3.4 Economic Legacies of Imperialism


How should contemporary society respond to the legacies of historical globalization?

Perspectives on Ownership


Private ownership is the underlying value of capitalism, which was, and still is, a driving force of globalization. The right to own property is included in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in the constitutions of many nations, not including Canada. Today, we take for granted that we can own a piece of land, a car, a house, and countless consumer items. In fact, our dominant culture values wealth. The richer a person is, the more "successful" he or she is thought to be. Magazines, television, and movies are filled with stories about Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates, and other wealthy celebrities.

Private ownership is a value and a right in today's society, but that has not always been the case.


Property and Values


Slaves being loaded aboard a ship

Slaves are people that can be owned. Today, slavery is illegal, but throughout history in many cultures, and especially in colonial times, ownership of people for personal profit was legal. The buying and selling of human beings, particularly those who were considered inferior or less human, was acceptable. A huge legacy of imperialism is the large number of Africans brought to the Americas to work on plantations as slaves. African-Americans have spent generations trying to recover from the injustices of slavery to and find their place as equals in their own country. Many of African descent intermarried with Indigenous people along the coasts of Central America, the Caribbean, and parts of South America and formed their own hybrid cultures.


Intellectual property refers to ideas that can be owned. These ideas can appear as machinery, technology, books, articles, photographs, movies, artwork, and music, all of which can be patented or copyrighted. In the past, no one could own a song or a story, but now, photographs, music, literature, and even ideas are property to be bought and sold.

At one time, new ideas were shared with the entire community to make people's lives richer. Improved technology made everyone's life better; it was not just for the inventor's profit. What does that say about our changing values?