Sugar production was integrally tied to African slavery.  “Immense legions of slaves came from Africa in order to provide for King Sugar the numerous and free work force that he demanded: human fuel to burn” (Galeano 2004:83; 1997:59). 

     Slavery and slave labor provided benefits beyond sugar production.  “According to Sergio Bajú, the most formidable engine of European mercantilist capital accumulation was American slavery; at the same time, that capital became ‘the foundation upon which was constructed the giant industrial capital of contemporary times.’  The resurrection of Greco-Roman slavery in the New World had miraculous properties: the slaves that crossed the Atlantic multiplied the ships, the factories, the railroads, and the banks of the countries from which they did not originate and to which, with the exception of the United States, they were not destined.  Between the dawn of the sixteenth century and the agony of the nineteenth century, several millions of Africans, it is not known how many, crossed the ocean….  From the Potomac to Rio de la Plata, the slaves constructed the houses of their masters, cut down the forests, cut and ground the sugar cane, planted cotton, cultivated cocoa, harvested coffee and tobacco, and dredged the river beds in search of gold” (Galeano 2004:107-8).

     Slavery promoted the economic development of the Northeastern United States, even though the region did not utilize slave labor as a systemic pattern.  By the eighteenth century, the Caribbean islands had developed extensive sugar plantations utilizing African slave labor to produce sugar for export to Western Europe.  To maximize profit, it was rational to utilize the plantation exclusively for the production of sugar and to purchase food, rather than cultivate it.  Thus the slave production of sugar in the Caribbean generated a market for food products.  North American farmers, given their medium-sized farms and their proximity to the Caribbean, were strategically located to respond to this market demand.  The sale of food and animal products to the Caribbean turned out to be a very lucrative market for the North American farmers.  Through this trade, the North American farmers accumulated capital, which was converted into industrial development during the nineteenth century, taking advantage of new possibilities emerging form the peripheralization of the South from 1800 to 1860. During this period of 1800-1860, the slave production of cotton, tobacco, sugar and rice in the South provided cheap raw materials as well as a market for the new and expanding industries of the Northeast, thereby creating possibilities for the industrial and economic development of the Northeast.  Thus, although the northeastern farmers did not themselves utilize slaves as an integral and significant part of their production, they economically benefited from slavery in the Caribbean and in the US South through core-peripheral commerce with these slave regions (Frank 1979:64-68; Shannon 1996:64; Pérez 1995:70-71; Galeano 2004:87; Genovese 1967; Williams 1996:108-18).  Since northeastern manufacturing was central to the economic development of the nation during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, we are recognizing here the importance of slavery in the economic development of the United States. 

     The ascent of the United States was spectacular.  Merely a semi-peripheral nation in the late eighteenth century, during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries it ascended to become the hegemonic core power of the neocolonial world system.  No other nation could possibly repeat such an ascent, without finding an equally lucrative commercial relation with a system of forced labor, similar to the relations with systems of slave labor in the Caribbean and the US South, exploited by the North American British colonies and the northeastern region of the United States during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.  The ascent of the United States is a theme that we will discuss in future posts.

     The slaves did not passively accept their condition.  In addition to the Haitian Revolution, there were constant slave rebellions in the Caribbean islands.  In addition, slaves escaped to form their own communities in the mountains.  And they developed a cultural resistance, affirming their identity through religious ceremonies, dances, and magic (Galeano 2004:112-16).  This spirit of rebellion of African-Americans would emerge as an integral component of the social movements of the twentieth century.

References

Frank, Andre Gunder.  1979.  Dependent Accumulation and Underdevelopment.  New York:  Monthly Review Press.

Galeano, Eduardo.  1997.  The Open Veins of Latin America: Five centuries of the pillage of a continent, 25th Anniversary Edition.  Translated by Cedric Belfrage.  Forward by Isabel Allende.  New York: Monthly Review Press.

__________.  2004.  Las Venas Abiertas de América Latina, tercera edición, revisada.  México: Siglo XXI Editores.

Genovese, Eugene D.  1967.  The Political Economy of Slavery.  New York:  Random House, Vintage Books.

Pérez, Jr., Louis A.  2006.  Cuba:  Between Reform and Revolution, 3rd edition.  New York:  Oxford University Press. 

Shannon, Thomas Richard.  1996.  An Introduction to the World-System Perspective, 2nd ed.  Boulder:  Westview Press.

Williams, Eric.  1966 (1944).  Capitalism & Slavery.  New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, Capricorn Books. 

