Asia and the World Economy
This is an excerpt from the paper...
The three largest economies in Asia had very different experiences in the world economy from 1850 to 1945. India, an imperial subject of Britain throughout this period, was forced to abandon the production of textiles and most other goods when Britain elected to manufacture these goods and export them instead to its continent-sized colony. As a result, India became primarily an exporter of primary products and made only minimal progress toward industrialization. China, though it was no one's colony, was beset by weak governments and periods of extreme political instability. But China suffered a much worse fate than India's because it was subject to the demands of powerful, competing industrialized nations seeking raw materials and markets for their manufactured goods. Japan, however, became one of the industrialized nations and, in addition to exerting immense influence over China's economy, became a world industrial power. All three nations were major traders with the industrialized nations of the West and traded heavily among themselves. When compared with each other the differing performances of the three nations in the emergent global economy, demonstrate how the world system developed as a system of relationships between the newly industrialized world and the less-developed, primarily agricultural, nations that relied on the export of raw materials and food. Japan's development demonstrates the fact that any country that could create the proper circumstances co
. . .
r imports."
The principal direction of India's participation in the world economy was set by its turn to the provision of primary commodities in exchange for consumer goods. Throughout the second half of the nineteenth century India's role in the world economy was largely that of a producer of traditional crops on a large scale for export. Traditional crops such as opium, indigo, raw silk and cotton had accounted for 56 to 64 percent of the total value of Indian exports prior to 1850. But rising competition from China and, much later, Japan all but eliminated the silk industry and Indian cotton went into a decline from which it did not recover until much later. The emergence of various commodities to the new status of major exports was, of course, tied to demand in the rest of the system. A high level of demand for jute developed, for example, with "the increased level of world trade in foodgrains [and the] corresponding demand for container bags." But demand was, of course, a dangerous thing for providers of primary commodities. The thriving indigo plantations were one industry that contracted severely by the end of the century "largely due to the discovery of synthetic aniline dyes." In other instances, however, In
. . .
Some common words found in the essay are:
China India, China Japan, Indian Trade, Meiji Restoration's, Opium Wars, , United Japan, Russo-Japanese War, Immanuel Wallerstein, India Japan, primary commodities, world economy, nineteenth century, world system, industrialized nations, world trade, world economic system, economic system, economic development, foreign trade, foreign traders, primary commodities suffered, nineteenth century example, producers primary commodities, world trade system,
Approximate Word count = 3260
Approximate Pages = 13 (250 words per page)
More Essays on Asia and the World Economy
|
Customer Service
to Over
32,000 Professionally Written Papers!!!
