From 1492 to 1914, seven European nations conquered the world, establishing the structural foundation of the modern world-system and capitalist world-economy.  The European project of world conquest did not always involve direct control by European states.  In some cases, formally autonomous empires or societies were compelled to make concessions to European powers, coerced by significant European military presence in the region.  In other cases, European military-economic companies contracted by European states made alliances with local political actors whose particular interests coincided with the European agenda, enabling it to take control of the political process. And there were important exceptions: China and Japan.  But in essence, during the course of four and a quarter centuries, Europe conquered the world.

     Conquest has been the way of humanity since the agricultural revolution ten thousand years ago.  It was through conquest that political structures were centralized, kingdoms and empires formed, and advanced civilizations came into being.

    But the modern European conquest of the world was more penetrating.  In previous eras, the conquering power required a tribute from the conquered societies or kingdoms, but the basic structures of their political-economic systems were left intact.  In contrast, European colonial domination involved the transformation of the economies of the colonized, so that the colonized regions were converted into peripheral zones in a developing world-economy.  They were turned into suppliers of raw materials, on a basis of forced or cheap labor, and purchasers of the surplus manufactured goods of the colonial power.  With their traditional industries destroyed, and their traditional agriculture transformed, the colonies became impoverished and economically dependent on the core.  

    The peripheralization of the conquered peoples had the consequence that when formal political independence was conceded, in response to nationalist movements, the newly independent countries encountered tremendous obstacles to autonomous development.  In addition to the legacy of colonial economic structures, these obstacles included imperialist strategies by the core powers, seeking to preserve the core-peripheral relation with the colonized regions.  So today the world-system stands on a foundation of colonialism: it is a neocolonial world-system.

     In the development and maintenance of the project of global conquest, it has been necessary for the colonizing governments to justify the conquests in the eyes of the peoples of the conquering nations.  The participation of the people has been required: for officers and soldiers in the armed forces; and for merchants and consumers in the developing structures of global commerce.  During the first three centuries of the world-system, the justification was religious: the conquered peoples were not Christian, and thus considered not civilized, so the conquest was viewed as bringing civilization to the world.  From the period 1789 to 1914, liberal democracy emerged as the consensual ideology that guided the world-system, reducing the role of religious beliefs in civil society.  During this period, racism emerged as a justification: the conquered peoples were viewed as racially inferior and as uncivilized, and thus not ready for democracy. During the course of the twentieth century, racism was dislodged from its position of influence, and the meaning of democracy was expanded and deepened.  So all possibilities for the ideological justification of colonial domination were eliminated.  The strategy then became the denial of the importance of colonialism, presenting it as a phenomenon of the past and as not central to the development of the world-system. The colonial denial is supported in two ways: the fragmentation of the academic disciplines in higher education, preventing the emergence of a comprehensive understanding that discerns the role of colonialism in the economic development of Europe and that perceives the survival of colonial economic structures in the neocolonial world-system; and the development of a consumer society, distracting the people and undermining possibility for an informed popular understanding of human history and global dynamics.

     The colonial denial is central to the difference between European and Third World perspectives.  Whereas Europe and the European settler societies deny the significance of colonialism, the colonized peoples of the world are not able to forget the colonial transformation, and they consider it their duty to remember.  Whereas in Europe it is assumed that Western economic and technological advances are explained by cultural characteristics, the colonized understand colonialism and neocolonialism to be central to European development and Third World underdevelopment.   Whereas public discourse in Europe rarely refers to colonialism and neocolonialism, public officials and political figures in the Third World regularly name colonialism as an important part of their present reality.  The fundamental difference between European and Third World perspectives is their vastly different levels of consciousness of colonialism and of the colonial situation in which the vast majority of persons in the world live.

