Author: Eric Wasserzug

The process of decolonization in Africa had many interesting, positive and negative ramifications for the continent and the entire world. Regardless of the questions of how, why, and in what way decolonization occurred, African independence had ripple effects in many branches of academia. It seems clear from the various readings and lectures from this class that imperialism was a major factor in pushing the racist platform of the imperialists forward. The ideas of social darwinism and the ‘white savior’ aided the agendas of imperialist leaders back home. The conquest of Africa helped alleviate political and class tensions, giving the people of imperialist Europe something to focus on. However, long after slavery was abolished in almost every corner of the world and colonization became a thing of the past, the idea of Africa as an inferior continent because of the people that inhabit it was shockingly persistent. Racism is, of course, still a major problem in both Africa and almost anywhere people of African descent might live. Even now, the idea of the ‘white savior’ has not fully disappeared.

The study of Africa as a continent stretches back hundreds of years. For much of its history, as explained by Jemima Pierre in Critical Terms for the Study of Africa, the field of African Studies was based on racist views held by Western people and scholars. The study of economic development, however, largely ignored Africa until the process of decolonization began. Instead, it focused on countries like the United States. It asked why the Great Depression was so damaging, how it could be avoided, and why the US economy was so successful in the years following the second World War. But as African nations were earning their independence, the field of economic development shifted its focus from the most developed economies in the world to the least. Development economists started asking how to bring Africa as a whole out of poverty and into prosperity.

Much of this early work was concurrent with African independence. The 1950s and ’60s were a time of significant development in the field of development. But as time passed, it became clear that no one macro-level strategy would cure poverty in all of Africa. Some strategies worked for some countries for some time, while others found only stagnation when they attempted to emulate their neighbors. There were complicating factors, as there always are, but the vision of Africa as a collection of many separate but alike nations was fundamentally flawed.

The discipline began to shift again. Perhaps, if there was no solution for the entire continent, it was better to look at the problem on a nation by nation basis. Determining policy and economic strategy to eradicate poverty in a single country is easier than for an entire continent consisting of dozens of independent governments. The idea that there was a single golden economic development story was no longer considered reasonable. This perspective is mirrored in the article from the Economist. The reporter focuses on Africa by region, pushing the narrative that Africa is a continent faced with challenges, but in a position to succeed.

The Economist is a fundamentally conservative institution, and this perspective of Africa, as the one before it, is declining in popularity. The field of economic development in many ways is examining even more specific entities, for instance, conducting studies on how to boost education or female decision making power on a local level. Both of these factors have been significantly linked to the development of a country’s economy, and this is the kind of thing development economists are beginning to focus on.

Even now, the idea of economic development in the United States focusing on Africa is perhaps disquieting. After all the years of racism and discrimination, is this form of aid anything better than the ‘white savior’ idea from the time of imperialism? Is economic development in the West condescending or humanitarian? If aid were to discontinue, would that be a sign of recognizing the implicit racism, or would it be turning a blind eye to those in need? It seems hard to believe that aid today is motivated directly by the ‘white savior’ idea, but perhaps the drive to lend such aid is derived from a lingering sentiments of a time when it would not have been so unbelievable.

The era of Japanese modernization and expansion provoked a great deal of resentment from China and Korea. Even before the start of the 20th C., there had been a significant amount of tension between the three East Asian countries. In the late 16th C., Japan launched an invasion of Korea that nearly succeeded before the Ming dynasty in China came to Korea’s aid. These early invasions were Japan’s first forays into the realm of imperialism while it was also the beginning of anti-Japanese sentiment in both Korea and China. Japan remained relatively isolated for the next two centuries, through the fall of the Ming and the rise of the Qing dynasties, but when Japan reinstated the Meiji and decided to modernize, relations with China were once again deteriorating. This culminated in the first Sino-Japanese War fought over and in the territory of Korea. The Qing’s humiliation in that war was a significant factor in its fall and the rise of Chinese nationalists such as Sun Yat-sen. After both Japan and China entered WWI on the side of the allies, Japan was rewarded with control of former German colonies in China, which sparked a wave of Chinese nationalism and anti-imperialism protests, including the May Fourth Movement.

The second Sino-Japanese War, which merged with WWII, was a war of Japanese aggression in which significant war crimes against Korea and China proliferated. The Nanjing massacre in 1937 saw an unknown, but certainly massive number of people fall victim to murder, rape, and looting. Women such as Kimiko Kaneda were taken and treated brutally, forced to become sex slaves for Japanese soldiers. The anti-Japanese sentiment in China was understandably virulent, evidenced by the scathing tone of the tabloid article on members of the pro-Japanese puppet government in Japanese-controlled China. After Japanese surrender and the end of the war, Chinese territory was returned to China’s rule, but which party would rule China was another question. The Nationalist Kuomintang party did not fair well during the war; they were left weak and unpopular while the Communists, under Mao Zedong, had gained popularity and military strength. The Civil War ended in 1949 with a victorious Communist Party of China establishing the People’s Republic of China, leaving Mao Zedong poised to play a major role in the politics of not only East Asia, but the Cold War as well.

