Capitalism and imperialism
and, also, on its informal empire, as seen in the use of gunboat diplomacy. Cotton in Egypt, coal, iron, palm oil, and timber in West Africa, gold in Ghana (formerly the Coast), diamonds in South Africa, jute and other crops in Bengal. Such things fuelled the growth of British industry. A great example of this can be found in the textiles industries of Birmingham and Manchester, which relied on cotton and materials from, in large part, Egypt and India – a significant factor in British expansion in Egypt. Britain also used the consumer markets of Empire, selling textiles, machines, consumer goods like kettles, and various other goods back to the same continents that were exploited to produce them. The profits of all three stages in the process – resource extraction, manufacturing, and consumer sales – not to mention the profits from transport, went to the bourgeois class, and neither the workers of empire nor the British industrialized proletariat saw the inordinate profits that arose from these growing networks of trade.
Development & self-sufficiency
Despite all the injustices, however, this process fuelled ‘development’. Railways were built for efficient transport of resources to ports, and ports were built to export goods, as in the Cape Colony. (Because of its deep, warm waters and its usefulness as a stopping point in the route to India, massive ports were built there.) The Suez Canal was built, which took in no negligible amount of tariffs and shortened the route to India by 9,000 miles. Nevertheless, any serious analyst will tell you that, clearly, Africa, India, the Middle East, South America, Oceania, were robbed from and exploited. When the British removed their troops, they did not leave behind factories or a well-rounded economy that allowed for internal development and growth. Minerals, crops, and other resources were not extracted by well-paid workers in collaboration to be refined a couple miles away and then, produced in a factory a few miles after that, to be sold in that same country. Rather, the minerals were mined by l ocals and ‘coolies’ on poverty wages, beaten down militarily. These were then refined in Britain, turned into goods in Britain, and then sold to Britain first, with the excess being sold off to the countries that actually held the minerals. This was not good for the economies of colonies. Some former colonies, as a result of this, still have very little industry, relying on exports of the same goods that Britain’s bourgeoisie grew rich by producing, and the former colonies that have a reasonable amount of industrial production had it built after they left or during lapses in British control (as seen in the growth of Indian and Canadian industry in WWI). Even there, this industry is squarely owned by the bourgeoisie, and the actual workers, for example, sweatshop workers producing textiles in Bangladesh, are treated abysmally and poorly paid.
China’s projects in Africa and the ‘Third World’
In this context, let us talk about China. What can we say about their famous Belt and Road initiative (BRI) and other economic ‘aid’ or support in Africa and other parts of the world? China has certainly been playing a much larger role in African economies in recent years: it has become Africa’s largest trading partner, and receives 15% of Africa’s exports; it was only 1% a decade ago. A 290-mile railway was built in Kenya, from Nairobi to Mombasa, where there are major ports, which are themselves being developed. A 470-mile electric railway, the first electric railway in Africa, was built from Addis Ababa to ports in Djibouti. China’s focus is in east Africa, facing the Indian Ocean, which is a significant area of influence for them as they form stronger links with south Asia, central Asia, and Oceania. They have
remember that cultural imperialism has always been used as a tool for strengthening economic imperialism. In order to exploit Empire, imperialist nations had to define its constituents as inferior.
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