Notes on Colonialism and Post-Colonial Development

The Impact of Colonial Rule on Population Growth

Colonial rule led to the end of local warfare, reducing population losses.
Warfare indirectly promoted the spread of epidemic diseases and famine, which were also reduced.
Railroad and steamship links, established by colonizers, facilitated the spread of the market economy and reduced regional famines.
Shipping food from areas with good harvests to those threatened by drought or floods became possible.
Reduced war and famine led to accelerated population growth, especially in areas under long-term European control like India and Java.
Death rates declined while birth rates remained stable, causing larger net population increases.
Improved hygiene and medical treatment contributed to population increases from the early 20th century.
Efforts to eradicate tropical diseases and improve sanitation further boosted population growth.
Leaders of emerging nations faced unprecedented population increases.
Population growth leveled off in Asia but continued at high rates in Africa.
Moderate growth rates in South Asia resulted in huge total populations due to a large base.
Population experts predicted in the 1970s that South Asia’s population would more than double by 2000; this prophecy was fulfilled, with India alone exceeding 1 billion people.
Africa's high birth rates and diminished mortality rates have caused steep population increases.
Some predict Nigeria's population could equal China's by the mid-21st century if current growth rates persist.
Africa faces challenges in supporting population increases due to new diseases like AIDS and limited economic capacity.
The African continental economy has a productive capacity equal to only 6% of that of the United States, or roughly equal to that of the state of Illinois.

Consequences of Limited Industrialization

European colonial regimes conquered war, disease, and famine, but limited industrialization in their dependencies.
Emerging nations could not replicate Europe’s population boom response due to a lack of factories and technology.
Many African and Asian leaders initially opposed state measures for family planning and birth control, viewing them as Western interference or believing socialist societies could handle additional population.
Excessive population increase hinders economic advances, leading some leaders to reassess birth control attitudes.
A high percentage of the population in developing countries is under age 15, creating a dependency burden.
Obstacles to promoting family planning include cultural and social factors, resource limitations, and insufficient educated personnel.

Cultural and Social Resistance to Birth Control

Emerging nations struggled to provide necessities for growing populations and could not easily draw food and mineral resources from the rest of the world.
Impressive industrialization gains in postcolonial countries like India were offset by the population explosion.
Resistance to birth control efforts exists in many African and Asian countries due to entrenched social patterns and religious beliefs.
Procreation is seen as a sign of male virility, and bearing children is critical to women's social standing.
Hindus believe a deceased man’s soul needs his eldest son to perform special ceremonies, encouraging families to have several sons.
In Africa, children are seen as indispensable additions to the lineage, and sons are essential for continuing the patrilineal family line and performing burial rites.
Girls are highly valued in African societies due to their key roles in agricultural production and marketing, unlike in many Asian societies where high dowries and occupational restrictions limit their contribution to family welfare.
High rates of stillbirths and infant mortality historically fostered the conviction to have many children to ensure some would outlive the parents.
Surviving children were essential for caring for parents without welfare systems or old-age pensions.
Persistence of these attitudes, despite medical advances reducing infant mortality, contributes to soaring population growth.

Overview of Urbanization Challenges & Economic DisparitiesB

Ambitious youths and rural poor migrated to port centers and capital cities for jobs and a better life.
Cities often lacked rapidly expanding industrial sectors, leading to limited job opportunities and low wages.
Underemployed migrants turned to street vending, scavenging, begging, or crime to survive.
High rates of illiteracy, particularly among women, remain a challenge, and education is expensive.
Birth rates have declined in some cases, like India, but the legacy of massive population growth persists.
Rural population increase outstripped land and employment opportunities, leading to mass migrations to urban areas.
The movement from overcrowded villages to cities was a dramatic development in the postcolonial history of most new nations.
Migration to cities, as well as emigration, grew due to desertification amid climate change and civil strife.
Urban poor became volatile in political struggles, willing to riot and loot in times of government crisis.
In divided societies, poor, working-class, or idle youths formed shock troops in communal clashes.
Fear of urban “mobs” forced regimes to subsidize necessities like bread and kerosene to keep prices low.
Population influx to cities without sufficient jobs or infrastructure skewed urban growth.
Asian cities became “megacities,” and Middle Eastern and African urban areas sprawled beyond colonial limits.
Wealthy areas contrast with vast slums lacking planning, electricity, water, and sewage facilities.
Slums often provide the only housing urban dwellers are likely to find.
These conditions have burdened societies with parasitic rather than productive cities, heavily dependent on food and resources from their own countryside or abroad.
Few cities in emerging nations have the manufacturing base needed to generate growth.
Urban dependence on the countryside stretches resources of rural areas.

