Verdict: two carrots and a stick
Morris’s earlier book, Why the West Rules – for Now, was much more compelling than War: What Is It Good for? He is a readable writer, with a talent for catchy conceptual formulations and neat summations, but in this book his argument often feels strained and his conclusions questionable. Sampie Terreblanche would certainly dispute them, for his Western Empires is a sustained (600 pages) account of how modern empires formed what Immanuel Wallerstein calls the present “world system”. The West certainly benefited from the exploitation of its colonies, and continues to benefit, but only the coldest of gross domestic product-per-capita statistics show a long-term improvement in the lives of the exploited.
Book Details
- Western Empires: Christianity, and the Inequalities Between the West and the Rest 1500 – 2010 by Sampie Terreblanche
EAN: 9780143539070
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- War: What Is It Good For? by Ian Morris
EAN: 9781781252963
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- South Africa: The Present as History by John S Saul, Patrick Bond
EAN: 9781431410668
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