IMPERIALISM AND
UNDERDEVELOPMENT IN THE THIRD WORLD
0.1 Introduction
Indeed, imperialism has been one of the most dominant forces
in world politics over the last four centuries, carving up whole countries
while oppressing indigenous peoples and obliterating entire civilizations. Imperialism
is not just about armies, labor and gold. Imperialism has a cultural dimension.
When one part of the world systematically oppresses another, it changes not
only the material make-up of those societies, it also affects the cultures.
According to Rodney (1972):
“Africa in the
fifteenth century was not just a jumble of different ‘tribes.’ There was a
pattern and there was historical movement. Societies such as feudal Ethiopia
and Egypt were at the furthest point of the process of evolutionary
development. Zimbabwe and the Bachwezi states were also clearly on the ascent
away from communalism, but at a lower level than the feudal states and a few
others that were not yet feudal such as those in Western Sudan.”
This above insight by Rodney shows that Africa had a
particular pattern of development before interference from without the
continent. As it was and still is with Africa so has it been with the rest of
the third world countries in Asia and Latin America.
This is why we can say thatthe political and economic life of
the so-called Third –World countries cannot be discussed or given a cursory
glance without taking consideration of the influence of the developed or
industrialized nations of the west and North America. This view came as an
antithesis to the Modernization paradigm of political economy, which stated
that the third world’s economic and political life can be studied as a closed
system meaning; underdevelopment in the third world is an original situation.
However , the above thesis remains what the neo-Marxist scholars of the school of imperialism have
come to contradict, because truly the politics of the third- world countries of
Asia ,Africa, and Latin America ,cannot be studied outside the imperialist
incursion of the third world , which is an offshoot of the growth of advanced
capitalism. This is why Lenin in his
book considered imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism.
Capitalism as an economic ideology was influenced greatly by
the Industrial Revolution in the west, starting from Britain in 1760(Collins
concise encyclopedia) , and later spreading to other parts of Europe in the 18th
century. The growth of capitalism andits spread around Europe further brought
about the saturation of the European markets. So in essence there was need for
markets elsewhere for these goods. So the continents of Africa, Asia and Latin
America became seen as veritable markets for for these goods.
Thus was born the idea of colonialism, which was consequently
a manifestation of imperialism, whereby territories were turned into colonies
of the principal authority for the main purpose of plunder. The colonization of
the third world countries by imperialistEurope halted and distorted the
development patterns that were being followed by the now called third world
countries. Where these imperialists were not allowed to peacefully assume
power, they took it by force.
Today, even after the decolonization of the countries of the
so-called third world, the industrialized nations are not only exporting goods
but also capital in the form of machinery,technology, investments and loans.
This paper is aimed at elucidating the concept and phenomenon of imperialism
vis-à-vis the underdevelopment situation in the third world today.
0.2 CONCEPTUAL
CLARIFICATIONS
In the course of this academic exploration it would be
pertinent to explicate the concepts of imperialism, Development and
Underdevelopment for the sake of clarity and putting them in the right context
for the sake of good comprehension.
1.
Imperialism: imperialism has been a concept and
phenomenon fraught with so many contradictions as regards its existence or
authenticity. Modernization scholars
like W.W.Rostow in his book” the stages of economic growth “have expressly
disputed the existence of the concept of imperialism. On the other hand the Neo-Marxist scholars mostly from the
third world, scholars like; Andre Gunder Frank, WalterRodney and Ake Claude
have come to defend the existence of the phenomenon, further seeingit asa major
force in the life of the third world. So what is this imperialism?
According to Parati( 1995)”imperialism means the process
whereby the dominant politico-economic interest of one nation expropriate for
their own enrichment the land ,labor raw-materials and markets of another
people. This definition shows that imperialism is a highly parasitic
relationship between territories, because the so-called industrialized
expropriated the resources of the third world to feed their own
industrialization. These acts are usually done with impunity.
Ake (1981:20) also saw the concept as the economic control an
exploitation of foreign lands, arising from the necessity of counteracting the
impediments of the accumulation of capital engendered by the internal
contradictions of the domestic capitalist economy. From this definition, it is
implied that imperialism is as a result of the growth of advanced capitalism.
Given the expansionist nature of capitalism it has little inclination to stay
at home. Almost 150 years ago, Marx and Engels described a Bourgeoisie that chase
over the world surface for the globe for capital accumulation and surplus
value.
