Economic Expansionism Research Articles

Renegotiating Skills, Wages, and the Right to Work: On the Gender of Labor Activism around Rationalization in the Bulgarian Tobacco Industry in the Early 1930s

AbstractStarting from the early 1930s, structural changes in the Bulgarian tobacco industry, prompted by the advent of the world economic crisis and German economic expansionism into Southeastern Europe, led to a deep restructuring of the labor processes, known in the terminology of the time as rationalization, in the Bulgarian tobacco industry. The introduction of the tonga rationalization technology had a deskilling and deeply gendered effect on the industry, making a significant number of skilled male workers redundant, disproportionately decreasing average male wages and leading, in turn, to a further feminization of an already majority-female workforce.The introduction of the new system provoked a strong response from the organized labor movement, which used a variety of tactics to fight against the new technology: from strikes to petitions to tripartite negotiations. Organized labor's reaction was deeply gendered, an aspect that only becomes truly visible if, in addition to gender and skill, we employ the analytical lens of scale. By following trade union policies on the local, national, and international levels, the article goes beyond the carefully crafted gender-neutral language in official documents to reveal tensions between the conservative attitudes of rank-and-file activists and the official trade union agenda. This is especially evident in communist labor politics, where Bulgarian trade union policies on the local and national levels provoked an intervention on the part of the Profintern between 1930 and 1931. The movement's internal contradictions resulted in a polyvalent, ambiguous, and non-linear trade union policy formed through the clash of and negotiations between local activists’ conservative notions of gendered work and family roles and the radical gender program of international communism.

The foreign investments-growth nexus in underdeveloped countries: the state-of-art of research analysing a selected and recent empirical literature (2020-2022)

Over the past few decades, foreign investments (FIs) have exerted a significant impact on the growth of both developed and underdeveloped countries. Although many studies have explored the FIs-growth nexus a state-of-art analysis is needed with reference to underdeveloped countries only.The article aims to analyse a selected and recent empirical literature from 2020 to 2022 relates to the FIs-growth nexus with evidence from developing and emerging economies, by providing indications on the state-of-art of research, as well as, by situating works to contribute to the analyses on this field and to be used by researchers, academics, and practitioners as a research agenda.By using a bibliometric approach based on the journal’s Impact Factor index over the previous two years (IF-2021), several research topic areas with the recent empirical studies have been discovered. Therefore, FIs are driven by: (i) economic efficiency, (ii) productivity and trade, (iii) sustainable development, (iv) Chinese economic expansionism. The analysis suggests that in underdeveloped countries the foreign investment effectiveness in stimulating growth mainly depends on the institutional and business environment of the host country. Sound governance and the technological gap emerge as the crucial drivers for development of countries, on which they should spend efforts and invest resources.

„Legyenek a mi gyarmataink: Dalmácia, Bosznia, Hercegovina!”

Hungarian imperial thought after the fall of the Habsburg Monarchy became a fantasy of past times, and thus the imperial propaganda of Rezső Havass was long irrelevant by the time of his death in 1927. In spite of this, Havass was called a “wholehearted devotee of Hungarian imperialism” in his obituary, a man who believed in further Hungarian expansion with the faith of prophets, and whose goal was to resurrect the imperium of Louis I of Hungary. Present study analyzes the works of Rezső Havass in order to uncover the specifics of Hungarian imperialism before the Great War. For Havass, the Hungarian Kingdom was undoubtedly a would-be colonial empire with well-defined political goals (the colonization of Dalmatia), and his texts mixed up and vulgarized scientific elements to serve political goals. Research questions concern the modalities of imperial thought before 1914. What did it consist of? How did it compare to other notions of imperialism and economic expansionism? How widespread was it in the public sphere in Hungary?

