The main goal of the thesis is to develop an understanding of the history of international society, reinterpreting it as the uneven and combined development of capitalism. It is argued that uneven and combined development is the historical form that capitalism has taken in expanding international society. The way in which each individual society was integrated into the expanding international society depended on the local conditions and how this fed into the international context set by an already-existing world market and states-system. When subjected to the pressures of capitalist expansion, states attempted to quickly consolidate their power and increase revenue by developing their productive capacity through copying the methods of production and political organisation which had made Europe so strong. This produced a particular model of development in that advanced forms were often grafted onto pre-existing structures. The experience of this creates the particular context in which political action takes place. The case studies of Egypt and Vietnam provide two local comparative applications of the theory. Each case study shows, through historical reconstruction, how the history of international society and the history of individual societies are intertwined. It will also show that in both cases the experience of uneven and combined development created a particular distorted and twisted class structure which meant that social and political instability was built in. By charting their different experiences an explanation is provided for the two very different routes they took: in Egypt's case - a nationalist military coup d'etat, and in Vietnam's case - Communist revolution and war. But the theory goes further than just providing an analysis of domestic instabilities, it also shows how it is the management of these very instabilities which has dominated the policies and actions of the major powers throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:325405 |
| Date | January 2000 |
| Creators | Turner, Mandy Mary |
| Publisher | London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London) |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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