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9 - Empire, capital and a legacy of endogenous multiculturalism

from Part III - The future legacies of the American Empire

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2015

Herman Mark Schwartz
Affiliation:
University of Virginia
Sandra Halperin
Affiliation:
Royal Holloway, University of London
Ronen Palan
Affiliation:
City University London
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Summary

Empire, capital and endogenous multiculturalism

Do empire and capitalism produce different kinds of multiculturalism? And how did empire and capitalism interact to produce the multicultural societies we see every where today? Imperial and capitalist multiculturalism do differ, but not as much as one might expect, and not just because modern capitalist society emerged out of several imperial powers. It is tempting to see today's multiculturalism as a lingering feature of capitalism's impure origins in the world that preceded it. But both empire and capitalism contain contradictory and endogenous tendencies towards homogenization and differentiation that grow out of generic political and economic logics. Homogenization and differentiation each lower both governance costs and transaction costs in the mobilization of labour forces. The precise mix differs from place to place, as a function of the imperial centre's relative strength, population density in newly conquered territory and the onset of industrialization.

I tease out some of these differences by comparing labour mobilization and migration in late Qing China, the British tropical empire before and after the industrial revolution and the US Empire. Thirty million people migrated from Han China into Manchuria in the nineteenth century. This came close to producing the same kind of culturally homogeneous population and production practices that existed on the south side of the Great Wall.

Type
Chapter
Information
Legacies of Empire
Imperial Roots of the Contemporary Global Order
, pp. 197 - 220
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2015

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