Least developed country

“ The cry suddenly raised that this great country has become too small for us is too ridiculous to demand an answer, in view of the fact that our present population may be tripled and still have ample elbow-room, with resources to support many more. But we are told that our industries are gasping for breath; that we are suffering from over-production; that our products must have new outlets, and that we need colonies and dependencies the world over to give us more markets. ”

“ We require (or, at least, our people believe, rightly or wrongly, that we require) wider territorial scope for our growth than we possess in our own country and in our colonies. We require, too, an assurance of greater security as to the conditions of our national existence and our economic development. ”

“ The United States and Brazil must both seek out other countries with undeveloped resources, in order to unload the surpluses on them. But by the very process of unloading the surpluses, the resources of those countries are in turn developed. Soon they have surpluses, and are seeking other countries on which to unload. Now, gentlemen, follow me. The planet is only so large. There are only so many countries in the world. ”

“ The teeming soil and salubrious climate of the far West, together with the prospect it affords, not only of wealth, but of social advancement, both of which are forever denied them in their own country, and extremely difficult of attainment even in our own Eastern States, where the population is dense and every branch of industry crowded to repletion, will allure the hardy laborers of Europe by thousands and tens of thousands to the prairie land. ”

“ With the filling up to the full limit of the remaining territories suitable for European occupation, and the growing pressure of population therein, it may be expected that the inexpediency of allowing a great extent of territory in the richest region of the globe—that comprised within the tropics—to remain undeveloped, with its resources running largely to waste under the management of races of low social efficiency, will be brought home with ever-growing force to the minds of the Western (Northern) peoples. ”

“ The developing nations also varied in their growth results, with many countries facing population increases that erode gains in output. Externally, the nation-state, as a bedrock economic-political institution, is steadily losing control over international flows of people, goods, funds, and technology. ”

“ How rapidly the development may go on there, and what an enormous mass of capital will be absorbed, is clearly indicated by what has been done in a very few recent years. And so far we have left Africa entirely out of the account, a country with a vast population and richly dowered with natural resources and with a capacity for rapid development. ”

“ We must, in the first place, find what the natural operation is by which industry leaves a country.
When a country is in a state of poverty, it maintains the same degree of industry, from generation to generation, without any effort. The new race is brought up in the same way that the former was before it, and the same pressure of necessity, acting on the same desire (but no greater desire) to shun labour, produces the same effect at one time that it did at another. ”

“ There is a great difference between those states whose inhabitants subsist exclusively from the products of their own country and those which rely more or less upon other lands. Great industrial states, like England and Germany, which derive only a portion of their food and raw material from their own territory, supply their dense populations through international trade. Interruption of such foreign commerce is disastrous to the population at home ”

“ No matter what the form of government may be,—I might almost say no matter what the morals and religion of the people may be,—so long as there is land to occupy, and to be sold cheap, the continent will fill up, and will be as densely populated as Europe or Asia, because the natural advantages are good. The rivers and the lakes will be navigated; the products of the country will be exchanged for European and Asiatic products; wealth will certainly increase, and increase indefinitely. There is no calculating the future resources and wealth of the New World, especially in the United States. ”

“ It may be that a growing people cannot win Colonies from uncivilised races, and yet the State wishes [Pg 23] to retain the surplus population which the mother country can no longer feed. Then the only course left is to acquire the necessary territory by war. ”

“ There is, indeed, reason to believe it is so, but, whether it is or not, as natural philosophy is not here the study, but political economy, the fact is, that if southern nations had the same propensity, it would be impossible to indulge it to an equal extent.
As wealth and power are intimately connected with population, and depend in a great measure upon it, wherever they are the cause of introducing a taste that will, in the end, depopulate a country, they must, in so far, undermine their own support, and bring on decay. ”

“ Between envying France her colonial empire and determining at some favourable opportunity to redress the inequality is but a short step.
To discontent with the present is added fear for the {108} future. Those nations, which are least blessed with colonies and which lack at home a broad agricultural base for the support of their industries, look anxiously towards a possible development, which will rob them not only of their markets and investment opportunities but also of their necessary raw materials. ”

“ As this tendency is uniformly felt by a number of individuals over the whole of a country, when it advances in wealth, and over whole districts that are more advanced than the others, it must operate, in length of time, in producing the decline of a whole nation, as well as it does of a certain portion of its people at all times. ”

“ But the European who measures the unpreparedness of the nation in the terms of the unpreparedness of his own, or any other European, country, not taking into account the colonial character of the population, the alertness and audacity of the national mind, the resourcefulness and confident self-reliance of the people, is likely to fall into error. ”

“ Soon derive new and great increase from the growing improvements of that one and the smallest of the great divisions of her territory, which was the poorest by natural constitution—still more, the poorest by long exhausting tillage—its best population gone or going away, and the remaining portion sinking into apathy and degradation, and having no hope left except that which was almost universally entertained of fleeing from the ruined country and renewing the like work of destruction on the fertile lands of the far West. ”

“ Yet, while in classical colonialism, the colony at least received some recompense for its goods – here the poor country is actually the poorer for its exports. The bright young people who depart (most of them never to return) carry with them an investment of the scarce resources of their homeland – and award it to their new, much richer, host countries. ”