Forgotten pioneers in degrowth: John Africa and the MOVE Organization

Decades before the term 'degrowth' had gained currency as a rallying cry against the ideology of economic expansionism, John Africa founded The MOVE Organization in Philadelphia based on sanctity of life and dismantling institutions of state and capital (including economic growth). Members eschewed many forms of technology, lived collectively, harbored stray animals, and strove toward an entirely raw food diet in a communal lifestyle that many today would label 'simple living' or 'primivitist.' They rejected fashion and cosmetics, demonstrated for animal liberation as well as against police brutality, militarism, prisons, and pollution of land, water, and air. Notably, John Africa and MOVE emphasized the need to maintain sobriety and break with personal addictions in order to achieve personal and societal balance. Yet, rather than a set of 'single issues' strung together, John Africa formulated an all-encompassing paradigm. This article presents John Africa's paradigm as well as his grassroots decolonial semiotics that critically deconstructed, qualified, repurposed, and reframed conventional English language terms toward emancipatory and radically egalitarian ends. This paradigm, based on 'Mother Nature' and oneness, aligned with (without overtly borrowing from) many Indigenous and Aboriginal paradigms that similarly locate human life as interwoven with habitats and nonhuman animals. Whether or not one agrees with his ideas or approach, John Africa and the organization he co-founded seem to clearly qualify as early pioneers of degrowth. This article brings their hitherto unrecognized contributions into conversation with degrowth literature both to fill out the historical record and provide potentially useful insights for degrowth researchers and organizers alike.

The EU in Search of Autonomy in the Era of Chinese Expansionism and COVID‐19 Pandemic

AbstractGiven the global changes created by China's expanding international influence, increasingly intense Sino–American competition and the growing multi‐polarisation of the international political economy, is there any specific place that the European Union can hope to occupy? For tentative answers to this question, this analysis of Chinese economic expansionism aims to highlight the rationale behind the EU's foreign policy action and to explore how this expansionism has impacted on the preservation of the European unity and whether Chinese economic power has undermined integration and triggered disunity within the EU. We look at the period starting in 2013, the year when China launched its ‘New Silk Road’ initiative, right up to the global lockdown due to the COVID‐19 pandemic.

Distinctive and continued phases of Indian migration to South Africa with a focus on human security: The case of Durban

A long-term analytical view of Indian migration and their human rights experiences in South Africa is essential to understand what prompts continued Indian migration and the factors that shape migrants’ human security experiences. The intersections of global, social, political and economic powers combine with national and international forces to determine the experiences of migration and human (in)security among Indian migrants in South Africa. This article focuses on historical Indian indentured migrants and the continued post-apartheid contemporary migration of Indians to South Africa. Throughout South Africa’s turbulent, violent and exploitative history, the political constructs of slavery, colonialism, economic expansionism, economic dispossession and apartheid convened in the passage of poor men, women and children from the Indian subcontinent. The article argues that traces of earlier exploitative histories continue to shape the framework for present-day Indian migrants in a way that impacts directly on their human security within a contemporary context.

Ideological uncertainty and the path of convergence: the impact of the 1970s in France and the UK

This article looks at the fracturing of certainties that began in the 1970s, at the end of the period described as ‘les trente glorieuses’ in France, but a period that was also, to a more modest extent, a period of economic expansionism and intellectual optimism in the UK. At the level of political discourse and policy options, the economic crisis of the late 1970s prepared the ground for a marked divergence between France and the UK: on the one hand, the ‘socialisme aux couleurs de la France’ that was to characterise the ambition of the socialist years under François Mitterrand, and on the other, a return to the corner-shop capitalism of thrift and endeavour that was at the heart of Margaret Thatcher’s remedy for the UK’s ills. Looked at, however, from the perspective offered by theories of convergence, underlying that manifest divergence was a deeper gravitational pull to the same path as both countries endured the loss of old ideological certainties and grappled, as we shall argue, with a new ideology that is no less powerful and ubiquitous for refusing to declare itself as such.

St. Louis and Empire: 250 Years of Imperial Quest and Urban Crisis by Henry W. Berger