Key words: Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, independence, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, capitalism, peripheralization, slavery

      In a commentary to my August 27 post, Dr. Yuri Grigoryan, a professor retired from the Physiology Institute in Yerevan, Armenia, rightly expresses his indignation at a possible US military action against Syria.  He expresses alarm at the unconstrained aspirations of the US military-industrial complex.

      The United States developed its enormous military capacity during the twentieth century, a necessary component of its ascent to economic, financial, military, political and ideological domination of the world-system by the post-World War II era.  Its ascent began during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, fueled by lucrative commercial relations with slaveholders in the Caribbean and the US South, facilitating the development of textile manufacturing and other industries in the northeastern section of the country.  During the first half of the twentieth century, the United States turned its growing capital accumulation to investments in the auto and steel industries, the most profitable industries of the era, which further fueled US ascent.  During World War II, it converted its industries into the service of war needs, thus establishing war industries, a war economy, and the military-industrial complex.  
 
     The United States emerged from World War II with unchallenged dominance.  Its territory had not been affected by the war, and thus it did not experience violent destruction of its industrial infrastructure, as occurred with Germany and Japan.  British industry was still relatively intact, but it had been surpassed by the US ascent.  The Soviet Union had successfully converted its industries to a war economy during the war, utilizing highly effective state planning.  But the Soviet Union, in spite of an impressive industrial growth after 1917, was still significantly less advanced than the United States.  The growing strength of the Soviet Union was not really a threat to the United States, because the Soviet Union sought peaceful co-existence with the United States, in which the Soviet area of influence close to its borders in Eastern Europe and Asia would be secure, leaving to the United States vast areas of Latin America, Africa, and South East Asia for neocolonial exploitation. 
 
     The real threat to the United States was from the Third World revolutions, which challenged the basic structures of the neocolonial world-system.  In response to this global challenge from below, the United States maintained and developed its war industries, using Cold War and anti-communist ideology to justify this turn to a permanent war economy, disdaining a post-war reconversion of its industry to peaceful purposes, as had been envisioned by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. With its enormous military capacity, the United States became the global policeman, claiming to act against “communism” and in defense of “democracy,” when in reality it was defending its neocolonial interests.  Thus the military-industrial complex became solidified as an integral and necessary part of the US economy, a fact noted with concern by President and formerly General Dwight Eisenhower by the time of his retirement in 1960.

     The United States began to decline in the 1960s and 1970s, and it no longer is a dominant economic and financial power.  However, it continues to be the dominant military power of the planet.  Its military expenses are approximately equal to those of the rest of the nations of the world combined.  This high level of military expenditures contributes to the further erosion of its productive and financial capacities.  
 
      As a weakened economic and financial power, but a dominant military and ideological power, the United States can be expected to continue to pursue its interests through military means, inventing any pretext as justification.  The unsubstantiated claim that the government of Syria has used chemical weapons against its own people is far from the first such pretext.  The US dependence on military action to attain economic, financial and political objectives places all of humanity at risk.

       The problem can be resolved only by the people of the United States, who must come to consciousness of the fact that US foreign policy is designed to promote the interests of US corporations and finance capital and to maintain the United States as a neocolonial global power, and not to promote democratic values and protect democratic structures.  In protecting the short-term interests of US corporations and banks, US policy undermines the economic, social, and physical security of the popular classes and sectors in the United States.  So the people must develop alternative political structures that can bring into power alternative political leaders who would be committed to protecting the interests and needs of the majority.  This is a difficult task, but not impossible, because many conditions favor such a political transformation.  And however difficult the task may be, it is our duty in the present historic moment.  These are themes that we will be discussing in future posts.

      I write these words on August 28, 2013, the fiftieth anniversary of the March on Washington, in which Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.  Dr. King was a powerful, articulate, and eloquent critic of the moral evils of racism, poverty and war, and as such was a prophetic opponent of the military-industrial complex. 


 

     During the stages of the origin and development and consolidation of the world-economy (1492-1815), sugar was developed as an important raw material for export.  “The search for gold and silver was, without doubt, the central motor of the conquest.  But on his second voyage, Christopher Columbus brought the first roots of sugar cane from the Canary Islands, and he planted them in lands that today are located in the Dominican Republic. . . .  In a little less than three centuries after the discovery of America, there was for European commerce no agricultural product more important than the sugar cultivated in these lands"  (Galeano 2004:83; 1997:59).

