A Green History of the World Part 7

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A NEW GREEN HISTORY OF THE WORLD

THE ENVIRONMENT AND THE COLLAPSE OF GREAT CIVILISATIONS

CLIVE PONTING

VINTAGE BOOKS              2007

PART VII

 

Chapter 9: The Foundations of Inequality

The rise of western Europe after 1500, from being a backward area of the world to one which dominated the rest of the globe, not only drastically affected a range of ecosystems but also reshaped the relationship between the different regions of the world. The states of Eurasia were increasingly linked together in the years after about 200 BCE (following the rise of the Han and Roman empires) and over the next thousand or so years there was an increasing interchange of technologies, scientific knowledge, crops and religions. However, the Americas, Australia, most of the pacific and much of Africa were isolated until the expansion of Europe brought about a gradual integration of the different parts of the world into a single system and created a world economy. This process took time. Until about 1750 European influence was largely confined to the Americas and a few trading posts in Africa. The European impact on the long-established trading systems and wealthy states of Asia was very limited. Only after 1750 did the Europeans settle in Australasia and exert an increasing influence over Asia and then Africa. Overall the impact of this process was drastic. The world economy that emerged over the 400 years after 1500 was dominated by the states of western Europe and the areas where extensive European settlement took place  – North America, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. The tropical colonies in Africa and Asia and large parts of Latin America were forced into a subordinate position. Japan was one of the few non-European states to avoid this fate mainly because it did not come under external political and economic control. (China was only partially successful.)

  • In the earliest phases of European expansion, from the 16th to the mid-nineteenth century, western Europe itself was still characterised by predominantly agricultural economies though with increasingly important commercial sectors.
  • The economies of the colonies were moulded and re-oriented to suit the demands of the home economy.
  • Europe’s demand for raw materials increased significantly and the colonies and dependent economies around the world provided an ideal source of supply.
  • These countries and colonies also became ideal dumping grounds for European industrial production not required in the home market.

The result was that when the colonies became independent they found it very difficult to remould their economies and escape from the constraints of a global economy constructed by the wealthy and industrialised states.

The first stages of European expansion

The creation of inequality in the world through the creation of dependent and lop-sided economies was a complex process that took many centuries. Some of the most important features can, however, be identified in the very first decades of European expansion in the 15th century, long before the Portuguese sailed into the Indian Ocean and the Spanish conquered Mexico and Peru.

  •  In the 15th century the Portuguese and Spanish discovered, conquered and settled in the Atlantic islands – the Azores, the Madeiras, the Canaries and the Cape Verde Islands.
  • The original forest cover of Madeira was almost totally destroyed. The settlers introduced pigs and cattle which caused irreparable damage to the ecosystems of the island.
  • Sugar cane production required a labour force to build terraces, artificial watercourses, crop cultivation and to process it and boil down the juices.
  • Once the sugar had been processed it had a very high value for its bulk and could be traded over long distances by ship at a considerable profit.
  • They moved in slaves (mainly from around the Black Sea) to do the work. At this time the slave trade did not involve more than about 1,000 people a year.
  • By 1500 Madeira had changed from being a small colony of largely self-sufficient farmers into one of plantation agriculture with 20,000 settlers, thousands of whom were slaves labouring on the sugar plantations.
  • The Spanish conquest of the Canaries was a more difficult operation, lasting from 1402 and the capture of Lanzarote, to 1496 and the final subjugation of Gran Canaria.
  • The Guanches hold the dubious distinction of being the first people to be driven to extinction by the Europeans.
  • Between the 1440s and the end of the 15th century the Portuguese took about 140,000 slaves from Africa to their Atlantic islands.
  • Over the next few centuries this system was to be replicated on a gigantic scale.

 

Slavery and indentured labour

Western Europe, originally a source of slaves for the Islamic world, began to use slaves on the sugar plantations on Cyprus and Sicily and then on the Atlantic islands.

