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 socities, 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–and the Europeans wanted in on the ‘market share.’ The problem with the spice trade 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 took the concept of the gun from Chinese culture, and made it bigger–they placed cannons on the caravel, for defense and/or offense. Thus the caravel required less crew, which meant less food 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 (image below) was a precursor of the compass, that 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 sea, they could work their way back and knew what their latitude was, 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 era of European Colonization had begun. The main colonial powers were the British, French, Portuguese, Spanish, and the Dutch. Most had areas of the globe where their power was concentrated, but at one point it was said of the British that the ‘sun never set on their empire.’ Quite a claim . . .

The colonizers found cultures with some sophisticated technologies and marekets 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 probably the number is in the millions.

The point? 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–without the colonies supplying the raw materials that fueld the process of industrialization. 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. 1000 years ago Europe was in the ‘dark ages’ and Oriental and Islamic cultures were quite sophisticated and highly developed. They didn’t, however, channel their inventive energies into military supremacy.

Colonial power–how did they use it?

Short of bald-faced military coercion (which was usually the threat looming in the background), colonial powers used other ways to get what they wanted out of their colonies:

1. Land-based exploitation–changes in property ownership, the taking of the best and most productive lands, mineral and water rights were common. In India, the British essentially ‘gave’ land it claimed to local tax collectors (in part as reward for their contribution to the colonial cause). India still is characterized by a landlord-tenant property rights arrangement, where a minority of absentee landlords control land and rent it to the tenants who farm it.
2. Destruction of indigenous industry–as was mentioned above–textiles, foundries, shipbuilding–this was especially the strategy of the Dutch and British.
3. ‘Technopiracy’–this is the process of taking indigenous knowledge, technologies and such, and adapting them to conditions in Europe, further reinforcing the role of colonies as producers of the raw materials used to fuel industrial development. We see it still today. It is often called ‘biopiracy,’ or the pirating of traditional knowledge, usually by profit-making enterprises.
4. Slavery–genocide, depopulation, control over labor (10-11 million Africans were removed from their continent; shipboard mortality rates alone were estimated to be 10-15%).
5. Any questions?

Strategies–how to avoid using military force?

Direct use of military force is expensive in many respects, and the colonial powers avoided it if they could. Some of the political means they used to get what they wanted included:

1. Fiscal policy. Imposing taxes on producers (and then offering to pay them for producing certain cash crops … ), appropriating land and hiring farmers as low-wage laborers)
2. Ethnic co-optation. The British were especially accomplished at this–favoring one ethnic group over another (to facilitate the slave trade, tax collection, control of the peasantry, etc.). Africa to this day in many places still suffers from the ravages of ethnic warfare–Sierra Leone and Liberia are practically ungovernable, atrocities occur frequently in the Republic of Congo, in Rwanda, Burundi, etc. The Ivory Coast is currently the ‘hotspot.‘
3. Administration through ‘companies‘, such as the Dutch East India Company and Britain’s East India Company.
4. Threat of force. When all else failed, military power was used, and there were many massacres of indigenous people.

Lots of history and politics . . .

Many scholars still refer to ‘neocolonialism,’ because in many ways, the third world is still the supplier of raw materials–its farmers produce commodities for world markets (usually very cheaply because their own currencies don’t fare well against the dollar), it provides the workers for the factories that produce most of the goods the industrialized nations consume (WalMart is the classic example, but Nike, other shoe manufacturers and clothes manufacturers, as well as electronics producers, work well in a pinch). One major difference is that neo-colonialism has spread with capitalism and has benefited and been spread by private corporations (albeit with lots of help from industrialized nations where those corporations are based, along with multilateral agencies that make rules and provide incentives such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization).