What all the developed countries have in common - Page 6 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15105620
Pants-of-dog wrote:No. You are confusing how modern capitalism benefits from ongoing colonialism with the larger wealth transfers that occurred during the colonial era.

You asked me how Ireland is benefiting from current imperialism, then you incorrectly assumed that I was referring to this dynamic (and only this dynamic) for all of Ireland’s colonial history.


No, I'm not confusing anything. The exact same dynamic would hold if the Barley was exported to other countries as well - say, Botswana.
#15105626
Pants-of-dog wrote:Yes, that is how ongoing colonialism benefits others NOW.

And that is different from how colonialism affected countries like Ireland and Botswana during the era of colonialism.


But Ireland was not developed back then, it only became so during the 1990s (1996 if we go by the HDI).
#15105676
@wat0n

Yes, I said that.

I pointed out that the economic growth was exactly what would we would expect to see if Ireland is both a colony from which wealth is extracted and a beneficiary of other colonial projects of wealth extraction.
#15105679
Pants-of-dog wrote:@wat0n

Yes, I said that.

I pointed out that the economic growth was exactly what would we would expect to see if Ireland is both a colony from which wealth is extracted and a beneficiary of other colonial projects of wealth extraction.


We are going on circles now :roll:

But I'll say it once more: Ireland could have benefited from such projects just as any other country, developed or not, could. Hence that is not really what makes developed countries especial.
#15105718
Julian658 wrote:The last place to receive humans due to migration was the Americas. It remained free of people till just the other day, perhaps 15,000 years ago, I do not recall. As to why they did not develop the same technology as Asia is not clear.

I can answer that, having studied this question intensively.

The fundamental reason has to do with climate. If you look at a rainfall map of North America for the Summer months, you will notice something. The continent gets very little precipitation during the warm part of the year. This is of immense importance when it comes to potential for agriculture. (Before widespread technology of irrigation)
Some of the parts of the continent that do get higher rainfall levels also can get very hot temperatures, leading to evaporative loses and drought.
In addition to that, there is the cold. So even in some of the lusher greener parts of the continent, the cold still greatly limits the length of the growing season.
It is much more complex than this, of course, but that is as simple of an explanation as can easily fit here.

I suspect that environmental factors and the genetic pool of a population may likely be connected, due to long-term evolutionary selection over many generations. So environmental factors could have had both direct, and indirect effects on the economic state of a population area.
Last edited by Puffer Fish on 07 Jul 2020 03:16, edited 1 time in total.
#15105719
Puffer Fish wrote:I can answer that, having studied this question intensively.

The fundamental reason has to do with climate. If you look at a rainfall map of North America for the Summer months, you will notice something. The continent gets very little precipitation during the warm part of the year. This is of immense importance when it comes to potential for agriculture. (Before widespread technology of irrigation)
Some of the parts of the continent that do get higher rainfall levels also can get very hot temperatures, leading to evaporative loses and drought.
In addition to that, there is the cold. So even in some of the lusher greener parts of the continent, the cold still greatly limits the length of the growing season.
It is much more complex than this, of course, but that is as simple of an explanation as can easily fit here.

I suspect that environmental factors and the genetic pool of a population may likely be connected, due to long-term evolutionary selection over many generations. So environmental factors could have had both direct, and indirect effects on the economic state of a population area.

Humans have a single origin. That they progressed at different rates once they spread around the globe was as you said related to weather and likely geography and topography.

Once agriculture was well developed MAN had time to think and create technology. Before MAN spent all day hunting or foraging. There was virtually no progress from generation to generation.
#15105720
Truly accurate answers to these sort of questions tend to be extremely complicated, and often do not have a single simple answer that is easy to understand.

Often different perspectives can both be true, but the question is how much of each (relative to the others) actually contributes to the outcome.

(For example, you might have a theory to explain something, and that theory could be perfectly reasonable and true, but it is still not really such a great theory if in reality it is only 5 percent of the overall causes of the effect)
#15105800
Pants-of-dog wrote:@wat0n

Yes, any country could have helped the British Empire colonisers and thereby helped enrich itself. But when we look at history, we see that Ireland actually did, while Botswana and other countries did not.


