Throughout Module 8, we discussed the Dutch East India Company. We learned that the Dutch took an aggressive, almost genocidal colonization approach in order to monopolize and take full control over the spice trade. It is important to note that the Dutch East Indian Company was just a company with shareholders that issued stock. In order for the Dutch to really exploit the population they colonized, they would create plantations, obtain slaves to compensate for the indigenous populations they mightve wiped out, and use those slaves to work on the plantation in order to produce more spices. These Dutch colonies created a very extractive society which led to the evolution of a monarchy in these countries once the Dutch East Indian Company came to an end.
What interventions, individual or collective, could be made, or could have been made, to address, and or improve, the issues raised in the readings?
In the example of Natal and Transkei, the dual economy that formed in Africa could have been avoided if more inclusive political institutions had been able to prevail. Despite Africas economic boom during the 18th century which resulted from a shift toward more inclusive institutions and the erosion of the chief’s powers, the prosperity of Africa declined because of the interference from European settlers. The Europeans slowly initiated the dual economy by driving the Africans out of business and employing them for cheap labor. The Natives Land of 1913 ultimately created the split between the modern and traditional sector and granted the white minority more political and economic rights. Had the extractive economic institutions developed by the Eurpeans been stopped by inclusive political institutions, the formation of the dual economy could have been avoided.
the people of that region had been encouraged to participate in inclusive institutions and its innovations. Instead, the people of Africa were
Lastly, how do the readings connect to Economics and History?
In western Europe, the importance of the printing press was quickly recognized. In 1460, there was already a printing press across the border, in Strasbourg, France. By the late 1460s the technology had spread throughout Italy, with presses in Rome and Venice, soon followed by Florence, Milan, and Turin. By 1476, William Caxton had set up a printing press in London, and two years later there was one in Oxford. During the same time, printing spread throughout the countries of Spain and Europe. Not everyone saw printing as an innovation. But as time passed by, printing was forbidden for Muslims in Arabic. Until 1727, the printing press was allowed in Ottoman Islands. The connection to economics and history, in the early eighteenth century, there were reputed to be eighty thousand such scribes active in Istanbul. This opposition to the printing press had great consequences of literacy, education, and economic success.
Seriously only need like 4 sentences.
The book used is: Why Nations Fail : The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty pdf