Barratt cited in Ake (1981:20) also sees the concept as “the
outward drive of certain peoples to build empires –both formal colonies and privileged
positions in markets, protected sources of materials and extended opportunities
for profitable employment of labor. The concept has thus been associated with
an unequal economic relationship between states not simply the inequality of
large and small ,rich and poor trading partners but the inequality of political
and economic dependence of the latter on the former.
This above definition is useful because it comes from the
perspective of some common sense view of imperialism but it did not establish a
link between capitalism and imperialism.
After exploring the above definitions by these authorities in
the field it is now pertinent to see imperialism as the economic and political
control of a geographical entity by another, whereby the former is dominated by
the latter for the main purposes of plunder and extraction of, material and
surplus value in a relationship that ends up leading to dependence. This
definition could be seen as appropriate in the context of this paper because;
1.
It
establishes the relationship between
capitalism and imperialism and
2.
It
establishes the role of dependence in imperialism.
3.
Development and Underdevelopment: indeed the twin concepts of
development and underdevelopment have remained problematic in terms of
conceptualizations in the field of political science. It has elicited various
definitions from scholars of diverse backgrounds and ideological underpinnings.
According to Rodney (1972:21) “development in human society
is a many sided process. At the level of the individual, it implies increased
skill and capacity, greater freedom,creativity, self – discipline,
responsibility and material well being. Some of these are virtually moral
categories and are difficult to evaluate depending as they do on the age in
which one lives, ones class, origins and one’s personal code of what is right
and what is wrong. However , what is indisputable is that the achievement of
any of those aspects of personal development is very much tied in with the state
of the society as a whole".
This above exposition of development by Rodney posits that
the societal and economic variants of development are all hinged on the
individual. When individuals making up a society are developed, then the
society can be said to be developed.
According to John Montgomery and William Siffin cited in
Abah(2000:5), “development is planned mobilization and direction of scarce
resources to achieve constantly rising national goals and objectives formulated
by the national machinery. To them government must be involved in the
development process of a given geographical entity or a semi-autonomous
political unit.
Fred Riggs also cited in Abah(2000:5) is however more
inclined to equate development with freedom as he defines it as increase I the
level of of autonomy and discretion of social system.
In the context of this paper it is better to see development
as the qualitative and quantitative increase in society, which is as a result
of the creative energies of the individuals in that society. This definition
covers the fact that development cannot be given to a group of people or
community but could only be said to have happened when the people in a given society
are able to transform nature or manipulate it for their own betterment.
Underdevelopment on the other hand does not connote the
absence of development because every society has developed in one way or
another to the extent possible. Underdevelopment therefore makes sense only as
a means of comparing levels of development. It is very much tied to the fact that
social development has been uneven and from a strictly economic point of view,
some human groups have advanced further by producing more and becoming wealthier.
Hence in comparison with the greater affluence of the countries of Europe and
North America, the economically backward countries could only be called
underdeveloped. This perspective was aptly presented by Walter Rodney in “How
Europe Underdeveloped Africa”, where he stated that virtually all
underdeveloped countries of the Third World without exception passed through a
colonial era and the trauma of colonialism impacted upon them the condition of
underdevelopment.
This view by Rodney (1972) blamed the underdeveloped status
of the third world on imperialism. It is also instructive of how the
underdeveloped post colonial economies Of Africa, Asia and Latin America, fused
into the global capitalist economy to compete side by side with the
industrialized economies of Western Europe and North America.
So we can say today that the communities in Africa, Asia and,
Latin America that are now impoverished and pauperized were as a result of imperialism. Today the
gap between the so-called developed countries and the underdeveloped countries
is so wide. Dependency is the order of the day in which the countries of the
third world depend on the industrialized nations for almost everything ranging
from goods to services. The third world countries have been relegated to the background and only made relevant in the
area of supply of Raw Materials in the international division of labor.
Backwardness in science and technology is also another major area where the
third-world lags behind in the balanced of world economy. Major projects that
require the employment of advanced science and technology are now being
contracted out to European multinational and transnational companies.
There can be no doubt that there is still a widening gap
between the central and peripheral states in world economy and politics today.
This is because the imperialist nations have seized control of five monopolies,
which are (1) technological monopoly (2) monopolistic control of worldwide
financial markets (3) media and communications monopolies and (4) monopoly of
weapons of mass destruction and other advanced means of destruction.
This above situation puts the third world countries in a
competitive disadvantage when it comes to trade and investment.
0.3 Theoretical
Perspective:The
theoretical perspective that best suits the thesis of this paper is the
dependency theory as propounded by Andre Gunder Frank,Immanuel Wallensteinand a
host of other third world scholars.
