Globalisation: Issues in World Change- An Historical Overview
From the Age of discovery to The End Of Empire.
The first European power to seek out a major land empire outside its own boundaries (if we exclude the Tudor Dynasty's often savage attempts to subdue a recalcitrant Ireland) was Portugal- neither the richest nor the most advanced of European Nation States - in the early fifteenth century. Europe as a whole in the fifteenth century was economically backward, politically unstable and socially incohesive by comparison with the contemporary Chinese Land Empire of the Ming Dynasty.(1368-1644)
The Portugal of the early fifteenth century did have two factors that facilitated the principality's territorial ambitions- a powerful and wealthy neighbour in Spain which surrounds the whole land border of Portugal and access to considerable foreign capital. Through the century Portuguese mariners, largely financed by consortia of Jewish Portuguese, Dutch, Swiss and German merchants, patiently sought out new routes and areas for trade and exploitation. Capturing the Moorish city of Ceuta as early as 1415 they pushed on gradually establishing bases trading posts and ports along the African coast and opening up the sea route to the Indies for the lucrative spice trade - by the expedients of piracy, bribery and bombardment Portuguese traders set up fortress trading points at Goa, Malacca, Mozambique, and by 1557 had even Planted a colony on the coast of China itself at Macao. (like Hong Kong is due to return to China at the end of the millennium.)
Success begat imitation and the rivalry between Spain and Portugal in the early modern period of European development, the "age of reconnaissance", was to be accelerated by the discovery in 1492 of what was believed to be the western route to China and the Indies by the Genoese explorer Colombus for the Spanish Crown in 1492.
Portugal's early empire was primarily based on small incursions and the establishment of trading posts and ports. Spain, however followed its explorers to the New World with armed adventurers with an explicit mission to convert the savage to the Church Of Christ. By 1494 Spain laid Claim in theory at Least to almost all of the Americas but for a portion of South America West of the Treaty line of Tordesillas that was to become the Portuguese territory of Brazil.
It was the introduction first in Brazil of the plantation culture of sugar cane that was to be the genesis of what was to be the largest forced migration of the human race in all recorded history. The enslavement of the native populations of the Americas was forbidden by the Church- The Portuguese territory of Angola was to provide the necessary labour power by the supply of salves from the African interior. The worlds first two bulk trading cargoes were in turns Human and Sugar. The sometimes bitter rivals sometimes united Portuguese and Spanish Empires were soon joined by stronger (financially and militarily) players on the world Stage Britain France and the Netherlands.
Dutch mercantile ambitions and financial strength had allow them to largely shadow the expansion of the Portuguese East but during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth centuries the major powers of Europe began to colonise the lucrative territories of the New World.
Slave populations were taken from all of the western coast of the continent of Africa (It is estimated that the area surrounding the Congo river had supplied at least a million workers for the Americas by 1680) usually with the active support of the ruling elites of the coastal Kingdoms. In some areas, notably North America and in the Anglo phone Caribbean the indigenous population continued to be protected from enslavement but only by the expedient of genocide. The Caribs the Arawaks and much of the native tribal peoples of the eastern seaboard of North America were ruthlessly wiped out or fell to epidemic illness for which they had no resistance.
The Dutch and the British were to prove the most economically successful of the Imperial powers primarily due to their naval might (in the case of Britain) or to their superior financial and administrative organisation (Britain and the Dutch). The industrial rise of Britain and its near neighbours was to based on the innovations of trade conditions instituted in the rape of the planet that was undertaken during the period 1600-1777. Trading Companies (eg Hudson Bay or East India Co,) were organised on the basis of joint stock and limited liability among the participants with stock openly traded in the metropole. The joint stock or limited company is a feature commonplace in the Imperial expansion of Europe across the globe.
That Portugal sought out n empire largely with foreign capital investment and that both Empires declined as a result of the concentration of the rewards and the risks of colonial expansion is relatively uncontentious.
Their Colonial competitors the Dutch, French and especially the British Empire builders proved the more resilient in their endeavours to dominate portions of the globe at least partly because both the risks and rewards (and hence the ability to reinvest internationally) were more dispersed via mercantile trading companies set up, in what was to be the prototype of the joint stock, limited liability company.
The risks of imperialism were considerable- the loss of a colony could and did effect major declines in the prosperity and power of the metropolitan base nation. The American War of Independence had dire consequences for the economy and political stability of Gt. Britain. Interestingly there are direct parallels between this conflict and America's defeat in Vietnam- both conflicts were unpopular with the public, fought by a State headed by a figure of dubious honesty and sanity.
