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The Anglo-Maratha Campaigns and the Contest for India: The Struggle for Control of the South Asian Military Economy
Randolf G. S. Cooper
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
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ASIN: 0521824443 |
Book Description
The Anglo-Maratha Campaigns of 1803 represented the last serious indigenous obstacle to the formation of the British Raj. This study examines Maratha military culture through a battle-by-battle analysis of the campaigns. Randolf Cooper challenges the ethnocentric assumptions that associate Western political ascendancy with "The Military Revolution" and argues that the real contest for India was the struggle to control the South Asian military economy, rather than a single decisive military battle. Victory depended more on economics and intelligence than on superiority in discipline, drill and technology.
Book Description
The preeminent book on Chilean history, Chile: The Legacy of Hispanic Capitalism has been thoroughly updated throughout. Among its many new features are an analysis of the global developments in Chile during the last two decades; a new chapter that focuses specifically on the transition from a military to a civilian government; and extensive coverage of human rights as well as of environmental, economic, and social policies implemented since 1990. Insightful and clearly written, this new edition also includes twenty-six new photos that bring this exciting text to life.
Book Description
This new and completely revised edition of "Super Imperialism" describes the genesis of America's political and financial domination.
Michael Hudson's in-depth and highly controversial study of U.S. financial diplomacy explores the faults built into the core of the World Bank and the IMF at their inception which -- he argues -- were intended to preserve the US's financial hegemony. Difficult to detect at the time, these problems have since become explicit as the failure of the international economic system has become apparent; the IMF and World Bank were set up to give aid to developing countries, but instead many of the world's poorest countries have been plunged into insurmountable debt crises.
Hudson's critique of the destructive course of the international economic system provides important insights into the real motivations at the heart of these institutions - and the increasing tide of opposition that they face around the world.
Customer Reviews:
Misleading title.......2007-06-01
There are much better longer reviews on the book. This is just a quick take on the book after quickly looking over the updated version and having read the earlier version.
1. Doesn't deal with imperialism in its most fundamental conceptions.
2. Is not in the Marxist-Leninist traditions.
3. Doesn't deal with militaristic imperialism.
4. Doesn't even deal with the more recent manifestations of the US's bubble-driven hyperactivity, such as private equity, which has been around long enough, surely, to integrate it into a book of meta-financial analysis (which is what this book is).
If you want to deal with real imperialism, try Lenin and then follow it up with Blum's 'Rogue State'. If you think Stiglitz is interesting, here is a great read, as the author is a bit left of Stiglitz. He is not, though, in the Marxist tradition (if that is what you are looking for).
If you are looking for material dealing with the US's abrogation of Bretton Woods and the establishment of a unilateral exchange system, see
'The Global Gamble: Washington's Faustian Bid for World Domination' by Peter Gowan. It is much better written than this book.
Difficult and rewarding, Hudson is the real deal.......2006-05-25
Super-Imperialism is better viewed as a radical alternative to common undergraduate textbooks such as Joan Edelman Spero's, "The Politics of International Economic Relations" than as an update to the theories of Lenin or Hobson. (His background and prose style are similar to Spero's and his book covers similar ground.)
It has three sections, each which could have been a separate book.
Chapters 1-6 are a history of U.S. international economic relations from World War I through Bretton Woods.
Chapters 7-10 are a critique of the "The Institutions of the American Empire" (GATT, the World Bank, the IMF and U.S. foreign aid mechanisms). If you have ever wondered what all of the huge protests of the World Bank and IMF were all about these chapters are for you.
Chapters 11-15 are about the U.S. economic transition in the late 1960s and early 1970s from running consistent balance of payments surpluses to running consistent deficits. (We used to export more than we imported; Now we import more than we export.) At the same time the U.S. stopped backing dollars with gold, which forced other countries to lend the surplus dollars created by our trade deficit back to the U.S. government (i.e. to buy treasury notes), thereby also subsidizing our chronic budget deficits. This is the "super-imperialism" of the book's title. This situation was still new and strange when the first edition was published in 1972, and the book's reputation rests on the light Hudson was able to shed on it.