Reviewed by: St. Louis and Empire: 250 Years of Imperial Quest and Urban Crisis by Henry W. Berger Jon C. Teaford (bio) St. Louis and Empire: 250 Years of Imperial Quest and Urban Crisis. By Henry W. Berger. (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2015. Pp. xii, 353. $39.50 cloth) Cities have traditionally been consigned to the realm of domestic policy; discussion of foreign trade and treaties rarely appears in the pages of urban histories. In a refreshing departure from the norm, Henry W. Berger views St. Louis as a player in the international arena, focusing on the efforts of local leaders to extend the city’s economic empire through vigorous promotion of foreign trade and investment. By doing so, he performs a signal service to the study of cities, forcing shortsighted scholars to reconsider international relations as an integral part of the urban story. Berger begins his account of the economic imperialism of St. Louis by focusing on Thomas Hart Benton. The long-serving antebellum senator loudly and persistently promoted his hometown as the gateway to the American West and eventually East Asia. He personified the expansive ambitions of early St. Louis leaders. Although an inland city two thousand miles from the Pacific coast, St. Louis would supposedly be the great beneficiary of America’s transcontinental Manifest Destiny. After the Civil War, local boosters shifted much of their attention to Latin America, establishing strong economic ties with Mexico. John [End Page 239] F. Cahill founded El Commercio del Valle, a bilingual English/Spanish journal that promoted investment in and trade with Latin America. Cahill established a close relationship with Mexican president Porfirio Diaz and served as Mexican consul in St. Louis. During the late nineteenth century, the publisher/consul unleashed an invasion of St. Louis dollars into Mexico. Among the most notable entrepreneurs was Henry Clay Pierce, who invested heavily in Mexican railroads and oil. During the twentieth century, St. Louis became a key player in the emerging military-industrial-academic complex that arose out of America’s Cold War expansionism. In discussing the city’s growing international role in the midcentury, Berger focuses on Stuart Symington, chief executive of the locally headquartered Emerson Electric Corporation and later secretary of the Air Force and United States senator. He also examines the development of St. Louis-based Mc-Donnell Aircraft and its dependence on lucrative Cold War military contracts. The city’s Washington University likewise benefited from Cold War research dollars, reinforcing the integral role of St. Louis in the nation’s international endeavors. Throughout his work, Berger demonstrates the importance of an international vision to the development of St. Louis. Although an inland city in the heart of the nation, far removed from the Atlantic and the Pacific or the Rio Grande and forty-ninth parallel, St. Louis was not isolated from the world. Instead, its leaders realized that the city’s fortunes were tied to international trade and investment and dependent on the nation’s foreign policy. Although Berger refers to “urban crisis” in his title, his work is less effective in dealing with the city’s discord or decline. He discusses the loss of population and manufacturing base briefly in the closing pages of the book, but he does not sufficiently relate this crisis to the longstanding economic expansionism of the city. Moreover, throughout the book he implies that promotion of foreign trade and investment was somehow overreaching and unsavory, repeatedly referring to the city’s imperialism and quest for empire. Some readers may question why expansive foreign trade and investment that brought prosperity [End Page 240] and growth to the city should be deemed suspect and undesirable. Overall, however, Berger’s work sheds needed light on the expansive ambition of an American city. The nation’s traditional fear of entangling alliances and preference for isolationism did not prevent the leaders of a midwestern metropolis from reaching out and recognizing that St. Louis’s future was linked to that of the larger world. Jon C. Teaford JON C. TEAFORD is professor emeritus of history at Purdue University. He is the author of a number of books in urban history, including The Metropolitan Revolution (2006) and The American...

Synergetic Paradigm of Geopolitical Confrontation in the Postmodern Era

The article analyzes current state and mechanisms of geopolitical struggle in postmodern information age that has come. The author judges from assumption that entirely new postmodern society appeared with expansion of information technology, accompanied by cardinal changes in mechanisms of political power. Information technologies have become one of the most important factors contributing to the transformation of modern society from industrial to informational (post-industrial). In modern conditions, ensuring national and global security is a comprehensive process that includes not only measures to ensure information and economic security individually, but also such an integrated component as providing both information and economic security. The author suggests that modem geopolitical confrontation is carried out based on the synergetic paradigm. The main tool is information and energy influence on enemy system weaknesses using information space control, organizing negative information campaigns and applying economic sanctions. If the main focus of geopolitical struggle in modern era was forced expansion of the territory, in information postmodern age control over economic and information space has become priority among forms of geopolitical struggle. Military expansion of modern era becomes substituted by information and economic expansionism of postmodern using synergetic paradigm of geopolitical confrontation in order to control and capture the opponent's political space.

Contemporary Chinese art and the dream of glocalisation

This article addresses the emerging world of modern subjectivities represented by the artwork of 12 renowned contemporary Chinese artists, including CAO Fei, SONG Tao, WANG Qingsong and ZHANG Dali, amongst others. Following the January 2008 discussion by media activist Brian Holmes of the role of art in China's new economy, the author argues that Chinese artists are adopting diversified media forms and artistic/design characteristics as timeless fantasies within the context of crude economic expansionism, urban transformation and censorship politics. Particularly in the light of China's opening-up policy following its accession to the World Trade Organization early this century, the author finds it meaningful to investigate how these artists take up or resist the lure of Western or other foreign art trends, and to examine how the new Asian economy is kindling artistic vibrancy and expressionism. The engendered chaos and restlessness are taken by the author as a realisation of the Chinese glocalisation dream.

