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Book
Review |
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Daniel R. Headrick, The Tentacles of Progress:
Technology Transfer in the Age of Imperialism, 1850-1940 (Oxford University
Press 1988), pp. 416, $26.95.
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One of the issues that teachers and students
of history must address is the hegemony of the West in the 19th and early
20th centuries. This issue is similar to one explored by Jared Diamond in
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (W.W. Norton
& Co., 1999) regarding the dominance of Eurasia by 1500 C.E. To put
it simply, what allows one region to become dominant over others? In The
Tentacles of Progress: Technology Transfer in the Age of Imperialism, 1850-1940,
Daniel R. Headrick explores the technological reasons for the economic and
political dominance of the West over the tropical regions in the modern
period. |
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Thankfully, as world historians we no longer
rely on the nineteenth century view that social evolution should ineluctably
move all societies toward the "perfection"of Western European
civilization. That said, how do we explain the century-long delay in industrialization
in countries under Western domination? If one of the justifications for
19th century imperialism was to spread Western technology to the rest of
the world and to promote "progress," what happened? Why did traditional
economies fail to become industrial economies based on European technology
and instead became "modern undeveloped ones"(p. 4)? Headrick,
who focuses primarily on India and Africa, notes that while tropical economies
grew, they did not develop. This "reversed the age-old pattern of world
trade in which the Western peoples craved the goods of the East, but had
little but bullion to offer in exchange" (p. 7). Instead, from the
middle of the nineteenth century tropical countries were forced into the
role of supplying cash crops and raw materials to Western markets and importing
Western manufactured goods. |
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Why did technological knowledge and techniques
fail to be transferred to areas controlled by the West? Among other things,
Headrick argues, the technological gap between European and tropical countries
following the second industrial revolution was just too great, so that the
"gap between preindustrial crafts and industrial technology had grown
so wide that the traditional skills were useless in the process of modernizing"
(p. 11). Illiteracy also hindered the transfer of complex machine tools
and chemical processes. In addition, since modern industrial machinery is
much more complex and expensive than pre-industrial revolution technology,
the start-up costs to create a factory were much higher by the late nineteenth
century than they were earlier in the century. "In other words,"
Headrick notes, "as time goes on, underdevelopment make[s] industrialization
increasingly difficult" (11). As a result, long-standing technologies
(such as the manufacture of cotton cloth in India) were replaced by Western
industrial products, so that local people had to rely on the West for items
they once produced themselves. |
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More importantly, Western European powers
controlled the means of transportation (such as steamships and railroads)
and communication (such as the telegraph and the wireless). Roads, for example,
were built to carry raw materials and resources from their point of origin
to the nearest port to be collected and shipped to Europe--not so that they
might directly benefit indigenous peoples. New technologies of transportation
and communication allowed the Western powers to penetrate into and control
ever larger segments of the world and to control the world economy in a
way never before possible. |
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Tentacles of Progress is one of those
books that can be used in many ways in a world history curriculum. It is
a popular summer reading assignment, allowing students to mull over the
various chapters at a leisurely pace instead of trying to read it alongside
a full reading load during the school year. It can also be used as reading
during either Winter or Spring break, closer to the point in the curriculum
where the book is applicable. |
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It is also possible to tailor the reading
to meet more specific classroom needs, such as to elaborate on particular
themes or regions. For example, one might ask students to read the first
chapter and the conclusion, which provide the overview of Headrickâs
argument. Then one could select the sections that are most relevant to the
particular course in question. For example, chapter 7, "Economic Botany
and Tropical Plantations," makes an excellent follow-up to work on
the Columbian Exchange in the 1450-1750 period. The chapter examines in
depth cinchona, sugar cane, and rubber in the British, French, and Dutch
Empires. Other possibilities include following different geographical regions
through the topics of the chapters: for example, Indian telegraphs (chapter
4), irrigation systems ("hydraulic imperialism," chapter 6), iron
and steel production (chapters 8 & 10), technical education and politics
(chapter 9), cotton mills and shipbuilding (chapter 10). Similar threads
can be pulled out for Egypt, sub-Saharan African, or Malaya and Indonesia.
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Finally, Tentacles lends itself to
preparation for questions regarding both change over time and regional comparisons.
In both cases, students are forced to think in terms of causality and world
systems. Given one chapter as a hand-out, students can compare, for example,
the "Hydraulic Imperialism" in India and Egypt (chapter 6) or
technical education in Egypt, West Africa, and India (chapter 9). Since
Tentacles covers the last two AP chronological periods (1750-1914
and 1914 to the present), 'change over time' topics can also be developed
for the AP history class with relative ease, such as exploring the European
take-over of mining tin in Malaysia and copper in central Africa. |
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However a teacher uses Tentacles of Progress,
it is clearly a classic global approach to a long-standing set of questions,
and deserves a place as one of the standards for the "new" world
history classroom. |
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Ryba
Epstein
Rich East High School
Park Forest, IL |