     The Portuguese colony of Brazil was the first to develop sugar production on a large scale, developing it on the coastal northeastern region of the colony.  By the middle of the seventeenth century, Brazil was the principal producer of sugar in the world, and it was the largest market for African slaves.  The financing of sugar production in Brazil was undertaken by Dutch capital, and Dutch companies owned the sugar mills and managed the importation of African slaves (Galeano 2004:85-88).

      The production of sugar in the Caribbean islands became so extensive that they came to be known as the “Sugar Islands.” Barbados was the first Caribbean island to establish sugar plantations on a large scale, and the Dutch were the first to develop them on the small British colony.  The sugar plantations on the island displaced the production of a variety of agricultural and animal products by small-scale producers; and it devastated the dense forests and exhausted the soil.  Sugar production also was developed on the Caribbean islands of the Leeward Islands, Trinidad-Tobago, Guadalupe, Puerto Rico, Haiti, Santo Domingo, Cuba, and Jamaica as well as Guyana on the South American coast  (Galeano 2004:90-91).

     By the second half of the eighteenth century, one of the leading producers of sugar was the French colony of Haiti.  In 1791, a slave revolution erupted.  The insurrectionist slaves pushed the French army to the sea and burned the sugar plantations, leaving sugar production paralyzed.  The newly independent nation, under the leadership of insurrectionist General Toussaint-Louverture, immediately suffered a blockade imposed by an international coalition of global powers, facilitating the end of the revolutionary process launched by the slaves, although the nation remained formally independent (Galeano 2004:91-92).

     The destruction of sugar production in Haiti led to the rapid expansion of sugar production in Cuba, which became the world´s leading sugar producer.  The expansion of sugar production in Cuba led to an expansion in the importation of slaves and the displacement of other land use patterns, including production by small farmers of tobacco and vegetable products.  The extensive sugar plantations reduced the forests and the fertility of the soil (Galeano 2004:92-95).

      Sugar production promoted development of the nations of the core, where it was marketed and consumed, and underdevelopment for Brazil and the Caribbean, where it was cultivated.  Galeano writes:  “Sugar not
only produced dwarfs.  It also produced giants, or at least, it contributed intensely to the development of giants.  The sugar of the Latin American tropics gave great impulse to the accumulation of capital for the industrial development of England, France, Holland, and also the United States, at the same time that it mutilated the economies of northeastern Brazil and the Caribbean islands and sealed the ruin of the history of Africa” (2004:106).

     As Augusto Cochin has written, “The history of a grain of sugar is above all a lesson in political economy, politics, and morality” (quoted in Galeano 2004:106).


References

Galeano, Eduardo.  1997.  The Open Veins of Latin America: Five centuries of the pillage of a continent, 25th Anniversary Edition. Translated by Cedric Belfrage.  Forward by Isabel Allende.  New York: Monthly Review Press.

__________.  2004.  Las Venas Abiertas de América Latina, tercera edición, revisada.  México: Siglo XXI Editores.


Key words: Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, independence, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, capitalism, peripheralization, open veins of Latin America, Galeano, sugar

    Paraguay was an exception to the nineteenth century Latin American norm of the retardation of national industry by the Latin American estate bourgeoisie and merchants in alliance with the global powers.  In Paraguay, the government of Gaspar Rodriguez de Francia (1814-1840) appropriated rural land, thus taking power away from the estate bourgeoisie and the merchants.  The government of Francia and two successive governments successfully pursued a policy of independent economic development, investing economic surplus from agricultural production in the development of industry.  By 1865, “Paraguay had telegraphs, a railroad, and numerous factories manufacturing construction materials, textiles, linens, ponchos, paper and ink, crockery, and gunpowder….  From 1850 on, the Ibycui foundry made guns, mortars, and ammunition of all calibers; the arsenal in Asunción produced bronze cannon, howitzers, and ammunition.  The steel industry, like all other essential economic activities, belonged to the state.  The country had a merchant fleet, and the Asunción shipyard turned out many of the ships flying the Paraguayan flag….  The state virtually monopolized foreign trade….  The trade balance produced a big surplus.  With a strong and stable currency, Paraguay was wealthy enough to carry out great public works without recourse to foreign capital.  It did not owe one penny abroad, yet was able to maintain the best army in South America” (Galeano 1997:189-90).

     But from the point of view of British commerce, the only truly independent nation in Latin America in the nineteenth century was a “dangerous example” (Galeano 1997:191) that could demonstrate to its Latin American neighbors an alternative road.  Paraguay was destroyed in a genocidal war of 1865 to 1870 conducted by a Triple Alliance consisting of Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina and financed by British bankers.  By 1870, the population of Paraguay was one-sixth what it had been in 1865 and significant parts of its territory were ceded to the members of the Triple Alliance. 

