Week 5- Chapter 31 Flashcards
dependency theory
In 1948 the UN established the Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA) in Santiago, Chile, to study economic development. Under the direction of Argentine economist Ratil Prebisch, ECLA produced Latin America’s main intellectual contributions to the twentieth century: a diagnosis of why less industrialized regions lagged economically and technologically behind Europe and the United States. These ideas were known as dependency theory.
According to dependency theory, the first regions to industrialize in the nineteenth century— Western Europe and the United States— were locked in a lasting economic advantage magnified by colonialism and neocolonialism. This advantage
trapped countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia in roles as exporters of agricultural and mineral commodities and importers of capital and technology. According
to this analysis, the prosperity of Europe and the United States was built on the impoverishment of other regions, an inequality that increased over time as the value of commodities decreased relative to the value of manufactured and technological goods.
modernization theory
Suggested that societies passed
through phases of development from primitive to modern and that adopting the
political, economic, or cultural practices of places like the United States was the best
remedy for poverty. This theory shaped U.S. foreign aid programs, which deployed
armies of experts offering advice in areas ranging from revising legal codes to digging
wells. These experts often did not understand local conditions, believing the
American way was always best. Regardless of their intentions, these projects were often riddled with unintended negative consequences, which led to mistrust of U.S. aid.
Arab socialism
New nations emerging from colonial rule in the Middle East embraced Arab socialism, a modernizing, secular, and nationalist project of nation-building aimed at economic development, a strong military, and Pan-Arab unity. Arab socialism held particular significance for women in Middle Eastern societies. It cast aside religious restrictions on women’s education, occupations, public activities, and fashions. In countries like Egypt and Iraq, the openness of education and access to professions enjoyed by urban, typically affluent women symbolized an
embrace Western modernity, although men still dominated senior posts in government, the professions, and business.
Palestine Liberation Organization
(PLO)
By early 1948, an undeclared civil war raged in Palestine. When the British mandate ended on May 14, 1948, the Jews proclaimed the state of Israel. Arab countries immediately attacked the new state, but Israeli forces drove off the invaders and conquered more territory. Roughly nine hundred thousand Palestinian refugees fled or were expelled from old Palestine. The war left an enormous legacy of Arab bitterness toward Israel and its political allies, Great Britain and the United States. In 1964, a loose union of Palestinian refugee groups opposed to Israel and seeking a Palestinian state joined together, under the leadership of Yasir Arafat (1929-2004), to form the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
Great Leap Forward
In 1958, China broke from the Marxist-Leninist development course and
began to go its way. Mao proclaimed a Great Leap Forward in which industrial growth would be based on small-scale backyard workshops and steel mills run by
peasants living in gigantic, self-contained communes. The plan led to economic dis-
aster, as land in the countryside went untilled when peasants turned to industrial
production. As many as 30 million people died in famines that swept the country
in 1960-1961. When Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev criticized Chinese policy in
1960, Mao condemned him and his Soviet colleagues as detestable “modern revision-
ists.” Khrushchev cut off aid, splitting the Communist world apart. Mao temporarily lost influence in the party after the Great Leap Forward fiasco.
Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution
Mao lost influence in the party after the Great Leap Forward fiasco and the
Sino-Soviet split, but in 1965, he staged a dramatic comeback, launching the
Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. He sought to purge the party and to recap-
ture the revolutionary fervour of the guerrilla struggle. The army and the nation’s
young people responded enthusiastically, organizing themselves into radical cadres
called Red Guards. Students denounced their teachers and practised rebellion in the
name of revolution. Through his speeches and writings, Mao’s thoughts were collected in the Little Red Book, which became scripture to the Red Guards.
Import substitution industrialization
For people emerging from colonialism, dependency theory was more appealing.
Newly independent nations faced enormous pressures: rural poverty pushed millions into cities with scarce good jobs. Cities and the countryside alike had
insufficient schools and health care. Dependency theorists favoured state planning to induce industrialization and distribute resources more equitably. A common tool to do this was import substitution industrialization (ISI). Under ISI policies, countries imposed trade barriers to keep certain foreign products out and provided subsidies for domestic industries to make the same goods. Dependency suggested that even ISI was not enough and that deep social reforms were needed, such as the redistribution of large farming estates to rural workers, as well as state control of major industries and banks.
liberation theology
Within Catholicism, ideas of social reform and liberation crystallized into a movement called liberation theology. The movement emerged in Latin America amid reforms of the Catholic Church by Pope John XXIII
who called on clergy to engage with the contemporary world—a world characterized
by poverty and exclusion. In 1968, the Latin American Council of Bishops gathered
in Medellin, Colombia, and invoked dependency theory as it called on clergy to
exercise a “preferential option for the poor” by working toward “social justice,”
including land redistribution, the recognition of peasants’ and labour unions, and the condemnation of economic dependency and neo-colonialism.
