The Anthropocene and the Triumph of the Imagination: An Environmental Perspective on C. A. Bayly's Remaking the Modern World, 1900–2015

2019 ◽  
Vol 78 (4) ◽  
pp. 837-848 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sunil Amrith

Having had the privilege of being taught by Chris Bayly as an undergraduate, I can hear Remaking the Modern World in his voice. I can hear it in the form of the dazzling lectures—never showy, but perspective-shifting week after week—that were the kernels from which this book and its predecessor on the nineteenth century both grew. In the late 1990s, that course was still called “The West and the Third World since 1914.” Notwithstanding its then already outmoded title, it was a progressive course: a perspective on global history building out from the detailed study of South and Southeast Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa. It was clear even then that Bayly's long immersion in the study of Indian history was not incidental but rather vital to Bayly, the global historian.

English Today ◽  
1990 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 39-41

‘All other regions of the Third World made economic progress in the 1980s; not sub-Saharan Africa. Arms are not the only reason. Every year at least $15 billion in capital leaves Africa. Much of it is booty, siphoned off by vampire elites. For example, last April the Christian Association of Nigeria revealed that more than 3,000 Nigerians operated Swiss bank accounts and that Nigerians were near the top of the list of Third World patrons of Swiss banks.


2002 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 132-135
Author(s):  
David Wilmsen

According to Ankie Hoogvelt, this book is intended to "introduce students todebates regarding the development prospects of the Third World." This sheaccomplishes in very compact and richly documented detail. Indeed, thereare so many citations that the lack of a bibliography is sorely felt.The book is divided into three parts, each addressing a broad themeaffecting development and the Third World. The first considers the historicalroute of capitalist expansion into a world economic system by means of,among other things, the core countries' depredations of their peripheralcolonies. The second treats the world economy's increasing internationalizationand the retrenchment of wealth accumulation by means of strategichegemony and economic regulation, especially by the United States. Thefinal part examines the resultant situations in the four distinct socioculturalrealms of the Third World, devoting a chapter to each: sub-Saharan Africa,the Islamic world, East Asia, and Latin America.True to the spirit of debate she is trying to foster in her students,Hoogvelt challenges some of the conventional assumptions about humansociety's advancement under globalization. She points out that, contraryto expert consensus, the flow of wealth to the Third world has declinedsince the colonial era. Or, again, that world trade represented a greaterpercentage of world production at the beginning of the twentieth century,before the era of globalization, than it did at its end, when it was in fullstride. Or, yet again, that much of the apparent increase in trade, especially ...


1991 ◽  
Vol 30 (4I) ◽  
pp. 551-578
Author(s):  
William C. Thlesenhusen

In the short term one can be pessimistic about the collective progress of the Third World and its interactions with industrial countries. There is plenty of bad news. With one-quarter of the world's population, industrialized countries consume about 80 percent of the world's goods. With three-quarters of the world's population, developing countries command less than one-quarter of the world's resources. And the imbalance is growing worse.! Of the 2.7 billion people in the tropical and subtropical regions outside of China, 40 percent live in poverty; more than 14 million of their children under 5 years of age starve to death or die of disease each year? Furthermore, at the same time as an increasing proportion of the population of Africa is composed of young people (65 percent of its population is now under age 25), education budgets are being cut - from $ 10.8 billion in 1980 to $ 5.8 billion in 1986.3 In an article assessing the globalization of economies, Richard J. Barnet writes: "Poverty, population pressures, civil war, and repression are turning Sub-Saharan Africa - black Africa minus South Africa and Namibia - into a giant disaster zone, and in countries in South America, such as Colombia and Peru, the civil society is dissolving. In the Philippines more than seventy percent of the population is poor by any human standard. With the end of the Cold War, the increasing marginalization of the Third World appears likely."4 The predictions are ominous. Barnet concludes his article, written before the crisis in Iraq, by speaking to an industrial-country audience: "There is no real north-south dialogue, and politicians in the industrial world feel little pressure to begin one.


1992 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Webber

The transformation of Soviet foreign policy during the Gorbachev era was truly seismic in nature. Re-evaluations were effected in all areas of policy, resulting, most visibly, in the fundamental reordering of relations with the United States and fellow N.A.T.O. countries, and the demise of the Warsaw Pact and communist régimes in Eastern Europe. Equally sweeping were alterations in approach to the Third World and, more specifically, sub-saharan Africa, where changes in policy Soviet retreat.


1985 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 239-250 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin Kirkpatrick ◽  
Dimitris Diakosavvas

The problem of food insecurity in less-developed countries (L.D.C.s) continues to demand the attention of the international community. Despite the progress that has been made in increasing the world's production of cereals and other major foodstuffs, many L.D.C.s continue to face immense difficulties in ensuring an adequate level of food supplies on a regular year-to-year basis. The current African food crisis has once again demonstrated the vulnerability of low-income economies to a sudden shortfall in supplies, and has highlighted the need for additional measures to strengthen food security in the Third World.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 385-410
Author(s):  
Mariano Mestman

The Italian film I dannati della terra (The Damned of the Earth) (Orsini and Filippi 1968) is a prominent example of the connection between the European cinema of intervention and the Third World struggles of the 1960s. Set as a ‘film within a film’, the movie tells the story of a leftist filmmaker, Fausto Morelli, who faces the challenge of finishing a film about the liberation struggles of sub-Saharan Africa by building on the documentary footage that was bequeathed to him by his student and friend, the young Abramo Malonga, an African (Bantu). This article recovers overlooked and little-known documents about the film to show that it is the expression of an active cinematic Third Worldism forged in previous years between the legacy of the Resistenza Partigiana (Italian Resistance) and the Third World struggles of the 1960s. At the same time, the article analyses the ways in which the film ‘dialogues’ with experimental trends of the contemporary avant-garde artistic scene in order to challenge the viewer to debate the ‘open ideological hypothesis’ of the film and take an active part in the political struggles of the time.


1989 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
R N Villar ◽  
V K Solomon ◽  
J Rangam

The pattern of knee pathology seen in an Indian mission hospital following the introduction of knee clinics is described. This paper reports the results of the first 200 consecutive patients seen at these clinics, relating the findings to anticipated treatments. The occurrence of degenerative disease was high. The importance of knee flexion, in order to be able to squat, is highlighted. The necessity to adopt this position materially alters the types of treatment that can be offered to this group of people. It is concluded that treatments common to the West are not always suitable for patients in the Third World.


1998 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-263 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Cammack

It is doubtful as to whether the countries of the Third World are likely to move to the kind of liberal democracy that is regarded as characteristic of the West. In particular, parties are often remaining ‘parties of the State’ and not organizations truly competing with each other. This is in part a consequence of economic globalization, as the requirements of global economic liberalization do not fit with the requirements of democracy. In such a context, clientelism around the State may be inevitable and it contributes to ensuring that the main party in the country, and indeed all parties become ‘parties of the State’, as is the case in Mexico or Malaysia and perhaps in the Ukraine and South Africa. Thus, globalization does not mean the end of the State, but possibly the end of liberal democracy.


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