PIECE/PEACE WORK: Engendering ‘rationalities of care’ through a thread-by-thread deconstruction of militarism

Textiles and their manufacture from raw material into cloth, uniforms, bedding and shelter are an integral component of the military-industrial-complex as are the mechanized gestures of industrialization through which they are produced. How do the rationalities of transnational industrial production intersect with those of militarism? How are both informed by dominant orderings of masculinities and femininities produced by and through centuries of Imperialist and economic expansionism? “Piece/Peace Work” juxtaposes an auto-ethnographic reflection of Unravel — a durational memorial performance meditation involving the thread-by-thread deconstruction of military uniforms — with historical and theoretical inquiries into the gendered lexicons of war, peace and textile production. Drawing on theories of mourning in a geopolitical context (Butler 2010); a ‘critical craft theory’ that rethinks crafting as a ‘tactic of ambiguity’ (Roberts 2011); and performance theory that examines performance as ‘a tool for cross- or intra-temporal negotiation’ (Schneider 2011: 30-31) ‘Piece/Peace Work’ investigates how through the tactile corporality of the task of dismantling the uniform, thread's past inter(in)animates the tangle of thread in the political present to reveal the assemblage of materials and material relations and conditions that must collaborate to create the uniform.

Chinese economic expansionism in Africa: a theoretical analysis of the environmental Kuznets Curve Hypothesis in the Forest Sector in Cameroon

This paper, which is conceptually located at the intersection of trade–economics, resource politics, and environmental assessment, is a narrative-analytic review of Chinese economic expansionism in Africa especially its quest for the continent’s natural resources in the past 10 years. We seek to examine the environmental, ecological, and sociopolitical impacts of the current China–Africa engagement within the context of the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis. The EKC hypothesis posits that an inverted U-shape relationship exists between economic growth and environmental quality. This implies that the quality of a country’s environment will initially decrease due to its economic growth, but will soon start to improve when the country attains a certain threshold level of economic development/income per capita. We argue that by virtue of its ‘omission’ and/or ‘commission’ factors, the EKC hypothesis can be misleading if not dangerous. Using the case study of China’s engagement with Cameroon in the forest sector, the paper illustrates the high threshold level of economic development/income per capita that is required before the quality of the country’s environment can begin to improve. The paper ends with the environmental, ecological, and sociopolitical impacts of Chinese involvement in the Cameroonian forest sector and concludes that this engagement and the larger Chinese economic expansionism in Africa under current trading conditions is fairly detrimental to the welfare of African peoples and their environment.

No Dishonour to Be a Pirate: The Problem of Infinite Advantage in Defoe's Captain Singleton

In Captain Singleton (1720), Daniel Defoe rehearses the ethical and discursive justifications of predatory capitalism. Through an examination of Defoe's economic writings, I illustrate how the author confronts readers with the moral ambiguity of legal trade by comparing the “litteral” pirate Singleton with the “allegorical” pirates of London's central economic institutions. Through this comparison, Defoe places legal trade on an uncertain continuum with piracy. By extension, he explores the problematic necessity of reconciling the hero-outlaw Singleton's piracy to conceptions of national identity predicated on economic expansionism. Defoe suggests this reconciliation is best achieved by understanding trade in terms of “infinite advantage.” This article contextualizes “infinite advantage” as an imaginative projection onto the world of the conditions necessary to sustain infinite trade, and argues that Singleton appropriates this ideology to palliate fears of Hobbesian scarcity. Thus, the novel examines the conditions of scarcity that precipitate predatory trade practices alongside the fantasy of economic infinitude that would make these practices obsolete.

No Dishonour to Be a Pirate: The Problem of Infinite Advantage in Defoe’s Captain Singleton

In Captain Singleton (1720), Daniel Defoe rehearses the ethical and discursive justifications of predatory capitalism. Through an examination of Defoe’s economic writings, I illustrate how the author confronts readers with the moral ambiguity of legal trade by comparing the “litteral” pirate Singleton with the “allegorical” pirates of London’s central economic institutions. Through this comparison, Defoe places legal trade on an uncertain continuum with piracy. By extension, he explores the problematic necessity of reconciling the hero-outlaw Singleton’s piracy to conceptions of national identity predicated on economic expansionism. Defoe suggests this reconciliation is best achieved by understanding trade in terms of “infinite advantage.” This article contextualizes “infinite advantage” as an imaginative projection onto the world of the conditions necessary to sustain infinite trade, and argues that Singleton appropriates this ideology to palliate fears of Hobbesian scarcity. Thus, the novel examines the conditions of scarcity that precipitate predatory trade practices alongside the fantasy of economic infinitude that would make these practices obsolete.