     The European colonial denial is a distortion.  It prevents us from seeing fundamental historical facts and from understanding contemporary realities.  It is not simply a matter of a difference in perspectives.  It is a question of one perspective that cannot see important components of the human condition, giving rise to partial and limited understandings of a wide variety of social issues; and another perspective that addresses relevant questions and that formulates an informed understanding.  It is a question of a legitimating and distorting ideology as against a scientific understanding.  It is a question of a Eurocentric understanding as against a universal understanding.  The Third World perspective, tied to emancipatory movements, is the most advanced understanding of which the human species is capable at this stage in its development

     Even the European Left suffers from Eurocentrism.  When we formulate issues in the historical and social context of Europe or the United States, ignoring issues and frames that are emerging in the Third World, this is a form of ethnocentrism.  When we treat the history of popular struggles primarily in the context of Europe and the United States, and pay little attention to the various popular revolutions that have been unfolding in the Third World, we are thinking in a Eurocentric way.  If we study Marx and Lenin; but not Ho Chi Minh, Fidel, and Chávez; we are developing Eurocentric blinders.

      But we Europeans and peoples of European descent can overcome Eurocentrism.  By encountering the popular revolutionary movements that have been forged by the peoples of the Third World, we can make their experiences and understandings part of our own, and we thus can emancipate ourselves from the ideological distortions of Western culture.  We can arrive to understand that colonial domination was the principal cause of the development of the West, and that neocolonial structures continue to promote the development of the North and the underdevelopment of the South.  We can develop a basic frame of reference that sees the conquest of the world by seven European nations during the course of more than four centuries as fundamental to the existing world order, and that appreciates the revolutionary struggles of the colonized as a necessary and significant global process that is seeking to construct a more just, democratic and sustainable world-system.  Possessing such a basic frame of reference would enable us to recognize that we must cast our lot with the peoples and movements of the Third World, in defense of humanity.

      In 2013 and 2014, I wrote fourteen blog posts on the origin and development of the world-system, which endeavored to describe the economic transformations in the colonial process:

With respect to Cuba:
“Cuba in historical and global context” 6/12/2014; 
“The peripheralization of Cuba” 6/16/2014;

With respect to Vietnam:
“What enabled French colonialism?” 4/28/2014;
“French colonialism in Vietnam” 4/25/2014;

With respect to Latin America:
“The natural resources of the periphery” 10/25/2013;

The origin and development of the world-system and the capitalist world-economy:
“What is a world-system?” 8/1/2013; 
“The modern world-economy” 8/2/2013; 
“Unequal exchange” 8/5/2013; 
“The origin of the modern world-economy” 8/6/2013; 
“Modernization of the West” 8/7/2013; 
“Conquest, gold, and Western development” 8/8/2013; 
“Consolidation of the world-economy, 1640-1815” 8/19/2013; 
“New peripheralization, 1750-1850” 8/20/2013; 
“The world-economy becomes global, 1815-1914” 8/21/2013.

To find the posts, in the category World-System, scroll down.

Posts on the related theme of the “The Open Veins of Latin America” can be found in Latin American History; and on the related theme of Western development in World History.

Posted June 12, 2014

     A fundamental tendency in human societies since the agricultural revolution has been the formation of world-empires and world-economies, with accompanying advances in civilization, on a foundation of conquest.  I have called this principle of human social dynamics “the dialectic of domination and development” (see “Dialectic of domination and development” 10/30/2013).  Jared Diamond (1999) has maintained that the societies that were able to conquer others were those that, driven by necessity provoked by population growth and environmental factors, had turned earliest to food production, thereby enabling them to maintain fulltime specialists, such as soldiers, state administrators, craftsmen, and priests, who played important roles in wars of conquest (see “What enables conquest?” 8/9/2013; “Food production and conquest” 8/12/2013).  

     The dialectic of domination and development received advanced expression with the modern nation-state, which is characterized by centralization of political authority and by unity established on the basis of common ethnic identification.  Centralization was a significant force in Western Europe from the tenth to the fifteenth centuries, pushed by monarchs and merchants as a consequence of their common interest in overcoming the local power of feudal lords.  National ethnic identification took shape in Spain, England and France, as a result of wars of conquest reinforced by natural geographical boundaries.   In the case of Spain, it was a matter of reconquest in reaction to the Moorish conquest; whereas England and France had continuous wars with one another.  The common ethnic identification of the modern nation-state became a unifying force, replacing religion, which had functioned as the central unifying force in the traditional state.  This ultimately gave rise to the differentiation of political leaders from religious leaders, reducing the role of the latter.  Common ethnic identification made possible the unifying of peoples of diverse cultural-religious traditions in a territory governed by a single state (see “European feudalism” 8/13/2013; “The modern nation-state” 8/14/2013; Cristóbal 2008).

