Year 501: The Conquest Continues [Paperback]

Noam Chomsky (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0896084442 | ISBN-13: 978-0896084445 | Publication Date: July 1, 1999

Noting that the current period has much in common with the Colombian Age of Imperialism, during which Western Europe conquered most of the world, Chomsky focuses on various historical moments in this march of imperial power, up to and including the current axis where the U.S., Germany, and Japan share world economic control with the U.S. reveling in a monopoly of military might.

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: South End Press (July 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0896084442
• ISBN-13: 978-0896084445
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #300,384 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston. A member of the American Academy of Science, he has published widely in both linguistics and current affairs. His books include At War with Asia, Towards a New Cold War, Fateful Triangle: The U. S., Israel and the Palestinians, Necessary Illusions, Hegemony or Survival, Deterring Democracy, Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy and Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

40 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Devastating indictment of Western capitalism, October 14, 2002

By 

Chris (Washington state, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Year 501: The Conquest Continues (Paperback)

This is a book by Chomsky that is probably even more scholarly than usual. At least in the way it is written. Chomsky wrote this book on the 500th anniversary in 1992 of the beginnings of the invasion of much of the world of what Adam Smith refered to, in a rather narrow context as "the savage injustice of the Europeans ("revealing himself to be an early practicioner of the crime of 'political correctness,'"Chomsky comments sardonically)". Chomsky begins his survey by analyzing the policies of the major European powers and the United States as they grew to dominate the world. Such policies., he explains, are not the free market doctrines stressed by right wing talk radio hosts, University of Chicago professors and other such bores and frauds but by massive state subsides, huge tarrifs to block foreign competitors, extreme violence and colonial occupation.

Places like India and Bengal (Bangladesh) which were highly advanced industrial societies by the mid-1700's but all of the industries which were superior to their counterparts in Britain were deliberately undermined or simply forced out of existence by the British colonisers. India and Bangladesh became extremely poor, feudal agricultural countries supplying Britain with raw materials and as a captive market for British goods. The latter is a familiar pattern outlined by Chomsky in this book. The West, since World war II, dominated by the U.S., has always sought any way it could to block advanced economic development in the third world. The exceptions to this that Chomsky points to are Japan and its former colonies in Asia who violated all the laws of the free market to create very dynamic, if, of course, very far from perfect economies. The British, noted Chomsky, started to adopt "free trade" as policy as the United States would do later under similar circumstances, around 1846 when they had no competitors in their field but this changed around 1930 when they, along with the Americans, French and Dutch erected high tarrif walls around Japanese exports to their colonies in Asia with which they could not compete, a major factor in staring Japan's wars of conquest.

He examines the U.S. role in the slaugter of half a million people in Indonesia in 1965 as the independent nationalist Sukarno was overthrown and "a staggering mass slaughter of communists and pro-communits." The U.S. media, rejoyced at the massacre of landless peasants and the destruction of the only mass-based political party the communist PKI. General Suharto took power initiating ongoing plunder and exploitaion of Indonesia's resources by Western corporations while engaging in mass murder in the U.S. backed occupation of East Timor and elsewhere. He examines the media reaction to this slaugter and the reaction back in 1990 when this great event was brought up again by Kathy Kadane.

He examines the showcases of capitalism in the third world like Brazil, whose liberal capitalist president Goulart was overthrown in 1964 with U.S. aid by a group of Neo-nazi generals who compiled over the next few decades a truly horrific human rights record but who were praised for producing an "economic miracle" as the population sunk into quite horrific levels of malnourishment and disease and land became ever more concentrated in fewer hands and millions of street children arose in the big cities. And Nicaragua where the massive terrorism, celebrated by the media liberals that Chomsky quotes, brought to force upon the Nicaraguan people a defeat of the Sandanistas in "democratic election" in 1990 (the 1984 election won by the Sandinstas dissapearing into the memory hole). This has predictably resulted in a terrible rise in starvation and disease and drug running and street children and on.

He continues with an in-depth examination of the woes of Haiti and the American and Western efforts to ravage it since 1804, and particularly since 1915 when the U.S. invaded and reestablished virtual slavery, with a U.S. imposed constitution ratified with five percent of the voting public participainting under the U.S. marine bayonets, reversing the ban on foreign ownership of land.

He compares the podering of the unique evil of Japan in being unable to fully face up to their past crimes and the comparable ignoring of things like the hundreds of thousand of tortured victims of U.S. chemical warfare in South Vietname, which occasionally elicits a comment in the science pages of the newspapers about how we are missing a great opportunity to study the effects of dioxin on a control population

32 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Myth-shattering - ESPECIALLY on economics., October 27, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Year 501: The Conquest Continues (Paperback)

Don't believe the critics for a second without reading for yourself. As alway, Chomsky states what is unthinkable in standard circles: that the free market is first of all a lie and second of all a disaster for world economies. A lie, because it is hypocritically championed by the US and Europe, who do not practice a 'free market' at all, except when it serves their interests; and a disaster, based on unending research on the real consequences of opening up Third world economies to foreign investment - leading to a near inevitable decline in wages, rise in unemployment, end of free speech, control by foreign interests, and brutal, usually murderous suppression of the vast majority of the population by the "friends of democracy".

Yes, this sounds like a paranoid left-wing conspiracy theory, especially given that the unending stream of facts presented by Chomsky are almost entirely omitted from mainstream discourse, even in such 'left-leaning' forums as the NY Times and the New Republic. Combine that with Chomsky's biting irony, and it is easy to go up in arms against him as a fringe figure with a "breathtaking ignorance of economics" - or at least the orthodox version of economic theory that so selectively pays attention to the most glaring of facts. It is easy to dismiss as "politics more commonly found on bumper stickers". But these reactions are beyond unfair for such comprehensively researched work - and they tell more about the readers and about the pervasiveness of common myths than about Chomsky's positions, which are always irreproachably humane, no matter how critics may try to claim the contrary, utterly without foundation.

Reading Chomsky will either send up walls of defensiveness in you, or else make you see the world in a different way - more accurately. There are no arguments presented in Year 501 that are not virtually common knowledge to the majority of the planet - everywhere but in the privileged sectors of the First world, where people have a gift for selective blindness. But this is essential reading all the same. I give 4 stars instead of 5 because, like other books by Chomsky, Year 501 could be more accessible than it is. Try one of the interview books for an easier read.

24 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I was reading this on Pearl Harbour Day and..., December 10, 2004

By 

Timothy Horrigan "Tim Horrigan" (Durham, NH United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Year 501: The Conquest Continues (Paperback)

I happened to be reading this on the anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attacks; on the same day my local paper carried a Mallard Fillmore strip which tried to mock the liberal media by having a stereotypical liberal media commentator intoning, "Today the Japanese Attacked Pearl Harbor. Let's examine how we brought this on ourselves." Amongst many other topics, Chomsky actually does show how we brought Pearl Harbor on ourselves. The "Pacific War" as he calls it was not just an unprovoked act of aggression. The Japanese imperialists, even though (as Chomsky points out) they were every bit as brutal as their white rivals, had an arguably legitimate political goal: that is, they wanted Asia to be ruled by Asians rather than by Europeans.

As others have noted, this is a pwerful, angry and wide-ranging book. As you can see just from the title: "Year 501" refers to the 501st anniversary of Columbus's first voyage, but Chomsky's story ranges all over the globe abd all over history.

If you're like me, you know Chomsky's political works primarily from his extensive collaborations with David Barsamian, which are based on speeches and radio interviews. Chomsky voice is much more fiery when, as he is here, he speaks without Barsamian as a moderator.