IDST 1001H Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Social Inequality, Killer Application, Capital Accumulation
14 Jun 2018
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Lecture 3: Colonialism and development in the South and North, 1500 - 1950
• 1490:
• Columbus made first contact with Western hemisphere
• 1500:
• World population less than 450 million people, half lived in East or South Asia
• China and India produced a lot of material things the world had
• Groups of societies:
• Subsistent society: kinship in rural, farming communities was central
organizing principles of those communities, kinship was basis of social
organizations, characterized by reciprocity between individuals and
mutual dependence upon each other
• Found in large parts of Africa, Latin America, and across Central
Asia
• Pre-capitalist states: high degrees of social inequality, elites were
sustained by rural populations that worked in tribute to the elite, elite
created mechanisms to make sure they did not stop paying tribute
• Found in Europe, middle East, South Asia, East Asia, modern day
Peru, modern day Mexico
• Late 15th to early 16th century:
• Europe expands its territories
• 14th century Europe:
• Social and economic order was in crisis (feudalism)
• Saw wars between political territories
• Caused landowners to need new sources of revenue, got this through
taxing peasant farmers
• Peasants were not able to manage due to the high taxes
• 14th to 16th century:
• Anti-tax peasant uprisings
• Black plague in 1347- kills ⅓ of population in some places
• Feudalism was in crisis
• Colonialism: direct political and economic control of a people in a different territory by a
foreign state
• Colonization: a process which brings colonialism about
• 16th century:
• Spanish and Portuguese explorers collected luxury goods for the elite
• Colonialism for Spanish and Portuguese was about sustaining feudalism
• Pre-colonial empires where local forces are forcibly appropriated to enrich
merchants and aristocrats
• Spanish and Portuguese only imposed systematic empirical rule in Caribbean
and Latin America, done through genocide of Indigenous populations
• They colonized brutally, through genocide
• 17th century:
• Spanish and Portuguese empires were challenged by the English and the Dutch
(2 main colonial powers)
• England and Holland were going through early stages of industrialization
• Needed raw materials, which were supplied through merchant
trading companies who were given monopoly rights to trade in
certain parts of the world
• Given exclusive rights to promote trade and industrialization
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