Seeking to understand the European conquest of the world that began in the sixteenth century, the Cuban political scientist and diplomat Armando Cristóbal Pérez (2008) analyzes the emergence of the modern nation-state in Europe.  

     The dynamics that gave rise to the modern nation-state began to express themselves during European feudalism, which Cristóbal dates from the fifth to the fifteenth centuries. After the collapse of the Roman Empire in the fifth century, fragmentation and particularism emerged. Cities disappeared (except Florence, Venice, and Geneva, which were tied to commerce with Asia).  Monarchs had nominal power over what was essentially a rural territory.  In its fullest expression, feudalism involved the disappearance of the state, with its functions assumed by feudal lords. But this was never completely attained, because the centralized state existed over feudal-vassal relations and was not totally dissolved.  Nevertheless, manors were sovereign territories in many respects, governed by feudal lords who could emit money and declare war.  Monarchial power was more nominal than real.  On the religious-cultural plane, Christianity expanded; the power of the Church, centered in Rome, increased; and Latin emerged as an interstate language among elites.  
 
     The dynamics that undermined feudalism expressed themselves from the tenth to the fifteenth centuries.  There began to emerge what Cristóbal calls feudal re-urbanization.  The growth of commerce and industry created a class of free merchants and artisans, an incipient bourgeoisie that needed certain liberties, such as movement from place to place, the making of contracts, and the buying and selling of goods, which could not be exercised under feudal conditions of servitude.  The new cities emerging in feudal rural territories made evident the need for the transformation of feudalism.

     Immanuel Wallerstein interprets the feudal period in a somewhat different way.  He maintains that there was an expansion of European commerce in the period 1150-1300, but the period 1300-1450 was characterized by a decline in production, commerce and population.  By 1300, the population growth of Western Europe had surpassed its capacity to produce sufficient food, given its level of technology.  This led to food shortages, which gave rise to epidemics.  At the same time, the general crisis stimulated wars among states and peasant rebellions and revolts.  So this period, which Wallerstein calls the "crisis of feudalism," was characterized by decline in agricultural production, manufacturing, commerce and population and by wars, social conflict, famine, and epidemics (Wallerstein 974:17-27).   
 
     Let us combine these two interpretations.  Commerce and industry began to expand following the tenth century, laying the foundation for an urban-centered society based on commerce and industry.  But the development of the society in embryo was constrained by the structures of feudalism, provoking various problems and conflicts.  These dynamics were making evident to major political actors the need for a fundamental transformation of feudal structures.  
 
     The stage was thus set for decisive political action by monarchs, in alliance with the emerging commercial bourgeoisie, establishing the modern nation-state in the fifteenth century.  We will explore this in the next post.


References

Cristóbal Pérez, Armando.  2008.  El Estado-Nación: Su Origen y Construcción.  La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales.

Wallerstein, Immanuel.  1974.  The Modern World System, Vol. I. New York:  Academic Press.  
 

Key words: Third World, revoluti on, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, Wallerstein, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, feudalism

     Jared Diamond maintains that the most advanced societies in terms of capacity for conquest have been those that were the earliest and most advanced in food production.  

     In contrast to hunting and gathering, food production makes possible a much larger population size and population density.  Since only a small minority of animal and plant species is edible, the conversion of land to the cultivation of plants and the domestication of animals means a significant increase in consumable calories per acre.  Moreover, the domestication of animals and their conversion into livestock: increases the availability of meat and milk and milk products; provides fertilizer, thus increasing crop production; and provides plow animals for agriculture.  In addition, food production permits permanent settlement, thus making possible a shortened birth interval as well as the storage of food surpluses.  
 
     Food production is an indispensable prerequisite for conquest.  In addition to the military advantages stemming from a large population size, the storage of food surpluses makes possible the support of a wide variety of full-time specialists, including monarchs, bureaucrats, professional soldiers, priests, and metalworkers, all of whom have important functions in wars of conquest.  And the domestication of animals facilitated that humans would obtain diseases from animals and would eventually evolve a degree of resistance to epidemic diseases, such as smallpox, measles, and influenza.  This was a major factor in the conquest by Europeans of the indigenous people of America and the Pacific Islands.

