Chapter 2:

The Changing Global Context

Paul L. Knox & Sallie A. Marston
PowerPoint Author: Keith M. Bell
 Chapter Objectives
• The objectives of this chapter are to
illustrate:
– Geographic expansion, integration, and
change
– Industrialization and geographic change
– Forces that organize the periphery
– The fast world and the slow world
 The Changing Global Context
The modern world-system has evolved through several
distinctive stages.

The new technologies of the Industrial Revolution

created a new global economic system.

Places and regions are part of a world-system that has

been created by the processes of private economic
competition and political competition.

The world-system is highly structured and is

characterized by three tiers: core, semi-peripheral, and
peripheral regions.

The growth of the core regions could take place only

with the foodstuffs, raw materials, and markets provided
by colonization of the periphery.

Successive technological innovations have transformed

regional geographies.

Globalization has intensified the differences between the

core and the periphery, creating a digital divide.
 Hearth Areas: Old and New Worlds
• The first agricultural
revolution involved a
transition from hunter-
gatherer groups to
agriculture-based
minisystems or societies
with a single cultural base and
a reciprocal social economy.
• Carl O. Sauer noted that
agricultural breakthroughs
could only occur in certain
geographical settings: plentiful
natural food supplies,
diversified terrain, and
rich/moist soils.
 Hearth Areas: Old and New Worlds
Hearth areas are geographic settings where
new practices have developed and from which
they have spread
(Ex. Agriculture originated in few distinct places and spread to other regions,
Coffee (Ethiopia) – spread to Arabia, Europe and to European colonies
 Agricultural revolution probably took place in four distinct
hearth areas at approximately the same time in history.
4 Hearth Areas:
1.In the Middle East: in the so-called Mesopotamia or the
Fertile Crescent
2.In South Asia: along the floodplains of the Ganga
(Ganges), Brahmaputra, Indus, and Irrawaddy rivers
3.In China: along the floodplain of the Huang He (Yellow)
River
4.In the Americas: in Mesoamerica (the middle belt of the
Americas) around Tamaulipas and the Tehuacán Valley
(Mexico), in Arizona and New Mexico, and along the western
slopes of the Andes in South America.
Minisystems
• Each individual specializes in particular tasks,
(e.g., tending animals, cooking, or making
pottery) and freely gives any excess product to
others
• The recipients reciprocate in turn by giving up
the surplus product of their own specialization.
Such societies are found only in subsistence-
based economies.
• Because they do not have (or need) an
extensive physical infrastructure, minisystems
are limited in geographic scale.
Minisystems
• The transition to minisystems began in the
Proto-Neolithic (or early Stone Age) period,
between 9000 and 7000 BCE., and was based
on a series of technological preconditions:
 the use of fire to process food,
 the use of grindstones to mill grains, and
 the development of improved tools to prepare and
store food.
• The key breakthrough was the evolution and
diffusion of a system of slash-and-burn
agriculture (also known as “swidden” cultivation)
Minisystems
• Slash-and-burn is a system of cultivation in
which plants are harvested close to the ground,
the stubble left to dry for a period, and then
ignited
Minisystems
A transition to food-
producing minisystems had
several implications for the long-
term evolution of the world’s
geographies:
1. It allowed much higher population densities.
2. It brought about a change in social organization.
3. It allowed some specialization in non-agricultural
crafts.
4. Specialization led to the beginnings of barter and
trade between communities, sometimes over
substantial distances.
The Growth of Early Empires
The higher population densities,
changes in social organization, craft
production, and trade brought about
by the first agricultural revolution
provided the preconditions for the
emergence of several “world-
empires.”
A world-empire is a group of minisystems that have been
absorbed into a common political system while retaining their
fundamental cultural differences.
•In world-empires, wealth flows from producer classes to an elite
class in the form of taxes or tribute
•Redistribution of wealth is often achieved through military
coercion, religious persuasion or a combination of the two.
The Growth of Early Empires
• The best-known world-empires were the largest and longest
lasting of the ancient civilizations – Egypt, Greece, China,
Byzantium, and Rome
• These world-empires brought important new elements to the
evolution of the world’s geographies – the emergence of
colonization, the other was urbanization
o Urbanization: Towns and cities became essential as
centers of administration, military garrisons, and as
theological centers for ruling classes.
o Colonization: The physical settlement in a new
territory of people from a colonizing state; an indirect
consequence of the operation of the law of
diminishing returns.
 The Geography of the Pre-modern World
• The generalized framework of
human geographies in the Old
World as they existed around A.D.
1400 are characteristically
important:
– Harsher environments in
continental interiors were still
characterized by isolated,
subsistence-level, kin-ordered
hunting-and-gathering
minisystems.
– The dry belt of steppes and desert margins was a continuous zone
of kin-ordered pastoral minisystems.
– The hearths of sedentary agricultural production extended in a
discontinuous arc from Morocco to China, with two main outliers.
 The Silk Road

