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Since its construction in the early 1960s, the hydroelectric Akosombo Dam across the Volta River has exemplified the possibilities and challenges of development in Ghana. Drawing upon a wealth of sources, A Dam for Africa investigates contrasting stories about how this dam has transformed a West African nation, while providing a model for other African countries. The massive Akosombo Dam is the keystone of the Volta River Project that includes a large manmade lake 250 miles long, the VALCO aluminum smelter, new cities and towns, a deep-sea harbor, and an electrical grid. On the local level, Akosombo has meant access to electricity for people in urban and industrial areas across southern Ghan...
“This volume brings together leading experts to examine the potentials for maritime conflict and cooperation in a region where geopolitical rivalries are intensifying. I highly recommend it to scholars, practitioners, and students alike.” —Miranda A. Schreurs, Professor, Technical University of Munich. “With an original approach to maritime conflicts that focuses on the effects of technological and environmental change, this is a must-read for anyone interested in East Asian peace and security!” — Stein Tønnesson, Research Professor Emeritus, Peace Research Institute Oslo “A crucial read for anyone interested in understanding the complexities of maritime conflicts in East Asia...
This book explores the impact of resource extraction and the dynamics of great powers competing for natural resources in the Caribbean. The book analyzes labour–capital relations between China, the United States, the European Union, and Russia in the Caribbean, as competition increases with the arrival of non-traditional sources of foreign investments in infrastructure from the East. Chapters assess these dynamics through varying historical and current forms of worker, community, and organization resistance in the Caribbean’s extractive industries from the 1970s to the present. In doing so, the book critically analyzes the interplay of extractive capital with labour unions, community org...
This book explores the post-war Greco-German relationship and asks how this relationship fits into, and changes, the narrative of European integration. The book highlights West Germany’s role in shaping Greece’s development model and argues that Greece's accession to the Community in 1981 had a long back story in the modernization strategies adopted by the two countries as early as the 1950s. The success, not the failure, of those strategies lies at the root of Greece's lingering balance of payments problems: the ever-widening trade deficit with Germany, the country’s main trading partner, was the price of Greek economic growth in the decades following the war. By addressing this three-decade story of uneasy continuity, the book offers new insights into core-periphery relations in Europe, questions the conventional wisdom about Greece’s path to Europe, and challenges the way the so-called North-South divide has been adduced to explain the recent euro crisis. In doing so, the author calls attention to past cooperation between leading political and business circles in Greece and Germany, making this a useful and insightful read for historians and political scientists alike.
This book engages in the long-standing debate on the relationship between capitalism and colonialism. Specifically, Rönnbäck and Broberg study the interaction between imperialist policies, colonial institutions and financial markets. Their primary method of analysis is examining micro- and macro-level data relating to a large sample of ventures operating in Africa and traded on the London Stock Exchange between 1869 and 1969. Their study shows that the relationship between capital and colonialism was highly complex. While return from investing in African colonies on average was not extraordinary, there were certainly many occasions when investors enjoyed high return due to various forms of exploitation. While there were actors with rational calculations and deliberate strategies, there was also an important element of chance in determining the return on investment – not least in the mining sector, which overall was the most important business for investment in African ventures during this period. This book finally also demonstrates that the different paths of decolonization in Africa had very diverse effects for investors.
"How Nazi architects and planners envisioned and began to build a model 'Aryan' society in Norway during World War II"--
A capacious history of decolonization, from the decline of empires to the era of globalization Empires, until recently, were everywhere. They shaped borders, stirred conflicts, and set the terms of international politics. With the collapse of empire came a fundamental reorganization of our world. Decolonization unfolded across territories as well as within them. Its struggles became internationalized and transnational, as much global campaigns of moral disarmament against colonial injustice as local contests of arms. In this expansive history, Martin Thomas tells the story of decolonization and its intrinsic link to globalization. He traces the connections between these two transformative pr...
While the birth of global economic governance is conventionally dated to the end of World War II, Jamie Martin shows how its roots lie in World War I and its aftermath. The Meddlers explores the intense political struggles about sovereignty and self-governance provoked by the first attempts to govern global capitalism.
Over the past two centuries, industrial societies hungry for copper – essential for light, power, and communication – have demanded ever-increasing quantities of the metal. Born with a Copper Spoon examines how the metal has been produced, distributed, controlled, and sold on a global scale. However, this is not simply a narrative of ever-increasing and deepening global connections. It is also about periods of deglobalization, fragmentation, and attempts to sever connections. Throughout history, copper production has spawned its own practices, technologies, and a constantly changing political economy. Large-scale production has affected ecologies, states, and companies, while creating and even destroying local communities dependent on volatile commodity markets. Former president of Zambia Kenneth Kaunda once remarked that Zambians were “born with a copper spoon in our mouths,” but few societies managed to profit from copper’s abundance. From copper cartels and the futures market to the consequences of resource nationalism, Born with a Copper Spoon delivers a global perspective on one of the world’s most important metals.
This volume focuses on how, why, under what conditions, and with what effects people move across space in relation to mining, asking how a focus on spatial mobility can aid scholars and policymakers in understanding the complex relation between mining and social change. This collection centers the concept of mobility to address the diversity of mining-related population movements as well as the agency of people engaged in these movements. This volume opens by introducing both the historical context and conceptual tools for analyzing the mining-mobility nexus, followed by case study chapters focusing on three regions with significant histories of mineral extraction and where mining currently ...