     Diamond maintains that neither more advanced cultural characteristics nor a higher level of  intelligence was the reason that some societies developed more advanced systems of food production.  He maintains that the decisive factors were environmental: climate change, decline in the availability of wild foods, increase in the availability of domesticable wild plants, and/or the availability of domesticable animal species.  These environmental factors made it necessary for human societies to turn from hunting and gathering to food production, if they were to survive.

     Food production emerged independently, without awareness of it having been developed elsewhere, in at least five areas of the world: Southwest Asia (also known as the Near East and the Fertile Crescent); China; Mesoamerica (central and southern Mexico and adjacent areas of Central America); the Andes Mountains of South America; and an area that today pertains to the eastern United States. There are four other areas (Sahel, West Africa, Ethiopia, and New Guinea) where food production may have emerged independently, but there is some possibility that they had contact with food producing societies.  These nine areas all developed food production in the period of 8500 B.C. to 2500 B.C.  They were thus societies with a capacity for conquest and for the development of empires and advanced civilizations.

     In addition to the development of food production independently, many societies have developed food production as a result of cultural diffusion.  This occurred in two early advanced civilizations: the Indus Valley region of the Indian subcontinent (7000 B.C.) and Egypt (6000 B.C.), both of which began to domesticate plants and animals that originally had been domesticated in the Fertile Crescent.  
 
     Food production makes possible conquest, and conquest is the foundation of empires and of great civilizations.  Conquest has been central to the human story for 10,000 years.  It would attain its fullest and most advanced expression in the modern era, with Spanish conquest of America and with English and French domination of vast regions of Africa and Asia.  Ultimately, human conquest would reach its limit, when in the middle of the twentieth century, the great conquering powers found that there were no more lands and peoples to conquer, placing the world-system in a profound and systemic crisis, and making necessary a shift to the creation of civilization on a foundation different from conquest, on a foundation of knowledge, mutual understanding, and solidarity among all peoples.  Such a shift would represent a change in human social and economic development as profound as the shift from hunting and gathering to food production.  And like the agricultural revolution, the turn to cooperation is necessary for human survival, and because of this, there is a reasonable possibility that it will occur.


Reference

Diamond, Jared.  1999.  Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies.  New York: W.W. Norton.


 Key words: Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, Wallerstein, world-system, world-economy, conquest, food production, development, underdevelopment, guns germs steel, Jared Diamond

Posted August 1, 2013

   Drawing upon the French historian Fernand Braudel, Immanuel Wallerstein maintains that there have been many systems that form a world, or world-systems, which transcend political and cultural boundaries.  They were not world systems in the sense of encompassing the entire planet, but in the sense that they were systems that formed a world defined by political-economic structures as well as ideologies.  For this reason, Wallerstein uses the sometimes grammatically incorrect hyphenated world-system: “world” does not modify “system;” rather, two nouns are joined to convey the notion of a system that forms a world (Wallerstein 2004:87-89).

     There have been two types of world-systems: world-empires and world-economies.  Both are characterized by a dominating center that controls peripheral regions.  In a world-economy, the center transforms the economic institutions of the peripheral regions, so that they function to promote the economic interests and provide for the productive needs of the center.  In contrast, the empire represents a more limited form of domination, in that the economic systems of the peripheral regions are not restructured.  The center has political authority and jurisdiction over the peripheral regions and requires them to pay a tax or a tribute, but it does not seek to transform economic activities of the periphery (Wallerstein 1974:15-16; 2004:89). 

      In empires, the tribute from the periphery functions to maintain a bureaucracy in the center that administers the empire.  This works well at first, but as the empire expands, and as more tribute comes pouring in, the center tends to absorb much of the tribute in lavish lifestyles rather than maintaining effective administrative control.  The over weighted and gluttonous center is unable to effectively control all of the peripheral regions, and some of the nations in the periphery are able to effectively assert their autonomy and break free of the empire.  Thus empires have a historic tendency to expand until they become unable to control their peripheral regions, at which time they disintegrate.  So the rise and fall of empires is common in human history (Wallerstein 1974:15-16).  