Rural Overpopulation and Environmental Degradation

Rural overpopulation has led to soil depletion and deforestation in Africa and Asia.
Peasants cut trees for fuel or clear land for farming and livestock grazing.
Logging firms clear-cut rain forests for specialty hardwood trees.
Deforestation and overgrazing threaten wild animal life, upset tropical ecosystems, cause soil depletion and erosion, and encourage desertification.
Wildlife is threatened by poachers, leading to species extinction rates unequaled since the end of the dinosaurs.
Environmental degradation is intensified by industrial pollution from mines and oil fields.
Developing nations rarely can afford the antipollution technology.
Cities of the developing world are shrouded in smog produced by burning rain forests.
As nations industrialized, electrical systems expanded, coal-burning plants multiplied, and runoff waste polluted rivers and coastal waters.
Developing nations, especially China and India, have added massive amounts of CO_2 and other pollutants, rivaling those of early industrializers.
Rising seas threaten to make coastal areas uninhabitable.
Climate change has triggered drought conditions and flooding, increasing inter-continental forced migrations.

Positive Economic Changes

Environmental damage added further constraint to the challenges of postcolonial Africa and South Asia.
Economic development in countries like India introduced positive changes.
Poverty levels and child labor declined, and health and educational levels improved.
India began featuring an annual economic growth rate of 7 percent, projected to become the world’s fifth-largest economy by 2020.
Thousands of people emerged from dire poverty every day by the early twenty-first century.

Women in the Postcolonial EraC

Western democracies and communist republics influenced emerging nations to include female suffrage in their constitutions.
Women’s activism in nationalist struggles contributed to their right to vote and run for political office.
Women gained some equality in legal rights, education, and occupational opportunities under the laws of many new nations.
However, proclaimed equality often differed from actual rights and conditions.
Female heads of state often entered politics due to connections to powerful men, such as Indira Gandhi, Corazon Aquino, and Benazir Bhutto.
Most African, Middle Eastern, and Asian women were relegated to peripheral positions or excluded from the political process.
Women face handicaps comparable to those in industrialized nations, but more blatant and fundamental.
Early marriage ages and large families limit women’s opportunities for higher education or careers.
Low sanitation and food scarcity cause chronic anxiety about nutrition and disease susceptibility.
Male-centric customs affect women’s health and life expectancy.
The Indian tradition of women serving their husbands and sons first disadvantages them nutritionally.
India has only 930 females for every 1,000 males, reflecting sex selection and nutritional factors.
Although secular property and divorce laws give women legal protection, many cannot exercise their rights due to lack of education and resources.
Religious revivalism has eroded women’s rights.
Most Asian, Middle Eastern, and African women continue to be dominated by male family members and have limited career opportunities.
Levels of women’s education did advance, contributing to new birth rate limitations.
Globalization has changed some patterns, with rates of child marriage declining and new protests emerging against violence toward women and limitations on certain rights.

Subordination of Women and Feminist Struggles

Early Marriage and Large Families: Women spend youthful years having children, limiting education/career.
Health and Nutrition: Chronic anxiety due to low sanitation and food scarcity.
Male-Centric Customs: Examples include Indian tradition where women eat leftovers, impacting their health.
Demographic Consequences: Skewed sex ratios (e.g., India), reflecting sex selection and nutritional factors.
Legal Rights: Limited access to and enforcement of secular property and divorce laws.
Religious Revivalism: Erosion of rights due to the spread of religious fundamentalism.

Economic Realities

Nationalist leaders' plans for industrialization faced economic realities of the postcolonial world.
Most nations lacked an industrial base and means to obtain one.
They relied on selling cash crops and minerals to finance industrialization, but the world market structure worked against them.
Newly independent countries depended on exporting two or three food crops or industrial raw materials.
Prices of primary products have declined compared to manufactured goods.
Price fluctuations created problems for planners in developing nations, as market slumps could wipe out critical funds.
African, Middle Eastern, and Asian leaders blamed the legacy of colonialism and the neocolonial economy.

International Aid and Structural Adjustments

Emerging nations turned to international organizations and industrial nations for assistance due to a lack of investment funds and essential technology.
The price for international assistance was often high, requiring major concessions.
Industrialized nations demanded commitments to buy their products, favor their investors, enter into alliances, and permit military bases.
Loans from international lending agencies required structural adjustments, including removing or reducing state subsidies on food and other essential consumer items.
Subsidy reductions often led to widespread social unrest, riots, and the collapse of regimes.
Strong growth rates in India and promising developments in some African countries offered relatively positive examples.