     Modern nation-states were the central actors in the formation of the modern world-system.  The modern world-system came into being as a result of the Spanish conquest of America, which, in addition to the factors that had forged the Spanish nation-state, also was aided by the lack of horses and iron and the limited resistance to disease among the indigenous kingdoms and societies of America.   The Spanish conquest of America was the foundation for the forced acquisition of gold and silver, which was utilized by Spain to maintain its army and expanding state bureaucracy and to sustain the life-style of the expanding upper and middle classes.  The Spanish, however, did not manufacture the goods required for these needs; rather, they purchased necessary manufactured goods from northwestern Europe.  Therefore, the Spanish purchase of manufactured goods promoted the economic development of Northwestern Europe, stimulating the modernization of agriculture (including centralization of land and conversion from feudal obligations to rent payments), the conversion of land use from agriculture to pasture, and the expansion of industry.  And it caused the peripheralization of Eastern Europe, where landholders converted a decayed feudalism into capitalist agriculture that supplied Western Europe with grains and timber.  Thus, during the sixteenth century, a European-centered world-economy took shape, with Western Europe as the core and Spanish America and Eastern Europe as the periphery.  The peripheral regions functioned to provide cheap raw materials on a foundation of forced labor to the core and to provide markets for the surplus goods of the core, thus facilitating the economic development of the core and strengthening the nation-states of England and France and their capacity for conquest (see “The origin of the modern world-economy” 8/6/2013; “Modernization of the West” 8/7/2013; “Conquest, gold, and Western development” 8/8/2013; Wallerstein 1974).

      During the period of 1750 to 1914, seven Western European nation-states, led by Britain and France, conquered, colonized, and peripheralized vast regions of Africa and Asia, converting them into suppliers of raw materials, on a foundation of forced labor, for the modernizing industries of Western Europe.  The conquered regions also functioned to purchase surplus manufactured goods of the core. Thus, by the beginning of the twentieth century, the capitalist world-economy had become global, with Western Europe and the European settler societies of North America as the core, and with the periphery formed by Central America, the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, and Southeast Asia, except for China and Japan; South America (except Bolivia) and Eastern Europe had ascended to semi-peripheral status, having developed limited levels of industry.  A world-system characterized by extreme levels of inequality, in which the majority of persons and peoples on the planet were denied the democratic rights proclaimed by the ideology of the world-system, had taken shape (see “New peripheralization, 1750-1850” 8/20/2013; “The world-economy becomes global, 1815-1914” 8/21/2013; Wallerstein 1989; Frank 1979).

     At the end of the nineteenth century, the capitalist world-economy entered its imperialist phase.  Lenin provided a penetrating description of the characteristics of imperialism.  In Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, published in 1917, Lenin writes that imperialism is characterized by the concentration of industry and banking, so that a small number of large firms dominate industry and banking.  The large corporations and banks turn to the investment of capital in the peripheralized zones, where the price of land and labor is low, and profits are high (see “Lenin on imperialism” 9/10/2013).  Thus, in the twentieth century, the axis of super-exploitation, in which labor received less compensation than is necessary for life, shifts from the industrial factories of the core to the plantations, haciendas, and mines of the peripheralized zones.  

     The reaping of high profits during the twentieth century through the super-exploitation of the peripheralized regions made possible concessions by transnational corporations to workers in the core, so that there occurred a significant improvement in the standard of living of core workers, such that their social and economic rights were protected, for the most part, at least prior to the emergence of the terminal structural crisis of the world-system.  Concessions to core workers made possible the cooptation of the workers’ movement and its transformation from a revolutionary movement to a reform movement. 

     Thus, once the capitalist world-economy entered the imperialist phase, the force of the revolution no longer is located in the working-class organizations of the core but in the peripheralized zones.  Because the peripheralized zones were historically peripheralized through the conquest and colonization by European nation-states, the revolutions in the periphery have taken an anti-colonial character, consisting of nationalist revolutions that seek national liberation and independence from colonial domination (Arboleya 2008: 4, 10-11, 21-23). 

