The chief centers of heavy
industry, commerce and finance were in Europe. European merchant fleets
and European navies sailed the seas. European banks and business houses
dominated planetary financing, insuring and investing.
Viewed from outside, the ascendancy of Europe seemed to be complete.
Europe held the strategic strong points: productivity, wealth, the means
of transportation, mobile fire-power. By the end of the nineteenth
century Europe was the monopoly-capitalist motherland. The rest of the
planet was made up of actual or potential dependents under European
authority. From these outsiders living at subsistence levels, Europeans
could get their supplies of food and raw materials at low prices and to
them Europeans could sell their surplus manufactures, their commercial
services, and their investment capital at high prices. The resulting
European prosperity was expected to continue indefinitely into the
future.
This planetary structure, with Europe as the center of wealth, power,
art, science, free business enterprise and wage slavery, progress and
poverty, left the majority of mankind living as dependents and
colonials. The situation embodied several confrontations:
1. The masters of Europe might quarrel among themselves.
2. Non-Europeans might set up rival wealth power centers
and challenge Europe's world hegemony.
3. Colonials and other dependants might demand independence,
and equal status in the family of nations.
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