Unfortunately too much of academia is fixated on faulting the west for past injustices, which leads to an unproductive Eurocentric mindset. (Britain will never, and cannot, pay back India what it took, so no point concerning ourselves about that.)
Not necessarily: firstly, some of those factors were "have the right geology" (coal/iron/later oil), which you can't replicate even if you want to, and secondly we're already in a developed world. That changes the environment and cost/benefit analysis greatly.
The first person to develop a steam engine and the 1,000th person to do so are working in a very different way.
To develop the third world, it might be more informative to look at the postwar trajectories of Japan, Singapore, Korea, and of course China.
> faulting the west for past injustices
Many of which are linked directly to present, ongoing injustices, but you'll never read that because you have no interest in engaging with the research itself, only a caricature. Besides, isn't it better history to find out what actually happened rather than just regurgitate the propaganda of the past?
A hallmark of post-modern historiography is exactly discarding this history can only be perceived through a western-european lens, and acknowledging that there are as many valid ways of looking at the past as there are cultures and people around the world.
> Japan, Singapore, Korea, and of course China
Neither Japan, Korea nor China were "third world" countries before WWII. Or even ever.
On the contrary. Japan was very much an industrialized nation in the 1930s. Before then, it has a long history as a advanced, albeit, regional power. The same is true about Korea. Chinese history itself is rife with empires and kingdoms - having trade networks, technological advances and so on - some of which being as large and influential - if not more - then the Roman Empire during its heyday.
Singapore already was a bustling trade port long before WWII, and has a history of being part of powerful local sultanates before the arrival of the British.
If anything, the examples you gave are quite ambivalent about the historical dynamics that led to their integration in today's modern global economic, geo-political, cultural structures and global power balances which were borne out of post-WWII victors creating a new order for peace and development.
Put another way, France had six times higher per capita GDP than South Korea in 1950. Today the two are comparable.
Before that, Japan went from feudal agrarianism to aircraft carriers in, what, 50 years?
I think you're missing the point - the idea is to learn from the industrialisation of those countries
That's the exact sentence, and it doesn't sit right with me for three distinct reasons.
First, it can be read as an an implication: "these 4 countries where part of the "third world" and now aren't given their post-war trajectory." which ignores the history of those 4 nations long before WWII or Western involvement.
Second, makes the same a-historical mistake by assuming that the particular path followed by those nations can readily be transposed towards other regions in the world.
Third, it's a take that ignores the agency other cultures and peoples have to carve out their own place in the world. Moreover, many of the problems in the so-called global south are a direct result of this exact thinking. Countless cultures and ways of living have disappeared over the past 2 centuries because it.
It was in reply to "those lessons can be applied to help developing nations follow the same trajectory to development", which does indeed embed the assumption of both a trajectory and that help is being imposed from outside.
> makes the same a-historical mistake by assuming that the particular path followed by those nations can readily be transposed towards other regions in the world
I put "might" in there for a reason. It also might not. It seems like something that might be worth investigating rather than dismissing? If that kind of development is your goal, of course. And it comes with its own assumptions and disadvantages.
> Moreover, many of the problems in the so-called global south are a direct result of this exact thinking. Countless cultures and ways of living have disappeared over the past 2 centuries because it.
Unable to parse antecedant of "this"; colonialism? Western involvement? Copying other countries?
But I'm not sure it's worth replying in this kind of environment.
Whether its true or not makes no difference. Studying history with an eye to past injustices puts people into a mindset of dependency, waiting for their former overlords to help them. But Europeans are never going to pay meaningful reparations for colonialism. Ever. The only thing worth learning from history is how Europe got to the point where it could take over Asia and Africa in the first place.
Why not look at somewhat more modern lessons?
Vietnam had a GDP per capita of $13,000 USD today.
They aren’t even close.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location...
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?locat...
And if you’ve ever lived in Vietnam you’d realize the comparison doesn’t make sense.
Vietnam is still very poor today. Netherlands in the 1980’s was a developed nation.
To assume we have reached some endpoint of development is absurd, particularly given historical precedent.
The article posits that industrialisation was spawned out of necessity due to a shortage of unskilled labour, and an excess of underemployed capital.
I find it interesting that the U.K. finds itself once again at a not dissimilar crossroads, with a shortage of unskilled and skilled labour, and with an excess of underemployed, concentrated capital. Growth is sclerotic, the political situation is fragile, and inflation runs rampant. Meanwhile, new technology developed over the preceding century has enabled new possibilities, hitherto unimagined and as yet unrealised.
In history, when exposed to severe stressors, societies typically either flourish or collapse.
Collapse has become less common in the industrialised, interconnected world, so it’s not an unreasonable hypothesis that perhaps the U.K. will somehow find itself at the forefront of a new productivity revolution.
Who would you suggest modern developing nations colonize?