•
Generally
dependency is the reliance on a person, or something for support, survival or
enhancement
In development studies dependency speaks of a situation in
which a particular country or region relies on another for support, “survival”
and growth.
Dependency is aNeo-Marxist
perspective that maintains that Third World countries are Underdeveloped
because of the activities of the First World (developed and industrialized
nations)
Dependency theory holds that “the condition of
underdevelopment is precisely the result of the incorporation of the Third
World economies into the capitalist world system which is dominated by the West
and North America” (Randall and Theo bald 1998, 120)
Dependency Theory emerged in the 1950s as a critique of
Modernization
Argues that these Classical theorists failed to recognize
that Imperialism, Colonialism and Neo-Colonialism is solely responsible for the
development of the First World and the subsequent underdevelopment of the Third
World.
These below are the features of the dependency critique:
•
The
existence of a Capitalist World System as a conduit pipe for the siphoning of the resources of the
third world.
•
In
this capitalist system countries are divided into Metropoles and Satellites
(Frank) or Core and Semi-periphery and Periphery (Wallenstein)
•
Core
Countries/ are the Rich Industrialized Countries of the West, whose GDP and per
capita income exceed 7% per annum
•
Peripheries
are those countries whose annual rate of growth is less than 5-7% and are
primary producers of goods and services.
Semi-peripheries: Newly industrialized countries, China,
Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea (Asian Tigers), Cuba, Brazil, Venezuela, Mexico,
Indonesia, Egypt, Portugal, Spain and Italy.
•
The
capitalist system operates where peripheries/Satellites provide raw material
for the Core/Metrpole countries who manufacture and sells it. Thus the basis of
dependency and Underdevelopment.
Dependency according to scholars emerged as a result of
Europe’s drive to capital accumulation. Thus led to the colonization of Latin
American, Caribbean, African and East Asian States. The extraction of wealth
(Natural resources and capital) followed leading to the transfer of this wealth
to Europe facilitating industrialization and development (Rodney, 1972).
According to Andre Gunder Frank, “monopoly control of trade
and unequal exchange between metropole and satellite resulted in the extraction
of surplus value (Potter and Binns et al, 1999).
In general the theory of dependency holds that both
;political and economic dependency are inversely and significantly related
economic prosperity, that is more dependent countries are also less prosperous.
In order for these backward to countries to develop they must disassociate
themselves from all relations with the first world. This is because the
imperialist nations of the west have created artificial underdevelopment in the
third world through imperialism.
0.4 Imperialism and
Third world Underdevelopment
As has been earlier posited in this paper, the political and
the economic life of the third- world cannot be studied imperialism. This is
because imperialism has made a major impact amongst the so- called third world
or less developed countries and has even altered their modes of production that
should be historically determined.
According to Rodney
(1972:3) every people have shown a capacity for independently increasing their
ability to live a more satisfactory life through exploiting the resources of
nature. Every continent independently participated in the early epochs of the
extension of man’s control over his environment which means in effect that
every continent can point to a period of economic development.
Drawing from Rodney above even the so-called third-world
countries today showed some form of development pattern before external
interference from the imperial nations such as ; Britain, France and the U.S.A.
A classical example of this above statement was the situation
of India. In 1810, India was exporting more textiles to England than England
was exporting to India. By 1830, the trade flows was reversed. The British had
put up prohibitive tariff barriers to shut out Indian
finished goods and were dumping their commodities in India, a practice which
was backed by the British Gunboats and military force.
Within a matter of years, the great textile centers of Dacca
and Madras were turned into ghost towns.
The Indians were sent back to the land to raise the cotton
used in British textile factories. In effect India was reduced to being a cow
milked by British financiers.
The result of the above relationship was that by 1850,
India’s debt had grown to 53 million pounds. From 1850 to 1900 its per-capita
income dropped from almost two-thirds. The value of raw materials and
commodities the Indians were obliged to send to Britain during most of the 19th
century amounted yearly to more than the total income of the sixty million
Indian agricultural and industrial workers. The massive poverty we associate
with India despite its recent growth was the country’s original historical
condition. British imperialism did two things. First it ended India’s
development process, then it forcibly underdeveloped that country.
Similar processes occurred throughout the third-world. The
enormous wealth extracted should remind us that there originally were few
really poor nations. Countries like Brazil, Indonesia, Chile, Bolivia, Zaire,
Mexico, Malaysia, and the Philippines were and sometimes still are rich in
resources. Some have been so thoroughly plundered as to be desolate in all
respects. However, most of third-world is not “underdeveloped but overexploited”.
