Global trade and globalisation are now so ingrained in our world that it would seem impossible to remove them, to return to a time when local produce was enjoyed entirely by local people.

Of course, trading across borders is not a new concept. As far back as the nineteenth century, British whaling ships landed on the shores of New Zealand. The Māori offered fresh food and water, and sometimes women, in exchange for manufactured goods, clothing, and sometimes muskets.

A century earlier, British merchants sent ships to trade with North America and the West Indies with sugar, tobacco and other tropical groceries that were transported to Britain to meet a growing consumer demand. Sadly, the growth of Empire went hand in hand with the growth of the slave trade, where unfree labour was used to work on the plantations of tobacco, rice and sugar that Britain would then enjoy.

Roll forward two or three centuries, and despite our abhorrence over the concept of slavery, George Ritzer (an American philosopher and professor) points out that in some parts of the world little has changed.  He goes on to argue that economic freedom now seems to exist on the basis of manipulation and exclusion of what he calls the ‘bottom billion’, citing:

‘the exploitation of indigenous labour by multinational corporations [and] the adverse effect on the environment of actions taken in the developed world [has resulted in] threats posed by global culture to indigenous culture’.

Labour continues to be a ‘commodity’, with worldwide manipulation now also achieved via the internet, which as Slobodian points out has more ‘followers’ than any nation state.

To fully appreciate the extent of global inequality, George Ritzer compares the life experience of the bottom billion with the lives of the rich and the super-rich in the world. Ritzer quotes Paul Collier’s description of ‘the bottom billion’, explaining that the vast majority (70 percent) of the people in the bottom billion, are in Africa. Among the other countries that contain large numbers of the bottom billion are Haiti, Bolivia, Laos, North Korea, and Yemen.

Wherever they live, the bottom billion have incomes of only about a fifth of those in other developing countries and Collier warns that their situation will only grow worse unless there are dramatic changes in the near future. The bottom billion experience low life expectancy (about 50 years compared with an average of 67 in other developing nations), high infant mortality (14 percent of the children of the bottom billion die before their fifth birthday compared with four percent in other developing countries). They are also more likely to show symptoms of malnutrition (36 percent as opposed to 20 percent in other developing countries). Perhaps of greatest importance (says Collier) is the fact that their situation has grown worse in recent years and they have fallen further behind those in not only the developed countries but the other less developed countries, as well.

Collier argues that there are four ‘traps’ that disproportionately account for the impoverishment of the bottom billion.

These are:

• The conflict trap, where internal conflicts, such as coup d’etats and civil wars result in populations being plunged into poverty
• The natural resources trap, where the world’s poorest countries may be rich in certain natural resources but boom and bust shifts in trade can result in a small number of people becoming increasing wealthy, with democracy often undermined, leaving the poor without a voice to enact change
• The landlocked trap, experienced by some countries whose only direct access to trade routes are via ‘bad’ neighbours, limiting their ability to benefit from trade and leading to economic isolation and poverty
• The bad governance trap, where bad government policies can not only inhibit an economy from growing, but can literally destroy the economy. One example is the government of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, which came to power in 1980, clinging on to power, leading to millions of people fleeing Zimbabwe, many crossing the border illegally into South Africa. This led to protests, riots, and even violence against these immigrants in South Africa. Another example of the bad governance trap can be seen in China, with Mao Zedong, who put in place a series of disastrous policies, such as the infamous ‘Great Leap Forward’ in which he attempted to force China to make a rapid transition from a farm-based to an industrial economy. The policy was highly disruptive and extremely unsuccessful and led to great failures on the farms and to a famine in China.

I read about Mao Zedong’s ‘Great Leap Forward’ initiative when I came to do my research for The Birdsong of Michael Grey. The initiative, which ran from 1958 to 1962, ordered the Chinese people to eliminate rats, flies, mosquitoes, and sparrows. The order came as the authorities decided that these ‘pests’ were damaging crops and the sparrows were eating too much grain. Over that period some one billion sparrows were killed, including the total population of tree sparrows. However, it seems the Chairman’s plan would backfire. The sparrows were a vital part of the Chinese ecosystem, as well as eating grain, sparrows ate locusts. Without the sparrows the locusts flourished. By 1960, locusts decimated the rice crops, resulting in one of the worst man-made famines ever experienced. The exact numbers of people who died during the famine is unknown, but it is suggested that it was between twenty and forty million people.

China’s ‘Great Leap Forward’ is a bold reminder that tampering with nature will inevitably create problems for our whole ecosystem, mankind included.

As we see the ever-increasing influence of trade and economic power across the globe, we can perhaps look to this quote attributed to philosophers, Fredric Jameson and Slavoj Žižek, to counter any hope for fairness and economic equality:

‘it is easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism’.

My next post – Cars, cars and more cars – will be reflecting on the competition for space between the motor vehicle and people!

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To continuing exploring the topic, take a look at:

• Paul Collier. The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What
• Can Be Done About It. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
• Frederick Cooper, “What is the Concept of Globalization Good For? An African Historian’s Perspective” African Affairs 100 (2001): 189-213.
• George Ritzer, Globalization: a Basic Text.
• Quinn Slobodian, Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy.
• Tara Zahra, Against the World: Anti-Globalism and Mass Politics Between the World Wars). Video talk on the book is here -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6v4FbfrmAc