The 2003 Edition has a new introduction and two new chapters at the end. The rest of the book has occasional new material, but does not appear to have been extensively re-written.
It's a difficult and rewarding book. The difficulty lies partly in the subject matter itself, partly in Hudson's convoluted prose and partly in the numerous typographical errors that mar the 2003 Pluto Press edition.
The book is rewarding because it's honest. Readers educated in the U.S. will initially regard Hudson's account with some skepticism. We can't help it; We've been systematically miseducated by pro-U.S. polemics presented in an "objective" tone.
In contrast Hudson is a strident critic of the U.S. management of the global economy. But so is any reasonably objective person who is apprized of the facts. I much prefer an author who honestly tells you the real story as he understands it to one who conceals the awful truth behind an ostensibly impartial facade. But a "revisionist" has to work twice as hard to make his case, and that is why the book contains the detailed explication of what reviewer Myers calls the "intricacies of events and negotiations that gave rise to the present order."
I think an open-minded reader will be won over by Hudson's thoughtful use of contemporaneous sources (e.g. government publications and articles in the business press) and also biographical sources to illuminate how key decision makers understood the alternatives, and their motives for pursuing the policies that they did when forging the post-war economic order. As he places these choices in context it quickly becomes evident that the motives on the U.S. side have been consistently aggressive and that U.S. policy makers have all along viewed multilateral economic institutions as instruments of national policy--to the world's detriment.
Hudson also has a keen sense of the painfully narrow horizon of human foresight. The historical sections sometimes read like a conspiracy theory in which the conspirators are not very smart. E.g., Franklin Roosevelt's stubborn insistence that World War I debts be repaid prolonged the Great Depression; When J. M. Keynes was negotiating Bretton Woods for the newly elected Labour government, he got them a terrible deal; The U.S. transition to "super-imperialism" which is the main story of the book (chapters 11 through 14) was originally an unintended consequence of the huge budget and trade deficits caused by the Vietnam War.
If you are interested in "globalization" this book is an important piece of the puzzle, but it really only covers up through 1973, and it spends more time on the relationship between the U.S. and Europe than on "North-South" relations. Having said that, Ch. 8 "The Imperialism of U.S. Foreign Aid" is very good, esp. how foreign aid benefits the U.S. balance of payments and the harmful effects of U.S. agricultural exports. China is hardly mentioned.
If you are an economics student and you sense that they aren't telling you the whole story, or just a thoughtful citizen who wants to sharpen your conceptual tools for understanding and resisting the strategies of U.S. imperialism, this book is for you.
Crucial insights, plodding explication.......2005-07-24
In this history of the creation of the current system of global trade and finance, Hudson offers some crucial insights for dissipating the obscurantist fog that wafts out of mainstream economics departments to provide cover for neoliberal imperialism.
He details how the US emerged with its economy unscathed from the World Wars, and seized this opportunity to unseat Britain as the dominant force in global finance, leveraging control over war debt and reconstruction funds into dominance of the World Bank and IMF. He describes the way these nominally multilateral institutions were shaped by the US to perpetuate and extend its hegemony over the particulars of world trade and finance, opening foreign markets to US producers while protecting domestic industries with tariffs, ensuring ample flows of raw materials to US manufaturers and stunting the development of 3rd world nations.
In his most penetrating analysis, Hudson describes the way the US managed to turn its chronic trade deficits from the Vietnam War era onward into a mechanism of "Super-Imperialism": by unmooring the dollar from the gold standard, the US established a 'debtor imperialism' whereby nations with trade surpluses against the US were forced to buy US treasury bills in lieu of gold. The rest of the world is thus forced to finance the growing US trade deficit (and thus US military interventions) in perpetuity, or face a meltdown of the current world economic order and a collapse in the value of their own immense dollar holdings.