Muslim League
The Congress Party’s rival was the Muslim League, led by lawyer Muhammad
Ali Jinnah (1876-1948). Jinnah feared that India’s Hindu majority would dominate
national power at the expense of Muslims. He proposed the creation of two separate
countries divided along religious lines. Ghandi disagreed with this, which he believed would lead to ethnic sectarianism rather than collaboration.
Pan-Africanists
The most renowned participant in “black nationalism” was Du Bois
who co-founded the National Association
for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in the United States and orga-
sized Pan-African congresses in Paris during the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 and
in Brussels in 1921. Pan-Africanists sought black solidarity and a self-governing
union of all African peoples. Jamaican-born Marcus Garvey (1887-1940) was the
most influential Pan-Africanist, rallying young, educated Africans to his call of
“Africa for the Africans.”
cocoa holdups
The mass protests that accompanied the deprivations of the Great Depression,
in particular the cocoa holdups of 1930-1931 and 1937-1938, fueled the new
nationalism. Cocoa dominated the British colonial economy in the Gold Coast
(which became Ghana). As prices plummeted after 1929, cocoa farmers refused to sell their beans to the British firms that fixed prices and monopolized exports. Farm-ers organized cooperatives to cut back production and sell their crops directly to European and American chocolate manufacturers. The cocoa holdups mobilized the population against the foreign companies and demonstrated the power of mass organization and protest.
These cocoa hold-ups were early examples of collective action by African farmers against colonial economic policies.
They underscored the need for fairer pricing and better support for smallholder farmers.
The events contributed to the growing awareness and eventual movements towards independence and economic self-determination in the Gold Coast and other African colonies.
National Liberation Front
France attempted to retain Algeria, home to a large, mostly Catholic, European
settler population known as the pieds-noirs (black feet) because its members wore
black shoes instead of sandals. In 1954, Algeria’s anticolonial movement, the
National Liberation Front (FLN), began a war for independence, which the French
colonial police and armed forces bitterly contested, leaving over 500,000 Algerians
dead and millions more displaced. After the FLN won and created an independent
Algerian state in 1962, an estimated 900,000 of the 1.25 million Europeans and
indigenous Jews fled.
The war in Algeria and Indochina’s military victory divided France and under-
mined its political stability. As a result, it was difficult for France to respond to
nationalists in its other African colonies until Charles de Gaulle returned to power in
1958. Seeking to maximize France’s influence over the future independent nations, de Gaulle devised a divide-and-rule strategy. He divided the French West Africa and French Equatorial Africa federations into thirteen separate governments, thus
creating a “French commonwealth.”
Common Market
The first steps toward economic unity were taken through close cooperation over Marshall Plan aid. These were followed by the creation 1952 of a Coal and Steel Community of France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. 1957 these nations signed the Treaty of Rome, creating the European Economic Community, popularly known as the Common Market. The treaty’s primary goal was to eliminate trade barriers
between them and create a single market almost as large as that of the United States.
How did religion and the legacies of colonialism affect the formation
of new nations in South Asia and the Middle East after World War II?
After World War II, the formation of new nations in South Asia and the Middle East was significantly influenced by religion and the legacies of colonialism. In South Asia, the partition of British India into India and Pakistan in 1947 was driven largely by religious differences, with India being predominantly Hindu and Pakistan predominantly Muslim, leading to massive migrations and communal violence. Colonial legacies further complicated matters, as the British had drawn arbitrary borders and deepened religious and ethnic divisions, making post-independence governance challenging. In the Middle East, the establishment of Israel in 1948 as a Jewish state led to immediate conflict with Arab nations and Palestinian Arabs, fueling the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict. European colonial powers had previously drawn artificial borders and implemented the mandate system, disregarding ethnic and religious realities and fostering internal conflicts and instability in countries like Iraq and Syria. These historical factors left a lasting impact on the political landscape and intergroup relations in both regions.
How did the Cold War shape reconstruction, revolution, and
decolonization in East and Southeast Asia?
The Cold War profoundly influenced the reconstruction, revolution, and decolonization in East and Southeast Asia. In terms of reconstruction, the U.S. played a pivotal role in rebuilding Japan and South Korea, transforming them into strong anti-communist allies. Revolutionary movements, such as the Chinese Communist Revolution and the Vietnam War, were heavily shaped by Cold War dynamics, with the U.S. and Soviet Union backing opposing sides. Decolonization processes were also impacted; in Indonesia, U.S. pressure led to Dutch withdrawal and subsequent non-aligned policies, while British decolonization in Malaysia and Singapore was facilitated by the suppression of communist insurgencies. The Philippines gained independence from the U.S., which maintained a military presence to counter communist threats. These interactions illustrate how the Cold War drove strategic alignments, influenced revolutionary activities, and accelerated regional decolonisation.
