Colonialism

Theoretical Explanations

Modernization theory asserts that the reason some countries suffer from greater rates of poverty is that they have resisted modernizing or that their institutional and infrastructural framework is too poorly developed to lead to take off—a state of selfdirected and sustained development. Many modernization theorists often point to colonial heritage as an important historical component for setting these conditions for poor institutional and infrastructural conditions, and favor international support and investment in modernization, mimicking [Page 301]the systems of the developed world. Less developed nations must then work to develop infrastructure and technologies more like the West if they wish to decrease inequalities and, by extension, reduce environmental problems. Because of their underdeveloped technology, developing countries utilize less sustainable methods of agriculture and are less likely conduct activities that prevent environmental damage. Further, modernization theorists might say that developing countries need to modernize their governmental structures in order to create and enforce more effective environmental laws.

Critics of this theory suggest that this model of modernization is in itself colonial, in that modernization essentially requires the imposition of extraterritorial controls and institutions on foreign states, typically following the same geographic patterns as historical colonialism (e.g., flowing from the United States to the Philippines or the United Kingdom to Ghana). This is accompanied by similar paternalistic attitudes, they further assert, in an ideology that holds such impositions are essential and desirable for underdeveloped nations.

By contrast, dependency theory asserts the opposite—that colonial powers exploited lesser powers, creating dependent relationships that persist to the present. World systems theory is a more elaborated analysis of the same condition, which posits that the dawn of colonialism in 1500 set into motion a change in the global network of economic relationships, establishing a persistent system of flows, extractions, and exchanges that continues into the era of globalization. According to both theories, there exist core or high-income nations, middle-income or semi-peripheral nations, and low-income or peripheral nations. European powers and the United States are core nations whose position has been maintained by a division of exchange and labor established in the colonial era, in which peripheral states became providers of raw materials and primary goods (e.g., cotton) that was exported to core states to be processed into higher-value finished goods (e.g., textiles). During the colonial era, such relationships were regulated by force. Indian textile production was disbanded under British colonial authority, for example, and cotton production emphasized. This provided both a cheap supply of cotton for British textile mills and a ready-made market for finished textiles in India. Dependency and world systems theorists maintain that these flows of labor, raw material, and finished goods remain in motion today, under their own momentum and an ideological assumption that they are either natural or inevitable.

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