Hudson's presentation of the intricacies of the events and negotiations that gave rise to the present order are somewhat belabored and presume a familiarity with macro-economics. For the layperson, his basic thesis is clearly presented in the preface and introduction, and those without a special interest in economic history are advised to pass over the body of the book.
Compelling Update.......2004-12-04
A remarkable work. It functions as both a novel theory of imperialism and a 20th century history of international finance. The two converge as Hudson shows how the former evolves from the latter, thereby elevating the US to a position economically and militarily astride the rest of the globe. Anyone who senses that behind the comforting rhetoric of Free World and Democracy, an aggressive empire lurks with contours and mechanisms unlike previous ones, should pick up the book.
This second edition updates developments through 2002 and includes a fresh Introduction and Preface. It may be helpful to note that at the rather basic text-book level Hudson doesn't fill in the blanks. A familiarity with the rudimentary mechanics of international finance is assumed from the outset. Nonetheless, the prose remains accessible and the train of thought clearly stated, no minor accomplishments for a work of this sort. Moreover, I'm glad this new updated edition dispensed with Mc Carthy's Introduction to the previous edition, which needlessly entangled Super Imperialism in the tangential Marxian tradition. (Unfortunately reviewer Saltillo has responded to the older edition which may cause unnecessary confusion to review readers.) Also, the Preface and Introduction to the new edition effectively summarize the text, such that those wishing to absorb the main points without the details can stick with these prefatory sections.
One note of caution. Super imperialism treats international financial policy as a purely governmental affair apart from private individuals, organizations, or special interests. This exclusive focus produces an impression of the state as an independent and autonomous entity, acting separately from the private interests surrounding it. Whether or not this is an accurate portrayal remains an open question. I don't fault the book for not addressing this basically Marxian issue; Hudson's correct in keeping a tight focus on governmental agency such that the contours of his theory can emerge. Nonetheless, a follow-up might profitably examine what connections there are. Be that as it may, the new edition stands as a welcome update to the older, seminal edition, and given recent dollar developments, is now timelier than ever.
An awkward argument with moments of brilliance.......2004-11-04
Hudson's historical argument in this book is both brilliant and sometimes a bit rough.
Hudson has always had a great talent for interpreting and sketching out for weaker minds like us what the US government's abandonment of the gold-standard really means. When Hudson came forward with his thesis in the mid 1970's, his thesis was outrageous among orthodox economists: to suggest that the US should be worried about the long-term consequences of running balance of payments deficits year after year, decade after decade was crazy leftist nonsense in the 1970s. As long as people continue to need the US markets more than the US needs any other one country's markets (and people still have faith in the good credit of the US government) there is no reason US could not run balance of payment deficits forever, according to the conventional wisdom.
What amazes me is that now, after having done exactly what Hudson warned the US government not to do in the 1970s, many otherwise relatively orthodox economists are beginning to worry about this. Hudson may be on the more "sky-is-falling" end of things, but his analysis was right on the nail in 1972 and is still there today: worst case scenario - massive recession and massive devaluation of the dollar (by massive I mean, unprecedented). Former US Treasury Secretary, Robert Rubin was quoted in March 16, 2006 WSJ as saying that "The probabilities are extremely high that if we don't address these imbalances, then at some point, and it could be years down the road, we'll pay a very big price." We are in a limbo world where no one really knows how this problem is going to play out, but Hudson should be credited for being one of the first, and longest-running, advocates for addressing this problem. Too bad it has taken so many decades for people to recognize what he has been telling us all along about balance of payments deficits.
The rest of the argument Hudson makes in this book is a bit tough to follow, though. Essentially, Hudson attempts to show how the US has, during this century but especially since WWII, systematically sought to manipulate all of the great economic institution-building opportunities following WWII to advance the interests of the US over other countries. Coming off the gold standard and running up a balance of payments deficit was just one of many ways in which this occurred. The US largely succeeded. The GATT (now WTO), World Bank, IMF, all bear American "fingerprints".