The dominant centers of global civilization were China,

northern India (both of them hydraulic variants of world-
empires), and the Ottoman Empire of the eastern
Mediterranean. They were all linked by the Silk Road, a
series of overland trade routes between China and
Mediterranean Europe.
 The European Age of Discovery

Cartography is the name given to the system of

practical and theoretical knowledge about making
distinctive visual representations of Earth’s surface in
the form of maps.
 The European Age of Discovery
• Geography and cartography major influence on European
territorial expansion
• In the late 15th century, Europeans sought new trade routes,
improved and compiled maps
Notable European explorers:
o Bartholomeu Diaz (Africa), Christopher Columbus
(Caribbean) Vasco de Gama (India) and Pedro Cabral
(Brazil)
o Ferdinand Magellan – first circumnavigation of the
world (16th century)
• Geographic knowledge and new map projections assisted
the European project of colonization
• Europe developed as a core region
The Foundations of Modern
Geography
• Immanuel Kant, Alexander von
Humboldt, Carl Ritter, and Friedrich
Ratzel were German scholars who
wanted to move geography away from
straightforward descriptions of Earth.
• They wanted explanations and
generalizations about the relationships
of different phenomena within and
among particular places.
• Kant saw human activities heavily
influenced by physical geography.
• Von Humboldt emphasized the
mutual causation among species
and their physical environment.
• European geography in the 19th
century was influenced by several
concepts:

 Ethnocentrism – the belief that one’s own culture is

superior to all others
 Masculinism – the assumption that the world is largely
shaped by and for men (and not women)
 Environmental determinism – the belief that human
activity is completely shaped by the environment (Ex.
Europe emerged as a world power because of its mild climate)
 Technology & Economic Development
• The Industrial Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century was
driven by a technology system based on water power and steam
engines, cotton textiles, ironworking, river transportation systems,
and canals.
• Each new technology system opens new geographic frontiers and
rewrites the geography of economic development, shifting the
balance of advantages between regions.
 Europe: Three • 1790–1850: based on the initial cluster
Waves of of industrial technologies (steam
engines, cotton textiles, and
Industrialization ironworking); was very localized
• 1858–1870: involved the diffusion of
industrialization to most of the rest of
Britain and to parts of northwest
Europe, particularly the coalfields of
northern France, Belgium, and
Germany
• 1870–1914: a further industrialization
of the geography of Europe as yet
another cluster of technologies
imposed different needs and created
new opportunities
 New World System: Core-Periphery
• Capitalism truly became a global system with the new
production and transportation technologies of the
Industrial Revolution (geographic expansion - external
colonization and imperialism).
• Capitalism is a form of economic and social organization
characterized by the profit motive and the control of the
means of production, distribution, and exchange of goods
by private ownership.
• The hinterland of a town or city is its sphere of economic
influence – the area from which it collects products to be
exported and through which it distributes imports.
 New World System: Core-Periphery
• Equipped with better maps and navigation
techniques, Europeans sent adventurers in search of
gold and silver
• Exploited coerced labor to produce high value crops
(sugar, cocoa, cotton, indigo) on plantations – large
landholdings that usually specialize in the production
of one particular crop for market
• European merchants and manufacturers also became
adept at import substitution – copying and making
goods previously available only by trading.
• Result: emergence of Western Europe as the core
region
World Systems Theory
• Developed by sociologist Immanuel
Wallerstein
• Views the world as consisting of one
single economic system in which each country or
region takes part in different ways
• It is an interdependent system in which each
country or region is linked to the others by
economic and political competition
• External arena – those regions of the world that
had not been absorbed into the world system
 New World System: Core-Periphery
 Core Regions: dominate trade, control the most
advanced technologies, and have high levels of
productivity within diversified economies
 Peripheral Regions: dependent and disadvantageous
trading relationships by primitive or obsolescent
technologies; undeveloped or narrowly specialized
economies with low levels of productivity
 Semiperipheral Regions: able to exploit peripheral
regions but are themselves exploited and dominated
by core regions
 New World System: Core-Periphery
• A country’s status in the world system is not
permanent.
• Change in status depends on the effectiveness of
states in ensuring the international competitiveness
of their domestic producers, in several ways such as:
⎻Manipulating markets (e.g., protecting domestic
manufacturers by charging taxes on imports)
⎻Regulating their economies (e.g., enacting laws that
help establish stable labor markets)
⎻Creating physical and social infrastructures (spending
public funds on road systems, ports, educational systems,
etc.)
The World-System: 1800
The World System: 1900
 The World System: 2000

