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T h e Ox f o r d H a n d b o o k o f
E C ON OM IC
I M P E R IA L I SM
The Oxford Handbook of
ECONOMIC
IMPERIALISM
Edited by
ZAK COPE
and
IMMANUEL NESS
1
3
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.
DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780197527085.001.0001
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Editors ix
PA RT ON E : T H E ORY
2. Imperialism and Its Critics: A Brief Conspectus 15
By Zak Cope
3. Classical Marxist Imperialism Theory: Continuity, Change, and
Relevance 43
By Murray Leigh Noonan
4. Marxist Theories of Imperialism in the Post–Cold War Era 67
By Efe Can Gürcan
5. Theories of International Trade and Economic Imperialism 81
By Bill Dunn
6. Capitalism, Imperialism, and Crises 101
By Shireen Moosvi
7. The Clash of Interpretations: World-Systems Analysis and
International Relations Theory 115
By Chamsy El-Ojeili and Patrick Hayden
PA RT T WO : I N T E R NAT IONA L P OL I T IC A L
E C ON OM Y
8. Neoliberalism, Globalization, and Late Capitalism: Capital,
Ideology, and Making the World Market 135
By Toby Carroll
vi Contents
PA RT T H R E E : WOR L D R E G ION S
Index 655
Editors
Contributors
I n t rodu ction
Economic Imperialism in Theory and in Practice
The Oxford Handbook of Economic Imperialism presents the latest scholarship on the
economics of imperialism in the modern age. Written by academics and researchers
working in the field of international political economy, the Handbook provides detailed
studies of economic imperialism’s roots, goals, methods, and impact around the world,
examining the rich and varied critique of economic imperialism, and its most signifi-
cant theories, intellectual traditions, and analysts.
We began editing the present volume right at the outbreak of the global coronavirus pan-
demic in early 2020. In many respects, the pandemic itself highlights central features of con-
temporary imperialism, as new diseases like COVID-19 originate from biodiversity hotspots
like tropical rainforests, with deforestation one of the most serious forms of environmental
degradation facilitating novel human and animal interaction. Trade inequalities built into
the world economy lead to the unfettered exploitation of the environment and people in
poorer nations, creating conditions under which viruses such as COVID-19 spread.
The pandemic presented us with many challenges as editors. The consequent disrup-
tion of people’s schedules unfortunately meant that many agreed contributions were
not forthcoming. In addition, the antithetical views of the editors on many of the is-
sues raised in this volume posed serious editorial difficulties. We were thus unable to
include chapters on such subjects as trade liberalization in developing countries; glob-
alization and balance of payments; the settler colonial economy; colonial reparations;
ecology, imperialism, and sustainability; climate change and imperialism; imperialism,
free trade, and protectionism; economic imperialism and monetary policy; imperi-
alism and social revolution; and chapters on Russia, the Caribbean, Australasia, West
Africa, Southwest Asia, and other world regions. Yet despite these challenges, we have
assembled a wide range of penetrating and incisive chapters that illuminate the contours
of today’s internationally stratified world economy.
2 Zak Cope and Immanuel Ness
The Oxford Handbook of Economic Imperialism is divided into three sections, namely
‘Theory’, ‘International Political Economy’, and ‘World Regions’. We outline the contents
of each section as follows.
Theory
The first section of the Handbook, ‘Theory’, consists of six chapters that provide an over-
view of the major theories of economic imperialism. In particular, the chapters elaborate
on Marxist, world systems, crisis, and dependency theories as these relate to the study
of economic imperialism. This section highlights the intellectual history of theories of
economic imperialism, and some of their most significant progenitors, and outlines the
theoretical foundations for the applied understanding of economic imperialism.
Zak Cope’s chapter, ‘Imperialism and Its Critics: A Brief Conspectus’, provides a
survey of the literature on imperialism. It begins by defining the concept of economic
imperialism, and proceeds to describe five modes of economic imperialism, namely, co-
lonialism, internal colonialism, settler colonialism, investment imperialism, and une-
qual exchange, each predicated upon and reinforcing national oppression. The chapter
concludes by highlighting the pronounced tendency of ‘anti-imperialist’ discourse to
lend support to some of the world’s most repressive authoritarian states.