I agree that the mega-institutions of the contemporary world economic and political machine are largely the unilateral creation of the US, imposed on the other great nations at a time when the other nations were particularly vulnerable to US force of will and not particular inclined to be heterodox visionaries. I also agree that the US in general has probably used as much leverage as it could in negotiating all of the defining institutions in which it had any hand in constructing.
And yet, how could it have been any different? National governments pursue their self-interest and the interest of their citizens, often at the expense of other national governments and their citizens. The nation-state system is set up to work that way. But is the problem really one of US bad behavior, as Hudson suggests? Isn't the problem really structural? In the nation-state world, wherein the world is divided up into pseudo-autonomous political monopolies, each individually endowed with particular strengths and weaknesses, and all pitted against each other in a laissez-faire system where the only things that keep nation-states from raping and killing each other to oblivion are, good faith and the fact that the balance of power among the nation-states is enough to keep each monopoly contained in its behavior towards the other monopolies, what sort of behavior could we have expected from the US, a nation-state that, at a series of pivotal moments in 20th century history, found itself with "golden opportunities" to take advantage of other nations' weaknesses and advance its own power? Would the French, or the Brits, or the Japanese, or the Italians, or the Germans, or the Russians have behaved any different if they found themselves holding all the cards in 1945 instead of the US?
My point is, the facts Hudson lays out are correct - there clearly is a problem in the way in which our current world order has been put together and the US is at the middle of that problem. The conclusions Hudson draws from those facts do not go deep enough in understanding what those facts mean, however. It isn't that the Americans behave or behaved "bad" by the standard of good behavior implicit in the nation-state system, it is that the nation-state system itself to a certain extent reflects 19th century laissez-faire values of autonomy and individuality that pit nation-states against each other in a world where each is out to improve its lot through trade and, when possible and tolerable, violence. The system itself breaks down when one player becomes too powerful. To blame the US for the systemic problem of massive power imbalances between nationstates is simply pushing any hope for correction in the wrong direction.
Book Description
Up-to-date, easy to read, and wide-ranging, this is the first comprehensive academic work to explore the growth and development of the opium trade in relation to imperialism and a global economy. The book provocatively links the general expansion of the European empires-from Columbus to Cornwallis to Conrad-and the growth of commercial capitalism specifically to the Asian opium trade. Trocki breaks new ground by considering the production and traffic in tobacco, sugar, alcohol, tea, as well as opium. In an age of awareness of large-scale drug use, this book takes a long look at the history of our relationship with mind-altering substances.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent study of the Empire as a 'global drug cartel' .......2005-04-29
This book is an excellent study of the infamous opium trade, `the most long-continued and systematic crime of modern times'. And who committed this crime? The pious, canting, hypocritical Christian rulers of the British Empire!
Throughout the 19th century, the British ruling class paid for its ever more expensive empire by producing opium in India and exporting it to China. The British state promoted, protected and profited from the trade. Revenue from the opium trade financed all its governments in Southeast Asia.
By the 1830s, opium was the largest commerce of the time in any single commodity. In 1860, the British Indian government legalised India's narcotics trade with China as a government monopoly, run by the Opium Department. It became the Indian government's second largest source of revenue.
Trocki wrote, "So long as there was considerable profit in the drug, the enterprise was protected and given a safe haven in British India. ... the continued legal production of the drug in British India effectively prevented the eradication of drug use elsewhere." "if Britain did not provide a safe and legal haven for the trade, it could not flourish."
"The records show that the Indian government and the Colonial Office were constantly at pains to maximize profits and to protect, at almost any cost, the opium revenue of India. ... British authorities fought tenacious battles throughout the 1890s and into the twentieth century to preserve the opium system against reformers or opponents. So long as the British government profited from and perpetuated the opium industry, there could be no stopping it. It was the persistence in protecting the trade and preserving the revenues that seems the most reprehensible element of British policy during these years."
