We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 April 2010
As historians, living in the contemporary world, we ask and are asked about the causes of underdevelopment. And, as most of the former colonies belong today to the underdeveloped countries of the Third World, we are confronted with the question as to what importance the colonial era plays in the history of these countries. There is a consensus that the history of colonialism can only be meaningful approached in the broader spectrum of underdevelopment and the specific problems of the Third World. There is no satisfaction in retreatingto the ostensibly objective approach of the historian and wanting tolimit ourselves in showing how colonialism came into being, what administrative structures arose, what economic policies were followed and finally how the colonized revolted and the process of decolonization got under way. Society will simply not allow us to do so. Equally, if not more important, is the question regarding the impact of colonialism on the colonized societies and how far it may be held responsible for the existing structures of underdevelopment.
1) Keller, Werner. Strukturen der Unterentwicklung. Indien 1757–1914. Eine Fallstudie iiber abhängige Reproduktion, Zurich 1977.Google Scholar
2) I mention here only Samir Amin, Impérialisme et sous-développement en Afrique, Paris 1976, andGoogle Scholar“Underdevelopment and Dependence in Black Africa. Origins and Contempory Forms”, Journal of Modern African Studies, 10/4 (1972)Google Scholar.
3) Hobsbawm, Eric J.. Industrie und Empire, vol. 1. Frankfurt a. M. 1969 (Editions Suhrkamp 315), pp. 38, 52.Google Scholar
4) For instance Brett, E. H.. Colonialism and Underdevelopment in East Africa. The Politics of Economic Change 1919–39, London 1973.Google ScholarLeys, Colin. Underdevelopment in Kenya. The Political Economy of Neocolonialism, London 1975,Google ScholarPalmer, R., Parsons, N. (eds.). The Roots of Rural Poverty in Central and Southern Africa, London 1977Google Scholar.
5) A good example is Lamb, H. B.. “The State and Economic Development in India”, in Kuznets, S. (ed.). Economic Growth: Brazil, India, Japan, Durham, N.C. 1955Google Scholar
6) Vide my book Europäische Kolonialherrschaft 1880–1940, Zürich 1976. an American edition of which is in preparationGoogle Scholar.
7) See also André GunderFrank's remark in relation to the industrialized countries: “the now developed countries were never underdeveloped, though they may have been undeveloped”, in his Latin America: Underdevelop-ment or Revolution. Essayson the Development of Underdevelopment and the Immediate Enemy, New York 1972, p. 4Google Scholar.
8) Amin, Samir, L'Afrique de I'ouest bloquée, Paris 1971, p. 93.Google Scholar
9) Sunkel, O. quoted in Puhle, H.J. (ed.), Lateinamerika. Historische Realität und Dependencia-Theorien, Hamburg 1977, p. 66.Google Scholar
10) Habib, Irfan, “Potentialities of Capitalistic Development in the Economy of Mughal India”, Journal of Economic History, 29/1 (1969).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
11) Comité Information Sahel, Qui se nourrit de lafamine en Afrique? Le dossierpolitique de lafaim au Sahel, Paris 1974.Google Scholar
12) Bairoch, Paul, Révolution industrielle et sous-développement, Paris 1964, p. 176s.Google Scholar
13) Ibid., p. 166.
14) Arrighi, G., Saul, J. S., Essays in the Political Economy of Africa, London 1973, pp. 36Google Scholar , 273, where they are criticizing Tanzania; Senghaas, Dieter, Weltwirtschaftsordnung und Entwicklungspolitik. Plddoyer für Dissoziation, Frankfurt a.M. 1977, p. 266;Google ScholarAmim, Samir. L'Afrique de I'ouest bloquée, Paris 1971, pp. 42,44, 52Google Scholar.
15) Myrdal, Gunnar, The Challenge of WorldPoverty. A WorldAnti-Poverty Program in Outline, London 1970. p. 12: “If our conclusions on this point are valid- that the non-economic factors, broadly attitudes, institutions, and the productivity consequences of very low levels of living, are of such paramount importance in underdeveloped countries that they cannot be abstracted from in economic theory and in planning — the second assumption, that it is possible to take account of the non-economic factors … must be scrutinized as of crucial importance.”Google Scholar
