Synopses & Reviews
Based on three decades of fieldwork throughout the developing world,
Scars of Partition is the first book to systematically evaluate the long-term implications of French and British styles of colonialism and decolonization for ordinary people throughout the so-called Third World. It pays particular attention to the contemporary legacies of artificial boundaries superimposed by Britain and France that continue to divide indigenous peoples into separate postcolonial states. In so doing, it uniquely illustrates how the distinctive stamps of France and Britain continue to mark daily life along and behind these inherited borders in Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Caribbean.
and#160;Scars of Partition draws on political science, anthropology, history, and geography to examine six cases of indigenous, indentured, and enslaved peoples partitioned by colonialism in West Africa, West Indies, South Pacific, Southeast Asia, South India, and the Indian Ocean. William F. S. Miles demonstrates that sovereign nations throughout the developing world, despite basic differences in culture, geography, and politics, still bear the underlying imprint of their colonial pasts. Disentangling and appreciating these embedded colonial legacies is critical to achieving full decolonizationand#8212;particularly in their borderlands.
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Review
and#8220;This splendid volume is a seminal contribution to the comparative study of colonialism, decolonization, and colonial legacy. . . . A magnum opus embodying a lifetime of careful research, and a strikingly original research design.and#8221;and#8212;Crawford Young, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Wisconsinand#8211;Madison and author of
The Postcolonial State in Africa: Fifty Years of IndependenceReview
andquot;By focusing on the experiences of partitioned peoples in specific borderlands, Miles offers a rigorous political assessment of the global legacies of colonialisms in the twenty-first century.andquot;andmdash;Kate Marsh, Bulletin of Francophone Postcolonial Studies
Synopsis
Why did the industrial revolution take place in eighteenth-century Britain and not elsewhere in Europe or Asia? In this convincing new account Robert Allen argues that the British industrial revolution was a successful response to the global economy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He shows that in Britain wages were high and capital and energy cheap in comparison to other countries in Europe and Asia. As a result, the breakthrough technologies of the industrial revolution - the steam engine, the cotton mill, and the substitution of coal for wood in metal production - were uniquely profitable to invent and use in Britain. The high wage economy of pre-industrial Britain also fostered industrial development since more people could afford schooling and apprenticeships. It was only when British engineers made these new technologies more cost-effective during the nineteenth century that the industrial revolution would spread around the world.
About the Author
William F. S. Miles is a professor of political science at Northeastern University in Boston. He is the author of numerous books, including
Hausaland Divided: Colonialism and Independence in Nigeria and Niger and
Bridging Mental Boundaries in a Postcolonial Microcosm: Identity and Development in Vanuatu.