Perception of the relations between former colonial powers and developing countries

Abstract

People register and process stimuli every day, creating an image of space–time reality involving multifaceted relations between various states. The authors have created a database consisting of articles from the periodical Le Monde diplomatique from 1954 to 2009. This paper focuses on investigating how strong relations are between former colonial powers and developing countries. The authors present an index showing the frequency of coincidence of opinion-shaping content in articles about one of the selected world powers and a developing country; they next establish a quantitative reference to dependency and world-systems theories.

Keywords:

• decolonisation and colonisation
• dependency and anti-imperialism
• global South
• globalisation

Notes

1. Bunting and Guelke, “Behavioral and Perception Geography”; Tuan, “Images and Mental Maps”; Menzel, Das Ende der Dritten Welt; Lundestad, East, West, North, South; Lundestad, The Rise and Decline of American Empire; Cohen, “Geopolitics in the New World Era”; Cohen, Geopolitics of the World System; and Sidaway, “Postcolonial Geographies.”

2. Jones, “Phase Space”; and Steinberg, “Calculating Similitude and Difference.”

3. Braudel, Historia i trwanie, 86 (authors’ translation).

4. Hanson, “Isms and Schisms.” See also Crampton and Elden, “Space, Politics, Calculation”; and Wallerstein, “Open the Social Sciences.”

5. Flint, “A TimeSpace for Electoral Geography”; Flint “Political Geography”; and Ceccato and Uittenbogaard, “Space–Time Dynamics.”

6. Wallerstein, The Modern World-system.

7. Ahiakpor, “The Success and Failure of Dependency Theory.”

8. Wallerstein, World-systems Analysis.

9. Wallerstein, The Decline.

10. Wallerstein and Hopkins, The Age of Transition. See also Hassler, “Raw Material Procurement.”

11. Taylor and Flint, Political Geography, 67–77; Agnew, “American Hegemony”; Anderson, “American Hegemony after 11 September”; Smith, American Empire; and Wallerstein, The Decline.

12. Aronovitz, “A Metatheoretical Critique.” See also Wallerstein, World-systems Analysis.

13. Huber, “Energizing Historical Materialism”; Taylor, “World Cities”; Taylor, “New Political Geographies”; and Sidaway, “Sovereign Excesses?”

14. See Dussel, “Beyond Europocentrism.”

15. Ashcroft et al., The Empire Writes Back.

16. McMillin, International Media Studies.

17. Kessler and Slocum, “Analysis of Thematic Maps”; Kobayashi, “People, Place, and Region”; Kwan, “A Century”; and Short et al., “Cultural Globalization.”

18. Barriot and Bismuth, “Ambiguous Concepts”; and Kefala, L'évolution du Liban.

19. See Solarz, “North–South”; and Solarz, “‘Third World’.”

20. Parker, “Ratzel.”

21. Leroy-Beaulieu, “Les États-Unis”; and Dabène, Atlas de l'Amérique latine, 80.

22. Clochard, Atlas des migrants, 116–117.

23. See Manzo, “Africa in the Rise.”