Abstract
There is considerable agreement among economic historians that capitalism as a mode of organising social and economic life not only began in one miniscule little corner of the globe, namely north-west Europe, but from its very beginnings, while it was itself still in the process of being formed in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, involved outward expansion gradually encompassing ever-larger areas of the globe in a network of material exchanges. This network of material exchanges over time developed into a world market for goods and services, or an international division of labour. By the end of the nineteenth century the project of a single capitalist world economy had been completed in the sense that the grid of exchange relationships now covered practically all geographical areas of the world.
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Notes and References
S. Kuznets, ‘Quantitative Aspects of the Economic Growth of Nations: X-Ievels and Structure of Foreign Trade: Long-term Trends’, Economic Development and Cultural Change, 15 (2) Part II (January 1967) pp. 1–45.
In 1993. Source: Tables 5 and 6 in World Bank, Global Economic Prospects and the Developing Countries (Washington: World Bank, 1995).
I. Wallerstein, The Capitalist-World Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979) p. 15.
I. Wallerstein, ibid. For an excellent discussion on Wallerstein’s additions to Marx’s model, see Christopher Chase-Dunn, Global Formation, Structures of the World-Economy (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991) especially Part 1, Chapter 1.
S. Amin, Imperialism and Unequal Exchange (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1977).
A. G. Frank, Dependent Accumulation and Underdevelopment (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1979).
E. Mandel, Late Capitalism (London: New Left Books, 1976).
A. Szymanski, The Logic of Imperialism (New York: Praeger, 1981).
H. Magdoff, Imperialism: From the Colonial Age to the Present (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1978).
P. Baran, The Political Economy of Growth (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1967) (originally published in Spanish in 1957).
Cf. W. Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (Dar es Salaam: Tanzania Publishing House; and London: Bogle L’Ouverture, 1972).
See also my own book, A. M. M. Hoogvelt, The Sociology of Developing Societies (London: Macmillan, 1976) Chapter 4.
See B. Thomas, ‘The Historical Record of Capital Movements to 1913’, in J. H. Adler (ed.), Capital Movements and Economic Development (London: Macmillan, 1967) pp. 3–32,
reprinted in John H. Dunning, International Investment (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1972) pp. 27–58.
A. K. Cairncross, Home and Foreign Investment (New York: Harvester Press, 1975) p. 3 — first published Cambridge University Press, 1957.
Quoted in A. P. Thornton, The Imperial Idea and its Enemies (London: Macmillan, 1985) p. 76.
Cf. H. Wesselinck, Verdeel en Heers, De Deling van Afrika 1880–1914 (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 1991) opening citation.
B. Kidd, The Control of the Tropics (1989),
quoted in A. P. Thornton, Doctrines of Imperialism (New York: John Wiley, 1965) p. 85.
See Fieldhouse on the difference and complementarity of peripheral or core explanations of colonial imperialism, in D. K. Fieldhouse, Economics and Empire 1830–1914 (London: Macmillan, 1973) especially Chapter 4.
See V. I. Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1978; first published 1916);
N. Bukharin, Imperialism and World Economy (New York: International Publishers, 1929; first published in 1917);
and R. Hilferding, Finance Capital, a Study in the Latest Phase of Capitalist Development (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981; first published in 1910).
J. A. Hobson, Imperialism, a Study (London: Unwin Hyman, 1988 3rd edn; first published in 1905).
V. G. Kiernan, Marxism and Imperialism (London: Edward Arnold, 1974).
For example France after the the Franco-Prussian war — see H. Daalder, ‘Imperialism’ in Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (New York: Collier Macmillan, 1968).
For a critique of the alleged refutations of economic theories of imperialism, see P. Baran and P. M. Sweezy, ‘Notes on the Theory of Imperialism’, Monthly Review, 17 (March 1966) pp. 15–31. The authors argue that there is a fatal methodological error in comparing costs and rewards for nations as a whole, because the relevant actors on the imperalist stage are classes and their subdivisions down to and including their individual members.
B. Warren, Imperialism, Pioneer of Capitalism (London: Verso, 1980).
J. A. Schumpeter, Imperialism and Social Classes (New York: Kelley, 1951).
B. Warren, op. cit., note 32, p. 65. Note, however, Anthony Brewer’s observation that this line of criticism in part owes to a semantic confusion caused by different uses of the term ‘imperialism’. For Lenin in particular, imperialism did not specifically refer to the possession of colonies. He explicitly recognised that earlier stages of capitalism also involved colonial expansion — just as he recognized that the ‘semi-colonies’ of S. America were really victims of imperialist control and domination. cf A. Brewer, Marxist Theories of Imperialism (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980) p. 117.
A. Lipietz, ‘New Tendencies in the International Division of Labour: Regimes of Accumulation and Modes of Regulation’, in A. Scott, M. Storpor and contributors, Production, Work, Territory: The Geographical Anatomy of Industrial Capitalism (Winchester, Mass.: Unwin Hyman, 1988) p. 21.
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© 1997 Ankie Hoogvelt
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Hoogvelt, A. (1997). The History of Capitalist Expansion. In: Globalisation and the Postcolonial World. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-25671-6_1
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