  • Some countries, in particular England, used a system of indentured labour – people from England went to the colonies on a passage paid by their employer in return for a period of unpaid labour in the colony (usually seven years).
  • When this period was over they were free (if they survived and most did not) and entitled to a grant of land.
  • Labour for the sugar plantations could not be found in this way and the Europeans turned to the increasing import of slaves from Africa.
  • In the hundred years to 1700, as sugar production in the West Indies on islands such as Barbados and Saint Domingue expanded rapidly, the number of slaves taken to the Americas rose to 1,870,000.
  • The 18th century witnessed the slave trade at its height – it involved the transport of 6,130,000 people at a rate of about 80,000 a year by the last two decades.
  • In total about 12 million people were brought by the Europeans and taken to the Americas as slaves.
  • About a fifth of these people died in the terrible conditions on board the slave ships as they crossed the Atlantic.
  • Far more people were enslaved in Africa than began the voyage to the Americas because of the conditions on the journey to the slave ports – in total about 20 million people were enslaved to provide the labour the Europeans demanded.
  • The average life expectancy of a slave in the Caribbean, even a young, healthy male, was about 7 years.
  • In the 1690s such a slave could be bought for about £20, which was the value of the sugar each slave produced every year.
  • This left a huge profit for the slave owner and a high death rate did not matter – fresh slaves could always be bought.
  • Plantations and the slaves who worked on them became central to the growing wealth of western Europe.
  • Slavery was finally abolished in the British territories in 1833, in the United States in 1863-65, in Cuba in 1886 and finally in Brazil in 1888.
  • When slavery was abolished the Europeans looked elsewhere to secure a cheap labour force that could be kept under tight discipline and provide crops, resources and profits the Europeans demanded.
  • The main sources for this revitalised system of indentured labour were India, China and the Pacific islands.
  • In the century after 1834, 30 million people left India to work as indentured labour across the world.
  • Most of the 30 million Chinese labourers recruited for work abroad went to south-east Asia but many were also taken across the Pacific.
  • Between 1849 and 1874, 90,000 went to Peru to replace the Hawaiians who had died there digging out the guano beds to provide fertilizer for Europe.

 

The European impact on traditional agriculture

When Europeans took control of other parts of the world they inherited well-adapted traditional agricultural systems. Although all agriculture involves major disturbance to natural ecosystems, most of the traditional methods had, by a series of techniques, evolved over a long period of time, limited the damage to the environment and produced an agriculture that was stable, resilient and diverse, and capable of maintaining output over the long term.

  • The ways in which the agricultural economies of the colonial world were transformed can best be studied from three perspectives.
  • First, the British policy in Kenya illustrates both the process and the speed with which fundamental changes could be introduced.
  • Second, the development of plantation agriculture and the balance between this sector and the peasant smallholders illustrates both the environmental and social consequences of European policies.
  • Finally it is possible to trace the cultivation and export of the key crops the Europeans wanted – sugar, tobacco, cotton, rice, tea, coffee, bananas, rubber, cocoa and palm oil – around the world.

The reshaping of the Kenyan economy and society between the establishment of formal British control in 1895 and the 1920s was radical and highly concentrated. The interests of the African population did not determine the direction of development. The key factor was the British requirement that the colony should contribute to the overall development of the empire and produce commodities that Britain required.

  • By 1910 about 250,000 hectares a year were being granted to the whites.
  • From the start of the colonial period the desired pattern of development was the establishment of large plantations run by Europeans and using cheap labour.
  • A variety of measures were introduced to ensure that the Africans needed to work to earn money and did not remain as subsistence farmers.
  • Both a hut and a poll tax, both of which had to be paid in cash, were introduced. When this did not produce enough labour, tax rates were raised until it did.
  • Taxes rose sharply after 1920 and all Africans were required to carry a pass but these could only be obtained if they had a job.
  • In these conditions it is hardly surprising that the population of Kenya fell from 4 million in 1902 to 2½ million in 1921.
  • The average income per head of the whites was 200 times that of the Africans.
  • Plantations were European and American owned, financed and managed and increasingly run by commercial companies and large corporations.===

 

