The Westernization Movement

Abstract

By the time the Europeans launched an intensive drive to incorporate China at the beginning of the 1840s, the capitalist world economy was already completing the incorporation of other major new zones into its division of labour, most importantly, the Indian subcontinent, the Ottoman empire, the Russian empire, and West Africa. In the case of the Indian subcontinent and West Africa, incorporation went hand-in-hand with colonialization, while the Ottoman empire and the Russian empire were drawn into the world system without formal colonization, although with different results: while the Ottoman empire was fragmented, the boundaries of Russia remained relatively unchanged (Wallerstein, 1989).