Mao’s elevation to Chairman was the beginning of a new era in China, headlined by the Great Leap Forward and the resulting death on tens of millions of people. After Mao’s death, Deng Xiaoping’s selective implementation of Maoism transformed China’s economy into what it is today, one that is currently in the midst of a trade war that even has roots in early 20th C. China’s massive borrowing from foreign powers, such as the US, in an attempt to modernize. All of this, in a way, can be traced back to Japanese imperial ambitions.

Race-Making and Colonial Violence in the U.S. Empire: The Philippine-American War as Race War by Paul A. Kramer expounds on the attempts of the Philippines to earn recognition of not only their independence, but of their status as an organized, ‘civilized’ government that could maintain order well enough to conduct its own affairs. The United States’ assertions that they were attempting to ‘civilize the barbarians’ in the Philippines (a citation here would essentially include the entire article) might provide reason to believe that if the fledgling institution could show their ‘civilized’ qualities, the U.S. might be content to recognize them as an independent nation. Kramer’s overall point that the war was primarily a race war, however, suggests otherwise. Indeed, following the fighting with Spain, the people of the Philippines did their best to demonstrate their ‘civilization’ by rebuilding telegraph lines, railroads, and other modern paraphernalia (pp. 181-2). Unsurprisingly, this meant absolutely nothing to the people of the United States. Mostly irrelevant as their efforts seem in retrospect, the endeavor was a pertinent reflection of a notion which permeated much of world politics at the time—the idea that industrialization and technological modernity indicated social complexity, ‘civilization’, and racial competency whether in the form of supremacy or equity (ie. The U.S. and Philippines respectively).

This judgement ran as an undercurrent to the political and social interactions of countries all across the world. From Cornelius Vanderbilt and the industrialization of Germany to the Philippines’ recognition efforts and Jaffa’s rise to significance in the Middle East, political, economic, and racial power—or the illusion of such power—stemmed from this idea of modernity. In some cases it was justified; Germany’s economic importance to Europe was very real, and the same can be said for the United States. The problem arose when these Western powers used their modernity to justify their atrocities committed in the name of civilization and such claims were revealed for the paltry excuses they were when the evidence to the contrary was both conspicuous and conspicuously ignored.  The painting of the people of Jaffa congregating along the bare shoreline of their harbor to gaze upon the wonders of the steam engine in the distance is a cogent reminder not of the power of the West, but of the blinding effects of bigotry and bias.

One of the most important developments leading up to the twentieth century was of course the expansion of global trade. Made possible largely through improved transportation, the economic landscapes of nations all over the world were significantly altered. Resources and commodities became easier to access and significantly cheaper. Nations such as those in Latin America were able to provide exports to the consumption based economies of Europe. Global trade is generally regarded as a net positive, and it is, but it is not exclusively beneficial, particularly for those nations with underdeveloped economies.

The access to British markets in China played a significant role in the economies and politics of Beijing and Shanghai years earlier, eventually contributing to conflict and political tension in the area. However, the author of Latin America Since Independence indicates a more direct negative externality on page 88, saying “in almost all countries one or two commodities made up more than 50 percent of exports, which meant that falling prices for a single commodity could have devastating repercussions throughout the economy”. Professor Holt touched on the exports of Brazil in her lecture on Rio, explaining that 62% of income from exports came from coffee at the time. Decades later, this over-dependence on a single export—usually a natural resource—was coined the Dutch Disease, referencing how the Netherlands’ dependence on natural gas exports resulted in significant economic hardship in the 1970s. While one industry expands, other sectors of the economy fall behind and become less competitive on the international market, leading to unemployment and a lack of international investment. The term is now commonly used to encompass any negative effect resulting from this single resource dependence. However, it is not necessarily true that economies cannot avoid the Dutch Disease. Studies indicate that investing in a diversified economy has helped curtail the effects of single commodity dependence. Whether or not the individual countries experienced the Dutch Disease, Latin America certainly had an unfortunate, if necessary tendency to rely heavily on a single export.

On page 295, Bright and Geyer comment that, “the ‘great divergence’…does not project well to the end of the century,” then follow immediately with the statement that, “narratives of a ‘great convergence’…have been losing cogency and descriptive power.” I agree with Bright and Geyer that neither of these ideas hold much water. The ‘great divergence’ is spoken about extensively in their article, but they only really mention the idea of a ‘great convergence’ once. I think this is an important point that underpins much of recent history as well as these arguments of the ‘great divergence’, globalization, modernity, and survivalism.

The idea of the ‘great divergence’ suggests that the entire world was moving towards a single point of modernity, but somewhere along the way, paths diverged. Some nations rapidly continued toward that point while others fell behind and were forced to ‘catch up’. Globalization embodies this idea of a ‘great convergence’ fundamentally. They both present the idea that all the various actors in the world will live in a single homogenous, modern society. Only the idea of survivalism rejects this idea. There are many different paths and end points to the idea of progress and an advanced society.