Murray Noonan’s chapter, ‘Classical Marxist Imperialism Theory: Continuity,
Change, and Relevance’, argues that the classical Marxist theories of imperialism con-
tinue to have explanatory power despite the transformations that have occurred in
global capitalism and international politics since the early decades of the twentieth cen-
tury. Marxist thinkers and activists like Rudolf Hilferding, Nikolai Bukharin, Vladimir
Lenin, and Rosa Luxemburg were instrumental not only in identifying changes in cap-
italism that occurred after Marx’s death in 1883 but also in linking those changes with
geopolitical conditions that ultimately led to World War I. The chapter offers a critical
examination of the work of the classical Marxist theorists of imperialism, highlighting
the strengths and weaknesses of their analyses and the relevance of their work to under-
standing contemporary imperialism.
Efe Can Gürcan’s chapter, ‘Marxist Theories of Imperialism in the Post–Cold War
Era’, describes how post–Cold War theories of imperialism developed in two distinct
waves. He suggests that the first wave was prompted mostly by reactions to ‘transna-
tional’ capitalist globalisation, with its critics focusing on the contradictions of neo-
liberalism as the clearest manifestation of present-day imperialism. Since the crisis of
global capitalism in 2007 there has emerged a second wave of theorizing about im-
perialism which places greater emphasis on the North–South divide, and redeploys
Lenin’s terminology of uneven development, labour aristocracy, and super-profits. The
chapter discusses how contemporary theories of imperialism can contribute to a mul-
tidimensional understanding of the phenomenon in (geo)political, economic, and so-
ciocultural terms.
Introduction 3
The second section of the Handbook contains fifteen chapters that apply key concepts in
the theory of economic imperialism to the contemporary world economy. International
political economy is based on the recognition that economic systems are inextricably
linked to wider political and social systems at the international level. As such, this sec-
tion of the Handbook examines the interplay between economic and political processes
in the global economy, and explores mechanisms of value transfer, dependency, and ex-
ploitation in international relations.
Toby Carroll’s chapter, ‘Neoliberalism, Globalization, and Late Capitalism: Capital,
Ideology, and Making the World Market’, details the mutually reinforcing relation-
ship between globalization, neoliberalism, and late capitalism. The chapter explains
how intensifying patterns of competition have resulted in the political diminution of
progressive social forces and the increased leverage of competitive fractions of capital
and powerful capitalist states. The author concludes that while resistance to neoliber-
alism is evident in many, sometimes reactionary forms, the all-enveloping nature of late
4 Zak Cope and Immanuel Ness
capitalism and the ongoing reinvention of neoliberalism as the only solution to grave
socioeconomic maladies make the task of reimagining and realizing alternative social
orders formidable.
Amiya Kumar Bagchi’s chapter, ‘Imperialism from the Eleventh Century to the
Twenty-First Century’, provides a historical overview of the development of capitalist
imperialism. It argues that in the eleventh century several city states formed in Italy
that were controlled by merchants and financiers and which dominated southern Italy
and Sicily through trade and finance, prefiguring the dependency of the colonial and
semi-colonial countries from the eighteenth century onward. Following the logic of
capital accumulation, the new nation states at that time began acquiring colonies,
with England the sole superpower until it was challenged by Germany in World War
I. After the interregnum of the interwar years, the United States emerged as the most
powerful nation economically and militarily, its paramountcy having been challenged
by the Soviet Union until it went into terminal decline from the late 1970s. Bagchi
argues that the United States’ superpower status is currently challenged by China and
Russia.
Sébastien Rioux’s chapter, ‘Slavery, Capitalism, and Imperialism’, problematizes the
relationship between slavery, capitalism, and imperialism. It explores how slavery and
the slave trade played a historical role in capital accumulation and economic imperi-
alism from the early modern period to the Industrial Revolution. The author examines
the central importance of slavery in the expansion of capitalist trade and production, as
well as its role in the constitution of an international division of labour premised upon
the uneven exploitation of distant spaces and populations. The chapter explores the
ways in which capitalist techniques shaped slavery and its institutions and investigates
the rationalization of slave production in the context of an increasingly competitive in-
ternational commodities market. It considers the fundamental importance of struggles
and resistance against slavery in the context of capitalist imperialism and concludes
with a discussion of modern-day slavery and its roots in militarized borders, wars of en-
croachment, and the economics of dependency.
