Tag Archives: imperialism

Colonialism and "the white man's burden." The story of the East India Company and how transnational corporate totalitarianism began. The rest is history that is still unfolding in accordance with this paradigm that has been adapted to neoliberal globalization and how capitalism is uplifting the masses, in particular those who are not of European descent. There is a story that is commonly told in Britain that the colonisation of India - as horrible as it may have been - was not of any...

British policy was to depend upon alliances with others, rather than to maintain a large standing army itself. So it was important to be able to draw upon a force of colonial troops when needed, including for the policing of the British Raj. Important though they were for British power, Indian troops commonly faced racial discrimination, were looked down upon by white officers and were often used as cannon fodder, while also being given worse grade arms and equipment than regular British...

One could argue that the US has always been an empire. Thomas Jefferson called the US an empire, but an “empire of liberty” dedicated to spreading freedom around the globe. Tell that to the Native Americans killed and dispossessed by White Settlers. Tell that to the Mexicans. The US seized a third of their country through war. Still, it wasn’t until 1898 that the US acquired its first overseas colony. Hawaii had been an independent nation. In 1887, American planters in the islands had...

Trump’s Tariff Travesty Will Not Re-Industrialize the US, TRNN, March 15, 2018 [embedded content] SHARMINI PERIES: It’s The Real News Network. I’m Sharmini Peries coming to you from Baltimore. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or known as the OECD, predicted on Tuesday that Trump’s tariffs on aluminum and steel imports could initiate a wave of protectionism and slow global economic growth. The tariffs have already spurred various countries to announce...

Schumpeter’s theory is interesting for several reasons. It was formulated at the same time as Lenin’s and Luxemburg’s and clearly with the knowledge of the two. It reacts to the exactly the same events as theirs. It is different though and it was held by Schumpeter throughout his life. The key text for Schumpeter’s theory is “The sociology of imperialisms” (note the plural) published in 1918-19. It is a very long essay of some tightly printed 80 pages in its English translation. Schumpeter...

Branko Milanovic on his new paper with Thomas Hauner and Suresh Naidu exploring inequality prior to World War I and providing empirical support for the classical theory of imperialism. ProMarket — The blog of the Stigler Center at the University of Chicago Booth School of BusinessInequality, Imperialism, and the First World WarBranko Milanovic | Visiting Presidential Professor at City University of New York Graduate Center and senior scholar at the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), and...

CCPA recommendations for a better North American trade model October 6, 2017The all-party House of Commons trade committee is consulting Canadians on their priorities for bilateral and trilateral North American trade in light of the current renegotiation of NAFTA. In the CCPA’s submission to this process, Scott Sinclair, Stuart Trew, and Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood argue for a different kind of trading relationship that is inclusive, transformative, and […] Canadian Centre for Policy...

To continue from my post here, Paul Bairoch’s book Economics and World History: Myths and Paradoxes (New York and London, 1993) further analyses Western colonialism, the industrial revolution, and non-Western versus Western imperialism.Did British imperialism from the 15th to the early 19th century play a major – or indeed necessary – role in triggering the British industrial revolution?The fact is that, economically speaking, the British empire was not very big in the early modern period and...

The economic historian Paul Bairoch (1930–1999) subjected some Marxist myths about Western capitalism and imperialism to critical scrutiny in his now classic book Economics and World History: Myths and Paradoxes (New York and London, 1993).First, was the Western industrial revolution dependent on energy from the Third World?Bairoch (1993: 59) notes that right up until the post-WWII era the West was almost completely self-sufficient in energy, and as late as the 1930s much of the developed...

The relationship is a favourite of Marxists and even other leftists, and the usual line is: capitalism is inherently imperialistic.But is it? There are different forms of capitalism, and, above all, laissez faire ideology is not monolithic, and it comes in different forms.And it’s rather obvious that some of the most vehement capitalist ideologues are also the most vehemently anti-imperialist. Just think of Murray Rothbard or Ron Paul.For instance, just take Ron Paul’s comments in the videos...