        From the period of 1919 to the 1960s, Third World national liberation movements developed a significant challenge to the world structures of colonial domination.  The core powers responded to this threat by seeking to coopt the national liberation movements, through a strategy of obtaining the cooperation of the national bourgeoisies in the perpetuation of the core-peripheral relation following a transition to political independence.  The overall success of this strategy led to a transition from colonialism to neocolonialism and the consolidation of a neocolonial world-system.  With respect to radical national liberation governments in the Third World that could be not coopted, the strategy of the global powers has been to overthrow them and replace them with a moderate and more cooperative government, or failing that, to economically and diplomatically isolate the government, so that its autonomous path will have limited impact on the neocolonial world-system.

      Third World national liberation movements have a component of social transformation, involving a class struggle within the colony/neocolony that pits the popular classes against the national bourgeoisie.  In most cases, this class struggle takes the form of peasants, agricultural workers, and their allies from other popular sectors in opposition to an estate bourgeoisie or agricultural bourgeoisie.  This is rooted in the objective conditions of the peripheralized colony/neocolony.  The agricultural elite profits from the trading of its products with transnational corporations, over a base of low-waged labor, and thus it has an objective interest in the preservation of the core-peripheral relation.  In opposition to the particular interests of the agricultural elite, the sovereignty of the nation requires the formulation of a national development plan by and in the interests of the popular sectors, on the basis of which the use of land and human labor is decided.  This requires that the agricultural bourgeoisie be dislodged from its position of control over the decision-making process. 

     Thus, within national liberation movements conflict emerges between the interests of the agricultural elite and the interests of the popular sectors.  Moderate national liberation movements are those in which the interests of the agricultural elite shape the direction of the movement, and they cooperate with the global powers.  But radical national liberation movements are those in which the popular sectors take control.  They cannot be coopted by the neocolonial system, and they must be destroyed or marginalized by the global powers.

     In the colonies and neocolonies of the world-system, there are particular factors and conditions that shape whether the national liberation movement will emerges as a moderate or radical movement.  In the case of Cuba, various factors led to a situation in which its national liberation movement would become radical and indeed would become one of the most advanced revolutionary movements of national liberation, placing it in an epic battle with its neighbor to the North, the hegemonic neocolonial world power.  We will be exploring various components of this story in subsequent posts.


References

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

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

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

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

Lenin, V.I.  1996. Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism.  Introduction by Norman Lewis and James Malone.  Chicago: Pluto Press.

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

__________.  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, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective

Posted June 16, 2014

     We have seen that the conquest, colonization, and peripheralization of vast regions of the world by seven European nation-states from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries involved the imposition of systems of forced labor for the production of raw materials, thus establishing a world-system in which the core nations have access to cheap labor and cheap raw materials as well as markets for their surplus manufactured goods (see “The modern world-economy” 8/2/2013; “Unequal exchange” 8/5/2013; “The origin of the modern world-economy” 8/6/2013; “Modernization of the West” 8/7/2013; “Conquest, gold, and Western development” 8/8/2013; “New peripheralization, 1750-1850” 8/20/2013; “The world-economy becomes global, 1815-1914” 8/21/2013; “Cuba in historical and global context” 6/12/2014). 

     In the case of Cuba, the raw materials products were sugar, tobacco, coffee, gold, and cattle products.  The forced labor included African slave labor, indigenous slave labor, and the Spanish colonial labor systems of the encomienda and the repartimiento. 

     Gold.  Using indigenous slave labor, gold nuggets were extracted from riverbed sand immediately following Spanish conquest of Cuba in 1511 and 1512.  Father Bartolomé de las Casas, who would become famous as Bishop of Chiapas, Mexico, and as defender of indigenous peoples, documented the brutal treatment of the indigenous slaves, who toiled in the riverbeds from dawn to dusk.  The exploitation of the gold ended in 1542, with the exhaustion of the gold and the near total extermination of the indigenous population, as a result of the harsh conditions of labor, the effects of disease, and the disruption of indigenous systems of production (López Segrera 1972:35-49; Pérez 2006:18-22; Foner 1962:20-32).