( George III & Nixon- both corrupt and insane.).
Spain & Portugal were to loose all their significant possessions in the wars of Independence in Latin America led by Simon Bolivar & others during the first half of the nineteenth century. The Northern European Imperial Powers however not only retained their dominance over the East, Africa and The Caribbean but in the case of Britain the profits of colonial exploitation were to make a significant contribution to the rapid technological change that so changed all aspects of social life during the industrial revolution. Raw materials obtained with unequal trading conditions may have provided the some of the basis for industrial growth but both the capital extracted from the colonies and the lessons of colonialism and colonial organisation provided the genesis of industrialisation. In short Imperialism was the pioneer of Capitalism.
One common feature appears in any broad examination of the techniques of imperialism over the long term whether we look at the Portuguese in Angola or the British in India- The assimilation and containment of selected groups of the indigenous ruling class- It was the African "aristocracy" that sold the population into slavery in most cases, just as The Indian aristocracy collaborated with the British Empire.
The interrelationship between capitalist development in Europe and expansive imperialism is undoubtedly complex but it is much more than a simple historical coincidence that the period of most rapid technological and industrial change and growth- the later part of the nineteenth and early twentieth century- is also known as the age of imperialism. In "Imperialism- the highest stage of Capitalism" Lenin provides the starting point for all subsequent critical studies of the symbiosis between imperialism and industrial Capitalism.
Before 1880 the African Continent was still "Terra Incognita- Ibi Sunt Leones" in the psyche of the European powers- by 1914 only Abyssinia remained as an independent African Empire in its own right. The Portuguese consoled themselves for the loss of Brazil by consolidating and expanding their possessions in Angola and Mozambique, British dominion extended around the globe (See map 67 Phillips Atlas Of World History). French economic and industrial development drew in resources and from as far afield as Indo-China through huge Territory in Africa to the French Caribbean and Guiana.
European colonial expansion also created a world economy united not only by the establishment of regular communications and the exchange of goods and people but by the financial ties through capital investment even more widespread than territorial dominion. (Phillips Atlas of World History p.125)
As early as 1905 confidence in the efficacy of imperialism as a way of deflecting conflict was waning- the expansionism so clearly typified by Cecil Rhodes "Gentlemen if you wish to avoid class war in this country we must become imperialists" was being replaced by the recognition that the vast territory over which Britain held sway were beyond her capacity to defend.... Germany also had a place in the Sun (in Africa Togoland Kamerun & German East & SW Afrika). The carnage of the First world war which was to put an end to industrial Europe ambitions of world domination could have so easily been fought out outside Europe.
With the defeat of the German Empire at the end of the first world war Germany's African possessions were not it should be emphasised granted independence; the were handed over to the victors France & Britain.
Although Britain was soon to lose dominion over most of its first and most difficult colony with the partition of Ireland in the post first war period, the British Empire was to remain largely intact (as was the French and Dutch) during the inter-war years of economic crisis and political upheaval in Europe.
The position after the second worlds war was however to be quite different- and for a number of complex and interrelated reasons.
The immediate post war years saw the establishment of a number of crypto-global governmentally controlled organisations- The UN and its subsidiary agencies, The World Bank and the IMF. The latter two had both a specific developmental mission and a particular ideology in terms of the nature of trade and international trade relations.
In the years 1945- 1947 Britain itself experienced a period of hardship equal to any endured the war itself. When demands in the sub-continent for independence became impossible to ignore it was doubtful that Britain had the military capability, resources or economic strength to continue to impose the will of empire any longer.
As was demonstrated by the US administrations ambivalence to their allies' continued imperial desires in Malaysia, Algeria, French-Indo China and most obviously during the Suez crisis of 1956, the post war pattern of military and economic power had shifted away from Europe. The USA had its own strategic, economic, ideological and military objectives and visions. Regardless of former allegiances involvement of and the support of the US was to be determined by these criteria rather than any sense of historical loyalty.
US involvement in the post war conflicts has been frequent and of global scale. From Guatemala in 1954 to The Gulf Wars of 1991 and 2003 via The Congo, Vietnam, Grenada, and Chile. Such actions have been carried only when The US itself has deemed that a strategic, military or economic interest is at risk.
There without doubt an ideological component to the dissolution of European Territorial empires that is possibly unique to the post war period and related to the dominance of the USA.