     The country was subsequently turned into a typical example of foreign domination and free trade.  “In defeated Paraguay it was not only the population and great chunks of territory that disappeared, but customs tariffs, foundries, rivers closed to free trade, and economic independence.  Within its shrunken frontiers, the conquerors implanted free trade and the lafifundio.  Everything was looted and everything was sold: land and forests, mines, yerba maté farms, school buildings.  Successive puppet governments were installed in Asunción by the occupation forces….  National industry never came back to life” (Galeano 1997:194). 

      But nineteenth century independent Paraguay has come back to life in spirit, symbolized by the new efforts at Latin American autonomy being forged today by Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, with the support and participation of Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Nicaragua.  Similar to the mobilized effort to destroy independent Paraguay in the nineteenth century, today the neocolonial power seeks to destroy the new manifestations of Latin American autonomy.  But nowadays, the world-system is suffering from a profound systemic global crisis, the neocolonial power is no longer the dominant power that it once was, and the anti-neocolonial movements are more advanced; the destruction of the independence projects forged by the peoples of the world is more difficult.

 

References

Galeano, Eduardo.  1997.  The Open Veins of Latin America: Five centuries of the pillage of a continent, 25th Anniversary Edition.  Translated by Cedric Belfrage.  Forward by Isabel Allende.  New York: Monthly Review Press.

Key words: Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, independence, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, capitalism, peripheralization, Paraguay

     The penetration of foreign capital in Latin America during the semi-colonial republics of the nineteenth century destroyed what had been, prior to independence, an emerging industrial development, which had been developing in spite of the limitations imposed by Spanish and Portuguese colonial rule.  At the beginning of the nineteenth century, a significant textile manufacturing industry had developed in Mexico, Peru, Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, and Argentina.  But it was newer than British textile manufacturing, and its transportation infrastructure was not sufficiently developed.  It therefore could not compete with British manufacturing. Under the control of the landlords and the merchants, the newly independent Latin American republics adopted a policy of free trade, rather than protecting infant Latin American industry through tariffs and other mechanisms (Galeano 1997:173-81).

      Thus the economic relation that emerged between Britain and the Latin American republics in the nineteenth century was a core-peripheral relation.  Britain exported textiles and other manufactured goods to Latin America and imported cattle products from Argentina, guano and nitrates from Peru, copper from Chile, sugar from Cuba, and coffee from Brazil (Galeano 1997:174, 177).  This core-peripheral relation benefitted the Latin American estate bourgeoisie, because it provided markets for the Latin American raw materials, and because it was an arrangement that provided for the landlords cheaper manufactured goods than would be possible under protected national industry.  And it expanded business for merchants connected to the core-peripheral trade.

       But the core-peripheral relation undermined Latin American industry, and it thus weakened the emerging urban industrial bourgeoisie, which was in an embryo stage of development and did not have sufficient influence over political structures to defend its interests. Ultimately, for a project of industrialization to be successful, the domestic market would have to be expanded, and this would require raising the standard of living of the superexploited rural masses, which formed the majority of the population.  However, such an improvement in the standard of living of the rural peasantry and the working class would undermine the position of the Latin American estate bourgeoisie, whose exportation of raw materials was based on an international standard of superexploited low wage labor.  The Latin American estate bourgeoisie therefore always has been opposed to the development of a “genuine national capitalism” (Galeano 1997:185).

       The core-peripheral relation and free trade policies were integrally connected.  Free trade rejects tariff protection of national industry.  The defenders of free trade claim to be promoting a free market, but they ignore a fundamental fact: the prevailing social and economic conditions of underdevelopment and mass poverty were not established by a free market, but by brute force, in the form of conquest and forced labor.  In the context of these social and economic conditions, a newly independent government that seeks true independence would have to act decisively in the economy, seeking to promote autonomous industrial development and an improvement in the standard of living of the masses.  The protection of infant national industry would simply be one measure in a comprehensive plan for autonomous national development.  But free trade negates this possibility, and it promoted the deepening of the core-peripheral relation during the semi-colonial republics of the nineteenth century

       The free trade policies of the nineteenth century did not emerge from a political vacuum.  They were promoted by particular social classes, namely, the landed estate bourgeoisie and successful merchants of the periphery, which acted in alliance with the core.  These classes defended their particular interests at the expense of the well-being of the nation as a whole in the long term.  They disseminated ideologies that confused and divided the people.  It could be said of them that their conduct was self-interested and unpatriotic.  Indeed, such would be said of them and their contemporary kindred spirits by the popular anti-neocolonial movements that emerged during the twentieth century and that continue today.