Western colonization and imperialism have created a lower rather than a higher
living standard.
A according to Paul Baran(1957) in 1830, in Marx’s youth, the
countries that make up what we now call the third-world accounted for 60.9
percent of the world’s industrial potential. By 1860, the decade in which
Marx’s capital was written, this had fallen to 36.7 percent. By 1953 it had
declined to a low of 6.5 percent. China’s share of world industry fell from
33.3 percent in 1800 to 6.3 percent in 1900 and 2.3 percent in 1953. As
historian David Christian has noted, “The twentieth century term the
third-world could have made no sense in 1750, when today’s third-world
countries accounted to almost 75 percent of global industrial production. By
the late twentieth century, they accounted for less than 15 percent.
The above example is instructive of imperialism because it
shows how the phenomenon has over the years transferred or in a better sense
expropriated the wealth both human and material from the third-world to the
developed and industrialized nations.
Basically, in Africa countries like Egypt, Ethiopia, the
Maghreb, Sudan and Mali had already been developing on their own path before
the 15th century. But with the coming of western colonialism and
imperialism, such developments were interrupted and cultural and socio-economic
systems were halted and reinvented by the European imperialists. After the
decolonization of the third-world countries the greatest blow that was dealt
their politico-economic make up was how their underdeveloped capitalist
economies were fused to the global capitalist economy. These economies were now
made to compete side –by-side with the already developed countries.
The industrialized or imperialist nations also used their MNCs
(Multinational Corporations) or even Transnational Corporations to further
plunder the resources of the third-world till today.
As a classical example North-America and European
corporations have acquired control of more than three-fourths of the known
mineral resources of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Such multinational
corporations invest in countries with cheaper labor markets U.S corporate foreign
investment grew 84 percent 84 percent from 1985 to 1990, the most dramatic
increase being in cheap labor countries like South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore.
Transnational’s have developed a global production line.
General motors’ has factories that produce cars, trucks and a wide range of
auto components in Canada, Brazil, Venezuela , Spain, Belgium, Yugoslavian,
Nigeria, Singapore, Philippines, south Africa, south Korea and a dozen other
countries.
Today by controlling the substructure of the the third-world
countries the imperialists who could be in more recent terms called neo-imperialists or neo-colonialists
control the substructure of the world economy and as such control the
superstructure of the third- world countries. This is because major economic
decisions are being made by the developed countries and by virtue of the
technological advancement in the developed world; they tend to produce more
goods for exportation to the third world.
On the the other hand the third world is relegated to the background
in the international division of labor, by just producing raw materials which
is a very primary stage of production and productivity. This situation makes
the third world countries run at a deficit balance of payment because they buy
more than what they sell. Also the situation brings about dependency on the
industrialized nations for even local businesses.
Today the third world is not being controlled directly like
in the colonial period but the control today is indirect using the MNCs, and
sometimes the media for indirect psychological ; control of the third-world. Also
the metropolitan bourgeoisie of the industrialized economies further plunder
the resources of the third world with the aid of the comprador Bourgeoisie. In
Nigeria today which, is also a third world country, the situation is not
different from the other of the third-world.
0.5 CONCLUSION AND
RECOMMENDATION
In conclusion, the influence of imperialism on the third
–world cannot be overemphasized given its immense impact in determining the
politico-economic standing of the third-world today. Whole civilizations have
been altered, countries carved up and mode of productions artificially changed,
and dependencies created. The situation now remains where the third –world
finds a solution for the further imperial exploitation and domination of the
third-world. A veritable solution to
this situation is for the third-world countries to delink from whatsoever link
they have with the imperialist nations. But immediate delinking may be fatalistic.
So a slow process delinking will be advised so as to combat imperialism and
underdevelopment in the third-world forever.
REFERENCES
Abah, N. (2000)
Development administration; A multidisciplinary approach Enugu: John-Jacobs
classic publishers.
Ake, C. (1981) Political
economy of Africa. New York. Longman Inc.
Andre, G. (1967) Capitalism and
Underdevelopment in Latin America .New York: Monthly Review Press.
Baran, P (1957) the
political economy of growth. New York: Monthly review press.
David, C. (2004) Maps
of time.Berkely: University of California.
Parati, M (1995) Against
an Empire. Losangeles : city light books.
Potter &Binns et al(1999) Geographies of Development. New York: Oxford University Press.
Randall &Theobald (1998) Political change and Underdevelopment: A Lynn Reinerpublisher’s
book.
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