He concludes, "without the drug, there probably would have been no British Empire." "In their dreams, the empire, the Raj, was a great and glorious enterprise. It was also a global drug cartel which enslaved and destroyed millions and enriched only a few. The image of the Raj was itself a delusion created by opium."
And now the present pious, canting, hypocritical Christian rulers of Britain have the gall to praise the global drug cartel that was the Empire!
colonial history as a system.......2005-02-23
Most histories are about countries, cultures, or some social unit tightly bounded in space and time. Following the history of opium allows Trocki to show the inherent connection between regions (Europe, India, Southeast Asia, China), policies (free trade, monopoly, war), development of capitalism and the material basis of colonial exploitation, and the European hand in the creation of the Third world. Trocki's great strength is that he tells the story with evidence: numbers, charts, photos, and documentation. The result is that a complex, organic, and fascinating world opens up to the reader.
This is not a polemical work. However, its evidence and narrative undermine what ever is left of the European claim to bringing civilization. Trocki opens and closes the book with Joseph Conrad's peerless vision into the European heart of darkness.
Nice try, but...........2001-03-29
If you are one of those who appreciate sweeping generalizations, unsubstantiated declarations, and retrospective morality this is the book for you. One has to give Trocki credit for a concerted effort, and it is clear that he chases his mission with a vengeance. The thesis is controversial to say the least: "Without opium there would have been no British Empire." Many will be turned off by such a bombastic declaration, and, knowing this, Trocki does go in with all guns blazing. But no question, he shoots wide of the mark.
Besides the simple question of layout and direction of argument (which does not support the declared thesis) there are out-of-context and simply wrong quotations both of secondary authors and his own primary sources. Trocki makes extensive use of sarcastic remarks to drive home is own (presumably Marxist) political views and they can really irritate, especially when he is factually wrong. Trocki is not a historian but has tried his hand at historical research, and from this point alone he certainly made a poor impression.
To be fair, some of his later chapters are thoroughly interesting, as they concentrate on the author's own research area of South East Asia where he has undeniable expertise. Also, unless you reject post-modern historiography out of hand, it is always interesting to see a scholar attempt to create an entire weltbild out of his research and tie it in to other major developments worldwide. Personally, I think this is what historical research should be about. Trocki, however, could easily have damaged the entire budding genre with this book. If you want to read about British-Indian opium production, stick with Singh, or better yet, Amar Farooqui's new book 'Smuggling as Subversion.'
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- The City and the House of Lords
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Gentlemanly Capitalism and British Imperialism: The New Debate on Empire
Manufacturer: Longman Publishing Group
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ASIN: 0582327822 |
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The City and the House of Lords.......2002-08-09
After reviewing the various theories about power relations between the City and British upper class, authors analyze history of British investments across the globe: Asia, Africa, Latin America, Canada to name a few. They show how both City and British upper aristocracy rather than the British industrialists shaped British imperial strategies.
They demonstrate how the main Imperial and Overseas investors in are the British upper class while City professionals and middle class invest mainly in Britain and Europe. The City was used to channel British old money across the globe.
Main beneficiaries of those imperial and overseas investments are people with political power, the Lords. These in turn shape British imperial policies to fit their investments, building the British Empire along it.
But all locations are not equally influenced by them. Canadian financial markets in the interwar period for instance move according to interest rate of the dollar and pound. If dollar interest rate is lower than pound interest rate, then American influence is larger in Canada. Otherwise British influence dominates.
A detailed study about relation betweens upper classes and imperialism even if authors focused their attention on relations between the City and British Aristocracy adequatly naming it 'Gentlemanly Capitalism'.