Discourse on the Admission of Slovenia to the European Union: Internal Colonialism

The admission of former communist countries to the EU raised the question regarding their position in this supranational structure. This paper presents the results of a discourse analysis of the press and political and business leaders in the southern Austrian province Carinthia, where public discourse of difference between Others/Slovenians/non-Europeans and Us/Carinthians/Austrians/Europeans has been prevalent for decades. Macropropositional and lexical analysis display three key discourses regarding the admission of Slovenia to the EU: integrational discourse; differential discourse based on the level of Europeanity between Carinthia/Austria as ‘Western European’ and Slovenia as ‘Eastern European’ and thus not a sufficiently ‘European’ member of the EU; and discourse of economic expansionism. The analysis also uncovers the strategies of Carinthian public discourse, which display the occurrence of a new form of exploitation, so-called internal colonialism.

Britain and the Return of Japanese Economic Interests to South East Asia after the Second World War

Despite Japan's military defeat in 1945, Japanese economic interests returned to South East Asia remarkably rapidly in the post-war era. Backed by the United States, Japanese economic expansionism represented a new threat to British commercial and financial interests in a region much coveted by British policy-makers. Yet, notwithstanding doubts and fears expressed by some British business leaders and public servants, British policy played an important role in the re-emergence of Japan as an economic force in South East Asia. Although emphasis was placed on controlling the process, the logic behind the Anglo-American coalition in the Cold War pointed towards the need to build up Japan as a counterweight to communist China. At the same time, it was appreciated that Japanese trade and investment would benefit the sterling area as well as the economic development (and, hence, political management) of South East Asia. The resurrection of Japanese economic activity in South East Asia was also a side-effect of British decolonization policy. As this was increasingly fulfilled, indigenous political and business leaders welcomed economic links with the ‘new’ Japan.

Missionaries of Science: The Rockefeller Foundation and Latin America (review)

Reviewed by: Missionaries of Science: The Rockefeller Foundation and Latin America Anne-Emanuelle Birn Marcos Cueto, ed. Missionaries of Science: The Rockefeller Foundation and Latin America. Philanthropic Studies. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994. xx + 171 pp. Tables. $24.95. Over the last decade an assortment of edited books appraising the development of science under imperialism has appeared, challenging standard narratives that depict scientific gains as the noble exception to the otherwise destructive military and economic expansionism of imperial powers. The result of a one-day conference at the Rockefeller Archive Center, Missionaries of Science joins this critical literature and elegantly avoids the trap of oversimplification. A focus on the Rockefeller Foundation’s activities in a single region of the world sets this work apart from other collections by permitting an interweaving of themes far beyond the introduction. The book’s seven essays—which examine the relationship between yellow fever and nationalism in Brazil and Mexico, the evolution of genetics and physiology research in various countries, the Mexican test case for the so-called Green Revolution, and the Rockefeller Foundation’s own surveys of science and society in Latin America—offer the perspective not just of the “donors” but also of the “recipients.” Scientists, public health officers, farmers, bureaucrats, political officials, local associations, and peasants within Latin America did not passively accept Rockefeller philanthropy but variously shaped, resisted, accommodated, rejected, welcomed, and modified it, albeit within the constraints of institutional relationships and power differences. In part this more dynamic understanding of the Rockefeller Foundation’s activities in Latin America stems from methodological thoroughness. Unlike many of the researchers who have used the Rockefeller Archive Center since it opened twenty years ago, virtually all of the authors of Missionaries of Science conducted extensive primary research in Latin American archives. The yellow fever chapters illustrate the important part that large-scale disease campaigns played in nation- and institution-building, in the case of Steven Williams’s research on Brazil, and how public health, diplomacy, and war exigencies led to highly different strategies and local reactions in two regions of Mexico, as Armando Sol campaigns played in nation- and institution-building, in the case of Steven Williams’s research on Brazil, and how public health, diplomacy, and war exigencies led to highly dits enormous scale and the commercial, scientific, and political significance of the disease. Also engagingly paired are two essays on the Mexican Agricultural Program. Deborah Fitzgerald argues that, notwithstanding Rockefeller rhetoric supportive of peasant cultivators, the program was only relevant to large, American-style farms. Joseph Cotter, in contrast, holds that the program succeeded precisely because it fulfilled the political, scientific, and economic needs of Mexican agriculture. The chapters on scientific research highlight the Rockefeller Foundation’s interest in supporting key institutions and investigators in order to “make the peaks higher” (p. 161; see also p. 17). As Thomas Glick demonstrates for the case of genetics in Brazil, the Foundation carefully managed relatively small grants [End Page 137] and fellowships in order to promote particular research agendas. Marcos Cueto shows that the attempt to support a few serious and talented scientists as a kind of trickle-down scientific development strategy failed to address the social, cultural, and political context in Latin American countries. As is evident in Cueto’s chapter on the Foundation’s surveys, divergences in cultural values framed much of the interaction between the philanthropy and Latin America on science and development. There are a few matters that merited greater attention than they received. The copyeditors missed numerous minor but annoying spelling and grammatical mistakes throughout the volume. Another problem, certainly not unique to this study, was the failure to convert historical dollars into real dollar amounts; this is especially important because expenditures are traced over time and totaled, yielding misleading figures. Finally, it is unfortunate that, other than on the dust cover, none of the vivid photographs available in the Rockefeller Archive Center’s collections and in dozens of Latin American archives were reproduced in this volume. These small criticisms aside, Missionaries of Science is a valuable addition to the scholarship on science and imperialism and, particularly, the history of science in Latin America. Many of the questions raised...

