Two Core Nations Essay Research Paper Two

Two Core Nations Essay, Research Paper

Two Core Nations

Immanuel Wallerstien presents a theory that the .World System. is a capitalistic shifting of power of core states over selected peripheries. In order to support this theory you must look back on he history of capitalism as it stated to grow. Also you must understand what a core and periphery are. A core is a dominating state or nation by means of economics, military, and social structure. and the periphery is the state or nation in which is dominated or exploited by the core state or nation. Back in the 19th century we can see a large rise in capitalist backed imperialism ways of thinking in the expansion of the British empire, and it.s status as a dominating global power. We can also see the expansion of Portugal in to Africa in the 15th century. Although Portugal was a monarchy at the time it showed underling capitalistic motives. In exploring these two times in European history we can see how the area of Europe has for centuries be the dominant power, and core state. Also how Although it exploited areas, for there resources, it brought it.s peripheries into the modern world.

As recently as 1940, world maps showed large areas colored pink, representing regions dominated by the British. Much of Africa was pink, along with India, Malaya, Hong Kong, and other scattered territories in Asia and the Americas. The existence of an empire on which the sun never set helped instill in the individual British citizen tremendous nationalism, and the need to become personally a devoted imperialist (or peoples who wish to extend and maintain control or influence over weaker nations or peoples). For more than 100 years, the fact that Britain was an empire had changed the British man.s life, and had instilled in him the fact that he was superior to most other peoples especially those of other colors and backgrounds. This was also the period when it was felt that it was the “white man.s burden” to take care of all those countries whose inhabitants were less worthy than the white Anglo-Saxon. This way of thinking was called Social Darwinism.

This was an age when even though England, in some respects, tried to act “fatherly” towards some of the countries it had seized, it still felt a strong amount of racism towards the people of those countries. In 1849, General Wolsely wrote from the Gold Coast, “The Africans are like monkeys. They are a good-for-nothing race.”1 In 1849 Thomas Carlyle2 pronounced Europeans wiser than Africans and said inferior races must obey the superior. It was an idea that by 1900 most English men and women held, one that fit the paternalism of the governing classes and the prejudice of the lower classes. The Empire had created a nation of imperialists.

The commercial spirit has always existed in human society. What was peculiar to the nineteenth century was its “overbalance.” Capitalism, imperialism, and colonialism were the themes of the day. A generation of university teachers, schoolmasters, clergymen, poets, journalists, and fiction writers concentrated their minds and energies on popularizing the cult of the new imperialism. The intellectual and social trends were many and complex, ranging from Social Darwinist works like Benjamin Kidd.s “The Control of the Topics”3 to Kipling.s poems.4 There was, of course, the persistent call by Christian evangelicals to go forth and convert the pagans. Continuous, too, since the eighteenth century, were humanitarians anxious to end slavery or protect the aborigines.5

In the middle classes, the passion for wealth was closely connected with the desperate need for respectability. By 1880, a generation had passed into manhood with an outlook which made them ideally suited to govern the empire. In itself, wealth alone was hardly enough to make a Victorian respectable. When everyone at the time was busy making money and working to better themselves, someone with money who just laid back and enjoyed the pleasures of life was not a winner. It was said that to be a merchant prince was a far finer thing than to be a gentleman. This means that to be a working merchant, making a living, and getting high in the social ladder, was a more respectable thing to be than just a gentleman. Soon, every single person, no matter what age, was trying to advance in society. “Now that a man may make money, and rise in the world, and

associate himself, unreproached, with people once far above him it becomes a veritable shame to him to remain in the state he was born in, and everybody thinks it is his duty to try to be a .gentleman..”6

See, the whole train of thought for everyone of the time, especially men, since the women were mostly housewives, was to live to better themselves by gaining social status and respect from the higher powers.

Except for “God,” the most popular word in the Victorian age vocabulary must have been “work.” Capitalism was the main force behind imperialism. Capitalism had created a wealthy and powerful elite of investors, traders, and manufacturers, anxious to make profits. Capitalism had also, by its unequal distribution of wealth, given so little purchasing power to the workers that they could not buy all the goods produced. This underconsumption forced the elite to search for markets abroad and so to persuade their government to acquire territories abroad as markets for goods, places for investment, and so