Globalization, Empire, and the Postwar Order

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering the key concepts, historical empires, postwar governance institutions, neoliberal policies, global production dynamics, and migration trends outlined in the lecture notes.

Capitalism

An economic system based on private ownership of the means of production, mass commodity production for sale rather than subsistence or luxury goods, reliance on wage or coerced labor, market competition, and the constant imperative for economic growth.

Imperialism

The extension of power by one state beyond its borders to control other peoples, places, and cultures through political, economic, or military means.

Colonialism

A specific formal type of imperialism involving direct, formal political and administrative control over one territory and its population by another state, justified through claims of racial, cultural, or developmental difference.

1st Age of Empire (c. 1450–1750)

The initial wave of European colonial expansion primarily focused on the formal colonization of the Americas, characterized by mainland settler colonies, Caribbean plantation colonies, forced indigenous and African slave labor, the 'Triangle Trade', and mineral/agricultural extraction.

Age of Informal Empire (c. 1750–1885)

A period where European powers and the U.S. exercised power and extracted wealth largely through non-formal means, characterized by fewer formal colonies, the expansion of informal spheres of influence, trading/mining outposts, control over trade networks, and the transition to indentured labor.

2nd/High/Classic Age of Empire (1885–1914/1945)

The era of aggressive, formal imperial partition and colonization of Africa and Asia by European powers, the U.S., and Japan, driven by inter-imperialist rivalries, domestic working-class unrest, and the industrial demand for raw inputs like rubber, oil, and copper.

Conference of Berlin (1884)

A meeting of European powers to establish rules for claiming territory in Africa to prevent inter-European war, which arbitrarily drew international borders across Africa without regard for existing ethnic or political homelands.

Decolonization

The historic process peaking between 1945 and 1965 through which former colonies gained formal political independence and sovereignty from colonial empires.

Settler Colonies

Colonies where European migrants permanently moved in large numbers to build self-sustaining societies, displacing or eliminating indigenous populations (e.g., North America, Australia).

Plantation Colonies

Colonies established primarily in tropical zones structured around large-scale agricultural monoculture for export using enslaved or coerced labor.

Industrial Revolution

The massive 18th-to-19th-century transition in Europe and North America to machine-based manufacturing and steam/electrical power, which accelerated demand for foreign raw materials and manufactured export markets.

Scramble for Africa

The rapid invasion, division, and colonization of the African continent by European powers in the late 19th century, representing the extreme spatial reach of High Imperialism.

'West and the Rest'

A concept analyzed by cultural theorist Stuart Hall defining 'the West' not as a geographic location, but as a historical and discursive construct that categorizes the world into binary, hierarchical opposites (modern/advanced/civilized vs. traditional/backward/uncivilized).

Discourse

A concept associated with Michel Foucault and Edward Said referring to a systematic body of statements, ideas, and knowledge that constructs a particular representation of a topic, producing 'regimes of truth' backed by power that shape human practices and institutions.

Liberal International Order (LIO)

The international framework of multilateral rules, norms, and institutions established after World War II (1945) to govern global political, security, and economic relations, resting on political liberalism, economic liberalism, and liberal internationalism.

Political Liberalism

A core ideology of the Liberal International Order emphasizing Western-style representative democracy, rule of law, individual rights, civil liberties, and limited government interference in private lives.

Economic Liberalism

An economic philosophy advocating free markets, open international trade, private property rights, and minimal state distortion of cross-border commerce.

Liberal Internationalism

The belief that national states should achieve peace, security, and economic growth through inter-state cooperation, multilateral institutions, international law, and mutual respect for territorial borders.

UN General Assembly (UNGA)

The main deliberative body of the United Nations where all member states are represented under a 'one state, one vote' principle and resolutions are non-binding.

UN Security Council (UNSC)

The UN organ responsible for maintaining international peace and security, composed of 10 rotating members and 5 permanent members with veto power: the U.S., U.K., France, Russia, and China (P5).

UN International Court of Justice (ICJ)

The principal judicial body of the UN located in The Hague that settles legal disputes submitted by states, though it lacks direct enforcement power.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR - 1948)

A foundational UN document outlining non-binding universal civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights inherent to all human beings.

Bretton Woods System

The postwar international monetary and financial framework established in 1944 in New Hampshire that anchored global currencies to the U.S. dollar backed by gold at $\$35\text{/oz}$ and created the IMF and World Bank.

International Monetary Fund (IMF)

A Bretton Woods financial institution designed to promote global monetary stability and short-term liquidity by providing temporary loans to countries facing balance-of-payments crises, with voting power weighted by financial contribution.

World Bank (IBRD)

A Bretton Woods financial institution initially founded to fund post-WWII European reconstruction, which later shifted to financing long-term infrastructure and development projects in low-income nations.

Embedded Liberalism

The political-economic compromise of the early LIO (1945–1970s) that combined open multilateral international trade with strong domestic state regulation, capital controls, Keynesian demand management, and welfare safety nets.