Book Description
Globalization is the mantra of our times. Business executives, politicians, and intellectuals all seem to agree that it just happened, and that we must adapt to it. In this new book, the entire globalization project is subjected to a powerful blast from the left. James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer contend that globalization is not new—capitalism over the past 100 years has experienced periodic waxings and wanings of its tendency to integrate economies worldwide. They go on to argue that globalization was created by deliberate policies put in place by powerful states under the control of dominant classes, and that it is not a structural part of the capitalist system—it is instead an ideological smokescreen used to divert attention away from the resurgence of imperialist powers. The authors do see an alternative—a renewed, democratic, and revolutionary socialist vision that is capable of uniting people, and of being recognized by political movements that are committed to finding realistic strategies and achievable goals.
Customer Reviews:
A lighter and fancier rendition of imperialism.......2006-04-11
"Globalization" is deemed to be something very cool and new age. We hear people say things like "we live in a small village called the World and globalization what makes this happen". It all sounds very nice, fancy and cool!
But, do you think it is really cool for those who are "globalized"? The authors basically argue that globalization is some sort of new fancy name for imperialism with lighter rendition. People of the underdeveloped and developing countries should be very cautions as to the activities of some worldwide organizations IMF, World Bank etc.
One of the most eye-opening chapters of the book was the one about non-governmental organizations (NGO's). They argue that even though the majority of the administrators of these organizations are local people, they have, in general, very strong ties with those infamous worldwide organizations and powerful countries. They are paid by those institutions / countries in large sums and used as the tools of propaganda and promotion. These (relatively) poor countries essentially become more and more connected and dependent on the (seemingly) benefactor / benevolent countries.
This book carries a message to the people of underdeveloped and developing countries that they should stay away these NGO's and similar organizations as much as possible.
Vital.......2005-04-13
Despite the superficial review below, Globalism Unmasked is neither warmed-over cliche nor Third World chauvinism. The fact that some classic themes carry over to the New World Order, while some do not should surprise no one. Which do, and which don't, however, may. Those readers interested in situating Marxist analysis within the New World Order should find the text both stimulating and rewarding. In fact, "globalization", or its semantic equivalent, is on the lips of just about everyone, while the idea dominates trendy discourse. But the question remains: how is this concept being popularly understood and what are the facts surrounding its sudden emergence. The book's project is to shed some light on these crucial issues.
Clearly, globalization is being sold as an irresistable process, driven by new technologies that make an empire of global capital impossible to avoid. The practical upshot is that resistance should be understood as futile, no matter how negatively a person's life is being affected. The ideological value of this manuever should be obvious, while the value of its debunking should be even more so. Moreover, many on the left have bought into this thesis, rendering the book's counter-thesis a particularly important and timely one.
Behind the buzz-word, the authors insist, lies the old process of imperialism, or Euro-American exploitation. So the wine hasn't changed, only the semantic bottles. Given all the nonsense about an end of history, this is a contention worth considering, and it's the book's burden to defend the thesis. (How well it succeeds should be up to the reader to judge.) But at least, their analysis caused me to re-examine what's behind popular use. Too often globalization is taken as a process driven solely by technology, apart from those social forces in whose interest the new tools are operating. In short, popular usage is encouraged to assume a technological determinism instead of a class-bound determinism, thus closing off alternatives to capitalist consolidation. Or, to risk oversimplifying, it's computers dictating the global process, not corporate greed. As a result, unmasking the concept has the value of reopening alternatives based on the interests of classes other than the capitalist, alternatives which can then serve as a platform for renewing struggle against global cosolidation. And while this is not exactly the argument the authors use, I believe it's one way of understanding their position.
There are relatively fresh topics scattered throughout. For example, NGO"s have emerged as a recent international development, and despite their laudatory press, the text reveals unsparingly the actual role these agencies play in assisting global imperialism. That alone is worth the read. Moreover, the final chapter situating socialism in a post-cold war environment is anything but a stale left-over. Anyone curious about the direction of socialist thinking, given the Soviet experience, should find this discussion of genuine interest.