References

Galeano, Eduardo.  1997.  The Open Veins of Latin America: Five centuries of the pillage of a continent, 25th Anniversary Edition.  Translated by Cedric Belfrage.  Forward by Isabel Allende.  New York: Monthly Review Press.


Key words: Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, capitalism, peripheralization, estate bourgeoisie, free trade


 

     To be genuinely independent, the new American republics of the early nineteenth century would have had to follow an autonomous road to economic and social development, one that was not shaped by the interests of the core powers.  This would have required that the Latin American republics unify politically and integrate economically, in order that they would have the political and the economic capacity to resist the efforts at penetration by the world´s most advanced economies.  Such unity and integration was advocated by Simón Bolívar, the leading figure of the progressive tendency in the South American independence struggle.  However, it was not possible to accomplish the union and integration envisioned by Bolívar, because, as Cuban scholar Roberto Regalado has observed, “the Americas lacked a level of capitalist economic development and social structure that could serve as a basis for their integration” (Regalado 2007:108), that is, they lacked sufficient manufacturing capacity and capital as well as finance structures and a transportation infrastructure oriented toward regional integration.

      The global powers of the era did not immediately penetrate Latin America, due to limitations in the availability of capital, so the new republics enjoyed a brief period of true independence from 1825 to 1850.  British economic penetration began after 1850 and grew considerably after 1880.  British domination of Latin American economies continued until the Great Depression of the 1930s, when British capital was displaced by that of the United States.  U.S. economic penetration of Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, and South America emerged as a policy goal after 1850, and it was effectively accomplished by the 1930s (Regalado 2007:111-18).

     The Latin American republics of the nineteenth century were in some respects neocolonies of Great Britain.  However, Arboleya considers them to have been semi-colonies rather than neocolonies, because not all of the characteristics of neocolonial domination were present.  The capitalist world-economy had not yet arrived to the stage of finance capital, and thus British penetration was commercial rather than financial, involving an exchange of manufactured goods for raw materials without control of banking and financial institutions.  In addition, competition from the United States, also seeking economic penetration of Latin America, prevented Great Britain from establishing full economic control (Arboleya 2008:8-9, 42).   In the twentieth century, the United States would establish neocolonial domination in all of its aspects with respect to Latin America, forging an exemplary neocolonial system, a theme that we will explore in future posts.

     The emergence of the Latin American republics as semi-colonies during the nineteenth century was a consequence of political action taken by key actors that had an interest in the preservation of the core-peripheral relation: the Latin American estate bourgeoisie, whose raw materials products were sent to the core; Latin American merchants tied to the core-peripheral trade; and the industrialized and industrializing nations of the core that utilized peripheral raw materials, especially Britain and the United States.  The embryonic Latin American urban industrial bourgeoisie, which had an interest in an autonomous development that would strengthen the domestic market, lost out (Regalado 1997:109-10).

     Among the losers also were the popular classes and sectors.  The core-peripheral relation depended on low prices for Latin American exports based on low-waged labor.  A social and economic transformation that would benefit the popular classes could not occur without a rupture with the peripheral role, consciousness of which would general anti-neocolonial popular struggles during the twentieth century.

     The Latin American semi-colonial republics of the nineteenth century came to be characterized by military dictatorships or authoritarian civilian governments, supported directly or indirectly by the Latin American estate bourgeoisie.  The military provided to some extent an escape valve, in that it was a mechanism for upward mobility for the impoverished rural masses.  But the mechanisms of force used by the military were instrumental in maintaining control over the popular sectors, whose basic rights and needs were denied (Regalado 2007:109-10). 


References

Arboleya, Jesús.  2008.  La Revolución del Otro Mundo: Un análisis histórico de la Revolución Cubana.  La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales.

Regalado, Roberto.  2007.  Latin America at the Crossroads: Domination, Crisis, Popular Movements, and Political Alternatives.  New York: Ocean Press.


Key words: Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, capitalism, peripheralization, estate bourgeoisie, military dictatorship

      The expansion of the world-economy after 1750 led to prosperity for the Latin American agricultural and cattle sectors that were tied to the mining industry, giving the Spanish colonies the capacity to export other raw materials in addition to minerals.  Conceding to demands from these sectors, the Spanish government announced reforms in 1778 and 1782 that legalized exports to Spanish markets of sugar, tobacco, cocoa, and leather.  But Spain was lagging behind Northwestern Europe in manufacturing capacity, levels of capital, and standard of living, and it therefore was increasingly unable to adequately supply manufactured goods and investment capital to Latin America and to provide sufficient markets for Latin American raw materials exports.  So the Latin American agricultural and cattle sectors had interest in direct commercial relations with other core nations.  Spain was obstructing the development of such commerce, and it was imposing burdensome taxes in order to sustain the colonial empire (Regalado 2007:104-6; Weaver 1994; Frank 1979:164-71).

