In my previous post, I had offered some introductory comments on the Disruptive Dependency Theory. I reproduce them below.
The Disruptive Dependency Theory states that the world can be viewed in terms of “core” and “periphery” nations. Thus, there is a "core" set of nations in the world that are strong and a "periphery" that is relatively weak. I have stated before that this has been the state of the world since the end of the Second World War, and this is primarily because the models under development are stable because many assumptions can be made about the world since 1945.
The nations in the "core" are the strong nations. This includes the United States, China, Russia, France and the United Kingdom. What constitutes the "periphery" is a bit nebulous, but certainly the weakest nations such as island nations (Vanuatu, Togo, Jamaica, Antigua & Barbuda) belong the periphery. However, I would hasten to add that this has actually described the state of the world for a long while before that, viz., since the Advent of Agriculture. The nations in the core use the following to exert their influence on the nations in the periphery: (a) political strategies; (b) economic strategies; (c) social and cultural strategies; (d) technological strategies. It is important to note that this sort of modelling of the world by dividing it into “strong states” and “weak states” should not be interpreted as a model that only applies to World Politics, post-1945. In fact, this has been the underlying logic from much further back – from the advent of Agriculture itself.
This material is cut-and-pasted from a Teaching Note I had prepared for a class on Leadership. Please make necessary adjustments mentally if the phrase "this Teaching Document" appears anywhere. Let us continue.
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Indeed, it is the shift from the hunter-gatherer lifestyle to that of the agriculturalist that led to this model. It is this shift that led to the greater differentiation of the members of the species Homo Sapiens into the categories of “weak” and “strong”. With agriculture came: (a) the need to demarcate farms and protect their boundaries –
from both members of the species Homo Sapiens as well as the members of other species of animals; (b) the need to protect one’s farmland through the course of the growth of the crops planted; and (c) the need to protect one’s harvest(s) from other human beings and from animals.
A photograph of Queen Victoria, Queen of
the "United" Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
In this post, I discuss among other things: (a) how reliable ChatGPT is, in terms of fact checking history; (b) the problems with using ChatGPT to write history; (c) how colonial historians have often deliberately misinterpreted history; and (d) whether Niall Ferguson could be plausibly considered an early edition, “wetware” version of ChatGPT. Part (d) is the most entertaining part. On this point, I actually find for the claim. That is, it can be fairly concluded from this discussion that Niall Ferguson’s conclusions on the effects of the British Empire cannot be assigned any credibility, just like ChatGPT; however, his prose has the redeeming quality that it is likely to be grammatically correct.
