Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Late modern colonialism and industrial time-space
Late modernity, including the Industrial Revolution, was
firmly situated
within the context of the expanding capitalist global economy. Late modern
colonialism di
fi
ered from its early modern, mercantile counterpart in terms of
the regions conquered (i.e., Asia and Africa), the colonial powers involved
(largely British and French), and the technologies deployed (e.g., steamships,
railroads). The process was
ff
filled with unanticipated consequences: “the open-
ing up of continental interiors to rapid, cheap, and dependable transport
clearly tended to dethrone western Europe from its onetime primacy in the
world. The rise of American and Russian power to their contemporary dimen-
sions would have been inconceivable without the integration of large contin-
ental areas by a network of mechanically powered land transport” (McNeill
1963:765). As ever-larger chunks of the earth's surface fell under European
domination, the expansion of one empire increasingly entailed intrusions into
territories held by another. Far from being a smooth process of di
fi
usion,
therefore, colonialism was wracked by inter-colonial rivalries. The Seven
Years' War (1756-1763), for example, fought on three continents (Europe,
Asia, and North America) could be called the
ff
first true world war, one of
several that repeatedly racked the capitalist world system (others include the
Napoleonic con
fi
agrations).
The British Empire was the largest and most formidable of all colonial
formations. Britain invoked
fl
ict and the two major twentieth-century con
fl
first the doctrines of mercantilism and then,
when it was advantageous, became the world's major advocate of free trade,
an ideology used to great e
fi
ect. One element contributing to the British
colonial project lay in their ability to lower the friction of distance through
larger, quicker, iron-clad ships (Harley 1988). The success of the British was
also facilitated by their appropriation of Dutch innovations such as central-
ized banking and the joint-stock company, which commodi
ff
ed risk and dis-
tributed it over wide numbers of individuals. Another important tool was
the invention of warehousing in the eighteenth century, largely by Scottish
traders who appointed agents to collect goods in advance, which reduced
merchant vessels' time at port considerably and thus lowered transatlantic
shipping costs (Pomeranz and Topik 1999). In 1700, for example, the average
ship sailing between England and the Chesapeake Bay spent 100 days at port,
which by 1770 had fallen by a half. The reduction in piracy and introduction
of warehouses generated a cost-space convergence in the eighteenth and nine-
teenth centuries that dramatically accelerated trade, lowered costs and prices,
and raised standards of living even before the introduction of steam power.
The Industrial Revolution itself was intimately tied to the colonial waves
of expansion in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The traditional
fi
fl
ow
of pro
financial capital,
organized through stock exchanges, poured forth to North America, where it
fi
fi
ts from periphery to core was reversed as European
fi
financed the railroads, and to southern South America, where it modernized
transport systems, mines, and nitrate production in Peru, Argentina, and
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