The crops of the Americas

Plantations and cash crops in south-east Asia

Plantations in Africa

Cash crops and underdevelopment

By the early 20th century western Europe, and increasingly the United States, had brought about a major transformation in the agricultural economies of much of the rest of the world. Because agriculture dominated these economies it also had important social effects too. Countries and societies which had been largely self-sufficient in food were increasingly integrated into a world economy dominated by the industrialised countries. Through a powerful mixture of political control, economic pressure, investment and the structure of the world market, ‘development’ in these countries took the form of growing crops for sale to other countries. The crops were either to provide luxury items in the diet of people living in western Europe and North America – sugar, coffee, tea, cocoa and bananas – or to provide raw materials for manufacturing – cotton, rubber and palm oil. In the industrialised countries ‘development’ meant something very different – the building of a thriving and varied industrial base and rapidly rising levels of consumption and affluence for the population. In this process the dependent and colonial economies were restructured to specialise in a few commodities or in some cases a single crop. The environmental effects of this transformation were harmful. A diverse agriculture was increasingly displaced over wide areas by a monoculture which often exhausted the soil, reduced biodiversity and was vulnerable to pests and diseases. Socially the consequences were equally harmful. Self-sufficient peasants were turned into landless labourers or sharecroppers tied to the land and often heavily in debt. They became more susceptible to market fluctuations as the production of export crops rose at 3.5% a year in the first half of the 20th century while food production for home consumption rose at a slower rate than growth in population. As a result these countries had to import food, often at high prices.

  • The perverse effect of cash-crop-dominated agriculture on the population can be seen in many countries.
  • In east Africa in the late 20th century agricultural land was taken over to set up huge farms growing out-of-season flowers for sale in Europe. Not only did the peasants lose their land and become labourers dependent on their wages to buy food, they were also exposed to very high levels of pesticide use, usually without any protective clothing.

In many areas the large supermarkets who control distribution have forced lower and lower prices on producers. By 2004 banana producers in Costa Rica could not get the legal minimum price for a box of bananas (the supermarkets would not pay it) and therefore they could not pay their workers the legal minimum wage. Nearly 90% of the retail price of bananas now goes to the trading companies, distributors and retailers even though they are not involved in any form of processing. Just 2% of the retail price is paid to the workers on the banana plantations.

  • Despite major problems of hunger and malnutrition the developing world and the poorest countries continue to be net exporters of food.

 

Timber

Minerals

Fertilisers

Underdevelopment and inequality

  • Specialisation, according to economic theory should have benefited all countries equally from the most efficient allocation of resources.
  • The problem with this theory is that it completely ignores political factors – countries and areas were not equally powerful and they were not left free to decide what to produce.
  • Political control enabled colonial powers to ensure that the commodities they required were produced and allowed them to enforce a highly asymmetrical series of exchanges.

The words of Cecil Rhodes, one of the driving forces behind British expansion in Africa in the late 19th century, reveal the realities behind the theories of liberal economics:

‘We must find new lands from which we can easily obtain raw materials and at the same time exploit cheap slave labour that is available from the natives of the colonies. The colonies would also provide a dumping ground for the surplus goods produced in our factories.’

  • The way in which one part of the world – western Europe, North America and the white settlement colonies – became ‘developed’ and the way in which another part became ‘underdeveloped’ are not separate phenomena.
  • The achievement of political independence did not bring economic independence because the structure of the world economy had already been established.
  • Only a few countries avoided this trap.

The consequence of this unbalanced development was a world characterised by increasing inequality. The industrialised world was able to live beyond the constraints of its immediate resource base. Raw materials were available for industrial production and food could be imported to support a rapidly rising population. This formed the basis for a vast increase in consumption and the highest material standard of living ever achieved in the world. Much of the price of that achievement was paid by the population of the rest of the world in the form of exploitation, poverty and human suffering. The environmental problems produced by this growing inequality in the world were different for the rich and the poor. The current environmental problems in the world can only be understood in the context of the nature of the world economy produced since 1500.

Chapter 10: Disease and Death

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