Le remplacement des unités britanniques et américaines par le système international d'unités

Britain's conversion to "metric" (the SI) is a cultural revolution triggered by irresistible economic forces. Historically, the British and U.S. systems of weights and measures evolved under twin influences : the need for unifying national markets (without ignoring protectionist possibilities), and economic expansionism. A survey of the various stages of metrication, both legal and practical, suggests that those are still the active forces today, within a world balance modified, among others, by the emerging European Community. Evolution toward metric began many decades ago, and jingoism is far from being the only source of resistance to discarding traditional standards. Consumer protection, and national attitudes to law and institutions at large, play their part beside political motivations.

Rhetoric and Results: A Pragmatic View of American Economic Expansionism, 1865?98

One of the staple problems that historians face is the gap between words and deeds. Policies announced by presidents or congressional leaders are not necessarily the policies they carry out. Business, labor, or other interest groups proclaim a set of goals as vital for national welfare; months later their actions suggest that they find these goals highly unsuitable. We historians would not have it otherwise, for conflict and inconsistency are our bread and butter. As a case study of the gap between words and deeds, I should like to present to you a pragmatic view of the relationship between diplomacy and the expansion of American foreign trade and investments before 1898. Americans always have been known all over the world for their readiness to express themselves volubly and lengthily on almost every subject under the sun. It is not surprising, therefore, that American businessmen, journalists, and politicians celebrated the country's existing and potential foreign trade in rhetoric that grew louder and more extravagant as the American economy burgeoned between the Civil War and the end of the century.

The Popular Universities and the Origins of Aprismo, 1921-1924

A multitude of events and currents of thought influenced the formation and rise of the Peruvian Aprista Movement: the Mexican and Russian revolutions, the university reform movement, the emergence of organized workers' groups, the rise of foreign economic expansionism, and the impact of the ideologies of Marxism, socialism, and nationalism. Most of the studies of the Aprista Movement, however, have tended to emphasize its intellectual indebtedness to the university reform movement, with little attention paid to the immediate and proximate way in which the Peruvian university students reacted to the reform movement. Between the beginning of the university reform movement in Peru in 1919 and the appearance of the Aprista Movement in 1924 several important events occurred that decisively shifted the university reform movement into politics and stamped the Peruvian movement with several original characteristics distinguishing it from other university-based reform movements in the rest of Latin America. The most significant of these events was the founding of the Gonzalez Prada Popular Universities for workers by Haya de la Torre and his companion students at San Marcos University in 1921. The purpose of the centers originally was to further the aims of the university reform movement by bringing the benefits of culture and learning to the poor and uneducated. When President Augusto B. Legulia suppressed these centers in 1924 and exiled most of the leaders, Haya and his companions turned their cultural movement into the Aprista Movement and later into the Peruvian Aprista Party.'