Firstly, it's unfair to claim that about Ireland - it wasn't even an independent country at the time. Secondly, it is also a red herring: It says nothing about the development of Ireland after the UK had rid itself of most of its colonies. And lastly, the example you gave was about international trade, which doesn't magically discriminate between developed and non-developed countries as evidenced by the success stories of Ireland and a few East Asian economies, and quite a few more Asian economies that have gone from being "poor" to "middle income" societies during the same period.
#15105841
Yes, any country could have helped the British Empire colonisers and thereby helped enrich itself. But when we look at history, we see that Ireland actually did, while Botswana and other countries did not.


Ireland is very similar to South Korea, which was a colony of the Japanese Empire that turned itself into an economic juggernaut after gaining independence. Both countries were industrialized under British or Japanese colonial rule, while African colonies missed the opportunity. After England became the first country in the world to hit the Industrial Revolution, factories were springing up in Dublin, Cork and Belfast that were soon swelling with new residents.

Abstract
Under Japanese rule, the Korean economy underwent momentous change, so much so
that, from a global perspective, it constituted an exceptional case in the first half of the
20th century. Between 1912 to 1939, traditional primary industry (mostly agriculture)
shrank from about 70% to about 40% of GDP, meanwhile, the proportion of mining and
manufacturing industries combined in the total economy grew significantly, from about 5% to about 20%. In short, it represented a rapid transition from a primarily agricultural economy to a primarily non-agricultural one. During this transition, the agricultural sector itself underwent change. The policies of the Government-General and the development of the
money economy led to improved farming techniques and changes in crop selection. Overall
agricultural production increased steadily. In the meantime, industrialization in Korea began
with small and medium-sized plants that simply processed raw materials. Then, as early as
the 1910s, modern industries arose, particularly ironmaking plants. From the 1920s until
1930s, a private-sector enterprise built a large-scale chemical industrial complex founded on
development of power plants. What must be emphasized here is that the colonized people
themselves contributed widely to industrialization in Korea. Koreans positively responded to
external stimulus and took the initiative in following Japanese models and learning skills in
business and industrial technologies, thereby demonstrating entrepreneurship of their own.
https://www.jiia-jic.jp/en/japanreview/ ... Kimura.pdf
#15105865

Scientific and technological development in the South Korea at first did not occur largely because of more pressing matters such as the division of Korea and the Korean War that occurred right after its independence. It was not until the 1960s under the dictatorship of Park Chung-hee where South Korea's economy rapidly grew from industrialisation and the Chaebol corporations such as Samsung and LG. Ever since the industrialization of South Korea's economy, South Korea has placed its focus on technology-based corporations, which has been supported by infrastructure developments by the government.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Kor ... technology
#15105869
ThirdTerm wrote:
while African colonies missed the opportunity [for industrialization].



Rugoz wrote:
One thing is certain: it's not due to colonialism. That's probably the biggest nonsense self-flagellating left-wingers have come up with to date.




Imperialism

In 1876 no more than 10 percent of Africa was under European rule. By 1900 more than 90 percent was colonised. Britain, France and Belgium had divided the continent between them, leaving small slices for Germany and Italy. In the same period Britain, France, Russia and Germany established wide spheres of influence extending from their colonial enclaves in China; Japan took over Korea and Taiwan; France conquered all of Indochina; the US seized Puerto Rico and the Philippines from Spain; and Britain and Russia agreed to an informal partitioning of Iran. Even the smaller islands of the Pacific and Indian oceans were subject to the dictates of London or Paris. The number of genuinely independent states outside Europe and the Americas could be counted on the fingers of one hand—the remains of the Ottoman Empire, Thailand, Ethiopia and Afghanistan.


Harman, _People's History of the World_, pp. 393-394
#15105889
Rugoz wrote:One thing is certain: it's not due to colonialism. That's probably the biggest nonsense self-flagellating left-wingers have come up with to date.


https://voxeu.org/article/economic-impact-colonialism


    The immense economic inequality we observe in the world today didn’t happen overnight, or even in the past century. It is the path-dependent outcome of a multitude of historical processes, one of the most important of which has been European colonialism. Retracing our steps 500 years, or back to the verge of this colonial project, we see little inequality and small differences between poor and rich countries (perhaps a factor of four). Now the differences are a factor of more than 40, if we compare the richest to the poorest countries in the world. What role did colonialism play in this?

