POLI 227 Lecture 1: POLI 227- The Global Context
4 Feb 2019
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Document Summary
In the state of nature human life was poor, solitary, nasty, and short. You need a government to protect its citizens. People need to organize themselves for the greater good. "war made the state and the state made war" (in europe) Where inter-state wars create strong states, civil wars weaken states, leaving lasting divisions. There have been more civil wars then interstate wars since 1945. Civil wars are often the result of colonial legacies. In the developing world wars often divided states rather than united them. German, british, french, spanish, portuguese, italian, belgian, and us delegates met to carve up africa. Colonialism was driven by two factors: greed for resources, and beliefs of white racial superiority. European powers wanted to prevent competition over african land and resources from turning violent. They drew borders arbitrarily, often splitting up pre-existing political units and creating territories that were nto viable. Different ethnic religious groups were often pitted against each other: "divide the rule"
