On the Huffington Post , Christian Sahner provides some background for the current hostility against Christians in the Middle East. He notes, for instance that “Western nations have long showered attention upon Arab Christian communities.” As a result of their role in diplomatic . . . . Continue Reading »
Deepak Lal ( In Praise of Empires: Globalization and Order ) argues that after WW II, the US missed the opportunity to adopt unilateral free trade policies, as Britain did in the 19th century. “Rather than follow the correct British policy of adopting unilateral free trade and then allowing . . . . Continue Reading »
In his World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction (A John Hope Franklin Center Bo) , Immanuel Wallerstein argues that the modern world-system is fundamentally a capitalist economic system, the states being within in. On this model, he explains why the various efforts at modern world-empire (Charles V, . . . . Continue Reading »
Though he doesn’t deny that medieval cities had their forms of oppression and ugliness, Timothy Gorringe argues that the medieval city lived up to its claim: “the city makes one free.” The city was a place to “escape from the oppression of feudal bonds,” and during the . . . . Continue Reading »
Hobson believed that the imperial scramble was driven by the need for capitalists to find new areas for investment. Unlike Lenin, who used his theories and data, Hobson did not think that imperialism was the inevitable result of capitalist expansion. The problem was oversavings by capitalists and . . . . Continue Reading »
In his classic study of Imperialism , JA Hobson distinguished between colonialism and nationalism. Colonialism “consists in the migration of part of a nation to vacant or sparsely peopled foreign lands,” and thus is “a genuine expansion of nationality” and nationalism. With . . . . Continue Reading »
Bruce Cumings notes that the architects of the American Century could not have anticipated its most important events: “Never could the Achesons and Stimsons have imagined the fierce energy of aroused colonial peoples in the 1940s, for whom classical imperialism and a recent feudal past were . . . . Continue Reading »
A TLS essay review on recent books on Puritanism offers some helpful insights into that term and the movement it names. Recent work has so qualified and remolded “Puritan” that the term has been deemed all but useless, but the reviewed books indicate that a rehabilitation of the term . . . . Continue Reading »
Mann again. He points out that US aid is not typically spent for development purposes but for strategic purposes. Hence, a good deal of it goes to a small number of countries in the Middle East: “A third goes to one of the 20 riches countries in the world - Israel. A fifth goes to Egypt, . . . . Continue Reading »
In a 2005 article, David Rowe reviewed the 19th-century liberal belief that the formation of a global economy would bring enduring peace. The arguments sound a tad familiar: “Liberals identify at least three closely related means by which globalization pacifies society. First, globalization . . . . Continue Reading »
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