     Most of the great civilizations that we learn about in history courses are world-empires, although we tend to learn less about the empires in pre-conquest America (e.g., the Maya, Aztec and Inca civilizations) or in pre-colonial Africa (such as the kingdoms of Ghana and Mali).  World-economies are less common and tend to be shorter in duration. The ancient Chinese civilizations were world-economies.  Many of the pre-modern world-systems lasted several centuries, but all were confined to a single region of the world.  

     The modern world-system is the economic, political and social system that extends beyond the boundaries of societies and cultures and that today encompasses the entire world.  It began to emerge in the sixteenth century, with the Spanish and Portuguese “discovery”and conquest of America.  During the nineteenth century, as a result of the conquest of Africa and much of Asia by England, France and other European nations, the modern world-system became global in scope. 
During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, anti-colonial and anti-imperialist movements emerged in the conquered regions, influencing the development of the system (Wallerstein 1974:5, 7, 10-11).

 
References

Wallerstein, Immanuel.  1974.  The Modern World System, Vol. I.  New York:  Academic Press. 

__________.  2004. “The Itinerary of World-Systems Analysis, or How to Resist Becoming a Theory” in The Uncertainties of Knowledge, Pp. 83-108.  Philadelphia: Temple University Press.  [Originally published in J. Berger and M. Zelditch, Jr., Eds.  New Directions in Contemporary Sociological Theory (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), Pp. 358-76.]


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

       Jared Diamond, Professor of Geography at UCLA, begins his Pulitzer Prize winning book, Guns, Germs, and Steel, with Yali´s question.  Yali was a local politician whom Diamond had befriended in New Guinea twenty-five years prior to writing the book, and his question was: “Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?”  Diamond sees the question as one that can be generalized to the global inequalities that exist in the world today: Why do some nations and regions of the world have a high level of material goods, while others are lacking in the most basic material necessities?  His book can be seen as an effort to refute the racist explanations that, he maintains, are still prevalent, at least privately or subconsciously, in regions of material abundance.  Such racist explanations attribute inequalities to biological or innate differences in ability or intelligence.

     The premise of Diamond´s book is that inequality has emerged in human history primarily as a result of conquest, which enables some societies to expand their territory and take control over subjugated populations. So the question becomes, what enables some societies to conquer others?  
 
     Diamond maintains that the conquering societies in human history were large and politically centralized. Such societies were able to support specialists who are professional soldiers and who develop technologically advanced weapons, and they had a hierarchical political structure that is able to mobilize human resources in the cause of conquest.  In addition, the conquering societies had evolved a partial immunity to contagious diseases.  And they had horses, which Diamond describes as the Sherman tank of ancient warfare.  Diamond uses the phrase “guns, germs, and steel” as shorthand for these characteristics.

     Diamond applies this perspective to the conquest of the indigenous peoples of America by Spanish conquistadores.  Spanish weaponry was more advanced, principally with respect to their steel swords and steel armor, whereas the indigenous had not discovered iron, and their weapons were made of stone, bronze, or wood.  In addition, the indigenous were disadvantaged by the lack of horses, a situation that had occurred as a consequence of the fact that most large mammal species in America had become extinct thousands of years earlier, during the first human migrations to America.  Diamond also explains the impact of disease on the conquest of the indigenous peoples of America, a consequence of the greater evolution of natural immunities to infectious diseases among the populations of Europe, Asia, and Africa as against those of America.  In the case of the Inca, an epidemic of small pox had spread overland across South America as a result of contact with the Spanish in Panama and Columbia.  The epidemic had killed the Inca emperor and his designated heir, instigating a battle for control of the throne between two factions.  Thus the Spanish did not face a united Inca empire.  
 
     So the European settlers and conquerors were more advanced than the indigenous populations of America in terms of “guns, germs, and steel,” that is, in regard to those characteristics that are decisive in relation to conquest.

     In the next post, we will address the question: Why are some societies more advanced than others with respect to “guns, germs, and steel”?  
 

