
• Golan Heights (Syria)
• territories of the West Bank (Jordan)

Question 2

What were the Bretton Woods accords and when had they been taken?

Answer 2

The Bretton Woods accords established a monetary system with rules for commercial and financial relations among the US, Canada, Western Europe, Australia and Japan.

They were taken in 1994 and this system was the first example of a fully negotiated monetary order.

Question 3

What was the Third-Worldism?

Answer 3

The Third- Worldism has its origins in the Bandung Conference (April 1955). It was a meetting of 26 African and Asian States that adopted the policy of non-aligment toward the two economic blocks.

The Third-Worldism is a political concept that try to generate unity among the nations that were ex colonies, to persuite the developmet.

It gives priority to the North-South divisions and conflicts instead of the East- West opposition.

Question 4

What were the imperial powers aspirations ? What it means for the US after the 1945?

Answer 4

If not to
- suppress the autonomous civil society 
Then at least permeate them with 
- his leagal norms
- key regulatory principles of economic distributions.

For the US it meant diffusing the mass industrial capitalism

Question 5

What was the assembly line and who invented it?

Answer 5

An assembly line is a manufacturing process in which the parts of a product are added in sequence until the final assembly is produced.

It was invented by Henry Ford in 1913; its success is due to the production efficiency.

Question 6

What was the key element of the US economic growth in 1900?

Answer 6

• US allowed vast rewards and the right to pass the acquired fortunes with minimal payments.
• vast use of machine over human work.

Question 7

At the begging of nineteenth century the federal government played a small role in US (it was a State that hardly claimed taxes), but what it created despite everything?

Answer 7

Canals, road, railroad that unified national territory.

US gave bancks the right to issue circulating capital to encourage investment.

It commissioned technological experimentations expetially on national fleet that became very competitive.

Question 8

What were the solutions adopted by the US government when capitalism went awry?

Answer 8

It proposed no redistributive solutions but cooperatives ones.

Elimination of monopoly.

Question 9

What was the US growth advantage over the European Sates?

Answer 9

European States used their economic source on fighting each other. They focused on war.

US fought a capital-intensive war.
By making their advantages in industrial capital accessible to its allies, America could achieve a decisive supremacy.

Question 10

What was always oriented Fordism?

Answer 10

Toward standardization. It presupposed mass production and standardized labour contracts.

Question 11

What is the main characteristic of the twentieth-century industrial working class history?

Answer 11

Was its internal division.
They were split between gradualism and more radical tendencies, that gave priority to redistribution of income, property and political power rather than growth.

Question 12

What happened on a political level during the first years after the end of the war? What was the role of Communist and Socialist parties?

Answer 12

Socialist parties and unions tended to press on wage hikes and price controls to keep up with inflation.

While Communist parties went into a more militant rule. Their agitation against austeirity policies led their exclusion to the government in Fr, It and Belgium.

Question 13

What was the new vision of growth that was developed in the years immediately before and after the WWII?

Answer 13

The economists shifted the focus from Keynes’s concerns with recovery from the Great Depression to a more optimistic vision.

Tha solution was identified in the optimization of the work process and planning tasks within the enterprise.

Tha American labor accepted the idea that the increase of the salaries would be in proportion to the growth of output.

Question 14

Which side Social democratic and Catholic unions chose?

Answer 14

They supported Marshall Plan, which brought productivity mission and a crash courses in collaborative union activity.

Question 15

What was the main difference between US capital’s rights and those of European?

Answer 15

European capital rights were less than in US:

• it remain harder to fire workers;
• social security contributions would be higher;
• European States retained ownership of utilities and infrastructure to a far greater degree than public authorities in the US.

Question 16

What was the gold standard?

Answer 16

Was a self-imposed discipline provided that any currrency a central bank emitted might be redeemed for the gold reserves it had accumulated.

Question 17

What happened to the economic system under the gold system?

Answer 17

When there was a crisis, it was necessary to tightening interest rate.

Consequence I : inhibit investment and slow down economic expansion.

Consequence II : induce recessionary price.

SO

1. exporters suffer if the value of the currency rose in terms of gold;
2. Workers would face layoff;
3. Domestic debtors would bear heavier interest payment.

Question 18

In the international architecture of the gold standard, which country hold the hegemony?

Answer 18

GB, whose currency served as an reserve for many national and private foreign banks.

Question 19

Why the European countries suffered the dollar gap?

Answer 19

• European economy were devastated; America had vastly expanded its own productive apparatus.
• were investing at high rates to make up for wartime destruction.
• The strength of the Social and Communist parties set limits to austerity

Only US could alleviate their efforts between capital accumulation and consumption.

Question 20

Bretton Woods accords had not only the Europe dependence from US aid as consequence, but also….

Answer 20

A changing relationship with the (later) Third World, who was not under the Euopean countries (expecially GB) economic control, but US instead.

Question 21

What was the OEEC?

Answer 21

The Organisation for European Economic Co-operation; (OEEC) came into being on 16 April 1948.

It emerged from the Marshall Plan to supervise the distribution of aid.

Question 22

US imposed that the cost of liquidating the Allies’ wartime inflation would be borne by the sterling. System. What was the willing of US with this prerogative and also with the Marshall plan?

Answer 22

The aim was to gain preponderance in change of wealth. US was guided by hegemonic aspirations.

Question 23

How US gain the hegemony, beside the Marshall plan?

Answer 23

With the free trade.

The opening of the international markets bring US, that had a technological superiority, to a leadership role.

Question 24

What countries did with the dollars after the BW accords?

Which crisis showed the critical aspects of the newborn system?

Answer 24

Countries used dollars as a reserve currency without limits. The consequence was the expectation that dollars would remain scarce and continually in demand.

The Vietnam war called deficit that was exported also in the European domestic conflict.

Question 25

How the Atlantic regions prosperity rested so long from before 70’?

Answer 25

Thanks to the low energy coast.

US and GB intervened to contain Mossadegh, the Iran Shaw who in 1950 ride to nationalized the Aglo-Iranian oil firm.

They controlled through their oil firm the production of oil in Iran, that enjoying concessions in the Middle East.

Question 26

What consequences had Europe by the inflationary pressure that US caused for the Vietnam war deficit?

Answer 26

Domestic conflicts in Eu.

Labors and employee collectives fight for an equal distribution of the richness.

The growth that the capitalism system brought was not equal among the differences classes.

Question 27

In what way does it make sense to speak about American imperial leadership in the period through the 1960?

Answer 27

The are different reasons.

• European elites accepted a limited capacity for international decision making.
• the Bretton Wood agreements that gave life to a new economic and monetary system and make the dollars the world currency.
• the OEEC, the North Atlantic Alliance incubated an international political class that was proud of its role. They were voted to the American aspiration, fallowed the idea of a transatlantic cooperation.

Question 28

Why the American ascendancy was put in question?

What was the consequence of the fair of loosening supremacy that Americans stared feel ?

Answer 28

At the end of 1960s

• America was not the only power to own nuclear weapons (URSS had it too) and also
• was involved in numerous post colonial war.

The consequences was
- the strengthening of the imperialism ideas with the election on Nixon and Kissinger.