Kunibert Raffer’s chapter ,‘Development, Underdevelopment, and the North–South
Divide’, examines the endurance of the North–South divide on a planetary scale. It
discusses what Max Weber had termed capitalism based on the principle of looting,
which transferred enormous values to the Global North, financing its industrialization.
In the process, Southern economies were disarticulated and extraverted to benefit co-
lonial powers. The author analyses key features of the present world economy, showing
how trade structures disadvantage Southern countries through unequal exchange and
transfer pricing, and how financial structures discriminate against Southern countries
by denying them meaningful debtor protection. The author explains how tax evasion by
some Northern countries deprives Southern countries of resources needed to finance
development and discusses the role of international organizations such as the IBRD,
the IMF, and the WTO. The author describes the ways in which agreements such as the
Lomé and Cotonou treaties have hampered development and perpetuate the North–
South divide.
Introduction 5
Susan Newman’s chapter, ‘Global Value Chains and Global Value Transfer’, discusses
the restructuring of production that has taken place over the last thirty years, namely the
rise of global value chains and global production networks, and explains how this has
shaped the transfer of value from the Global South to the Global North through direct
channels of appropriation along these chains and the associated tendency towards the
impoverishment of workers engaged in primary production. The chapter describes new
financial avenues for the appropriation of value created in the Global South that have
opened as global value chains intersect with the financialization of commodity chains
and the rise of global wealth chains as routes through which multinational corporations
channel value to avoid fiscal claims, legal obligations, and regulatory oversight.
The chapter by Jonathan Cogliano, Soh Kaneko, Roberto Veneziani, and Naoki
Yoshihara, ‘International Exploitation, Capital Export, and Unequal Exchange’,
discusses how international exploitation and unequal exchange emerge in the global
economy by focusing on simple economic models with and without credit markets.
Free trade of commodities among rich and poor countries results in a transfer of labour
time between countries, allowing the citizens of some countries to consume more of
the world’s social labour than they have contributed. Capital movements across borders
together with strong restrictions on the movement of people result in net exporters of
capital exploiting (or benefiting from unequal exchange at the expense of) net capital
importers. The authors argue that under perfect competition, mutual benefits from free
trade in goods and capital can coexist alongside unequal flows of revenue and labour in
the world economy. They conclude that market imperfections and the open use of coer-
cion are not necessary for international exploitation to emerge, but they may be central
for it to persist over time.
Raúl Delgado Wise’s chapter, ‘Imperialism, Unequal Exchange, and Labour Export’,
describes how monopoly capital has become the central actor in the global economy.
Through mega-mergers and strategic alliances, this fraction of capital has reached un-
paralleled levels of concentration and centralization, leaving every major global in-
dustry dominated by a handful of large multinational corporations. In the expansion
of their activities, the largest monopolies have created global processes of finance, pro-
duction, services, and trade that have allowed them to seize the strategic and profitable
sectors of peripheral economies and appropriate the economic surplus produced at
enormous social and environmental costs. The chapter analyses the current modalities
of unequal exchange engendered by the implementation of structural adjustment
programmes in the Global South, these having been the vehicle for the disarticulation
of economic structures in the periphery and their re-articulation to serve the needs of
core capitalist economies under sharply asymmetric and subordinated conditions. The
author argues that these developments have led to the emergence of a new international
division of labour centred on the direct and indirect export of labour which has trig-
gered new modalities of unequal exchange.
