2) What was distinctive about the end of Europe’s African and Asian empires compared to other cases of imperial disintegration?
Like the ends of the Austrian and Ottoman Empires following World War I, which gave rise to numerous new states in Europe and the Middle East, and the ends of the German and Japanese empires after World War II, the African and Asian movements for independence featured the ideal of national self-determination. However, the new independence movements not only asserted political independence but also affirmed the vitality of their cultures, which had been submerged and denigrated during the colonial era. Although these new nations claimed an international status equal to that of their former rulers, like their earlier counterparts, they stood in contrast with the earlier independence movements in the cultural factor. In the Americas, many of the colonized people were themselves of European origin, and subsequently shared much of their culture with their colonial rulers.
3) What international circumstances and social changes contributed to the end of colonial empires?
On one hand, Western ideals sat awkwardly at odds with the reality of colonialism, especially the ideal of national self-determination being at odds with the possession of colonies denied any opportunity to express their own national character. On the other hand, the world wars had weakened Europe, while discrediting any sense of European moral superiority, and the United States and the Soviet Union became the new global superpowers. Meanwhile, the United Nations provided a prestigious platform with which to conduct anticolonial agitation. In addition, within the colonial world, a second or third generation of Western-educated elites were deeply aware of the gap between European values and its practices and no longer viewed colonial rule as a vehicle for their people's progress, as a result increasingly insisting on immediate independence.
16) How and why did thinking about strategies for economic development change over time?
At first, in newly independent nations, most people expected that the state authorities would spur the economic development of the countries, since the private economy was weakly developed and few entrepreneurs had substantial funds to invest. State control also held the promise of protecting vulnerable economies from the worst parts of capitalism. Over time, however, the favor switched to the market to generate economic development. In part this was due to the failure, corruption, and mismanagement of many state-run enterprises, but this was also influenced by the collapse of the world's first state-dominated economy in the Soviet Union. In addition, Western pressured pushed developing countries in a capitalist direction.
Hello,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed your blog post because it addressed some of the questions that I did not answer in mine so I got to expand my knowledge on the chapter. Going off the first question that you answered I agree that it was distinctive because these knew nations did not share culture with their colonizers like the people in America did. Also in regards to the third question you answered I agree with the reasons you listed for the changing in economic development strategies. State run enterprises where not the best strategy, while capitalism was emerging as the way to go.