Visualized value of Freedom
A large dataset could change our minds easily? I doubt this because there may be beneficial information, but we may generally lose focus when looking at a large information cloud. What about visualized information of a large dataset? Absolutely, yes.
Hans Rosling^1, a Global health expert and data visionary, prepared an excellent TED to talk^2 about visualizing world data since the 1800s. It includes many different kinds of information like health, birth rate, average life span, and GDP. He said that his child and wife prepared a tool gapminder^3 which was sold to google later. In his TED talk, he talks about the main difference between developing and developed countries.
That brought an idea to me, how a developed country became developed? And how is the gap between developed and developing countries started to become smaller? Like many people interested in global world politics and history, they would begin to think about the colonial age of developed countries and how it affects developing countries. First of all, I want to show you trade routes from developed European countries to their colonies between 1750–1850, making a video to understand intense ship travels.
And also, this British trade route shows the intensity of their ship travels from Britain to their colonies. Every colonial action in the 1800s makes it straightforward for us to understand the difference between developed and developing countries today. That made me think about France and its colonies since France is a developed colonial country, and no developed country was France’s colony in the past. So, I am debating that is France still has colonial power over its old colonies?
Let’s assume no meaningful data before 1850 about French colonies; we will start our graphics from 1850. I’ve added to my graphic Morocco, Algeria, Mali, Niger, Cote d’Ivoire, Chad, Senegal, and Vietnam. Our first graphic is about Life expectancy and income per person at 1850. This shows us France is better in every way than its colonies.
And Algeria reaches France’s 1850 Income per person for the first time in 1900. From this part on, we will see all colonial countries have regular stability about their growth on income per person, which we may say that France controls their economies. However, France’s economy shows a significant impact or great loss since they are a free country.
When the second world war ends, French colonies start to become free countries due to the second world war’s result. Until that age, we see stable growth in their economies, but it will change dramatically until today due to globalism.
In the 1990s, all blue dots -which were french colonies in the past- did an excellent job of a good effect on their people’s life expectancy, and as a result, we see a positive impact on income per person, or vice-versa. That was the time accepted as the cold-war finished.
From the 1990s until today, we saw more significant improvement in ex-colonial countries’ economic growth. As long-life expectancy they have, they can grow their income per person too. This last 70 years period shows us the importance of freedom, and when a country has its rights to manage themselves, they had a more chance to create a better impact on their society.
So, in the next 20 years, we will change our developing and developed country definitions if the world can become more accessible.
