The Meaning of Structural Revolution

Abstract

During the colonial period, and even after the Second World War, state powers were used to provide security for the interests of multinational companies. Since the 16^th century, there have been imperial conquests by Western European countries, and as early as the 7^th century by Islamic countries, to promote their business interests and to capture essential sea and land routes for international business. Since the Second World War, ‘regime changes’ have been used for the same purposes. The interests of the multinational companies and their governments were identical in these imperialistic conquests. The impacts of these interventions on colonized countries are great social and economic upheavals, destructions of domestic industries, forced migration of people and devastating famines. Within ten years of 1757, when the East India Company acquired the contract to collect taxes in Bengal, one fifth of the population were wiped out. Nearly a million people were killed in 1973 in Chile in order to protect the interest of the American mining companies. At those times, some parts of these colonized countries, particularly in the coastal areas, benefited from the expansion of trading activities and participations in the global economy controlled by the multinational companies of the great colonial powers.