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Imperialist Economic Strategies

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The global wealth distribution continues to be defined by a massive inequality of wealth between advanced capitalist countries and the least developed countries. The gap between the thirty richest and the thirty poorest countries, in per capital income has grown from 17:1 in 1980 to 27:1 in 2002 . Despite massive aid and trade liberalisation programmes, development strategies in poor countries have not resulted in sustainable economic development but have instead resulted in ‘massive underdevelopment and impoverishment, untold exploitation and oppressions’ . Despite the success of some newly industrialising countries, most notably China, many of the world’s poorest countries continue to be reliant on the export of raw materials and agricultural …show more content…

In the second part of this essay, I shall argue that colonisation and imperialist economic strategies allowed European countries to develop, whilst chronically under-developing colonised nations. In the third part of this essay, I will explore neo-colonial practices and argue that globalisation has, in many cases, deepened the divide between the advanced industrial and the least developed countries. In the final part of this essay, I will illustrate how these inequalities, and neo-colonial economic strategies proliferates poverty in the less economically developed countries, looking specifically at health and the Ebola crisis in West …show more content…

The historical relations of inequality, domination and colonisation between the rich and poor countries is demonstrative of the fact that the global economic “free” trade is not conducted on level playing field. However, the causes and explanations for wealth inequality between nations are many, and this essay has been necessarily limited in scope. Further attention could be paid to factors including (but by no means limited to) the effects of NGO international development policies, the effects of certain industries, such as, the pharmaceutical industry and the mining industry, US and European-supported dictatorships and coups in developing countries and corporate tax-avoidance. Additionally, the effect of racist ideologies and structural expendability in shaping the global economy and economic practices could provide further explanations for global inequalities. In the future, environmental factors, especially human-induced climate change (primarily the responsibility of the “Global North”), are going to have increasingly devastating effects on the economies, infrastructure, health and well-being of people in the “Global South”. For example, Sub-Saharan Africa produces less than 4% of the world’s greenhouse gases, yet will suffer some of the

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