      Cattle products.  The exportation of cattle products to Spain, or to other European nations via contraband trade, was the principal economic activity in Cuba in the period 1550 to 1700.  It was ideal for the conditions of limited supplies of labor and capital that existed in Cuba during the period (López Segrera 1972:36, 60-87).

     Sugar.  Sugar plantations were developed utilizing imported African slaves.  They were first developed in Cuba at the end of the sixteenth century, and they continued to expand, especially after 1750, in conjunction with the expansion of the capitalist world-economy (see “New peripheralization, 1750-1850” 8/20/2013; “The world-economy becomes global, 1815-1914” 8/21/2013).  Sugar plantations and slavery dominated the economy and defined the Cuban political-economic system during the eighteenth and most of the nineteenth century (López Segrera 1972:87-158; Pérez 2006:32-33, 40, 48, 54-65; Barcía, García, and Torres-Cuevas:259-60).

     Coffee.  Like sugar, coffee production was developed using African slave labor.  It was never developed on the scale of sugar, but it was a significant part of the economy of colonial Cuba.  It expanded following 1750, and it received a boost in Cuba as a result of the arrival of slaveholders and their slaves from Haiti following the Haitian revolution.

     Tobacco.  Whereas sugar, coffee, gold, and cattle products were developed in Cuba in accordance with a classical peripheral role, tobacco production in Cuba was developed with some core-like characteristics.  Tobacco production for export emerged in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and it was produced not by forced low-waged laborers but by middle class farmers.  By the first half of the eighteenth century, some tobacco growers had accumulated sufficient capital to develop tobacco manufacturing.  Tobacco production and manufacturing represented a potential for the development of Cuba that was different from the peripheral role represented by sugar, coffee, and slavery.  During the first half of the eighteenth century, there was a possibility that Cuba would emerge as a semi-peripheral nation, with a degree of manufacturing and economic and commercial diversity.  Contributing to this possibility was the diversity of economic activities found in the city of Havana, as a consequence of its role as a major international port.  But with the expansion of sugar production after 1750, the peripheral role defined by sugar and coffee became predominant, although tobacco production by middle class farmers and tobacco manufacturing continued to exist (López Segrera 1972:75-76, 90-91; Pérez 2006:33, 40).

     Consistent with the general patterns of the world-system, the peripheralization of Cuba created its underdevelopment.   There were high levels of poverty and low levels of manufacturing.  The vast majority of people lacked access to education, adequate nutrition and housing, and health care.  Relatively privileged sectors, such as tobacco farmers, tobacco manufacturers, and the urban middle class, found their interests constrained by the peripheral role and by the structures of Spanish colonialism.  Only owners of sugar and coffee plantations benefitted from the peripheralization of the island, and even they were constrained by Spanish colonialism.  During the nineteenth century, these dynamics gave rise to a movement of national liberation, which we will discuss in the next post.

      For further discussion of the peripheralization of Cuba, see “The Cuban revolutionary project and its development in historical and global context.”


References

Barcía, María del Carmen, Gloria García and Eduardo Torres-Cuevas.  1994.  Historia de Cuba: La Colonia: Evolución Socioeconómica y formación nacional de los orígenes hasta 1867.   La Habana: Editora Política. 

Foner, Philip S.  1962.   A History of Cuba and its Relations with the United States, Vol. I.  New York: International Publishers. 

López Segrera, Francisco.  1972.  Cuba: Capitalismo Dependiente y Subdesarrollo (1510-1959).  La Habana: Casa de las Américas.

Pérez, Jr., Louis A.  2006.  Cuba:  Between Reform and Revolution, 3rd edition.  New York: Oxford University 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, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, peripheralization

     The French imposition of colonial rule on Vietnam was rooted in global historical factors.  The centralization of Western European states began to occur in the tenth century.  The revival of commerce led to the expansion of a merchant class that had an interest in overcoming feudal obstacles to the movement of goods and people.  At the same time, the monarchs, who under feudalism found their powers limited by local lords, also had an interest in overcoming the localism of feudalism and in centralizing power.  Thus, the monarchs, in alliance with an incipient commercial bourgeoisie, centralized state structures by raising armies, conquering territory, and taking effective political control.  This process was intertwined with the formation of nationality identities that coincided with the territories governed by the centralized states, thus establishing a cohesive nation-state (see “European feudalism” 8/13/2013; “The modern nation-state” 8/14/2013).