     So there emerged conflicts of interest at the end of the eighteenth century, as has been explained by the Cuban scholar Roberto Regalado.  On the one hand, there was an emerging conflict between the Latin American elite and Spain.  The Latin American elite had an interest in free trade with European and American markets, whereas Spain (and Spaniards in America) had an interest in maintaining the monopoly of the Spanish crown over trade with the Spanish colonies.  At the same time, there was emerging another conflict of interest between the Latin American elite and the popular sectors.  The former had an interest in maintaining its economic and social control of the colony, whereas the latter had an interest in fundamental changes in the colonial system of class and ethnic stratification (Regalado 2007:106-7)

     By the early nineteenth century, these conflicts of interest gave rise to independence movements in Latin America.  The movements were formed by planters, farmers, small and medium-sized producers, merchants, intellectuals, and artisans; and they were influenced by the Enlightenment, American (U.S.) Revolution, the French Revolution, and the Haitian Revolution.  As a result of the two simultaneous conflicts of interest, there were in the Latin American independence movement two ideological tendencies that Regalado has called oligarchic and progressive.  The oligarchic orientation sought to attain independence while maintaining the socioeconomic status quo, and this approach was favored by the elite participants in the independence movement.  On the other hand, the popular sectors had a progressive orientation, envisioning independence from Spain as establishing the possibility for fundamental socioeconomic change, including the abolition of slavery as well as other measures in defense of the poor (2007:107-8). 

     The independence movements resulted in the establishment of independent Latin American republics, but the new republics were not truly independent, as we will discuss in the next post.

References

Frank, Andre Gunder.  1979.  Dependent Accumulation and Underdevelopment.  New York:  Monthly Review Press.

Regalado, Roberto.  2007.  Latin America at the Crossroads: Domination, Crisis, Popular Movements, and Political Alternatives.  New York: Ocean Press.

Weaver, Frederick Stirton.  1994.  Inside the Volcano:  The History and Political Economy of Central America.  Boulder:  Westview Press.

Key words: Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, capitalism, peripheralization

     
From 1815 to 1914, European centralized nation-states, particularly Britain and France, established colonial domination over Africa and South East Asia.  Vast new regions of the world were peripheralized, so that the modern world-economy became truly global in scope.  

      South East Asia was incorporated into the periphery of the modern world-economy during the nineteenth century.  During this period, many of the agricultural and handicraft systems of South East Asia were destroyed.  Its land was converted into the production of raw materials for export to Europe.  And the region was forced to import European manufactured goods, leading to the destruction of its traditional handicraft systems.  The unequal rate of exchange between European manufactured goods and South East Asian raw materials promoted the development of Europe and the underdevelopment of South East Asia (Frank 1979:149).

     The industry and village handicrafts of the Arab world were destroyed during the period.  When Egypt was part of the Ottoman Empire, Mohammed Ali attempted to stimulate national and industrial development.  ButEgypthad insufficient political autonomy within the Ottoman Empire to establish the necessary tariff protection.  When Egypt fell under British rule, its de-industrialization continued.  Lord Carver, who governed Egypt between 1883 and 1907, observed, "Some quarters [of Cairo] that formerly used to be veritable centers of varied industries -spinning, weaving, ribbon making, dyeing, tent making, embroidery, shoemaking, jewelry making, spice grinding, copper work have shrunk considerably or vanished" (quoted in Frank 1979:155).  At the same time, the Egyptian countryside was converted into cotton plantations with a small landowning class. Similar developments occurred throughout the Arab world (Frank 1979:154-56).

     In Africa, several regions were converted into single-crop export zones during the nineteenth century.  Agricultural products, including palm oil, peanuts and other oil seeds, and cocoa, as well as minerals were exported.  Mining operations and large-scale commercial agricultural enterprises were owned by Europeans.  There also was supplementary cash crop production by peasants, usually coerced through such mechanisms as the hut tax, a system of taxation in which each household was required to pay a tax, thus necessitating production by peasants of cash crops for sale.  The payments received were no greater than the tax, so the peasants were in effect producing without compensation, providing cheap raw materials for the world-economy. The tax revenues collected from the peasants were used to develop the transportation infrastructure to facilitate the export of the raw materials to the core.  So the forced labor of the peasants also facilitated the development of the infrastructure of the core-peripheral relation.  The peripheralization of Africa would deepen in the first half of the twentieth century (Frank 1979:157-59).