Reference

Diamond, Jared.  1999.  Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies.  New York: W.W. Norton.


Key words: Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, Wallerstein, world-system, world-economy, conquest, development, underdevelopment, guns germs steel, Jared Diamond


 

Posted August 2, 2013
​     
The modern world-economy is the economic component of the modern world-system (see “What is a world-system?” 7/31/2013). It consists of all the economic activities throughout the world that are related to one another through an extensive division of labor.  The division of labor is geographical, in that particular economic activities are carried out in specific geographical regions.  So the world-economy can be described as characterized by a geographical division of labor between two regions of the world, the core and the periphery.  In addition, there is a third region, the semiperiphery, which has some core characteristics and some peripheral characteristics.

     The core and the periphery have different forms of production and different tasks in their productive activities.  Historically, the basic purpose of the periphery has been to produce raw materials (agricultural, animal and mineral products) on a foundation of forced and/or cheap labor, and to export them to the core.  In order to fulfill this function, production in the peripheral regions has not required advanced technology or complex systems of production, and therefore the periphery has labor-intensive production and less sophisticated technology. In contrast, the core uses the raw materials imported from the periphery to manufacture various products.  Because of the variety of economic activities involved in fulfilling this function, advanced and sophisticated technologies emerge, with inventions in some sectors being applied in others.

     The structure of the world-economy thus generates a fundamental inequality between core and periphery.  The economic function of each ensures that the core will have much greater diversity in manufacturing, higher levels of technology, higher wage levels, and higher levels of consumption.  There is between core and periphery a structured relation of exploitation that creates two different realities: the core with its culture of consumerism, materialism, and individualism; and the periphery, where the basic democratic rights of access to adequate nutrition, housing, education and health care are denied on a mass scale, giving rise to a popular culture of social struggle and solidarity.

     Although the basic function of the periphery is to produce cheap raw materials, the periphery also functions as a market for the surplus manufactured goods of the core. In the historic imposition of the peripheral role through conquest and domination, the traditional manufacturing capacities of the conquered regions were destroyed, or at least weakened, creating a dependency on the manufactured goods of the core. This dependency pertained to equipment and supplies necessary for raw materials production as well as to personal consumption.  Consequently, the periphery provides a double benefit for the core: it functions as a purchaser of surplus manufactured goods as well as a supplier of cheap raw materials.

     Since 1970, the relocation of core factories to peripheral and semi-peripheral zones has emerged, a phenomenon provoked by a profound systemic crisis.  We shall see in future posts that the post-1970 peripheral manufacturing does not change the structured relation of exploitation between core and periphery.


Bibliography

Wallerstein, Immanuel.  1974.  The Modern World System, Vol. I.  New York:  Academic Press.  
 
__________.  1979.  The Capitalist World Economy.  New York: Cambridge University Press.  


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


  

Posted August 5, 2013
​     
     The modern world-economy is a capitalist world-economy, organized to maximize profit and to accumulate capital for the international bourgeoisie.  The bourgeoisie seeks to maximize exploitation of labor in order to maximize profit and accumulation of capital, and this exploitation of labor takes two forms.  First, there is exploitation in the sense defined by Marx, where the workers are paid less than the value of what they produce.  Secondly, there is superexploitation, where the workers are paid less than what they need in order to live.  Both exploitation and superexploitation are central to the functioning of the capitalist world-economy.

     Historically, the world capitalist economy confronted a dilemma: Effectiveness in keeping wages low limits the capacity of the workers to buy the products that the system produces.  Hence the capitalists’ interest in keeping wages to a minimum places restraints on the capacity of the system to expand.  The modern world-system developed in a form that resolved this dilemma.  There emerged a division in the labor market between workers in the core, who function to consume as well as to produce, and workers in the periphery, who function to produce primarily, with their consumption important only in relation to surplus manufacturing.  
 