The chapter by Christoph Scherrer, ‘Surplus Labour: Imperialist Legacies and Post-
Imperialist Practices’, describes how informal labour relations and underemployment
persist in many former colonies. The overabundance of persons offering their labour
6 Zak Cope and Immanuel Ness
in relation to limited demand for the same stems from the insufficient absorption of
peasants set free from their land. In many late industrializing countries most workers
leaving agriculture do not find gainful employment, with many such countries prema-
turely de-industrializing. Based on a comparison between the conditions prevalent in
early industrializing nations and present-day latecomers to industry and advanced serv-
ices, the chapter highlights how the generally violent passage from an agrarian-rural to
a capitalist industrial-urban economy is aggravated by imperialist legacies and current
post-imperialist practices for many countries of the Global South.
Arindam Bannerjee’s chapter, ‘Locating Agrarian Labour within the Contours of
Imperialism: A Historical Review’, discusses how neoliberal globalization has had pro-
found implications for agrarian labour, particularly in the Global South. Analysing neo-
liberalism through the lens of interconnected historical developments in the North and
the South, the author understands it as a set of continuities and discontinuities between
the old imperial order and new structures of imperialism. The chapter highlights the
economic and political resistance that has emerged in various contexts as a response to
neoliberal policies.
The chapter by Han Cheng, ‘Women, Domestic Labour, and Economic Imperialism’,
discusses the relationship between the oppression of women and economic imperi-
alism. Women’s unpaid domestic labour is a fundamental factor of capital accumula-
tion. The oppression of women in production, reproduction, and gender relations is an
integral aspect of neoliberal social structures. The author describes how consumerist
lifestyles in the developed countries are sustained by the exploitation of the labour and
bodies of women from the developing countries. He concludes that the super-exploita-
tion of women has triggered a global crisis of labour power reproduction and the rise of
female-led social and economic justice movements.
The chapter by Macarena Gómez-Barris, ‘Protecting Water and Forest Resources
against Colonization in the Indigenous Américas’, considers recent forms of resistance
in the Americas that contest the legacy of neoliberalism, debt, and economic imperi-
alism emanating from the United States. Specifically, the author examines Chile as a lab-
oratory for neoliberalism and the social and political movements therein that directly
challenge histories of wealth accumulation through extractive and racialized capitalism.
The chapter examines how state violence and an expanding prison and military infra-
structure is used to criminalize protest and describes creative strategies of resistance and
refusal.
The chapter by Seth Donnelly, ‘Imperialism, the Mismeasurement of Poverty, and the
Masking of Global Exploitation’, investigates the calculation of global poverty and reveals
the strong ties of the metric to the neoliberal political and economic establishment.
Donnelly deconstructs the widely publicized statistics that purport to show how ex-
treme poverty in the world has dramatically fallen. He subjects the analytical categories
and methodology employed by the World Bank to calculate its poverty statistics to a
systematic critique. By artificially reducing global poverty through statistical manipula-
tion, the World Bank can proclaim the success of the neoliberal project, legitimating its
further expansion. The chapter contends that if more accurate measurements are used,
Introduction 7
such as the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) $5 per
day standard, global poverty has increased.
Kalle Blomberg’s chapter ,‘Tertiarization, Financialization, and Economic
Imperialism’, investigates the increasing share of value associated with services in the
core countries of the global economy. In conventional accounts this value is synony-
mous with the inherent productivity of these activities and is assumed to derive from
their human capital content. In this crucial intervention, Blomberg explains that the
proliferation of what Marx called fictitious capital has characterized neoliberal devel-
opment in the core of the global economy. The growth of fictitious capital obscures the
reality that both the expansion of finance and the growth of services in the affluent coun-
tries are underpinned by value extracted in the dual exploitation of labour and nature in
low-wage countries.
In the next chapter, ‘The Hegemony of the Global Exploitation of Humans and
Nature: The Imperial Mode of Living’, Ulrich Brand and Markus Wissen introduce
the concept of the “imperial mode of living” as an innovative contribution to current
debates on imperialism. The term refers to the norms of production, distribution, and
consumption built into the political, economic, and cultural structures of everyday life
for the populations of the Global North and for those countries denoted as ‘emerging
economies’ in the Global South. This form of living is rooted in social class, economic
structures, everyday practices, subjectivity, ideology, and ecological transforma-
tion at the world scale. The designation and meaning of the “imperial mode of living”
is historically contextualized, and the authors provide an account of its contemporary
dimensions.
