Lecture 10

^^1.The Americans, Coffee, and Smuggling^^

  • Difficult nature of the trade at this time
  • Lack of unified price systems in the 18th and early 19th century
  • Political interference in trade makes networks very hard to maintain

Trade Patterns

  • Coffee grows in the West Indies
  • Coffee goes in US + Europe

Pricing

  • Information is really slow → by ships
  • Find out the product's value in the market when you arrive there! End up with some goods that aren't worth a lot finally

Trade

  • North America + West Indies = trade
  • US = not a core state yet
    • War of Independence - American Revolution → US wants to make itself a large country
    • British start to move to a free trade system - reduction of tariffs
  • The US is really close to West Indies: British becomes worried (there are more costs when trading with the West Indies - ships)
  • Restrictions for the US from many countries!

Smuggling

  • There is a lot of smuggling to trade for coffee

 

Globalization

  • Doesn’t always happen with the government
  • The economic incentive for merchants is large!

^^2.New Imperialism^^

Direct control and governance of land

  • Switch to empires of conquest
Africa
  • Dividing of Africa
  • Massive expansion of European - controlled territory
  • No longer strips of land along the coast and trading ports → large areas

More-or-less imposition of cultural norms and family structures

  • Want to change the culture and languages
    • Through school systems
  • Loss of languages

Large increase in labour coercion (for most average people) over previous models

  • Ex: Congo (owned by Belgium King) - rubber plantations
    • Famines, diseases
    • Coerce workers to get as much rubber as possible (quotas) and if not → torture, kidnapping…
    • Becomes a scandal in Europe

Significant increase in violence - wars of conquest and extermination instead of wars over trade or slave-raiding

  • Increase in crimes against humanity through extermination
  • Become concerned with culture
  • Ex: Indian residential schools
Wars of conquests
  • Conquer all of Africa by working together

Austin Article

Technological innovations

  • European imperial states overpower the rest of the world technologically
    • Naval technology
    • Battleships → heavily armed
    • Weapons
    • Increase in range and power

Industrial Revolution

  • Indian exports of cotton textiles decrease significantly
  • British manufacturing textile industry increases significantly

Non-Settlers majority states

  • Africa: no settlers, local administration
  • Settler elite colonies: most of the land is owned by white settlers, but the labour is still local

Neo-Europes + Japan

  • Japan rapidly becomes an industrialized society from 1868 to 1905

Problems with extractive economy

  • Often kills a lot of people. This is bad, but even if you’re the one doing the crimes it's difficult to maintain
  • Normally it requires food from somewhere else. This can be expensive
  • Slaves could feed themselves - this doesn’t work in many of the African regions where extensive cash crops are being produced in this period

What’s pushing this expansion

  • Competition between the European states - they admit this at the Berlin Conference
  • France was expanding in Africa, and this was causing tension
  • It would be better to partition Africa in advance, so they don’t end up fighting each other

Kinds of colonies

  • Settler-majority (Canada, US)
  • Settler-elite (South Africa)
  • Plantation colonies
  • Peasant colonies
  • City ports (Hong Kong)

Industrial Revolution

  • Difference in technologies → not worried about losing wars
  • Led by merchant capital
  • Calming workers angst
  • Change in the nature of commodities available

Why do they give up colonies?

  • Early colonial exploitation enabled industrial revolution (money)
  • After the industrial revolution → colonies are running deficits
  • Does the home country benefit from this?
    • No more profits from slavery

Development in the colonies

  • Population increase
  • Increase in height
  • Building up of local capitalism through food imports