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

Posted August 20, 2013

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


References

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

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


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

Posted August 21, 2013
​     
From 1815 to 1914, European centralized nation-states, particularly Britain and France, established colonial domination over Africa and South East Asia.  Vast new regions of the world were peripheralized, so that the modern world-economy became truly global in scope.  

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

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

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

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


References

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


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