In the last chapter of Part Two, ‘The Political Economy of Militarism’, Adem Yavuz
Elveren examines the relationship between economic growth and military domination.
Elveren examines how high military expenditures relate to militaristic values in the po-
litical, social, and economic spheres. The chapter examines the determinants and eco-
nomic costs of military expenditures through the prism of neoclassical, Keynesian, and
Marxist perspectives. The chapter emphasizes three issues relating to the economics of
militarism: first, its role in capital accumulation and in the absorption of economic sur-
plus; second, the value of militarism to imperialist geopolitical security; and, finally, the
impact of militarism on employment and economic growth.
World Regions
Part Three of the Oxford Handbook of Economic Imperialism presents twelve chapters
on economic imperialism as it operates within major geographic regions of the world
today. This section includes examinations of the dynamics of value transfer and under-
development in South Asia, East Asia, Southeast Asia, North Africa, eastern Africa,
southern Africa, North America, South America, the Pacific Islands, eastern Europe,
and Central Asia and the Caucasus.
8 Zak Cope and Immanuel Ness
perspectives have designated it as a new imperialist power. The chapter measures value
flows (represented by labour time embodied in export commodities) between China,
Japan, South Korea, and the rest of the world and shows that China continues to transfer
more surplus labour to the rest of the world than it receives. As such, the author argues
that China should be characterized as a non-imperialist semi-peripheral country. Yet
as China’s demands for energy commodities and raw materials continues to grow, it
intensifies global ecological and geopolitical contradictions. These contradictions are
unlikely to produce a world war fought between China and the United States, but these
dynamics of capitalist development contribute to the acceleration of global environ-
mental crisis and set limits to China’s long-term economic growth.
Marta Gentilucci’s chapter, ‘Pacific Islands: Sources of Raw Materials’, analyses ec-
onomic imperialism, resource extraction, decolonization, and sovereignty in the re-
gion. The chapter highlights how Pacific Islanders have the desire to be present and
acknowledged within the world economy. The first part of the chapter is focused on
an overview of colonial imperialism in the region, both historically and currently.
Gentilucci shows how decades of economic imperialism have commodified natural
and human resources and thereby influenced the course of social change in the region.
In particular, in all the islands of the Pacific, plantations and mines have had a huge
social impact, including the expropriation of lands, the arrival of migrant workers,
recruited mainly in Oceania and Asia, and long-term ecological consequences. The
chapter focuses on the different ways in which social actors resist, transform, and do-
mesticate imperialist forces. The chapter shows how mining is an ambivalent phe-
nomenon which in some communities is a means to achieve valuable economic,
social, and cultural goals and objectives. Gentilucci analyses mining activity from the
lens of indigenous eco-cosmologies—a cohabitation of spaces in which visible and
invisible, endogenous, and exogenous forces are constantly negotiated and balanced
with the goal of identifying alternative spaces to the rigid dichotomy between subjec-
tion and resistance.
Turning to North Africa, Hamza Hamouchene’s chapter, ‘Extractivism and Resistance
in North Africa’, explores the vast expansion of accumulation through dispossession in
the Maghreb region. Northern African countries are key suppliers of natural resources
in the global economy, from large-scale oil and gas extraction in Algeria, to phos-
phate mining in Tunisia and Morocco, and to water-intensive agribusiness paired with
tourism in Morocco and Tunisia. Hamouchene views this extractivist model of develop-
ment as reaffirming the role of North Africa countries as suppliers of natural resources,
entrenching their subordinate position in the global capitalist economy. The stark cases
presented in this chapter exemplify broader patterns of primitive accumulation in the
Global South, where accumulation by dispossession takes the form of the extraction
and pillage of natural resources, and the degradation of environments and ecosystems
through the privatization and commodification of land and water. Hamouchene
demonstrates that ruinous imperialist policies are accompanied by a surge in the forces
of mobilization, and resistance from local populations demanding that wealth be shared
and distributed equitably. Nevertheless, these examples do not reveal a significant
10 Zak Cope and Immanuel Ness
The chapter by Brayan Camilo Rojas and Ernesto Vivares, ‘Colombia and the OECD:
How Institutional Imperialism Shapes the Global Order and National Development’,
examines how imperialism shapes and politically frames national development in rela-
tions between the most and least powerful countries in the world economy. The chapter
focuses on Colombia’s incorporation into the Organization of Economic Cooperation
and Development (OECD) between 2010 and 2018. Starting from a critical interna-
tional political economy (IPE) approach, the chapter investigates the role assumed by
the OECD as neutral and purely technical, and analyses the dynamics of power in the
intersections of domestic-international economics. The authors show how the OECD
technically shapes and politically frames national development in key areas that define
the insertion of the country into the world economy. They demonstrate how external
forces determine domestic policies of development which in effect maintain Colombia’s
dependent economic position. In this process, multilateral recommendations become
central conditionalities that define the relationship between powerful foreign interests
and local capital. The chapter describes how international economic integration took
shape in Colombia through policies that were erroneously viewed as models for eco-
nomic development.