    In our research with Simon Johnson we have shown that colonialism has shaped modern inequality in several fundamental, but heterogeneous, ways. In Europe the discovery of the Americas and the emergence of a mass colonial project, first in the Americas, and then, subsequently, in Asia and Africa, potentially helped to spur institutional and economic development, thus setting in motion some of the prerequisites for what was to become the industrial revolution (Acemoglu et al. 2005). But the way this worked was conditional on institutional differences within Europe. In places like Britain, where an early struggle against the monarchy had given parliament and society the upper hand, the discovery of the Americas led to the further empowerment of mercantile and industrial groups, who were able to benefit from the new economic opportunities that the Americas, and soon Asia, presented and to push for improved political and economic institutions. The consequence was economic growth. In other places, such as Spain, where the initial political institutions and balance of power were different, the outcome was different. The monarchy dominated society, trade and economic opportunities, and in consequence, political institutions became weaker and the economy declined. As Marx and Engels put it in the Communist Manifesto,

    “The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie.”

    It did, but only in some circumstances. In others it led to a retardation of the bourgeoisie. In consequence colonialism drove economic development in some parts of Europe and retarded it in others.

    Colonialism did not, however, merely impact the development of those societies that did the colonising. Most obviously, it also affected the societies that were colonised. In our research (Acemoglu et al. 2001, 2002) we showed that this, again, had heterogeneous effects. This is because colonialism ended up creating very distinct sorts of societies in different places. In particular, colonialism left very different institutional legacies in different parts of the world, with profoundly divergent consequences for economic development. The reason for this is not that the various European powers transplanted different sorts of institutions – so that North America succeeded due to an inheritance of British institutions, while Latin America failed because of its Spanish institutions. In fact, the evidence suggests that the intentions and strategies of distinct colonial powers were very similar (Acemoglu and Robinson 2012). The outcomes were very different because of variation in initial conditions in the colonies. For example, in Latin America, where there were dense populations of indigenous people, a colonial society could be created based on the exploitation of these people. In North America where no such populations existed, such a society was infeasible, even though the first British settlers tried to set it up. In response, early North American society went in a completely different direction: early colonising ventures, such as the Virginia Company, needed to attract Europeans and stop them running off into the open frontier and they needed to incentivise them to work and invest. The institutions that did this, such as political rights and access to land, were radically different even from the institutions in the colonising country. When British colonisers found Latin-American-like circumstances, for example in South Africa, Kenya or Zimbabwe, they were perfectly capable of and interested in setting up what we have called ‘extractive institutions’, based on the control of and the extraction of rents from indigenous peoples. In Acemoglu and Robinson (2012) we argue that extractive institutions, which strip the vast mass of the population of incentives or opportunities, are associated with poverty. It is also not a coincidence that such African societies are today as unequal as Latin American countries.

    ....

https://trace.tennessee.edu/cgi/viewcon ... lopment%22


    The imposition of colonialism on Africa altered its history forever. African nl0des of thought, patterns of cultural development, and ways of life were forever impacted by the change in political stnlcture brought about by colonialisln. The African economy was significantly changed by the Atlantic slave trade through the process of imperialisnl and the economic policies that accompanied colonization. Prior to the "Scramble for Africa," or the official partition of Africa by the major European nations, African econolnies were advancing in every area, particularly in the area of trade. The ainl of colonialisln is to exploit the physical, human, and econol11ic resources of an area to benefit the colonizing nation. European powers pursued this goa] by encouraging the development of a commodity based trading systeIll, a cash
    crop agriculture systeIn, and by building a trade network linking the total economic output of a region to the demands of the colonizing state. The developlnent of colonialisln and the partition of Africa by the European colonial powers arrested the natural development of the African economic system.


There is a lot of evidence showing the relationship.

Let me know if you wish for more.
#15105897
@wat0n

Yes, the issue is always more complicated.

That does not change the fact that the transfer of wealth from (what are now) developing countries helped spur economic and industrial development in Europe, and enriched the business classes or the monarchies in Europe.

Not does it change the fact that colonialism either enriched foreign countries (like extraction colonies) or the settler colonizing country (like Canada and the USA) at the expense of indigenous communities.
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