Many places around the globe are connected like never before, leading
to a backlash against globalization or “Americanization” (e.g., Jihad
vs. McWorld).
 The Manufacturing Belt of the United States
The cities of this region, already thriving industrial centers that were well
connected through the early railroad system, were ideally placed to take
advantage of a series of crucial shifts: telegraph system, manufacturing
technologies, railroad system. Specialization required an increase in
commodity flows.
 Major Steamship Routes, in 1920

The shipping routes reflect (1) the transatlantic trade between the bipolar
core regions of the world-system at the time, and (2) the colonial and
imperial relations between the world’s core economies and the periphery.
International Telegraph Network, in 1900

For Britain, submarine telegraph cables were the nervous system of

its empire. This enabled businesses to monitor and coordinate supply
and demand across vast distances on an hourly basis.
 International Division of Labor
• The fundamental logic
behind all colonization was
economic.
– Need for extended arena of
trade.
– Need for an arena
supplying foodstuffs and
raw materials in return for
industrial goods of the
core.
 International Division of Labor
• The outcome was an
international division of labor:
– where an established demand
existed in the industrial core.
– where colonies had a
comparative advantage in
specializations that did not
duplicate or compete with the
domestic suppliers within
core countries.
 The British Empire, late 1800s

Imperialism: The core countries engaged in preemptive geographic

expansion in order to protect their established interests and to limit the
opportunities of others.
 Neocolonialism and Transnational
Corporations
• Neocolonialism refers to economic and political
strategies by which powerful states in core economies
indirectly maintain or extend their influence over other
areas or people.
• Instead of formal, direct rule (colonialism), controls
are exerted through such strategies as international
financial regulations, commercial relations, and covert
intelligence operations.
• Commercial imperialism - Giant corporations had
grown within the core countries through the
elimination of smaller firms by mergers and take-
overs.
 Neocolonialism and Transnational
Corporations
• Transnational corporations have investments and
activities that span international boundaries, with
subsidiary companies, factories, offices, or facilities in
several countries.
• Examples of TNCs: Airbus, BP, Halliburton, News
Corporation, Siemens, and the Virgin Group.
• By 2007, over 79,000 TNCs were operating, 90% of
which were headquartered in the core states. These
corporations control about 790,000 foreign affiliates
and account for the equivalent of 11% of world Gross
Domestic Product (GDP) and one-third of world
exports.
Commodity Chains & Containerization

