Global North and Global South

In modern International Relations, the terms Global North and Global South have become common defining features such that the Global North inflicted insurmountable Gordian knots in global political interdependence. The major problems of the Global South evolved 350 years ago as a result of subjugation by the rise of powerful European powers who were driven by the urge to colonize indigenous communities that were scattered all over the world.

Despite decolonization getting off the ground after WWII, a web of new nations emerged even though the legacy of colonialism continued to ravage the struggling, rising up nations in the Global South especially those within the African continent and some parts of Asia. With the escalation of the Cold War, the terminology Third World became the common name for those nations that regained independence while First World nations was in reference to North America, Europe, and Japan who were more technologically and industrially advanced than the Soviet Union and its satellite states who were designated Second World powers. I’ve used the terminology ‘regained independence’ for those colonized nations because they have been independent long before the first surge of European powers like Portugal, Holland, Spain, Britain, and France started their expansionist melodramatic aims

To add insult to injury, those Global South nations suffered further demotion by being degraded to the category of the less-developed of the least-developed countries. However, modern scholars prefer the use of Global North and Global South instead of the former degrading epithets. The estimated population of the Global South is 85% with a staggering 20% global income generation. Surprisingly, the humiliating income disparity is related to the negative impact of neocolonialism that is a hoodoo to nation’s having the will to prosper. It was during the early fifteenth century when the first wave of European migrants started seafaring in search of new raw materials from new territories that they renamed colonies. The surge in ocean mercantilism continued until its demise in the eighteenth century  when former colonies proclaimed independence and the global economic theories known as laissez-faire and liberal economics starting flourishing on a grand scale.

The second wave of European global movement plying world oceans continued until the 1870s, however, it was after the end of WWI when Europe and the United States and Japan commenced new territorial claims, to an extent that even former independent states and China became fragmented.