Why did some countries ‘develop,’ and others didn’t? Are the two sets of societies somehow related? Is it possible that the development of the industrial powers occurred at the expense of other societies?

Technology, power and colonization

Well over 1,000 years ago, European explorers were taking technologies from Chinese and Islamic societies, and bringing them home, where they were often modified to suit their own societies’ purposes. After Marco Polo’s expedition in the late 1200s, the prize was the spice trade in the East Indies (the so-called ‘spice islands’ were mostly what is now Inonesia, but markets existed along the West Coast of India, among other places–see a map of region). Food was pretty bad in Europe in the early part of the millennium (1000-1300), and in fact most of the ‘high’ culture was coming from Islamic and Chinese societies.

For a glimpse at the value of spices and the state of European cuisine in the Dark Ages:

During the Middle Ages in Europe, a pound of ginger was worth the price of a sheep; a pound of mace would buy three sheep or half cow; cloves cost the equivalent of about $20 a pound. Pepper, always the greatest prize, was counted out peppercorn by peppercorn. The guards on London docks even down to Elizabethan times, had to have their pockets sewn up to make sure they didn’t steal any spices. In the 11th Century, many towns kept their accounts in pepper; taxes and rents were assessed and paid in this spice and a sack of pepper was worth a man’s life. (ASTA online)

That didn’t stop the Europeans from exploring, however. The Arabs controlled the lucrative trade in spices–although they weren’t really organized–it was mostly enterprising merchants. The problem with spices for European traders was that the overland routes were very difficult and long (try making sense of this map of trade routes):

The sea route was perilous as well–one had to go around Africa, and the southern tip, around the Cape of Good Hope, could be disastrous during a storm. Another problem was the ship type–galleys required oarsmen, and oarsmen require lots of food and water, and there was little room left for cargo. The ships had to hug the coastline and go ashore for fresh water frequently. This posed a problem getting across the stretches of the Sahara Desert, where there was no water along the coast. The other problem was faced when returning with cargo. Prevailing ocean currents tended to blow the ships out to open sea, away from the coast. This posed a problem of getting lost, and losing access to water along the coast. The Portuguese came up with a solution: The caravel.

Because it didn’t require oarsmen, it didn’t have to carry so much food and stop as often. The Portuguese also borrowed the concept of the gun and gunpowder from Chinese culture. They made it bigger, placing cannons on the caravel. Thus the caravel required less crew, which meant less food to bring and more room for cargo. The other problem happened when the ships would return up the West Coast of Africa, because of the prevailing ocean currents that would take them out to deep sea, away from the coast. The astrolabe (below) was a precursor of the compass, which helped sailors calculate their latitude, using the north star as a point of reference. So they knew that even if they did get blown out to open sea, they could work their way back because they knew their north/south orientation.

Having conquered the navigation problem …

From there, the control of the spice trade belonged to the Portuguese. It had been a fairly decentralized operation, most of the merchants were Arab. But Portugal, by virtue of its big guns and big boats, was able to dominate, and the other European powers–Great Britain, France, Spain and the Netherlands–took note. Most concentrated on certain areas of the globe, but at one point it was said of the British that the ‘sun never set on their empire.’ Quite a claim . . .

‘Technopiracy’

The colonizers found cultures with some sophisticated technologies and markets for them–textiles in India in particular. The British took the technology of the day, and figured out how to modify it and mass produce textiles. Then they used India as a source of raw material–cotton, to fuel their own industrialization process in textiles. This sort of practice was common–using the colonies to produce raw materials, which became part of industrial production processes in the European Countries. In Senegal (West Africa), France tried to force peasants to grow peanuts–they needed oil for soap making back home. They had two ways to get it–one, through military force, but holding guns to peoples’ heads to get them to farm isn’t always as effective as you’d think. They levied taxes against the local cultures. Being part of a subsistence economy, no one had cash to pay the tax. Fortunately, France was willing to let people cultivate peanuts and sell them to them to pay their taxes, in the process also introducing a cash economy.

And so it went. The colonizers also oversaw a period of genocide–slaves were taken, shipped to various parts of the world, many dying on the voyages. Estimates vary but the number is in the millions.

The point(s)?

• Development = Underdevelopment. That the development of the Western Industrialized Powers could not have been possible without the systematic and oftentimes ruthless underdevelopment of many societies in what is now called the Third World
• Raw materials from the Global South fueled industrialization of the Global North. The colonies supplied the raw materials that fueled the process of industrialization.
• Technological innovation (ships, navigation, guns) played a critical role in allowing the colonial powers to dominate the tropics and societies of the South.
• Technological dialogue. There was nothing deterministic or natural about European Colonialism–China had superior sailing ships and technologies a millennium earlier, but didn’t use this as an advantage to invade other lands and force the indigenous peoples to produce goods for the colonials’ own enrichment and development. Technology interacts with and is expressed through culture, in other words. There is a dialogue that occurs.
• ‘Backward’ societies?? Thus we now talk about ‘international development,’ implying that some countries are ‘developed,’ and others ‘undeveloped.’ The history is more complex, and the ‘technological superiority’ of the industrial nations less clear. Those ‘backward’ societies were, after all, living within their environmental means, in some cases for many centuries. Industrialization has without doubt produced massive wealth. Yet it has also produced some serious risks and threats to humanity–environmental toxins that end up in human tissue, high-tech warfare and violence on a global scale, the capacity to disrupt fairly predictable (not to mention friendly to humans’ interests climatic cycles, all come to mind.