     Thus, in both core and periphery, the international bourgeoisie seeks to minimize labor costs, but it does so in accordance with different rules in the two regions.  In the core, the workers have organized unions, organizations, associations, and political parties that promote the interests of workers.  As a result of workers' struggles through such organizations, they have attained basic political and civil rights, and a majority of workers in the core have been able to obtain wages sufficient to acquire the basic necessities of life.  The capitalist class made these concessions because of pressure applied by workers’ action, and especially important was the weapon of the strike.  But such concessions also had the effect of expanding domestic markets in the core, and thus they were consistent with systemic needs in the long term.  Most core workers, then, are exploited, in that they receive in wages less than the value of what they produce.  But they are not superexploited, in that, for the majority of core workers, wages are sufficient to sustain a life with adequate nutrition, housing, clothing, and access to education and health care.

     For the workers in the periphery, however, there is a different reality.  In the peripheral regions historically, slavery and other mechanisms of brute force were used to obtain labor for the exportation of raw materials to the core.  As the system evolved, and as more and more land was used for plantations and mines, the majority of people had no option but to work in the plantations and mines, and coercion became more economic than physical.  Sharecropping, tenant farming, and low-wage labor on plantations and mines became the norm, which continues to the present day.  Basic political and civil rights, such as the right to organize unions and political parties, were not recognized until well into the twentieth, and they often have been nullified by military dictatorships and political repression.   
 
     Thus the majority of workers in the periphery are superexploited.  Their wages for full-time work are insufficient to acquire the basic necessities of life.  They survive through a variety of strategies: working two or three jobs; using several workers from the same household, including children; cultivating food on subsistence plots; and constructing simple huts or shacks with their own hands.  And they do without.  A majority is malnourished.  Many do not have electricity or piped water.  The great majority has very limited access to education or health care.  They die at birth more frequently than in the core, and they do not live as long.  The majority does not think about acquiring products that workers in the core take for granted, such as a car or a telephone.

     The unequal wage level between core and periphery establishes unequal exchange,in which the amount of products that a core worker receives for a given quantity of labor is many times greater than the amount of products that a peripheral worker receives in exchange for an equal quantity of labor (Wallerstein 1979:71).  So labor is performed throughout the core and peripheral regions to make the products marketed in the world-economy, but the sale and consumption of these products is concentrated in the core.

     Since 1980, the capitalist class has been more aggressive in the pursuit of its interests in relation to core workers, as a consequence of the profound and systemic crisis in which the system has entered.  This breaking of the social contract between management and labor in the core is shortsighted, because the relatively high wages of core workers have functioned to provide political stability to the world-system.  The shortsighted response of the capitalist class to the crisis is one of the signs of the depth of the crisis and of the incapacity of the system to resolve it.  The breaking of the social contract has led to erosion in the standard of living of core workers, thus undermining the legitimacy of core governments and creating a degree of social instability.  Nevertheless, by global standards, the wages of core workers remain relatively high, and the majority of workers in the core have the basic necessities of life.


Reference

Wallerstein, Immanuel.  1979.  The Capitalist World Economy.  New York:  CambridgeUniversity Press.  
 

Key words: Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, Wallerstein, world-system, world-economy, unequal exchange

     The sixteenth century Spanish conquest of the region of the Americas today known as Latin America was made possible by: the superior military technology of the Spaniards (particularly their horses, steel swords, and steel armor); the centralized political structure of the conquering nations; the decentralized political structure of many of the indigenous societies; and the rapid spread of diseases brought by the Europeans and against which the indigenous population had limited immunity. In many of the conquered regions, the indigenous population was reduced 90% as a result of the conquest, the spread of disease, and the brutality of the forced labor imposed in the aftermath of the conquest.  

     Using gold and silver acquired from America through systems of forced labor, the Spanish purchased manufactured goods from Northwestern Europe, particularly the Netherlands, England, and France.  This stimulated commercial expansion in Northwestern Europe, which began at this time to import grains from Eastern Europe.  Thus the Spanish military conquest of America played a central role in  the emergence of a European world-economy that encompassed Western Europe and Eastern Europe as well as those areas of America under the control of Spain and Portugal.  Characterized by a capitalist mode of production, the European world-economy came into being during the period 1492-1640.  .

