An introduction to human geography
Chapter 2: Rise and spread of capitalism
Beginning in particular in parts of England, and spreading to other parts of Europe, the
capitalist economic system was to change, or influence substantially not only the economics,
but also the political, social and cultural dimensions of newly powerful nation-states. By
1900, capitalism was the dominant socio-economic system over a large part of the world.
2.1 What is capitalism?
According to Adam Smith (simplification of reality), capitalism is a model that was driven by
people’s selfish desires for gain and self-interest where production takes place to generate
profit; surplus profits are accumulated as capital; and the basic rule of the system is
‘accumulate or perish’. The determination of prices is done through the free market.
Industrialists will try to minimize their costs of production (including wages) through division
of labour, and by creating competitive advantage by using new technologies.
The capitalist system began to cohere in England in the 17 th century up until the mid 19 th
century, until it matured to north-west Europe and North America. this vision can be seen
as too Eurocentric because of developments in China and the East in general.
Characteristics of a state with a mature capitalist economy
Majority of the population were male working-class wage labourers, women usually worked
at home. The labourers were closely supervised, and the means of production were owned
by capitalists whose aim was to make profit on investment. The majority of goods and
services were distributed through monetary exchange.
2.1.1 Cyclical characteristics of economic development
Macroeconomics = the working of a national economy over a year.
Kondratieff cycle = 50-year-long cycles of boom and depression have characterized the
capitalist world since the mid 18 th century. Technical innovation leading to the development
of new industries is key to understanding the growth phase of the cycle. Because technical
innovation is spatially uneven, the geography of economic development under capitalism is
so too.
2.2 Other perspectives, other stories
2.2.1 Marxism
Marx proposed that profit arises out of the way in which capitalists (the bourgeoisie)
dominate labour (the workers) in an unequal class-based relationship. This will inevitably
lead to class conflict. Labour could gain control of the means of production and thereby
‘throw off their chains’. This would have dramatic long-term consequences for the socio-
political organisation of the world.
Marx’s writing is dominated by an historical, but not a geographical, perspective: it traces
class relationships in time but not in space, and it is also highly Eurocentric.
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,2.2.2 World systems theory
This theory (Wallerstein) provides a categorization of historical socio-economic systems:
core, periphery and semi-periphery. These terms signify areas in which particular processes
operate.
Core refers to regions of the capitalist world economy typified by the predominance of core
processes with relatively high wages, advanced technology and diversified production
(north-west Europe).
Periphery refers to regions of the capitalist world economy typified by processes with low
wages, simple technology and limited production (central Africa).
Semi-periphery is in-between: refers to regions of the capitalist world economy typified by,
while exploiting the periphery, are being exploited by the core, so that they exhibit a mixture
of both core and peripheral processes.
However, this categorization says little about the complexities of the social and economic
networks that enable the system to work, or of the resistance by groups or individuals trying
to change it.
2.2.3 Eurocentrism
Eurocentrism tells the tale of these past three centuries as being about the ‘rise of the West’
owing to its developing humanism, scientific rationalism and democratic politics.
Orientalism = the story of East and West is intertwined, and that capitalism would not have
emerged without the import of eastern technology, ideas and resources along long-
established long-distance trade routes developed by eastern merchants and connecting to
Europe to the Middle East.
Eurocentrism led to a distinctive socially constructed European ‘identity’ that was Christian
and ‘civilized’ and could be set against the so-called ‘primitive’ peoples of North America,
Africa and Australia who could be exploited as European states began to develop their
empires.
2.3 The transition from feudalism to capitalism
The transformation of the European economy into a capitalist one was a long-drawn-out
process. The development of the class of wage labourers is crucial, together with the
assumption of political power by the new class of capitalists.
Feudalism was speeded by the after-effect of the Black Death, and the resulting labour-
shortage meant that the enterprise and new ways of doing things were more likely to be
rewarded, since the feudal elite required more revenue to maintain power.
Feudalism = hierarchical social and political system common in Europe during the medieval
period. The majority of the population were engaged in subsistence agriculture while also
having an obligation to fulfil certain duties for the landholder. At the same time the
landholder owed various obligations (fealty) to his overlord.
Merchant capitalism = merchants were both the providers of capital and principal traders in
a regionally specialized, complex, Europe-wide trading nexus based not on luxury goods, but
on bulky staples like grain, and on an increasingly array of manufactured products.
Land was a critical production factor. In the 16 th century, there was an enormous transfer of
land in England from conservative ecclesiastical ownership (church) to civil ownership. Land
was also being transformed through the process of enclosure, which enabled livestock to be
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,raised more efficiently and experimentation in new agricultural techniques to be
undertaken.
