The author describes the current status as “lopsided development.” To understand how it got to this point, he insists on history that led to “the rise and transformation of development as a powerful instrument of global social change (Easterly & Levine, 2016). He goes on to state that globalization was engineered by European countries through “development projects” that were executed in “non-European lands” during colonization (Easterly & Levine, 2016). They ushered in the Industrial Revolution which brought about “technological changes and the rise of new social classes and fashioning policies that could manage the large social transformations” (Hawken, et al., 2013). The concept of development was born at the time. However, the need for the need to improve humankind was suppressed by political interests (Hawken, et al., 2013). Colonies became the source of unregulated raw materials and markets for finished products at high cost (Salisbury, 2017). After independence the colonies adopted a market-based economy believing in the philosophy that “markets maximize individual preferences and allocate resources efficiently (Hawken, et al., 2013).” Rostow’s theory of modernization advances that non-European nations should strive for a free-enterprise, capital-intensive, industrialized economy” (Peet & Hartwick, 2015 )
Colonization had far-reaching consequences on social organization and political identities of the regions that were under control. Native populations lost control of their lands that were subjected to total exploitation (Salisbury, 2017). Agricultural lands that produced subsistence food were turned into sources of export crops (Easterly & Levine, 2016). For example, India was converted from a manufacturing to a production country of raw produce. Consequently, many folks were displaced from their land. They either became peasants or indentured plantation laborers (Salisbury, 2017). There was gender reorganization in that male counterparts were taken as slaves or laborers leaving behind women and children to manage on their own (Salisbury, 2017). Moreso, the local political structures were either destroyed or reduced instruments for implementation of colonial policies; lost their internal control to the Europeans (Salisbury, 2017). Local chiefs were paid to deliver native people to the Europeans as slaves (Salisbury, 2017).
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References
Easterly, W., & Levine, R. (2016). The European origins of economic development. Journal of
Economic Growth, 21(3), 225-257.
Hawken, P., Lovins, A. B., & Lovins, L. H. (2013). Natural capitalism: The next industrial
revolution. Routledge.
Peet, R., & Hartwick, E. (2015). Theories of development: Contentions, arguments, alternatives.
Guilford Publications.
Salisbury, N. (2017). The Indians’ old world: Native Americans and the coming of Europeans. In
Colonial America and the Early Republic (pp. 1-24). Routledge.