     There was a  geographical division of labor in the emerging modern world-economy.  Eastern Europe and Hispanic America were the regions in which raw materials were obtained using three forms of forced labor.  (1) The encomienda was developed in Hispanic America, in which forced indigenous labor produced gold and silver bullion as well as cattle products (beef and leather) that were exported to Western Europe.  The encomienda was a system in which the owner, or encomendero, was granted the right to indigenous labor by the Spanish crown.  The encomendero was formally obligated to provide for the basic needs of the indigenous laborers, but in practice it was a brutal system of forced labor.   
 
     (2) In Eastern Europe, a form of forced labor that Wallerstein calls "coerced cash crop labor" was imposed on the peasantry by the Eastern European landholding class.  With the emergence of a market demand in Western Europe for grains, timber and wool, the Eastern European landowning class began to impose demands on peasants for the production of these raw materials.  

     (3) African slaves in America, particularly in the West Indies and Brazil, produced sugar that was exported to Western Europe.  The brutality of African-American slavery occurred not only in regard to the slave system of production in America but also in the brutal conditions of the forced transit from Africa to America.

     Thus, during the period 1492-1640, a world-economy emerged, in which the peripheral regions (Hispanic America and Eastern Europe) produced raw materials (gold, silver, grains, sugar, wood, beef and leather), using various forms of forced labor.  These peripheral regions were providing the raw materials that fueled Western European commercial expansion and economic development. 

     Thus emerged what would be the first of four stages in the development of the modern world-system and the capitalist world-economy.


 Bibliography

Diamond, Jared. 1999.  Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies.  New York: W.W. Norton.

Wallerstein, Immanuel.  1974.  The Modern World System, Vol. I.  New
York:  Academic Press.  

__________.  1979.  The Capitalist World Economy.  New  York: Cambridge University Press.  


Key words: Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, Wallerstein, world-system, world-economy, forced labor, slavery, encomienda, gold, silver, sugar


 

Posted August 7, 2013
     
During the period 1540 to 1640, there occurred transformations in Northwestern Europe (particularly England, the Netherlands, and Northern France) involving the commercialization of agriculture, the consolidation of land, and the conversion to pasture. 

     Commercialization of agriculture.  The landholders of Northwestern Europe ended feudal obligations, including the obligation of serfs to supply agricultural products to the landholder, and adopted instead an obligation to pay rent in the form of money for the use of the land.  This turned the agricultural laborers into the direct sellers of their products and induced them to look for more efficient forms of production.  
 
     Consolidation of land.  In this new situation of commercialized agriculture, the great majority of peasants with smallholdings were unable to make their enterprises commercially viable, and they were forced to abandon the land.  But peasants with relatively larger plots of land were able to improve their financial situation, often acquiring access to land being abandoned by peasants with smaller plots, creating a consolidation of land.  Some of these more successful peasants were able to acquire ownership of land from their landholders, becoming independent producers.  So there emerged a new class of middle class agricultural producers, a "yeoman" class, who were both owners and renters on increasingly larger units of land and who were developing increasingly efficient techniques of production.  

     Conversion to pasture.  Many landholders converted agricultural
lands to pasture, both cattle and sheep.  The prices of meat and wool made the conversion to pasture attractive economically.  As a result, the amount of land devoted to pasture went from twenty-five to seventy-five percent.  Since much less labor is necessary for tending cattle and sheep than for agricultural production, the conversion to pasture displaced many peasants from the land.

      These dynamics created a large class of landless peasants who migrated to towns and constituted surplus labor for the expanding craft manufacturing of the towns. Particularly important here was textile manufacturing.  Manufactured cloth became England's most important export in the latter half of the sixteenth century, with the cloth going to Belgium, France, Spain and Portugal.

