Review. The hybris of the zero point. Science, race and illustration in New Granada (1750-1816)

Reseña. La hybris del punto cero. Ciencia, raza e ilustración en la Nueva Granada (1750-1816)

Dependency and world system theories in the 1960s and 1970s made it clear that the differences in economic systems between the ex-colonial North American Euro-North and ex-colonies in the rest of the world in South Latin America, Asia and African, they were not of degree of development, of delayed temporalities, but of position in the world capitalist system.

The northern economy exports high-tech industrialized products at high cost, while the southern countries export low-tech raw materials and manufactured goods at low prices thanks to low wages. It is the international division of labor that determines the state of the economy and not the lack of "development". Already a century earlier, Marx had warned of the fundamental role of American wealth and colonial trade in the constitution of the "original accumulation" that would make possible the industrial revolution. The structure and inequities of current capitalism with its 3,000 million poor have its roots in the colonial domination of Europe over the rest of the world.