THE CREATION OF WORLD POVERTY
TERESA HAYTER
Pluto Press in association with Third World First
Second edition 1990
PART IV
Chapter 4: The Past is not Irrelevant
It is very hard to understand the present situation of underdeveloped countries without some reference to their past. The accumulation of wealth in Europe and North America, and their industrial and technological advance, are relatively recent phenomena. It was in the 19th century, with the Industrial Revolution, that the huge advances in first British and then other European, North American and later Japanese wealth and productive capacity took place. Even so, during most of the 19th century the situation of working people in Europe was in its own way as bad as anything anywhere. Children were removed from the cities to the mills at the age of seven or eight; they worked in factories for up to 12 or 15 hours, standing throughout. ‘They always strapped us if we fell asleep,’ testified an eleven-year-old boy, who is quoted in Leo Hyberman’s book, Man’s Worldly Goods.
- That standards of living for working people in Europe were precarious at the beginning of the 20th century is brilliantly shown in Robert Tressell’s novel, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist.
- Even today there are places within industrialized countries where poverty is severe, including the United States where the principles of free enterprise are most resolutely upheld: in 1972 the US Bureau of Census stated that ‘at least 10 to 12 Americans are starving or sick because they have too little to eat.’
The change in the relative position of Europe can be said to have begun about five centuries ago when European traders and adventurers began their expansion overseas. Empires and civilisations have risen and declined and the European empire, though long-lasting, was only the latest of many. In fact the growth of what might be called civilization came rather late in northwest Europe and later still in what is now the United States. Before then, the major centers of power, wealth, the development of luxurious living, cities, monuments, a division of labour, science and technology, and whatever else may be the attributes of ‘civilisation’, were to be found elsewhere. This does not mean that there was some kind of Golden Age before the Europeans made their impact. Earlier empires were oppressive and of course hierarchical and much of what they did was no doubt as brutal as what their peoples subsequently suffered under the Europeans. Slavery was practiced on a large scale by the Arabs. The Aztecs practiced human sacrifice. The Europeans burned witches. It is obviously very difficult to compare the degree of oppression and deprivation suffered then and now. But what is clear is that the Europeans did not, at that time, possess anything that might be termed superior civilization, or even superior techniques, on a world scale. The latter developed later, in ways that have to be explained.
- The earliest empires were in China, India, what are now North Africa and the Middle East, later in Greece and Rome.
- Northern Europe began to emerge from its backwardness in the Middle Ages.
- In the 13th century Marco Polo went to China and was staggered by the richness of the civilization he found there.
- Throughout the world there were civilizations whose level of organization and degree of wealth was highly advanced: in Egypt, Persia, Benin, the Maghreb, Ethiopia, Java, Angkor.
- In Africa there were comparable developments; Walter Rodney, a Guyanese historian who was recently murdered for his political activities in Guyana, gives many examples in his book, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa.
- In India, the skill which was most clearly more developed than in Europe was the manufacture of textiles whose quality was much superior to that produced elsewhere.
- Indians had also advanced in other fields, for example, in the iron and steel industry.
- North Africa was on the whole more highly developed than the rest of Africa; in particular, it was responsible for some of the scientific discoveries on which later European progress was based.
- It seems that, in the earliest societies of hunters and gatherers, and slash and burn agriculture, there was little hunger. But famines existed before the advent of the Europeans, and famines have been made, by hoarding and greed, from earliest times.
- What is clearly the case is that, in a number of areas, self-sufficiency in food and also in fertility of the soil have been destroyed; and people have become dependent, to a degree that did not exist before, on buying food which they cannot afford.
- Josue de Castro, in The Geography of Hunger, gives numerous examples to indicate that nutritional levels have deteriorated in many areas.
Walter Rodney argues that: ‘Colonialism created conditions which led not just to periodic famine, but to chronic undernourishment, malnutrition and deterioration in the physique of the African people. If such a statement sounds wildly extravagant, it is only because bourgeois propaganda has conditioned even Africans to believe that malnutrition and starvation were the natural lot of Africans from time immemorial. A black child with a transparent rib-case, huge head, bloated stomach, protruding eyes, and twigs as arms and legs was the favorite poster of the large charitable operation known as Oxfam. Oxfam never bothered the consciences of the people of Europe by telling them that capitalism and colonialism created the starvation, suffering and misery of the child in the first place.’ That Oxfam has changed its policy since Rodney wrote his book does not, of course, alter his case.
What also probably needs saying, because of the widely held assumptions that Europeans have been helping the peoples of underdeveloped countries to escape from their backwardness, is that agriculture in many parts of the world was quite highly developed before the period of European expansion, in some areas more so than it is now. In Asia the state authorities in India, China, Sri Lanka, Kampuchea and other places had built elaborate irrigation systems and hydraulic works, many of which have subsequently fallen into disuse.
In Africa, agriculture was not as advanced as it was in Asia and Europe, partly because of the mainly communal organization of land tenure which assured everybody of sufficient land and partly because of the overall abundance of land. Even so, advanced methods were well known and used, for example, terracing, crop rotation, green manuring, mixed farming and regulated swamp farming. It was only when the colonialists intervened that the agricultural devastation, so familiar today, began.
Chapter 5: The Europeans Get Ahead