Integration into the Market
To feed the global market economy, new crops mainly
for export were introduced in the colonies; new laws and social
structures were imposed; new technologies and consumption patterns,
which were totally alien, took hold. Subsistence food production gave
way to commercial crops and raw materials to feed Europe’s
industrialisation. Agrarian societies in the colonies were profoundly
transformed. Fertile lands were given to grow cash crops with less land
to grow food to feed the local population. Food scarcity became a
permanent feature and this affected the nutritional and health status of
the people.
For example, Bengali peasants under East India
Company (EIC) rule in India were forced to grow indigo and kept in
extreme poverty as a result of very high land taxes imposed by the
Company. Within a few years of Company rule, Bengal’s economy was in
ruins. Fertile agricultural lands became barren and useless and famine
killed some ten million Bengalis. The frequency and severity of famines
which occurred under the rule of the EIC, accelerated under direct
British rule when food production was increasingly displaced by
commodities like jute, dyes, and cotton.
By the second half of the 19th century, India’s
industry and economy were in complete ruins. India became one huge
plantation for the British to grow tea, indigo, and jute for export.
Famine became endemic and reached epidemic proportions under British
colonial rule. During this period, more than 20 million Indians died
from famine.
All told, British exploitation of India, not only
pauperized more than 90 percent of the Indian masses, it left behind a
weakened population, susceptible to disease and destroyed indigenous
coping mechanisms that had been developed over the course of centuries.
This story was replayed in many Third World societies under colonial
conquest.
In Java, the Dutch imposed the Culture System, which
involved the compulsory use of land and labour for export crops and
sugar contracts. Under this system, Java was exploited as one huge
plantation owned by the Dutch. Javanese peasants were forced to pay two
fifths of the crop they grew as land rent or the cultivation of one
fifth of the rice fields in a cash crop. Sugar, coffee and indigo were
grown on rice lands, which were expanded to include tea, tobacco,
pepper, cinnamon, cinchona (quinine), oil palms, cassava, cotton and
cochineal. Corporal punishment was inflicted to enforce compliance. Land
and labour was concentrated on the export sector at the expense of rice
cultivation.
The labour required for sugar and indigo was more
than that required for the same acreage of rice so the peasants could
not grow food. This was made worse by the fact that during the height of
the Culture System, the population of Java increased by half.
Serious famines occurred, resulting in peasant
unrest: starvation and famines became frequent and widespread with the
worst in Central Java from 1848 to 1850. This haemorrhage of wealth from
Java resulted in phenomenal profits for the colonial government. Over a
45-year period, the Netherlands treasury received some 900 million
guilders from Java. It revived Dutch commerce and shipping and made
Amsterdam a great entreport for tropical products. It paid off all
Holland’s public debts, saving it from bankruptcy and Netherlands’
railroads and public works were built with these funds. The revenue
extracted from Java under the Culture System contributed not less than
one third to the annual budget of the Netherlands. In the space of 70
years from 1830-1900 some 2 billion guilders had been drained from Java.
The Culture System was a form of semi slavery, which severely retarded
Java’s social and economic development (Cady 1964:359-367; Vlekke
1959:284-307).
Perhaps the most blatant form of the export of ill
health and misery in modern colonial history was the Opium Wars
perpetrated on China by Britain. The British wanted Chinese tea badly,
which they had to pay in silver, but they had nothing to sell the
Chinese in return. The Chinese Emperor in a letter to George III had
this to say: ‘As your ambassador can see for himself, we possess all
things. I set no value on objects strange or ingenious, and have no use
for your country’s manufactures’ (Whyte 1927). The British had only
opium, which they were determined to trade, against China’s laws,
despite the fact that opium smoking was prohibited in England. In March
1839, the Chinese Imperial Commissioner burnt all stocks of opium at
Canton (the only port opened to the West). War was declared and British
naval vessels sank four warships of the Chinese fleet. The Chinese
suffered a humiliating defeat at this war, which was called the First
Opium War. At the treaty of Nanking in 1842, the Chinese were forced to
pay a large indemnity and had to open five treaty ports with British
Consuls appointed in each; whilst Hongkong was ceded in perpetuity to
the British. To further open up the Chinese market to the opium trade,
the British again entered into another war, this time in collusion with
the French in 1856. The Treaty of Tientsin concluded the Second Opium
War in 1858, which led to the further opening of China to foreign trade.
Opium became a scourge of the Chinese, and debilitated the Chinese
Empire, which led to its dismemberment by the Western imperial powers.
Colonial conquest not only destroyed life sustaining
societies and social relationships, it resulted in the breakdown of
ecological systems and balances which had enabled people and communities
to feed and sustain themselves and maintain good health.
For instance in India, colonial policies and
administration had led to the neglect of Indian agriculture. As a
result, arable land was laid waste, previously reclaimed areas reverted
to swamp where malaria and other diseases spread. And soil productivity
declined. This environmental degradation forced more people off the
land, even as the agriculture sector had to support more people (which
had been displaced by rising rents and the collapse of traditional
industries). This led to a decline in the small producers and a rise in
landless rural labour (Ross 1998:151).
British colonisation also made possible the spread of
cholera from riverine areas (where it was initially confined) to the
entire Indian subcontinent. The breakdown of local communities and
livelihoods and the marginalisation of peoples contributed to the
emergence of cholera in India in the 19th century.
Colonial policies, which undermined traditional
methods of controlling the physical environment, were also responsible
for the outbreak of disease. Until the arrival of the British in East
Africa, sleeping sickness was endemic in the region. The tsetse fly,
which carries the disease, is known to thrive in dense bush inhabited by
wild animals. The African pastoralists were able to effectively control
the disease through bush clearing and the control of game. These
preventive measures were destroyed when colonial wars, famine and
disease took a toll on the human and livestock population. With fewer
people to till the land and fewer goats and cattle to graze and keep the
bush at bay, coupled with British laws that prohibited burning and
hunting, the bush advanced and wild animals moved in to graze. In their
wake, the tsetse fly spread. Sleeping sickness affected local economies
and the availability of protein in the African diet (Doyal
1979:108-109).
Although medical discoveries and breakthroughs were
achieved under colonial rule, (which included the malarial parasite,
yellow fever, the transmission of plague by fleas and rats, and sleeping
sickness by the tsetse fly), improvements in health were largely
determined by colonial economic interests and political expediency.
Death and disease posed a constant threat to armies, white settlers and
the European business community in the colonies. Thus, overcoming these
scourges was vital to the colonial enterprise. It was with this
objective that the London and Liverpool Schools of Tropical Medicine
were established in 1899 to study tropical disease in furtherance of ‘imperial
policies’ (Ibid: 241).
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