A key reservation lies in the often high level of abstraction with which the text operates. Specifically, the book is weak on particular case studies. Too often, as in Chapter Four dealing with privatization, the text cuts loose from the sort of case studies that would strengthen the chapter's thesis. Still and all, I don't believe the authors intended this as a scholarly work even though the text draws from a scholarly background. Instead, it's an ideological work intended to reveal the real nature of so-called globalization, and when combined with Chomsky's intensive case studies, presents a powerful overview of North-South relations. Be that as it may, Petras and Veltmeyer's book deserves a more accurate Amazon reception than a mere single and misleading review. All in all, the book represents an important contribution to New World Order analysis and contemporary Marxist assessments, and is well worth the read.
Everything you already knew but were too cynical to ask.......2003-06-01
I didn't get a lot out of this book. I imagine there are plenty of young people who don't know what imperialism is and don't know it's history, so there is a need for such material. But I don't know if this would be the best vehicle for explaining this. It was good to get some of the facts, financial data and so on, but these are doubtless available in many books.
Altogether, it was a bit like going to a Rod Quantock comedy show or a good singing of The Internationale, preferably in Spanish. It makes the Left feel better, but it doesn't actually address the issues or change anyone's mind, if they didn't already know they were right all along.
In 175 pages, there was the mention of a strike in Belgium, a general strike in France and a street demonstration in London, within lists of "Third World" movements, plus an observation that foreign employees of NGOs would be better to go back to their own country and fight their own employers, but otherwise, the only politics discussed was in the "Third World" - the "victims" of imperialism. The implication is that the workers of Europe and the US (and Australia) are going to be rescued by movement of landless peasants in Columbia, or wherever, or not at all.
Given that the whole issue of "globalisation" came into public consciousness in the West as a result of Seattle, i.e., a movement by US citizens, not as a cheer squad for Third World revolutions, but on their own behalf, and not against the state, but against corporations, it is not really good enough to say: "Nothing has changed (except "quantitatively"), this is the same old imperialism that we all had demos against in the '60s and '70s. It's all a lot of globaloney! Regis Debray was right all along."
Of course, the book does not primarily present itself as a book about "how to fight imperialism" but rather to "unmask" the rhetoric of "globalisation" as a lot of baloney. But the political prescriptions that it concludes with, confirm that the writers actually haven't noticed anything new since the 70s, and their program at the end is for Third World movements to take governmental power and lead a revolution from above within the borders of their own country. The value of this, of course, is to say to citizens of such countries that their governments do have a choice, they do not have to be pliant tools of imperialism. OK, but it's so unconvincing, that altogether, the result is likely to be negative.
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The New Development Politics: The Age of Empire Building and New Social Movements
James F. Petras
Manufacturer: Ashgate Publishing
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Binding: Paperback
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Empire with Imperialism: The Globalizing Dynamics of Neoliberal Capitalism
ASIN: 0754635406 |
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An Economy of Colour: Visual Culture and the North Atlantic World, 1660-1830 (Critical Perspectives in Art History)
Manufacturer: Manchester University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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Picturing Imperial Power: Colonial Subjects in Eighteenth-Century British Painting
ASIN: 0719060060 |
Book Description
The contributors to this volume analyze visual culture in the context of British and French Colonial activity in the North Atlantic from 1660-1830. It is a response to a noticeable omission in current art history and cultural studies, which have largely ignored the diverse and important body of visual imagery relating to colonialism, Atlantic slavery and the development of racial ideology. This fascinating collection demonstrates that the visualization of individuals, communities, social types, fictive characters, artefacts and landscapes, played a highly significant role in both the European representation and self-representation of the peoples and places of the Atlantic colonial world. Consequently, it reasserts the primacy of visual culture as an active participant in forming this complex and fluid "imagined community."
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