Tag: colonialism

  • Nations and Nationalism in Developing Countries

    Many new nations in the global south struggled to find national unity following independence because of ethnic and religious divisions within their national borders.

  • How does Colonialism Shape the World We Live In? (1/5)

    This 2019 Live Stream from Al Jazeera is a good resource for students studying the Global Development option in A-level sociology. They asked the question: how does colonialism shape the world we live in today, and fielded responses from the audience who took part via #BecauseColonialism Below I summarise part 1 of what is a…

  • Explaining South Korea’s Development #1

    Korea was a Japanese Colony from 1910 to 1945, providing food and fuel for the ‘motherland’. Following the fall of the Japanese Empire at the end of World War II, Korea was divided along the 38th parallel into North and South Korea, North Korea controlled by communist Russia, and South Korea governed by the United…

  • Dependency Theory – Revision Notes

    Dependency Theory claims that Colonialism had a negative impact on the satellite territories in Africa, Asia and Latin America; that neocolonialism keeps the ex colonial master rich and the ex colonies poor, and that in order to develop the ex colonies need to isolate themselves from the capitalist system, protect themselves from the ‘free market’ and develop…

  • Forging the American Empire

    Is it possible to perceive the making of modern America as a sort of colonial project? One in which the new American capitalist class colonizes the so called American wilderness for the benefit of Capitalism? This is the argument Andrew Brooks makes in his recent book – The End of Development: On 4 July 1776…

  • The End of Development?

    A summary of The End of Development: A Global History of Poverty and Prosperity, by Andrew Brooks (2017) This blog post covers Part 1: Making the Modern World Chapter 1: environmental determinism and early human history The argument in this chapter is that nature (as in the natural environment) does not determine human society and…

  • The End of Poverty? A Documentary taking a ‘Dependency Theory’ View of Underdevelopment and Development

    This 2008 Documentary seeks to answer the question of why there is still so much poverty in the world when there is sufficient wealth to eradicate it. In order to answer this question, the video goes back to 1492, which marks the start of European colonialism and the beginning of the global capitalist system, making…

  • A Very Brief History of the Democratic Republic of Congo

    This year I’m using the DRC as a major case study in underdevelopment (it is last on the UN’s HDI rankings after all) – Here’s my (mainly cut and paste from Wikipedia) very brief history of the DRC – I’ll add in video links, general links, pictures and extracts from numerous books later…  The Stuff…

  • Dependency Theory

    Dependency Theorists argue that rich countries accumulated their wealth through exploiting poorer countries. Initially this was through colonialism and slavery, later on through neo-colonialism. To develop, poorer countries need to break free from these exploitative relations.