Purpose

I wrote Wealth and Power with the purpose of explaining how our world has arrived at the place that we are at now. This may sound like an abstract question, too broad to make any sense so I decided to try and make concrete some answers. To do that I turned to history, the subject I first studied at University long ago.

I am very aware that we turn from one global crisis to the next. Each crisis is reported as if it were by itself. In fact, in my world view, each crisis occurs in a historical context, where each event is connected to a range of others including those that came before, throughout history. If that sounds too abstract, just consider the ongoing crises about the environment and the change in climate on our planet. This is connected to a wide range of contemporary events, from fossil fuel use, to the way we farm, to the type of organisations associated with fossil fuels or to farming. I could go on, but you get the idea. Historically, the environment crises are connected to the industrial revolution and use of steam and oil power to drive engines. Each global crisis is interconnected with a wide range of other events, which we tend to ignore as we focus on the event in front of our eyes. Wealth and Power, if nothing else will help readers make these connections over time.

So, Wealth and Power is focused on a range of issues that are all interrelated. Here are some of them: Stay with me, this is a roller coaster of a story. It is as true as I can make it, and it could not have been made up even by the most imaginative storyteller.

First, how have we created the world we all take for granted?  It is unique in world history.

How did Europe, a small and insignificant part of the world in 1500, become so powerful and dominant across the globe by 1900?

What were the mechanisms used to establish European dominance?

I chose colonialism to start off with. Many talk of colonialism as if everybody knows what it was. Yet it was not simply one thing, it was complex and developed over a long period of time. I argue that what European Colonialism originally was in 1492 has simply changed its spots and continues today under different circumstances.

I argue that the immensity of the changes that I discuss could not have occurred and be sustained over long period without major changes in religion, ideology and science. A key part of these changes in ideology concerns race and racism. Europeans and Americans considered themselves Master races and race became deeply accepted as part of the Colonial edifice. I examine race from many different angles.

What were the key components of colonialism? I chose slavery, endured labour, impoverishment, holocausts, and war. I deal with all these in different blogs.

As we get closer to today, I begin to examine some of the major contemporary events and ask why they occurred. The wars of the period 1914 to 1945; the wars that continued after 1945 from Vietnam to the invasions of Afghanistan, and the entire area of Mesopotamia. Closer to home, the struggle for world supremacy takes many forms. First the UK becomes the world leader, challenged by Germany. The USA takes over in 1945, and is challenged by the Soviet Union. Finally, today the new challenger is China. The struggle for world supremacy needs to be understood in its totality, a strange and dangerous phenomena.

It is a roller coaster of a story.

Dr. Roger van Zwanenberg