Turning to Europe, the chapter by Ivan Rubinić and Maks Tajnikar, ‘Eastern Europe’s
Post-Transitional Integration into Western Economic Relations through Social Labour
Recognition’, examines economic inequality, social labour recognition, and unequal
exchange in eastern Europe. The integration of eastern and southeastern European
economies into the European Union promised to improve the standard of living in the
region. However, the chapter reveals that the integration has generated unequal labour
exchange and that while transition countries have experienced a radical capital inten-
sity increase, they have suffered from below-equilibrium prices obtained in commodity
markets. The chapter argues that eastern European transition state initiatives to homog-
enize and catch up with western countries is hindered by enduring unequal relations,
enabling western Europe to exploit international inequalities and exercise economic
dominance over the East.
Nazif Mandaci’s chapter, ‘Land Grabbing in Southeastern Europe and Its Historical
Context’, examines land grabbing, enclosure, and primitive accumulation in south-
eastern Europe. The chapter suggests that some parts of the region are re-experiencing
in the post-Soviet era what happened in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries due
to the decline of the Ottoman land tenure system, under conditions involving profound
sociopolitical transformation and integration with global capitalism. Mandaci contends
that today, despite growing connections with the European Union, the region has
remained on the western European periphery as a provider of raw materials and food
to (post)industrial Western centres. Just as declining Ottoman control and the collapse
of its imperial land tenure system in the eighteenth century led to the rise of chiftliks
(large agricultural estates), with powerful landlords and indentured peasants, so too has
the dissolution of the agricultural systems of the socialist regimes in the 1990s paved
the way for a process in which large portions of arable land became concentrated in
the hands of a small group of former nomenklatura, tycoons, and foreign agribusiness
12 Zak Cope and Immanuel Ness
partners. The chapter suggests that although the types of regime governing southeastern
Europe have changed throughout history, primitive accumulation practices that harm
small farmers have been maintained under different political banners. Current practices
of enclosure have turned land into a financial asset favouring foreign capitalists rather
than the local population, with small landholders adversely affected by the accelerating
trend of what Mandaci calls a ‘(re)concentrating land ownership’, analogous to the land
grabbing presently witnessed in Africa and Latin America.
The final chapter in the Handbook, ‘Colonial Legacies and Global Networks in
Central Asia and the Caucasus’, by Brent D. Hierman, addresses the persistent eco-
nomic and political effects of the Russian Empire’s establishment of extractive colonial
institutions in Central Asia and the Caucasus. At a fundamental level, the infrastructure
built by the Russian Empire in the nineteenth century and modified by the Soviet Union
in the twentieth century to exploit the region’s resources endure into the present; how-
ever, the outflow of wealth and resources no longer moves towards a single imperial core.