Strategies for Development2

Leaders in emerging nations tackled development with varying degrees of success, finding ways to raise living standards.
No strategy has proved to be the path to social justice and general economic development.
Successful overall strategies to deal with the challenges facing emerging nations have yet to be devised.
Responses ranged from populism to dictatorship to rejection of the West.

Obstacles to DevelopmentA

National Renewal Frustrations: Led to authoritarian rule disguised by charismatic appeals.
Kwame Nkrumah (Ghana): Initial commitment to social reform/economic uplift faced challenges from rival parties and declining cocoa prices.
Dictatorial Response: Crushing opposition, banning parties, assuming dictatorial powers, and ruling through his own party.
Manipulation of Symbols: Justifying policies with a uniquely African brand of socialism and revived traditions.
Downfall: Deposed by a military coup due to suppression and ties to communism coupled with economic deterioration.

Military Responses to Post-Independence Challenges B

Proliferation of Coups: Resulted from the difficulties leaders faced and military advantages in crisis situations.
Military Regimentation: Emphasis on discipline made soldiers more resistant to religious/ethnic forces.
Monopoly of Force: Essential for restoring order in political breakdown and social conflict.
Destructive Consequences: Military personnel more willing to use force without concern for consequences.
Technical Training: Military leaders often had technical training lacking in civilian nationalist leaders.
Anti-Communism: Attracted covert technical/financial assistance from Western governments.
Military Regimes: Banned civilian political parties and imposed authoritarian control.

Radical Military Approaches

Gamal Abdel Nasser (Egypt): Took power after a military coup in 1952 due to civilian politicians and corrupt khedival regime failing to improve living standards.
Free Officers Movement: Radical movement from a secret organization in the Egyptian army.
Muslim Brotherhood: Founded by Hasan al-Banna in 1928, focused on social uplift and reforms.
Revolution: Ended monarchy and installed Nasser and Free Officers. In 1954, all political parties had disbanded including the Muslim Brotherhood.

Nasser's Reforms & Foreign Policies

Land Reform Measures: Limited land ownership and redistributed excess lands.
State-Financed Education: Made available through the college level.
Government Employment: By 1980, more than 30 percent of Egypt’s workforce was on the state payroll.
State Subsidies: Lowered the price of basic food staples.
State-Controlled Development: Emphasized industrial growth, modeled after Soviet five-year plans.
Economic Independence: Placed stiff restrictions on foreign investment.
Interventionist Foreign Policy: Aimed to destroy the newly established Israeli state, forge Arab unity, and foment socialist revolutions. Ousted the British and their French allies from the Suez Canal zone.

Failures of Nasser's Initiatives

Land Reform Efforts: Frustrated by bureaucratic corruption and landlord strategies.
State Development Schemes: Lacked funding and failed due to mismanagement.
Aswan Dam Project: Interference with flow of the Nile resulted in increased parasytes and decline in fertility of farmlands.
Foreign Investment: Western funds dried up, and Soviet bloc aid was insufficient.
Overpopulation: Uncontrolled population rising caused the state to not afford all the ambitious schemes.
Heavy Foreign Adventures: High costs of foreign adventures, including the Six-Day War with Israel in 1967.

Changes Under Sadat

Favored private rather than state initiatives.
The middle class emerged again as a powerful force.
Moved to end confrontation with Israel and expelled Russians.
Opened Egypt to aid and investment from the United States and Western Europe.

Continuation under Mubarak

Neither Nasser nor Sadat nor Mubarak has done much to check Egypt’s alarming population increases and the corruption of its bloated bureaucracy.
No path to development has had much effect on the glaring gap between the living conditions of Egypt’s rich minority and its impoverished masses.
Muslim fundamentalist movements were the result of inequities.
Sadat’s assigniation, legal campaigns and underground movements aimed at overthrowing the Mubarak regime.
The “Arab Spring” in 2011 ended the Mubarak regime and a military coup ended a brief stint in power of the reform-minded Muslim Brotherhood.

Indian Alternative: Civilian Rule, Industrial and Scientific Sector, Skilled Middle Class C

India has managed to preserve civilian rule, defending democracy against religious extremism.
Has a larger industrial and scientific sector, a better communication system, and a skilled middle class.
Abolished the traditional caste system.
India was governed by leaders committed to social reform, economic development, and civil rights.
Despite threats, poverty, unemployment, and natural disasters, India remains the world’s largest functioning democracy.
Congress Party has either ruled or played key roles in governing at the center for most of the independence era. civil liberties are upheld.

