Week 3 - Colonialism and the Persistence of Colonial Legacies Flashcards
What was the key to the emergence and growth of global capitalism?
colonialism
What did colonisers attempt to do?
colonisers attempted to commodity, extract, and appropriate land and labour surplus from differently racialised groups
What does Rodney say colonialism was about?
not just economic exploitation, focuses not he active “underdevelopment”
What does Pailey say about colonialism?
beyond a system of economic exploitation but a cultural and ideological imposition that continues to shape development discourse today
What did colonialism involve?
deep institutional transformation which continued into post-colonial period (e.g. governance structures, rule of law, property rights)
What was primitive accumulation (Marx)?
feudal, communal, customary rights transformed to individual property rights (customary rights and institutions persist, leading to dualistic and hybrid systems of “legal pluralism”
Why and what are the different forms of colonialism?
depth of impact and historical duration varied widely
militarised mercantilism (16th-18h centuries, fortified enclaves for monopoly trade)
colonisation and settlement of the ‘new Europes’ (!7th-19th centuries)
plantation slave colonies of the Caribbean (17th-18th centuries)
Europe’s overseas empires in Africa and Asia (17th-18th centuries)
What are the statistics on the wealth disparities colonialism created?
10% of the world’s people were allocated 85% of its wealth, 90% of all present and rural people had their lands expropriated
What does Mkandawire say about the colonial state?
the colonial state was a surplus extraction regime and systems of taxation were a defining characteristic of various forms of colonisation even by the same imperial power
What is path determination?
colonial activities determined post-colonial ones, or at least conditioned them, such that departure from the colonial pattern was, and perhaps remains, difficult and costly
What is the difference between West Africa and East and South Africa’s colonial experience?
West African colonial governments more responsive to expand income and welfare, but did little to promote industrial expansion up value chain
East and South Africa colonies were worse on poverty alleviation, but did more for structural transformation (settler colonies)
What does unequal exchange regarding colonisation refer to?
periphery countries drawn into sphere of industrial capitalism without themselves becoming industrial producers (just a persistent transfer of economic surplus from the periphery to the core, produces ‘distorted’ economies in the periphery)
What was the cause of unequal exchange in the periphery countries?
export orientation
less manufacturing and expansion of services
tendency to use less productive technologies
What is “primitive accumulation” regarding colonialism?
a process where European countries amassed capital by exploiting colonies
What provided the necessary capital for Europe’s industrial revolution and economic expansion?
inflow of wealth from the colonies (by extracting vast wealth from their colonies, including raw materials, agricultural products, and human labour)
How did colonialism open new markets for European goods?
colonised regions were often forced to buy European products, which helped European industries thrive and grow
global trade system established through colonialism gave European merchants and industrialists significant economic advantages
How did colonialism shape labour systems?
forced labor, slavery, and indentured servitude in the colonies provided cheap labor that supported European industries (European capitalist systems were built on the exploitation of colonised peoples, allowing European)
What does Blaut argue about the wealth disparity between Europe and its colonies?
(later, the Global North and South) was a direct result of the colonial system (unequal exchange of goods and labour benefited Europe at the expense of the colonised)
What does Blaut argue that contemporary global capitalism continues to reflect?
the colonial exploitative relationships in a different form
What traditional narrative does Blaut reject?
the traditional narrative that capitalism is the result of European cultural or intellectual superiority
insists that the economic growth of Europe cannot be separated from its colonial ventures
In Africa, what were the forms of colonial incorporation?
cash from economies (enlarged West Africa)
Africa of the concession companies (Congo Basin)
Africa of the labour reserved (East and Southern Africa)
What is the Indian legacy regarding colonialism and what does Kohli refer to India as?
restructured India’s economy for British benefit
systematic destruction of Indian industries
focus on extraction of raw materials, cash crops, forced labour
‘fragmented multiclass’ development states
What is the Indonesian legacy regarding colonialism?
farm surplus was siphoned off to subsidise plantations
post-colonial elites now control the sugar and palm plantation system put in place by the Dutch colonialists and still contracted to foreign corporate interests
stagnant ‘traditional’ farming sector
How did colonialism help to lead to capitalism?
colonialism created a single global economy