General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)

A 1947 multilateral agreement aimed at expanding global trade by reducing tariffs, eliminating trade quotas, and preventing trade wars through reciprocity and Most-Favored-Nation (MFN) non-discrimination rules.

World Trade Organization (WTO)

The permanent international organization created in 1995 to succeed GATT, designed to handle broader trade areas like services and intellectual property and equipped with a binding dispute settlement mechanism.

Bandung Conference (1955)

A historic meeting in Indonesia of leaders from 29 newly independent Asian and African nations that marked the birth of the 'Third World' as a self-conscious political collective seeking decolonization, political non-alignment, and equitable economic development.

Import Substitution Industrialization (ISI)

A state-led economic development strategy widely used in Latin America and the Global South from the 1930s to 1970s aimed at building national autonomy by replacing imported manufactured goods with domestic production through tariffs, quotas, subsidies, and state-owned enterprises.

Expropriation / Nationalization

The legal process where a sovereign government takes over foreign-owned private assets, industries, or natural resources (e.g., oil in Iran and Cuba, or copper in Chile).

New International Economic Order (NIEO)

A collective project launched by Global South nations via UNGA Resolution 3201 in 1974 demanding an alternative model of globalization based on full sovereignty over natural resources, market-stabilizing commodity prices, preferential trade terms, and equal voting power in international finance.

globalization (little 'g')

As defined by Matt Sparke, the actual, empirical processes of increasing, multi-dimensional cross-border interconnection and interdependence across trade, finance, migration, technology, and cultural mixing.

'G'lobalization (big 'G')

As defined by Matt Sparke, an influential, pro-market political discourse that portrays globalization as an inevitable, natural, and universally beneficial process driven by free markets and technology to justify neoliberal policies.

Neoliberalism

A political-economic doctrine and policy framework dominant since the late 1970s/1980s positing that human well-being is best advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedom within an institutional framework of strong private property rights, free markets, deregulation, and minimal state intervention.

Washington Consensus

A set of 10 standard neoliberal economic policy prescriptions promoted by the U.S. Treasury, IMF, and World Bank starting in the late 1980s, including trade liberalization, financial deregulation, privatization, fiscal austerity, de-unionization, and protection of property rights.

'The World is Flat' (Friedman)

Thomas Friedman's thesis that 21st-century technology, software, and globalized communication have flattened the global economic playing field, enabling individuals everywhere to collaborate and compete on equal footing.

Free Market Theory

The economic view that markets function most efficiently when unhindered by government regulations, tariffs, subsidies, or price controls; critiqued by Ha-Joon Chang as a myth because all markets rely on state-enforced rules.

Global Commodity Chains (GCCs)

Networks of labor, extraction, processing, assembly, distribution, and consumption that bind distinct places together in the production of a single commodity across international borders.

Offshoring

The corporate strategy of relocating business operations or manufacturing processes from a home country to a foreign country to exploit differences in wage rates, environmental standards, and tax regimes.

Special Economic Zones (SEZs)

Fenced-off, bounded subnational zones established by governments offering special business laws, duty-free trade, tax exemptions, and weakened labor and environmental regulations to attract foreign direct investment.

New International Division of Labor - Production

The structural shift in the global economy since the late 1960s where manufacturing relocated from exclusive concentration in the Global North toward parts of the Global South.

New International Division of Labor - Workers

Doreen Massey's concept describing the spatial distribution and specialization of specific groups of people into distinct roles along commodity chains based on social markers such as nationality, class, race, and gender.

Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs)

Conditional loans provided by the IMF and World Bank in the 1980s and 1990s that forced crisis-hit developing nations to adopt Washington Consensus policies such as privatizing state assets, cutting public spending, and devaluing currencies.

Poverty (Relational Explanations)

An analytical approach explaining poverty through historical and ongoing transnational interconnections, such as imperial resource extraction, unequal terms of trade, debt burdens, and externally imposed structural adjustment programs.

Differential Mobility

The structural disparity in a globalized world where capital, finance, commodities, and high-skilled Western passport holders move across borders easily, while low-wage workers and refugees encounter severe legal barriers, militarized borders, and physical containment.

Refugee

A person legally forced to flee their country due to a well-founded fear of persecution, war, or violence, who is protected under the 1951 UN Refugee Convention against forced return.

Internally Displaced Person (IDP)

A person who has been forced to flee their home due to conflict, persecution, or disaster, but who remains within their country's borders.

NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement)

A 1994 regional trade agreement between the U.S., Canada, and Mexico that removed trade barriers and tariffs while deregulating capital flows, but explicitly omitted the liberalization of labor migration.

Maquiladora

A foreign-owned assembly plant in Mexico, predominantly located inside the $20\,\text{km}$ special economic zone along the U.S.-Mexico border, that imports duty-free components, utilizes low-wage labor for assembly, and exports finished goods back to the U.S.

'Prevention Through Deterrence'

An official U.S. border enforcement strategy adopted in the early 1990s that militarized urban crossing points to intentionally deflect undocumented migrants into hostile, lethal terrain such as the Sonoran Desert.