“ Another condition which leads to abnormally rapid increase is found when a civilised nation conquers and administers a backward country, introducing better methods of agriculture, and especially irrigation and the reclamation of waste lands. The alien Government also gives greater security, without raising the standard of living among the natives, since the dominant race usually monopolises the lucrative careers. ”

“ The map, which now is crowded with the names of cities where red men roamed in terra incognita so recently as the beginning of this century, should reprove any incredulity. The nations are like water. When a country is filled above its capacity, its surplus overflows. ”

“ While the present state of things is allowed to last, the actual inhabitants of these Provinces have no security for person or property, no enjoyment of what they possess, no stimulus to industry. The development of the vast resources of these extensive territories is arrested; and the population, which should be attracted to fill and fertilize them, is directed into foreign states. Every day during which a final and stable settlement is delayed, the condition of the Colonies becomes worse, the minds of men more exasperated, and the success of any scheme of adjustment more precarious. ”

“ It is no mere love of humanity that has impelled the European countries to divide these regions among themselves. We can scarcely realize the intensity of the struggle for existence in many of the overcrowded parts of Europe. Their factories are enormously productive, but their people will suffer for food unless they can export manufactures. The crying need for new markets, for new sources of raw material, drove these states into Africa. And we should be glad, for Africa's sake, that they have gone there, even though the desire to make money is one of the most powerful incentives. ”

“ It is evident that the tropical nations if left to themselves will not develop the resources of their country. But it is equally evident that the civilized world will not, and ought not, to leave these resources undeveloped. ”

“ Civilization takes on a material stamp, becomes that "dollar civilization" which is the scorn of the placid, paralyzed Oriental or the old world European. The genius of colonials is essentially practical. Impatience of obstacles, short cuts aiming at quick returns, wastefulness of land, of forests, of fuel, of everything but labor, have long characterized American activities. ”

“ By this means modern nations not only stimulated their manufacturing industries, awoke and encouraged inventiveness, spread their productions over the whole world, but developed cities at home and made life bearable for aggregates of population whose healthy existence would have been impossible under the conditions prevalent, say, at the close of the Napoleonic wars and for long after. ”

“ This condition is easily explained by the scarcity of stone, the inherent disregard of comfort, the poverty of the peasants, the absence of a yeoman class, and the great expense that would be entailed upon the landed proprietors, who live at enormous distances from each other. The country in these and many other governments has been civilized many generations, but so unfinished and primitive does it all seem that it recalls many localities of our West, where civilization appeared but yesterday, and where to-morrow it will be well in advance of these provinces. ”

“ Though colonies or conquests pass away at once, such changes only take place after a long chain of causes have prepared the way for them; whereas, manufactures are perpetually emigrating from one country to another: the operation, though slow and silent, is incessant, and the ultimate effect great beyond calculation. ”

“ It is certainly not for the advantage of the country that in selecting between alternative ways of providing for old age he should be induced to choose that which throws the greatest burden on the State. With the vast increase of population, with the great fluctuations of modern industry, and with the rapid development of the colonies, it is extremely desirable both in the interest of the working men and of the State that they should be induced to transfer themselves from congested towns and from exhausted industries to new fields. ”

“ European civilization can scarcely get along without these natural resources of Africa.
Now here we are up against a problem entirely different from the problem that arises in the case of India, Indo- China and China, which is the problem of a politically powerless but essentially civilized population which can be trusted to modernize itself and come into line with the existing efficient powers if only it is protected from oppressive and disintegrating forces while it adjusts itself. ”

“ If ever the nations of the world come to a state of permanence, (which in all probability will never be the case,) it must be when population is nearly proportioned to the means of subsistence in different parts; when knowledge is nearly equally distributed and when no great discoveries remain to be made either in arts, science, or geography.
While the causes from which wealth and power rise in a superior degree, are liable to change from one nation to another, wealth and power must be liable to the same alterations and changes of place ”

“ Developed countries keep moving and other developing countries keep developing. The more we delay, the greater will be the gap between us and the advanced countries, the harder it will be to catch up or compete with them. Furthermore, a hesitation today will mean the negation of all our efforts and sacrifices in the past. ”

“ The climate would be fatal in a generation, except in the hills; and that a remote province like Cashmere could be cleared of its present people, settled by Europeans, and kept free from the intrusion of native labour, seems the most fanciful of speculations. There remain therefore only Central Asia, Malaysia, and Africa as possible outlets not yet used for the surplus population of Europe, and of these Africa is naturally that which is especially attracting the attention of Englishmen at the present moment. ”

“ They give an international character even to purely internal improvements. Economic interests now tend to overflow national boundaries and to make the orderly development of every state truly a matter of general concern. ”

“ In contrast to this care-free, easy development in a new land, growth in old countries like Europe and the more civilized parts of Asia means a slow protrusion of the frontier, made at the cost of blood; it means either the absorption of the native people, because there are no unoccupied corners into which they can be driven, or the imposition upon them of an unwelcome rule exercised by alien officials. Witness the advance of the Russians into Poland and Finland, of the Germans into Poland and Alsace-Lorraine, of the Japanese into Korea, and of the English into crowded India. ”