As this chapter details, new networks of extraction have been built. China has emerged
as the terminus for much of the region’s natural resources, whereas Russia is the leading
destination for the region’s labour migrants, thereby capturing a significant amount of
human capital. Additionally, a large amount of wealth is transferred out of the region
into Western financial institutions where it is held, laundered, and sometimes moved
on. Hierman’s chapter argues that the flourishing of these global networks of extraction
strengthens the overwhelmingly autocratic regimes of the region and hinders the de-
velopment of civil society. Finally, the chapter addresses the prospects for halting these
extractive processes but ultimately concludes that this is unlikely, given the interwoven
nature of political and economic power across the region.
Taken together, the chapters of the Oxford Handbook of Economic Imperialism dem-
onstrate the persistence of economic imperialism in today’s world and the enduring
control wielded by great powers even after the end of formal empire. In addition, it
reveals how emerging powers are today expanding their economic control in new ge-
ographic contexts. This Handbook seeks to re-establish the conceptual significance of
imperialism as a major topic in political economy and as being crucial to understanding
the structures, relations, and processes responsible for the endurance and expansion of
poverty and inequality between countries and nations.
Zak Cope
Belfast
Immanuel Ness
New York
September 2021
PA RT O N E
T H E ORY
Chapter 2
Im periali sm a nd
Its Criti c s
A Brief Conspectus
Zak Cope
Colonialism
years, those that were relatively rich in 1500 are now relatively poor (Acemoğlu et al.
2002a). To understand the history of genocide, famine, and war in the last five hundred
years is to acknowledge the key role of colonialism (Moses and Stone 2007; Moses 2008).
In Africa, colonialism has had a negative effect on development (Heldring and
Robinson 2012). Considering human stature as an indicator for health and nutri-
tional quality, the biological standard of living in Africa fell under colonialism, with
colonized Africans losing fully 1.1 centimetres in height between 1810 and 1970 as a re-
sult of land dispossession and the resultant adverse labour market conditions, coercive
labour regimes, infectious disease proliferation from additional trade contacts and low
public health expenditures, and colonial conflicts (Baten and Maravall 2021). The tax
burdens imposed by colonial powers on small farmers, workers, and subjects in Africa
far exceeded investment in public goods while the bulk of the funds allocated went to-
ward the maintenance of the metropolitan government (Young 1994). Present-day cor-
ruption in Africa, one of the major impediments to socioeconomic development on the
continent, is linked to the historical systematic use of material inducements to compel
local African rulers to collaborate in the colonial project of dominating and exploiting
their own peoples, with the practices of postcolonial Africa’s political and bureaucratic
elites sometimes being an extension of colonial era policies and practices (Mulinge and
Lesetedi 1998; Langan 2017). More broadly, corruption in developing countries has his-
torical roots tracing back to colonialism, with European settlement leading to higher
levels of corruption for all countries where Europeans remained a minority in the popu-
lation, that is, for all developing countries (Angeles and Neanidis 2015).
In the Indian subcontinent, one of the wealthiest regions in the world prior to British
rule, between 1757 and 1947 there was no increase in per capita income, and India fell
behind in both absolute and relative terms (Habib 1989; Bagchi 2014; Gupta 2019).
During the devastating colonial famines of 1876–1879 and 1896–1902, between twelve
and thirty million Indian people starved to death, mortality rates often being highest in
areas serviced by British railroads (Davis 2002, 26–27, 142, 319, 332). The earlier stages
of British conquest and colonization under the East India Company were also marked
by large-scale famines, in particular the Bengal famine of 1769–1770 in which around
10 million people, or a third of the population, perished. Although precolonial India
had certainly known famine, its frequency, scale, and magnitude expanded dramati-
cally and in line with the disruption to indigenous social and economic structures that
accompanied colonial interference and extractions, especially the heavy and unpredict-
able cost of land revenues (Sheldon 2009; Siddiqui 2020).