     The emergence of the modern nation-state was particularly advanced in Spain, England and France (see “The modern nation-state” 8/14/2013), with the result that by the end of the fifteenth century, these nations had developed a significant capacity for conquest.  The centralized Western European nation-states were still no match for China or Japan, but they had developed the capacity to conquer the indigenous empires and societies of America.    

     The Spanish conquest of America was aided by environmental factors.  The steel shields and swords of the Spanish were more advanced than the bronze and stone weaponry of the indigenous, who had not discovered iron.  And the Spanish had horses, the Sherman tanks of pre-modern warfare; whereas in America, large mammals had become extinct during human colonization.  And the Spanish conquest was aided by the relative lack of immunity to diseases carried by the European conquerors, a consequence of less contact among populations in America than in Africa, Asia, and Europe (see “What enables conquest?” 8/9/2013).

     The Spanish imposed a colonial system characterized by forced labor and the exportation of gold and silver to Spain.  The bullion was used by Spain to purchase manufactured goods from Northwestern Europe, thus facilitating the commercial expansion and agricultural modernization of Northwestern Europe.  These dynamics created a European-centered world-economy that encompassed Western Europe as its core and Latin America and Eastern Europe as its periphery, a territory much larger than that of the Chinese world-empire.  And it increased the economic and military power of the centralized states of Britain and France, which after 1750 began a conquest of vast regions of Africa and Asia, seeking to expand even further the geographical territory of the European-centered world-economy (see “What is a world-system?” 8/1/2013; “The origin of the modern world-economy” 8/6/2013; “Conquest, gold, and Western development” 8/8/2013).

     Thus, we can see in sum the dynamics that enabled Western European conquest and domination of the world, which reached its culmination during the twentieth century.  The common interests of the monarchs and a rising merchant class created the modern nation-state, a centralized state with an advanced capacity for conquest, but not as advanced as the empires of Southeast Asia.  Spain proceeded to conquer the empires and societies of America, leading to the formation of a European-centered world-economy, which further increased the capacity for conquest of the Western European states, particularly Britain and France.  After 1750, the European nation-states, increasingly powerful, undertook a project of conquest and domination of vast regions of Asia and Africa, which was dialectically related to the modernization of industry and further increased the power of the Western European nation-states.

     But the European nation-states would find formidable resistance in the world-empires of Southeast Asia.  The region had developed food production early, and its empires were advanced (see “Food production and conquest” 8/12/2013).  For centuries, China was by far the largest and most advanced world-empire, and its conquests had included the empire of Vietnam.  As a result of its considerable strength, European powers deferred invasions of China until the nineteenth century.  Because of European invasions beginning in 1839, China was compelled to accept treaties that led to her partial de-industrialization, but China was never conquered, colonized, and peripheralized like most of Southeast Asia, South Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean (Fairbank 1986; 1992; Frank 1979). 

     For its part, Japan was not invaded by the European powers during the period of the expansion of the European-centered world-economy from 1750 to 1914.  As a result, Japan experienced “independent national development” (quoted in Frank 1979:153).  Its project for a Japanese-centered world-system in Asia clashed with the European-centered world-system in the twentieth century, and it was brought to an end by the Japanese defeat in World War II and the subsequent occupation by the United States, leading to Japan’s incorporation as a core nation in the European-centered world-economy.