Commodity chains: networks of

labor and production processes
beginning with the extraction of
raw materials and ending with
the delivery of a finished product
TNCs control many aspects of the
commodity chain
 Leadership Cycles
• The colonization and imperialism that accompanied the
expansion of the world-system was closely tied to the
evolution of world leadership cycles.
• Leadership cycles are periods of international power
established by individual states through economic,
political, and military competition.
• In the long term, success in the world-system depends
on economic strength and competitiveness, which brings
political influence and pays for military strength.
• With a combination of economic, political, and military
power, individual states can dominate the world-system,
setting the terms for many economic and cultural
practices and imposing their particular ideology by virtue
of their preeminence.
World Leadership Cycles: Hegemony
• The modern world-system has
so far experienced several
distinct leadership cycles:
1. Portuguese dominance:
Atlantic exploration, trade,
and plunder (16th century)
2. Dutch dominance: fishing
and shipping industries,
Dutch West India Company
(17th century)
World Leadership Cycles: Hegemony
3. British dominance:
overseas trade and
colonization, strong navy,
Nelson at Trafalgar,
Wellington at Waterloo
(early 18th through the early
19th century)
4. United States dominance:
economically dominant by
1920, hegemony in 1945,
credit crisis in 2008
threatens U.S. leadership
status (from 1950s)
 Leadership Cycles
• This kind of dominance is known as hegemony.
Hegemony refers to domination over the world
economy, exercised—through a combination of
economic, military, financial, and cultural means—by
one national state in a particular historical epoch.
• Over the long run, the costs of maintaining this kind
of power and influence tend to weaken the
hegemony.
• This phase of the cycle, when the dominant nation is
weakened, is known as imperial over-stretch.
• It is followed by another period of competitive
struggle, which brings the possibility of a new
dominant world power.
 World Leadership Cycles: The United States
The United States was economically dominant within the world-system by
1920 but did not achieve hegemonic power because of a failure of political
will, choosing “splendid isolation”. All hegemonic powers must protect the
economic foundations of their power, as represented by this photograph of
U.S. air superiority in the Gulf War.
End of Chapter 2
 Discussion Topics and Lecture
Themes
• The world-system did not always exist. Why did it
develop, and why did Europe emerge as the core of
the world-system?
– The world-system began in the 1400s, when Europeans
started exploring and settling beyond their home regions.
European expansion brought about the exchange of ideas,
technologies, and resources between regions that previously
had little to do with each other. Europe emerged as the core of
the world-system because of its economic system of
capitalism, its rapidly growing population, and its technological
innovations. European expansion abroad and the exploitation
of natural resources outside Europe were critical factors in
Europe’s emergence as a core region. See pages 48–64 in
the textbook for more information.
 Discussion Topics and Lecture
Themes
• Ask the students to give examples of core,
semiperipheral, and peripheral states. Are
there some countries that do not clearly fit in a
single category?
– Examples of core states would include the United
States, Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand,
and most of western and central Europe. Examples
of semiperipheral states include Mexico, Brazil,
India, and Taiwan. Examples of peripheral states
include Ethiopia, Nepal, Bolivia, and Guatemala,
among many others. Ambiguous examples might
include Singapore and Korea (core–semiperipheral)
and Iran and Vietnam (semiperipheral–peripheral),
but these distinctions are partly a matter of opinion.
 Discussion Topics and Lecture
Themes
• Have the students compare two countries, one in the
core and one in the periphery (for example,
Switzerland and Bolivia). Why is one of these countries
richer and more economically developed than the
other? How does the world-system model help to
explain these differences?
– World-systems theory argues that it is the relationship
between states that helps establish their place in the core–
semiperiphery–periphery hierarchy. Much of the difference
derives from the effectiveness of a state in insuring the
international competitiveness of its products. Switzerland, for
example, produces high-value goods—such as watches—and
important services—such as banking—while Bolivia relies on
low-value exports that are not processed locally—such things
as tin ore and fruit.
 Discussion Topics and Lecture
Themes
• Discuss the differences and similarities among
colonialism, imperialism, and neo-colonialism.
– All are similar in that they are the means of
domination by one state over another. Colonialism
refers to the establishment and maintenance of
political and legal domination, whereas
neocolonialism is an indirect means whereby core
states use political and economic strategies to wield
their influence. Imperialism is largely a competitive
form of colonialism that resulted in a scramble for
territory as (mainly) European powers attempted to
build colonial empires.
 Discussion Topics and Lecture
Themes
• Have the students describe the principal
means of transportation and communication in
the local region. When were these systems
first introduced? What existed before them?
What impacts did changes in transportation
and communications technology have on the
local area?
– Data on local transportation and communication
networks can be obtained from maps as well as
from the companies and agencies that operate
these networks.
 Discussion Topics and Lecture
Themes
• Have the students give examples of each of
the four factors (described on pages 72–74 of
the textbook) that have led to globalization in
the past twenty-five years. What evidence for
these factors exists in the local area?
– The four factors are (1) a new international division
of labor, (2) an internationalization of finance, (3) a
new technology system, and (4) a homogenization
of international consumer markets. See pages 72–
74 in the textbook for more information.
 Discussion Topics and Lecture
Themes
• Why does it no longer seem appropriate to speak of
the First, Second, and Third Worlds? What advantages
does a division into Fast and Slow worlds offer? Ask
the students to describe their own experiences (if they
have had them) in traveling between these worlds.
– Changes stemming from the four factors (see Question 6,
above) have led to a Fast World, largely composed of the core
regions, where people are involved, as producers and
consumers, in transnational industry, modern
telecommunications, materialistic consumption, and
international news and entertainment. The Slow World refers
to people, regions, and places where these things are limited.
The breakup of the Soviet Union and the collapse of
international communism generally have also made
meaningless the concept of a Second World.
 Discussion Topics and Lecture
Themes
• What minisystems once existed in the
local area? What happened to them?
– Consult ethnographies of the indigenous
population. The local museum or library may
also hold information on the area’s original
minisystems.
 Discussion Topics and Lecture
Themes
• The Geography Matters 2.5 boxed text discusses the nature and
meaning of commodity chains. Have the students gather data
about the three kinds of commodity chains and then sketch out
the “links.”
– The three kinds of commodity chains are 1) producer-driven, in which
large, often transnational, corporations coordinate production
networks; 2) consumer-driven, where large retailers, brand-name
merchandisers, and trading companies influence decentralized
production networks in a variety of exporting countries, often in the
periphery; and 3) marketing-driven, which involves the production of
inexpensive consumer goods that are global commodities and carry
global brands yet are often manufactured in the periphery and
semiperiphery for consumption in those regions.
– The Internet will provide a starting point for gathering this data, and
you might also want to contact the companies (such as Wal-Mart)
directly.
 Discussion Topics and Lecture
Themes
• Figure 2.22 shows how
North America is a key
node in global telephonic
communications flow,
What accounts for the
distribution shown in the
figure?
– The wealth of North
America and its pioneering
of much communications
technology are in part
responsible for this
position.