      Thus, by the beginning of the twentieth century, the conquest of the world by the principal European nations was virtually complete. Beginning in the early years of the sixteenth century and culminating in the twentieth century, the European project of domination involved conquest of the Caribbean, Central America, South America, North America, North Africa and the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and much of Southeast Asia (except China and Japan).  In the wake of the conquest, colonial empires were established, functioning to develop and maintain the peripheralization of the conquered regions and to repress popular resistance to colonial domination.  In this way, the foundation was established for the underdevelopment of vast regions of the world and the development of the nations of the core of the world-system.


References

Frank, Andre Gunder.  1979.  Dependent Accumulation and Underdevelopment.  New York:  Monthly Review Press.


Key words: Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination,  socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, capitalism, peripheralization, Andre Gunder Frank, Africa, Asia


 

     British textile manufacturing was restructured during the period 1780-1840, in that it was made more efficient by the development of larger scale and more mechanized enterprises.  These technological transformations in industry gave Britain an advantage over other core states, particularly after 1780 (Wallerstein 1989:57-86).

     The British modernization of the textile industry from 1780 to 1840 was made possible by greater access to colonial markets.  From 1750 to 1850, new zones were incorporated into the periphery of the world-economy, thus expanding access to raw materials for manufacturing and to markets for manufactured goods.  This expansion of raw materials and markets was so extensive that it facilitated not only the further industrial development of Britain, but also the industrial development of Western Europe, particularly France, Belgium, western "Germany," and Switzerland (Wallerstein 1989:125).  

      The regions incorporated into the world-economy during the period 1750-1850 included the Indian subcontinent, the Ottoman Empire, the Russian Empire and West Africa (Wallerstein 1989:129).  The process of peripheralization involved four main changes in these regions.  

      (1) The four regions were converted into exporters of raw materials through the expansion of cash crop agriculture.  The period saw dramatic increases in the export of indigo, raw silk, opium and cotton from India; of mohair yarn, raw silk, and cotton from the Ottoman Empire; of hemp, flax and wheat from Russia; and of slaves, palm oil and peanuts from West Africa.  Most of the products exported from the four regions functioned as raw materials for manufacturing in Western Europe or as products of food consumption in Western Europe, although the Indian opium and cotton headed for China and the West African slaves brought to the West Indies had different functions (Wallerstein 1989:137-49, Frank 1979:88-90).

      (2) Systems of coerced labor were established.  In the four regions incorporated during the period 1750-1850, cash crop production was not attractive to agricultural workers, since it took time away from the subsistence production necessary for survival.  As a result, the workers had to be forced, directly or indirectly, to engage in cash crop production.  The mechanisms of coercion, taking a variety of economic and legal forms, occurred in all four regions (Wallerstein 1989:157-66).

      (3) Manufacturing was reduced or eliminated in the four regions. India was one of the world's major centers of cotton textile production prior to 1800, but by 1840, Indian textile manufacturing had virtually disappeared as a result of British colonial economic policies, with a tariff structure that favored British manufactures.  Colonial economic policies destroyed not only Indian textile industry, but also its iron and steel industries.  Similarly, the manufacturing export capacity of the Ottoman Empire greatly declined from the 1780s to the 1850s as a result of a French duty on Ottoman imports of manufactured cotton cloth and British competitive advantage through mechanization of its textile production.  Also, the British imposed on the Ottoman Empire a commercial accord that functioned to destroy manufacturing in Egypt and Syria in the latter half of the 19th century.  Russia also suffered a significant decline in iron manufacturing.  But Russia was able to resist to some extent British efforts to promote her de-industrialization by virtue of tariff protection for its industry accompanied by a strong domestic market and a strong military.  In West Africa, cotton and iron manufacturing were able to compete at first with British manufacturing, but West African manufacturing was undermined by cheap British imports during the early nineteenth century (Wallerstein 1989:149-52).

     (4) The peripheralization of the four regions included the creation of large-scale economic units, resulting in the concentration of economic power.  In the four regions, there emerged either low-wage plantations or large estates with small-scale producers trapped by debt peonage (Wallerstein 1989:152-57).

