Lecture slides--Set 2

“Population Pressure” in Europe

“I do not want to risk . . . losing a fine chance Political competition and nationalism to secure for ourselves a slice of this magnificent African cake.”

Our aim is “to flash a torch of light across the western half of the Dark Continent.”

King Leopold (Belgium)

I would annexe the planets if I could!

Cecil Rhodes (England)

Economic competition

Industrialization

Mass migration

Massive wealth transfer

Map 103 Sovereign States: Duration of Independence

Map 106 European Colonialism 1500-2000

Map 116 Distribution of Minority Populations

Africa Pre-Colonialism

Africa in 1914

As they were “discovering” the world, Europeans were perfecting navigational skills and refining cartographic techniques

Taaffe, Morrill, and Gould model

During colonialism

This did not happen much after decolonization

Race in the Belgian Congo

Hochschild, Adam. 1999. King Leopold’s Ghost (pp. 120). New York: Houghton Mifflin.

Hochschild, Adam. 1999. King Leopold’s Ghost (pp. 121). New York: Houghton Mifflin.

Race in the Belgian Congo

Map 55 Employment by Economic Activity

Incorporation of the world-system When we write the “world history” of earlier periods, we are in fact making an addition of the histories of the various parts of the globe, but which . . . had only marginal and superficial contacts. It is perfectly possible to write the earlier history of Africa with only a casual reference to that of the Far East, with . . . little reference to Europe. . . . What happened in China was, until [the 1700s] irrelevant to the political rulers of Europe. In fact, there was not . . . one world. Even in 1848 large areas of the various continents were marked in white on even the best European maps. . . . Ignorance [of other places] was a symptom rather than a cause of the lack of the [interdependence of the various parts of the globe]. --E.J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital 1848-1875

1800

Maps showing the incorporation of external areas into the capitalist world-system 1900

2000

Implementation of the detail division of labor

(reorganization of production) Chaplin critique: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-FbVF1x1_U

Map 55 Employment by Economic Activity

Map 56 Economic Output per Sector

Map 18 Urbanization

Time-space compression

Since 1950, an increasing share of the world’s output has been traded between countries

“We are writing the constitution of a single world economy.” --Renato Ruggiero, first Director-General of the WTO

http://earthtrends.wri.org/updates/node/87