      French invasions of Vietnam were selective, and its conquest of Vietnam was partial.  French troops had landed in Da Nang in central Vietnam in 1858, but imperial troops compelled the French to withdraw.  Beginning in 1859, the southern region was occupied by French troops, and Cochin China was developed as a colony directly administered by the French.  As a result, in the south, French settlers developed plantations, and Saigon emerged as a commercial and industrial center.  And in the northern region, Hanoi was attacked and several cities along the Red River were occupied by French troops in the 1880s.  The French protectorate of Tonkin in the north in effect functioned as a French colony, although Cochin China was more attractive to most French settlers and investors.  But most of the empire of Vietnam, stretching between Tonkin and Cochin China and including the imperial capital of Hue, had not been conquered by the French.  The Vietnamese emperor ceded political influence over this central region to the French, and it became the French protectorate of Annam, with the Vietnamese imperial court and bureaucracy functioning as a puppet government.  To be sure, the emperor was compelled to concede the transformation of the countryside into the production of rice for export and to provide labor for the plantations, thus fulfilling the economic goals of the French colonial project.  Nevertheless, because of the indirect form of French rule, which was in effect a concession to the Vietnamese emperor, the peripheralization of Annam was less thorough than in Cochin China (Duiker 2000:9, 12-13, 42, 110-11; see “French colonialism in Vietnam” 4/25/2013).

      The ceding of political influence and territory to the French by the emperor was opposed at the outset by a faction in the imperial court and by the Confucian scholar-gentry class, many of whom favored continued military resistance against French aggression.  A movement of opposition to French colonialism began immediately.  It would be a movement not only in opposition to French colonialism but also in opposition to the collaboration with French colonial rule by the Vietnamese imperial court.  This will be the subject of our next post.


References

Duiker, William J.  2000.  Ho Chi Minh.  New York:  Hyperion.

Fairbank, John King.  1986.  The Great Chinese Revolution: 1800-1985.  New York:  Harper & Row.

__________.  1992.  China:  A New History.  Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

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, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, Vietnam, French colonialism, French Indochina, Cochin China

     We have seen in previous posts that after 1750, European nations conquered vast regions of Africa and Asia, incorporating the conquered regions into the European-centered capitalist world-economy (see “New peripheralization, 1750-1850” 8/20/2013; “The world-economy becomes global, 1815-1914” 8/21/2013).  As a particular manifestation of this global process, the French conquest of Vietnam began in 1859, when French troops attacked Saigon, a commercial port in the southern region of the empire of Vietnam.  The French overcame the resistance of the imperial troops, whose weapons were less advanced.  The emperor Tu Duc negotiated in 1862 the ceding to the French of three southern provinces, which later would become part of the French colony of Cochin China (Duiker 2000:12).

     The French invasion of Vietnam resumed in the 1880s, when the French attacked Hanoi and occupied several major cities along the Red River in the North.  This occurred shortly after the death of Tu Duc, and it threw an imperial court already in division over succession into further division concerning how to respond to the renewed French aggression.  An accommodationist faction came to dominate the court, and it ceded political influence to France over the remaining territory of Vietnam.  The French divided Vietnam into the protectorate of Tonkin in the far north, where the traditional capital city of Hanoi was located; and the protectorate of Annam, which included the imperial capital of Hue and stretched from Tonkin to the French colony of Cochin China in the far south.  The Vietnamese imperial court and its bureaucracy were allowed to govern in the protectorate of Annam, functioning as a puppet authority under the direction of the French (Duiker 2000:12-13).

     We have seen in previous posts that conquest and colonial domination involved peripheralization, where the newly conquered regions were converted into exporters of raw materials on a base of forced labor (see “New peripheralization, 1750-1850” 8/20/2013; “The world-economy becomes global, 1815-1914” 8/21/2013; “The modern world-economy” 8/2/2013; “Unequal exchange” 8/5/2013).  This pattern was followed in Vietnam, as feudal Vietnamese communal agriculture was transformed into a system characterized by privately-owned large-scale plantations and mines oriented to the exportation of rubber, rice, and minerals.  The plantations and mines were in the hands of a small number of owners, principally foreigners; and the puppet Vietnamese authority was required to supply forced laborers for them.  In addition, during colonial rule many small farmers became tenant farmers burdened by debt peonage (Prina 2008:14; Duiker 2000:173-76; Fall 1967:69; Ho 1968:236-237).

