Author: Andrew Baeder

There exists this rule throughout history where if a place exists and has something someone else wants Britain will, without a shadow of a doubt, stick their greedy paws in there and attempt to control the means of production or just control the place altogether. Where else is this more prevalent than in Bombay India. While it is true that Britain made an absolutely insane amount of money from all over India through the exploitation and exportation of the people and their resources the effects in a local setting are quite dramatic and are seen in Bombay quite well. Bombay’s export was cotton. Originally cotton had been flowing steadily from the U.S. but following the end of slavery cotton production all but stopped and British textile miles needed a new source. Bombay had one cotton mill, so why not make it 136 and consume the entire coastal area in cotton based farming. India benefited from this despite the implied tone of a British take over. Bombay went from a small and slightly backwards town to a huge port city post Suez and remains a large city today.

Take this is comparison with a place like Germany. Germany is unique in that it came out of know where and became this industrial giant making iron and steel faster and more efficient than most places that were in the business. German population boomed and their economy as well. But here’s the kicker, Britain did nothing. They didn’t attempt an empirical expansion and they didn’t attempt to seize the mean of production either by force or through laws. Germany managed to form an Empire all its own with no interference.

This strikes me as odd considering Britain’s stance in the world up to this point. Their homeland isn’t that big and thus had little in the way of natural resources. No other place in the world had as prolific of a iron working system as Germany and yet, Britain did nothing. It calls into question the existence of a European superiority complex that we all know exists but does that protect them from each other? Did Germany live because it was European or was it some other factor?

It seems the biggest fault that historians of this time period run into is assuming that there is one unifying effort of modernization across the globe. Almost as if there was a tide wave reminiscent of the 2012 disaster movie that swept over the world but instead of Maya calendar nonsense its guns, cotton, and the creation of huge gaps in wealth distribution. The reality here is that modernization happens on a mostly case by case  basis there just happen to be some common themes involved. For this its easy to look a where many theories come from and then how some places play out in terms of modernization.

Overall there’s two major theories of modernization. There the westernization equal modernization and the Geyer and Bright model of modernization is a result of exploited states adapting to survive. For starters an example of westernization based modernization can be seen in Japan as described in Fukuzawa Yukichi’s article where he states that in order for japan to survive in the now approaching modern era they would need to, ” adopted the modern Western civilization for everything within our borders.” Effects of this can be seen in Japan today where they now lead the world in many fields of technology and have become one of the most modernized nations in the east. A nation following the exploitation model can be seen in that of Brazil where wealthy nations exploited the land and its people for cheap products of coffee and rubber to be used elsewhere. Brazil’s entire economy was based on exporting their goods and the near slave labor that brought many from Europe over and kept them there. Brazil’s modernization occurred in the cities where the wealth plantation owners built a small part of Europe in the heart of South America and then left it in search of cheaper products in Africa.

The outcomes here are completely different. The exploited nation never learned to improve, only to survive while the adopting nation prospered and is now a technological zenith in the East. This could call into question the morality of modernization at the hands of exploitation but its far to late for this moral issue to actually solve anything. Africa is a mess and Brazil and the rest of South America unfortunately aren’t too far behind. The effectiveness of Modernization seems to be directly correlated to how it is done.

I found the Bright and Geyer brought up a rather interesting point in that Westernization was not the turning point of the world and Globalization is not a direct result. This assertion goes well against the grain of most modern history concepts since it can be seen clearly how the birth of a nation like the United States and the inevitable sprint that technology takes in a race between nations to be the most advanced once the is settled lines up to show Westernization equals Globalization. Geyer and Bright bring a very human, and savage as a result, aspect to the entanglement of the world rather than a nation based one. People always strive to be superior in some way shape or form to another group of people. This has been the cause for innovation, expansion, war, and exploitation for generations and there most likely no end in sight. People in power rarely just sit idly by with said power. More often then not they’ll see just how far they can push it and this takes form in exploitation.

Whats even more is that this is not a new idea of the 19th century either. The infamous, “the sun never sets on the British Empire” is a perfect example of how stepping on and over someone to reach farther in the balance of power drove the world wide entanglement. Not a sole gave a care about whats happening over in china until the British had them far opium so they can resell it to the people and nearly enslave a nation. This advanced the British both financially and in stance of power against the rest of the world. Thus providing an example to prove Geyer and Brights new theory as a passable idea.

 

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