Author: Lillian Dunning

This week through two major lectures from guest professors, as well as a journal article, we learned about three new specific places throughout the world that experienced colonization and the resulting reactions that came from imperial process. These three new locations included Jaffa in Israel, Paris (and Germany), and the Philippines. Here we will synthesize similar aspects discovered across these examples to acknowledge similarities and patterns.

To begin in Paris in 1900, Professor Shaya described the Paris Universal Exposition as a total display of European advancement. Simultaneously acknowledged in the same lecture, areas of western Germany such as the Rhineland and Ruhr valley were rapidly advancing multiplying consistently in population and ability to produce. However while innovation and power seemed to dominate the narrative of Paris and the included areas of imperial Germany at this time, underneath there was a large developing workers coalition building. This occurred primarily due to the abhorrent working conditions present in many factories and mines.

A couple years later in 1902, US President Teddy Roosevelt racialized the Philippine-American war by describing it as a conflict between “savages” and non-savages. Much like the misrepresentation of what was occurring in Paris and Germany, since the United States was a much wealthier imperial power it was able to establish the narrative in order to protect their wealth and the greater status quo.

The silencing of revolutions occurring during this time occurred consistently in this period so imperial powers were able to remain in power and continue exploiting those they saw as resources.

Throughout this week while focusing on individual examples such as Beijing and Rio de Janeiro, one overarching theme that connected our examples was revealed. This theme was the idea that beginning in the early to mid 19th century, culminating in World War I, throughout the world set of new political ideas spread globally. Many of these ideas included sentiments towards protectionism, nationalism, and the withdraw of support for elite imperial powers.

We began the week reading the first part of Bayly’s first chapter, The World Crisis, c.1900-1930: Europe and the Middle East. This excerpt set up an in-depth introduction to several political revolutions that ultimately led to World War I, some of which I mentioned above, while citing new forms of communication as the key to their successful launch. Bayly successfully encapsulated this idea on page 16 by saying “very widely, the monopoly of the old white ruling families was challenged by new forms of politics and new methods of communication”.

Throughout Monday and Wednesday we continued pursuing these ideas by connecting them to individual examples primarily through lectures on Rio de Janeiro by Professor Holt and Beijing by Professor Bonk. With this lens we were able to see that individual populations in very different different geographic areas of the world responded to forced globalization in very similar ways. This included, once again, instituting protectionism, nationalism, and in the worst case, violent conflict.

 

Another resonating issue that is growing in connection to what Bright and Geyer explain as Globalization is the struggle between people, many living in the same geographic regions, to continue participating in the same market while allowing cultural divides to dictate economic drive. A few examples of these include areas all over the world including many large midwestern cities in the United States such as Chicago, as well as other major population centers throughout the world that exist with significant socioeconomic divide and a disappearing middle class. Combined with growing nationalism as also mentioned due in part to growing isolationist tendencies as an attempt for individual nations to protect their dwindling middle classes, it is clear that the fact that the world, especially in an economic sense, is dependent on each other and only a select few have been able to truly benefit from this new system. Thus the effects of not benefitting from this system combined with the eventual social issues that arise from the response to these issues explain many of the issues we see today.