      Thus, the peripheralization of the four regions converted them into producers of raw materials for export, utilizing forced labor, facilitating the concentration of economic and political power and the creation of an elite class with an economic interest in the perpetuation of the core-peripheral relation.  The process of peripheralization reduced the standard of living of the majority, as resources of land and labor were used for the purpose of producing raw materials that were sent to Western Europe.  On the other hand, the peripheralization of these regions functioned to the advantage of Western Europe, in that it provided cheap raw materials for its manufacturing and markets for its manufactured goods.  At the same time, the expansion of production and commerce facilitated by the peripheralization of the four regions enabled the world-economy to overcome its stagnation and to enter into a period of unprecedented expansion that was both geographical and economic.  


References

Frank, Andre Gunder. 1979.  Dependent Accumulation and Underdevelopment.  New  York:  Monthly Review Press.

Wallerstein, Immanuel.  1989.  The Modern World System, Vol. III.  New York:  Academic Press.


Key words: Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, capitalism, peripheralization, Wallerstein, Andre Gunder Frank


 

     World-systems in human history are like living organisms.  They go through stages in their development.   

     The first stage in the development of the modern world-system was that of the origin of the world-system from 1492 to 1640, established on a foundation of the conquest by centralized European nation-states of vast regions of the Americas.  The second stage from 1640 to 1815 was characterized by stagnation and cyclical patterns of expansion and contraction.  It was a time of a "slowdown in the rate of development of the world-economy" (Wallerstein 1980: 33), a time in which the world-economy reached an economic plateau following a long period of conquest and geographical, economic and commercial expansion (Wallerstein 1980:8, 33).  

      Although it was a period of stagnation, the second stage in the development of the modern world-economy was not like the crisis that had marked the last stage of feudalism.  As we have seen in previous posts, the crisis of feudalism was resolved by the creation of new political-economic structures that reflected the interests of the monarchs and an emerging urban commercial bourgeoisie, structures that made possible the conquest of America, thus establishing the foundation for the modern world-economy and the definitive end of feudalism.  In contrast, the seventeenth century economic stagnation of the capitalist world-economy was overcome within the structures of the world-economy, resulting in their consolidation.  Throughout this stage, both core and peripheral elites had an interest in preserving the core-peripheral relation.  Peripheral elites found the relation profitable, and core manufacturers continued to need the raw materials flowing from the periphery to the core.  So the modern world-economy passed through the period of stagnation with the basic core-peripheral relation intact.  The boundaries of core, periphery and semi-periphery continued to be the same as they had been developed during the sixteenth century, although there were some modest and limited changes (Wallerstein 1980:18-19, 25-26, 129; Shannon 1996:61-71).

      During the eighteenth century, the West Indies played an important role in sustaining the economic development of Western Europe.  In his classic work, Capitalism & Slavery, originally published in 1944, Eric Williams* documents the role of the triangular slave trade and the direct British-West Indian trade in promoting the economic development of Great Britain.  These trading relationships promoted the development of: British shipping and shipbuilding; British seaport towns; and British industry, including woolen manufacturing, cotton manufacturing, sugar refining, rum distillation, and the metallurgical industries (iron, brass, copper, and lead).  They also made possible the development of banks and insurance companies.  Williams notes that a similar core-peripheral relation with the French West Indies promoted the economic development of France during the eighteenth century (Williams 1966:51-107, 209).

     In the next post, we begin to look at the third stage of the modern world-system, the period of 1815 to 1917, characterized by European colonial domination of vast regions of Africa and Asia, converting the world-system into a global world-system.


* - Eric Williams was born in 1911 in the Caribbean island of Trinidad, then a British colony.  He was an excellent student, and with the support of scholarships and grants, he pursued undergraduate and graduate study at Oxford.  His doctoral dissertation, completed in 1938, was the basis for his classic book, Capitalism and Slavery.  He taught at Howard University in Washington, D.C. from 1939 to 1948.  In 1948, he returned to Trinidad in order to serve as Deputy Chairman of the Caribbean Research Council.  He became well-known in Trinidad for a series of public lectures that he gave on world history, slavery, and Caribbean history.   In 1956, he founded the People’s National Movement, the political party that would lead the nation to independence in 1962.  From 1962 until his death in 1981, he served as the first Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago. 


References

Shannon, Thomas Richard.  1996.  An Introduction to the World-System Perspective, 2nd ed.  Boulder:  Westview Press.

Wallerstein, Immanuel.  1980.  The Modern World System, Vol. II.  New York:  Academic Press.

Williams, Eric.  1966 (1944).  Capitalism & Slavery.  New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, Capricorn Books. 


Key words: Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, capitalism, slavery, Eric Williams