First Age of Global Empire 25/07/2007 07:33:00

Globalization
• westernization
• super-natural organizations
• agents
o war
o trade
o multi-national companies
o travel and communication
• the process by which the world has become increasingly
interconnected
• globalization is not a new thing
• Archaic (13th – 18th century)
o when globalizing networks were created by kings, warriors
searching for wealth. Merchants. Taking place in the level of
individuals.
o Consumers are after exotic products. The era before mass
production.
 If you got something from china then it was good,
because it was unique
o universal rule, and universalizing religions
• Proto (1600 – 1800)
o stage leading up to something
o state are reconfigured through the growth of military-fiscal
o great period for Islam
• Modern (1800 – 1950s)
 othe rise of the nation state
othe rise of industrialization
onationalism, capitalism, democracy, consumerism
olabor force is being shifted into towns. Wage labor becomes
the norm
• Post-Colonial (1950s – present)
o super-territorial organizations
o challenged to the nation state
o world economy realigned
 a new level of integration based on trade. Inter-industry
trade
o Transnational Corporations
• Empires are key in this
o Appropriating new lands
o increased movement of people, ideas, and within colonies as
well
o missionary organizations, the migrants themselves, east India
company, people moving to and from the empires
o the freemasons can be seen as a multi-national organization
Knowledge
• Enlightenment Europe
o Through systematic observation, through reason we can see
how individuals and societies work
 With that knowledge you can now change it for the
better
o The Encyclopedie
 First vol. In 1751
  By 1772, 22 volumes.
 the Netherlands was crucial in publishing and
distributing the encyclopedia
 Editors Denis Diderot, and Jean le Rond d’Alembert
 a wealth of information about everything, not just the
western world
 over 2,000 articles on Islam
o warfare, trade, a whole new set of geographical discoveries
o evidence comes from the fact that people start to write more
often about their travels. An explosion in travel writing and
audience that is reading travel narratives.
o they wanted to learn about the state of life before the one
they are experiencing
o they looked and found nobles savages
 ex: Tahiti
• The British Empire
o 1760s – globalizing decade
 a fresh way of imperial acquisitions
 much more diverse, wide-spread
 renewed commercial expansion
 knowledge revolution in the British empire as they
explore and map the new environment
o The Swing to the East
 the period from the 7 years war to the 18th century
 the seven years war
 lost 1/5 of all the empire’s population
 a shift in attention from the old Atlantic empire to the
growing empire in the Indian ocean region
  now that they can’t send their convicts to Georgia they
start to send them to New South Wales (Australia)
 a swing to the east, however, there are still plenty of
colonies in the Americas
 The Pacific and India became more important culturally
and politically
 the Atlantic was set back to just being
economically important
o British East India Company
 increased its holdings
 became de facto rulers in certain places
 1849 was the end of the second anglo-sikh war
 the British are now in charge of the northern part
of Indian, started in 1750s and dragged until 1849
 wanted to solidify its commerce and specially in china
 The British naval power was opening up the pacific for
trade or to settlement, missionary activities
 new south Wales
o Cook Voyages
 Fundamental turning point in pacific exploration
 Establish much of the general geography of Australia
and Asia
 history of medicine
 comes up with a way to treat scurvy
 Cook himself
 Instrumental in America
 chartered the saint Lawrence river
 led three major expeditions
  contributed for empire building
 gathering knowledge is essential in empires
 surveyors, geographers
 what land is good for settling, for mining
 instruments of rule
 exploit the resources efficiently
 knowledge of where to place war machines
 Great Trigonometrical Survey
• Britons have a vision of their empire
o First public libraries
o knowledge is disseminated to at least the middle class
o histories of Europe and the orient (the pacific)
o more people are using maps and globes as decorations
 started to collect globes
 pocket maps
o knowledge was gathered, circulated to help the citizens but
also to imperial ends
Labor
• Intellectual and cultural history; social history
o Curiosity and knowledge is a good thing
o globalization was pushed because of economic reasons
o one of the keys to globalization was the organization of work
throughout the world
 o flow of goods, capital, and labor
 more extensive then than any other people of
globalization
• The Modernity of the Sugar Plantation
o Sugar production process
 First phases sugar is like grapes and production of wine
 plant the cane, harvest the cane and then press the
cane into juice.
 It has to be done before the cane rots
 Boil the cane juice, then refine it and turn it into sugar
 its a combination of agricultural and industry
 need a lot of capital, some intervention from the state
 land grants to planters
 remove taxes on imported things
• Modern Capitalism
o Size of labor force
 large labor force
o task specialization
 specialized in a certain task
o subordination to a tie discipline
 slave to the time of the cane process
o alienation from tools
o wholly expatriate character
 o the capital and machine-intensive nature of sugar production
o extensive economies of scale
o dependence on long-distance trade for inputs and for
exporting its products
o ultimate commoditization of labor
 the person becomes the commodity
• Abolition of Slave Trade (1807)
o As a result of a popular base abolition movement at home
• Abolition of Slavery (1833)
• Now that there are now slaves, where is the labor force?!
Indentured Labor
• A shift to indentured labor to supplement the slaves
• 1.4 indentured servants
• and 5.1 free/willing indentured servants
the British was facilitating and overseeing the movement of
indentured servants
25/07/2007 07:33:00
25/07/2007 07:33:00