By the end of the 17th century, through struggles between Crown and Parliament, the
capitalist bourgeoisie were politically predominant and were able to transform the state to
their own advantage. ‘Age of Absolutism’ = landowners amassed enormous wealth from
their control of the land. This wealth was spent to display itself (Versailles).
2.4 An expanding world
As the European economic and cultural world was gradually transformed, European
travellers began to voyage beyond the shores of Europe. First, they travelled to Asia for
spices, sugar, silk, etc. The Portuguese were the first Europeans to navigate around Africa,
and Columbus sailed to the Americas to open them for European exploitation using African
labour.
For Spain and Portugal, this is the ‘Age of the Navigators’. For the rest of the world, this
marked the beginning of the European colonial empires that were to dominate and control
almost every aspect of life for the next 400 years.
The Portuguese went to Brazil to have sugar plantation farms. The Spanish founded a more
militaristic, oppressive and exploitative empire in central and south America, with the
decimation of local populations through warfare and the catastrophic effect of European
diseases. The Dutch began to compete successfully with the Portuguese. In Antwerp, the
first stock exchange was established. In the late 18 th century, the British emerged dominant
in the developing Western world economy.
The movement of the centre of the European capitalist system:
Lisbon & Seville Antwerp Amsterdam London
The colonialist trading systems were core-periphery; dominant-subordinate; metropolitan-
colonial. A more multi-layered interpretation: different parts of the developing world
economy operated in somewhat different ways, were based on different product
interactions between raw materials, manufacture and consumption, involved complex
transportation flows, and required different politico-military frameworks to make them
function properly.
2.4.1 Colonial commerce
London and Paris were the source of finance, commercial intelligence and marketing. The
expanding industries of particular regions of western Europe were growing, in part because
they supplied a developing colonial market with manufactured goods such as textiles and
tools.
In North America, tobacco, rice, sugar, rum and cotton were major export products that
were produced on the plantation system using slave labour. African Americans were easily
the largest new culture group to be established in North and South America in the colonial
period.
By 1750, the slave trade was dominated by large European companies using specially
constructed and fitted ships, but many smaller traders would sail first to African trading
stations to exchange manufactured products, like guns, tools and chains, for slaves.
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, 2.4.2 Colonial society
The slave trade was perhaps the most significant aspect of the cultural transformation
effected by the 18th century capitalist world economy in the Americas and Africa. The
Africans were regarded as in every way inferior to Europeans; they were legally and socially
defined as different; and they had to live separately from the white settlers.
There were other trans-Atlantic migrations, like those seeking to escape religious
persecution in Europe, or to establish religious utopias in the new continent (Mormons,
Jesuit). Another group of settlers who came to convert the native people of the Americas to
Christianity. Both native Americans and African slaves were perceived as being in need of
conversion.
By the beginning of the 18th century, significant migrations of Scots, Irish, French, Germans,
Dutch, Swiss and Moravians had taken pace, but the dominant migrant group were the
British.
2.4.3 Colonial politics
There were major differences in the way European states governed their colonial empires.
The Spanish and French both used a highly centralized system of military, administrative and
ecclesiastical strands of authority linked to government departments and the Crown. The
English allowed each colony to be virtually self-governing and the links to London were many
and various. The English colonies first rebelled and fought for their independence.
After 1815, and over the next 15 years, the south-eastern United States were ‘ethnically
cleansed’ of its native American inhabitants. The resultant of land sales of millions of acres
enabled the first great economic boom in the US, much the same as the sale of monastic
land did in Britain during the 16th century.
2.5 Imperialism and racism
A second phase of colonial expansion was focused on Asia and Africa. This phase was
strongly characterised through racism and the othering of all non-Europeans. The increasing
economic competition of countries like Germany and Italy led them to seek new
opportunities through the colonial exploitation of economically peripheral lands.
In Britain, Christian-inspired reformers succeeded in the end of slave trade in 1807, and then
to slavery in 1833. Sadly, populist and bourgeois writing opposed to abolition characterized
Africans, Australian Aborigines, Indians and native Americans as not only unchristian,
uncivilized, but also less than human; inferior to Europeans in every way, and therefore
needing to be controlled and disciplined. Darwin’s ideas were being misused to give
scientific veneer to this othering.
In the US, the institution of slavery continued to flourish, and it was an essential part of the
cotton-growing plantation economy.
During the mid 19th century, South America broke free from Spain and Portugal, and
European powers raced to divide Africa amongst themselves. By the end of the century,
borders had been delineated and fought over, natural resources were being exploited, and
the polities cultures and economies of the native people had been disrupted and destroyed.
This is known as the ‘scramble of Africa’.
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