     The transformations in Northwestern Europe cannot be well understood if we observe only the region of Northwestern Europe.  From such a vantage point, we might explain them as occurring because of technological innovations and cultural changes.  This would be partly true, but it is an incomplete explanation that is very misleading in its implications.  On the other hand, if we understand the changes in Northwestern Europe in the context of the emerging European world-economy (see “The origin of the modern world-economy" 8/6/2013), their logic becomes clearer.  In spite of technological innovations, Northwestern Europe was producing less food, because of the extensive conversion to pasture.  But the importation into Northwestern Europe of grains produced in Eastern Europe compensated for the lower production of food.  In addition, the steady price of meat and wool and the growing demand for manufactured products were consequences of the gold acquired by Spain through forced labor in America, inasmuch as Spain used the gold to purchase manufactured goods from Northwestern Europe.  

     The modernization of Northwestern Europe was integrally tied to, indeed a consequence of, the Spanish conquest of America.   


Bibliography

Wallerstein, Immanuel.  1974.  The Modern World System, Vol. I.  New York:  Academic Press.  
 

Key words: Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, Wallerstein, world-system,  world-economy, Northwestern Europe, modernization, enclosure, consolidation, yeoman, vagabonds


  

Posted August 8, 2013

     We can understand more clearly the sixteenth century development of Northwestern Europe in the context of the emerging world economy by focusing on the role of American gold and silver (see “The origin of the modern world-economy" 8/6/2013; “The modernization of the West” 8/7/2013).  Large quantities of gold and silver were in the hands of Spain, as a result of the Spanish conquest of America and the extraction of the bullion through the forced labor of the indigenous population. The gold and silver were used to maintain the Spanish military as well as other state expenditures, including the salaries of middle class state bureaucrats, and to support a lavish lifestyle of the aristocracy. However, Spain did not modernize its production to respond to the increased demand caused by the gold; rather, it purchased textiles and other manufactured goods from Northwestern Europe and grains from Eastern Europe.  In response to this expanded market stimulated by the Spanish colonial empire, Northwestern Europe modernized agriculture, consolidating land and converting serfs into tenant farmers.  As a dimension of these transformations, Northwestern Europe also converted agricultural land into pasture, a dynamic made possible by the imposition of a“second serfdom” on the agricultural laborers of Eastern Europe, which facilitated the exportation of grains to Northwestern Europe  (Shannon 1996:55-58).  

     In addition, in response to the increased market demand established by the Spanish colonial empire, Northwestern Europe expanded its craft manufacturing. But it did not modernize craft manufacturing during this time. The modernization of industry would occur later, during the great expansion of the world-system of 1763-1914, when European colonial powers conquered and peripheralized vast regions of Africa and South and Southeast Asia.  This is what historians have called the Industrial Revolution, which has not been conventionally understood in the context of the expanding and developing modern world-economy.
 
     Viewing Western development in the context of the expanding world-economy, we can see that the changes in Northwestern Europe in the sixteenth century were occurring because of the economic relations between Northwestern Europe and Eastern Europe and between Northwestern Europe and (indirectly) Hispanic America.  Northwestern Europe was transforming itself into a core region in an emerging world-economy in which Hispanic America and Eastern Europe were functioning as peripheral regions.  The key to the economic development of Northwestern Europe is not its technological or cultural innovation but its capacity, by virtue of its function in the developing world-economy, to benefit from the conquest and exploitation of other regions. 
 
     Thus, during the period 1492-1640, the modern world-economy came into being. Northwestern Europe became the core, characterized by commercialization and centralization of agriculture; expansion of craft manufacturing; production of diverse products, including industrial, agricultural, and pastoral products; and free wage labor.  Eastern Europe and Hispanic America were peripheralized, producing raw materials (gold, silver, grains, timber and wool) for the core, using various forms of forced labor.  
 
     The modern world-economy would develop and expand over the next four centuries and become a truly global enterprise.  But during its expansion and development, the modern world-economy would continue to have a fundamental characteristic:  the economic development of the core would be related to and made possible by the superexploitation and the underdevelopment of the periphery.  The Third World revolutions of today can be understood as a reaction to this fundamental fact, and as a noble effort to establish an alternative foundation for global international relations.


Reference

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


Key words: Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, Wallerstein, world-system, world-economy, Northwestern Europe, modernization, gold, silver, conquest, development, underdevelopment

Posted August 19, 2013

     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