     The peripheralization of Vietnam was concentrated in the French colony of Cochin China, in part because it was a colony directly administered by the French rather than a protectorate administered indirectly through a Vietnamese government under French direction.  The production of rubber and rice for export, on a base of forced and super-exploited labor, provided the economic foundation for the colony of Cochin China.  Rubber seedlings had been imported from Brazil, and rubber plantations under French ownership were developed along the Cambodian border.  In the Mekong River delta, the French drained the marshlands, and rice was cultivated by sharecroppers who paid exorbitant rents to absentee Vietnamese landlords living in Saigon.  The rice was processed in plants owned by Chinese descendants of settlers of previous centuries, as Cochin China became the third largest rice exporter in the world. In addition to owning rice mills, the Chinese controlled banking, and they were an important force as merchants in Saigon and other cities of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.  They lived in separate Chinese sections that maintained significant components of Chinese culture.  In addition, several thousand Europeans settled in Saigon, attracted by nearby rubber, tea, and coffee plantations as well as opportunities vis-á-vis factory ownership and the import-export trade.  Saigon became the largest industrial and commercial city of Vietnam, as textile mills, cement factories, and food processing plants emerged (Duiker 2000:42, 110-11).

     The accommodation of the emperor and the imperial court to French colonial domination undermined the prestige and authority of the emperor.  And it led to a decline of fidelity to the Confucian ethic, which stressed service to the community, personal right conduct, and benevolence.  Corruption became endemic among bureaucratic officials, and land that was previously reserved for poor families was now seized by the wealthy.  The Vietnamese imperial system was in decadence (Duiker 2000:29).

     What historic social, political, and environmental factors enabled the French to impose colonialism on Vietnam?  This will be the subject of our next post.


References

Duiker, William J.  2000.  Ho Chi Minh.  New York:  Hyperion.

Fall, Bernard B., Ed.  1967.  Ho Chi Minh On Revolution: Selected Writings, 1920-26.  New York: Frederick A. Praeger.

Ho Chi Minh.  1968.  Páginas Escogidas.  La Habana: Instituto del Libro.

Prina, Agustín.  2008.  La Guerra de Vietnam.  Mexico: Ocean Sur.


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, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, Vietnam, French colonialism, French Indochina, Cochin China

Posted October 25, 2013

     In eleven posts beginning August 16, I have drawn upon Eduardo Galeano’s Open Veins of Latin America (see posts in the section on Latin American history).  The book was given to recently-elected US President Barack Obama by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, an indication of the extent to which it is appreciated in Latin America. Written in 1970, the book formulates the Latin American perspective on its role in the world-economy.  It provides a concrete presentation of the core-peripheral relation as seen from the periphery, organizing the presentation according to the various raw materials that played a role in the development of underdevelopment in Latin America and the Caribbean.  In the sixteenth century, the conquest of the indigenous peoples and the forced labor imposed on them established that silver and gold would be the driving engine of the newly emerging world-economy and world-system, promoting the development of Western Europe as it promoted the underdevelopment of Latin America.  During the third stage of expansion of the world-system (1750-1914), sugar and other agricultural monarchs in Latin America were the driving force of the system, incorporating African slaves as forced laborers.  As the world-system entered a stage characterized by imperialism and neocolonial domination during the twentieth century, Latin American petroleum and minerals, underground sources of power, became integral components of the development of the United States.  
 
     Although the world-system has passed through various stages, there has been continuity in its development, established by the Latin American role as supplier of raw materials for the core of the system: gold, silver, sugar, coffee, bananas, petroleum, copper, tin, and iron have played important roles in the development of a Latin American political-economic system in a distorted form, in dependent relation with the core of the world-system.

     This has given rise to movements that seek, not merely formal independence that is negated in practice by a dependent neocolonial relation, but the full and true independence of Latin America and the Caribbean.  Important moments in this quest for independence from the neocolonial world-system include: the Mexican Revolution; the Cuban Revolution; revolutionary democratic socialism led by Salvador Allende in Chile; the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua; and the reform and revolutionary movements that have transformed Latin America today, spearheaded by Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia, and Rafael Correa in Ecuador.  We will be discussing these revolutions that have sought and are seeking to transform the neocolonial world-system in future posts.  
 

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, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, open veins of Latin America, Galeano

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

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