Development in India

Nehru's approach to government and development also differed from Nasser’s in his more moderate mix of state and private initiatives.
India pushed state intervention in areas but also encouraged foreign investment.
Built has built on significant capitalist sector, generating revenue necessary for village development schemes.
Indians have also developed one of the largest and most sophisticated high-tech sectors.
India has suffered from the same gap between needs and resources that all developing nations have had to face. There have simply not been the resources to raise the living standards of even a majority of its huge population.
Social groups have been slow in most areas, both rual and urban.
Some development measures have greatly favored cultivators with the resources to invest and have increased the gap between rich and poor.
by the early twenty first century, economic gains were cutting into traditional levels of poverty and creating a new middle class.

Delayed Revolutions 3

Societies like Iran and South Africa remained independent or broke free from European colonial control in the post–World War II era.

Different Revolutions Needed

Different sorts of revolutions than those that had brought decolonization to most of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East were required.
Not all African, Middle Eastern, or Asian states were conquered by Western nations.
Iran was reduced to a buffer state between first the British and Russian and later the Soviet and Anglo-American great powers.
Regional strongmen emerged who claimed national leadership

South Africa: Apartheid

A different sort of popular resistance had been struggling to overthrow the minority run apartheid regime through the same post–World War II decades.
struggle for social justice and the right to vote and hold office lasted decades longer than the Iranians’ overthrow of the shah.

Iran: Religious Revivalism, Rejection of West and Unique Circumstances A

No path of development adopted by a postcolonial society has provided more fundamental challenges to the existing world order than revolutionary Iran under the direction of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
revolution of 1979 was a throwback to the religious fervor and there was emphasis on religious purification and the rejoining of religion and politics.
Both Mahdi and Khomeini called for a return to the kind of society believed to have existed in the past golden age of the prophet Muhammad to restore core values.
Both movements were aimed at toppling Western-backed governments: for the Mahdists, the Anglo-Egyptian presence in the Sudan; for Khomeini, the autocratic Iranian shah and the Pahlavi dynasty.
proclaimed alternative path for development was followed by the rest of the emerging nations.

Impetus for

Shah was closely aligned with the United States, Britain, and other Western powers and was important in the containment of the expansion. He also was a major supplier of oil to the industrial nations.
Growing opposition to the shah due to autocratic style, insensitivity to the poor, and dependence on the United States.
Inspired by radical Shi’ite leaders who began preaching against the evils of the shah’s regime in the late 1960s.
Khomeini had been exiled for over a decade, but he was able to rally enough support for clerics and students, bazaar merchants, and urban poor to challenge the shah.
Shah fled Iran in February 1979 and Khomeini declared an Islamic Republic.
Iranian revolution was unique because it combined religious zeal with anti-Western stance, offering no models for development.
Khomeini regime closed universities, banned Western books and films, and enforced dress codes to purify the nation.
Women were excluded from many occupations and professional attainment.
The revolution lead to war with Iraq which lasted from 1980 to 1988. An arms embargo was imposed on Iran by Western nations, crippling the economy.
Population increases limited their ability to recover during those years
Khomeini died in 1989, but the Islamic Republic survived. Still the mullah dominated state remained a force
Influence in global politics for decades to come

End of Apartheid in South Africa B

Ruled by a white minority that had expanded over the centuries. South Africa was under the control of Afrikaners
By the late 1960s, they had established a rigid racial segregation
Maintained the economic and political power of the descendants of settlers from Holland, Britain, and other European countries
Apartheid lead to the development of a resistance
African National Congress (ANC) was the most influential and nonviolent
Nelson Mandela and other leaders were jailed because of resistance
Growing internal unrest and external pressure
Apartheid ended in 199
South Africa became a multiracial democracy
Mandela was freed from prison in 1990 and he became president in 1994

Transition to Democracy in South Africa

1994 Elections:

The 1994 elections brought the African National Congress (ANC) to power.
Nelson Mandela became the first black president of South Africa.

Nelson Mandela's Leadership:

Mandela was a respected political leader and a moderating force.

Peaceful Surrender of Power:

F. W. de Klerk’s party, supported by the white minority, peacefully surrendered power.
This suggested the potential success of a pluralist democracy.

Remaining Obstacles

Interethnic Rivalries:

Bitter rivalries within the black community, particularly between Zulus and Xhosas,

Hard-Line White Supremacist Organizations:

Groups among the Afrikaners continued to defy the new regime.

Tasks of Reforming and Redistributing:

Reforming institutions and redistributing wealth remained formidable tasks in creating a just and equitable social order.