Summary Of The West And The Rest

Through writing The West and the Rest: Discourse and Power and Europe and the People without History, Stewart Hall and Eric Wolf, respectively, explored the spill of Europe into the Americas after Christopher Columbus’s landing in modern day Bahamas. Hall set up his essay to rationalize the beliefs that emerged from Europe. Meanwhile, Wolf took into account of the general growth pattern in Spanish and Portuguese colonies before applying his theory on the political economy. Though both Hall and Wolf recommended that holistic study of colonialism and regional development, Hall’s analysis showed that the driving force of change was sovereign from a limited group of wealth seekers and elites. Before delving into the compare and contrast, I

Changes in power, ideology, culture, etc. in Europe propagated across the world, impacting the lives in the Middle East and the Americas; the reverse was equally true. Hall used this phenomenon to explain the resurgence of Europe after the Middle Ages and further support the discourse of “The West and the Rest” (187-197). The ideals of the West came from the unification of the European people to differentiate themselves from the rest of the world. For example, Christendom, definitive of the region, helped in contrasting Europe from the Islam East or the pagan Americas. This unification through distinction allowed European power to gather strength and expand globally. Furthermore, the discourse of the West’s superiority in terms of advancement in morality, technology, and military power justified the enslavement and mistreatment of many African and Native Americans. Therefore, the discourse of the West changed not only Europe but also Africa and America. Wolf toyed with the idea of a “world of sociocultural billiard balls, coursing on a global billiard table” (17-18). Wolf argued that societies are not distinctive like billiard balls, coming in contact temporally to borrow power and spread independently hence after. Rather, Wolf claimed that political economic forces such as the African slaves trade “created an unlimited demand for slaves, and were quite unrelated populations met that

In the example of the Castilian Indies, the move toward silver mining “entailed changes in government policies from an initial concern with ensuring royal control of both conqueror and conquered to politics aimed primarily at maximizing mining and securing its supplies. These shifts created new geography and altered the ecologic, economic, and political conditions of the conquered pollutions.” This movement increased the need for foodstuff, mining equipment, and other essentials. As the region grew, it demanded a larger support network, making way for agricultural economy and other supportive positions to flourish. Moreover, the increasing burden of managing of all the miners and the coerced Indians forced the Crown to abandon direct control, transferring command of miners and Indians alike to private entrepreneurs. Another example embodying political economic’s reach is the phenomenon in which haciendas, land estates worked by dependent laborers, circumscribed towns and mines; the haciendas, then, drew upon the surrounding settlements of natives. “Each lower level yielded surplus to the level above it.,” meaning, to meet the demand of miners and townspeople, haciendas owners manipulated the local Indians to toil their land. Here, political economic forces acted as a hidden lure, pulling along a set of progressions in the colonies, profiting some at the expense of