Colonialism contributed to metropolitan capital accumulation by the indirect ex-
port of unemployment to the colonies through discriminatory trade policies. England,
France, and subsequently Germany and the United States, protected their own
industries from foreign competition while forcing ‘free trade’ on their colonies (Chang
2002). By flooding the colonial market with its own manufactures, Britain caused de-
industrialization in India and elsewhere, converting the tropical regions into suppliers
of cheap primary goods from the beginning of the nineteenth century. The rapid devel-
opment of industry in the industrial countries did not lead to increased unemployment
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minkä olemme eläneet yhdessä, käyttäytynyt mallikelpoisesti, muuta
en voi sanoa, mutta hänen entisestä elämästään on sittenkin jäänyt
niin paljon hänen sieluunsa, että me emme voi koskaan vaihtaa
ajatuksia ja sen kautta kehittyä. Olen ollut jonkinmoisessa opettajan
asemassa hänen suhteensa. Siinä kaikki. Vaimoni on alistunut
tähän, sillä hän on uskonut sen kautta tulevansa joksikin
paremmaksi. Mehän ihmiset tahdomme aina pyrkiä siihen
yhteiskuntaluokkaan, joka on yksi aste korkeammalla, kuin se, mihin
meillä on kehityksemme ja lahjojemme kautta oikeus kuulua.
Vaimoni on tehnyt kaiken pysytelläkseen siinä, mihin hän
avioliittonsa kautta minun kanssani joutui. Hän vaikeni hetkiseksi.
— Mutta kun tämän kaiken tiedät, niin etkö silloin voi järjestää
elämääsi uudella tavalla?
— Sen kyllä teen, mutta mitä siitä, jos sen kautta voin heille antaa
hiukan elämän uskoa sillä, mitä jää jälkeeni. Sinä huomaat, että olen
ottanut asian aivan järkevästi ja tarkan harkinnan mukaan. Minä olen
päättänyt kuolla ja tahdon, että sinä siinä autat minua.
— Jos kerran olet niin kaikkea harkinnut, niin mikset voi odottaa
siksi, kunnes luonto tekee tehtävänsä?
Mitä tiesin, mitä tunsin, en voi tällä hetkellä enää tarkkaan itselleni
tilittää. Hän oli mielestäni oikeassa, sen vaan muistan päättäneeni.
Jos ihminen kerran tahtoo kuolla, olosuhteitten ja luonteen
pakoittamana on selvällä järjellä päätöksen tehnyt, niin miksi silloin
lääkärit ei häntä siinä auttaisi. Lääkäri on elämän suuren puiston
puutarhuri, jos oksa taittuu, on hänen se leikattava pois eikä
odotettava siksi, kunnes se viimein itsestään rungosta irtaantuu.
En sanonut enään sanaakaan. Täytin morfiiniruiskun ja laskin sen
pöydälle. Hän puristi lujasti kättäni. Läksin pois. Mutta kotia
päästyäni ja tyyneesti asiaa punnittuani, alkoivat epäilykset nousta
sieluuni. Miksi suotta toimin tuollaisen lain mukaan, jota ei vielä ole
olemassa. Olin mielestäni tehnyt oikein, ehdottomasti oikein, mutta
laki sen kielsi. Jos taas olisin noudattanut lakia, niin enköhän silloin
oman itseni edessä olisi tuntenut toimineeni väärin.
Hän oli ennättänyt jo sitä käyttää. Leski itki. Hän kertoi minulle
sairaan viimeisistä hetkistä. Hän oli aivan kuin nukkunut ja hiljaa
sammunut.
Pian huomasin, että hän oli niitä ihmisiä, jotka tahtovat elää
elämän kaikissa eri muodoissa mahdollisimman kokonaisesti. Tuntui
aivan siltä, kuin hän olisi tahtonut poimia elämän puusta hedelmiä
enemmän, kuin se jaksoi kantaa.
— Luonnollisesti!
— Koko ajanko?
— Niin.
— On.
— Näyttäkää se minulle!
— Siis vakoillut?
Selailin kirjaa.
— Millä tavoin?
— Ja se on?
— Sitä parempi.
— Milloin aloitamme?
— Vaikka huomenna!
— Hyvä on. Menen sairashuoneelle ja valmistan kaikki tuloanne
varten. Voitte täydellisesti luottaa hienotunteisuuteeni tässä asiassa.
Kukaan ei saa tietää, miksi oikeastaan olette siellä.
— Minä kiitän.
Parin päivän päästä oli hän jo niin heikko, että hän tullessani
lepäsi vuoteessaan.