Transcript Western Perceptions of the Tropics

Western Perceptions of the
Tropics
It ain’t so much what you know, as
what you think you know.
The Key Points to Remember
The evolutionary process of the Tropics is
broken by a Quantum Change generated
externally.
The Tropics are locked into a
Unidirectional, Unequal relationship with
the New Mercantile Empires.
They are locked out of the Industrial
Revolution; their wealth is exported and the
Rich/Poor world division is created.
The Key Points to Remember
We cannot understand what happened to the
Tropics unless:
A. We understand how what was there
before the Europeans functioned (which we
have just done)
What the Europeans, in the context of their
times, thought they were doing.
The Only Good Indian I ever saw was Dead”
The Culture
of Superiority
General Philip Sheridan.
The Central Problem was that the
Europeans, who virtually took over the
Tropics between 1500 and 1900, considered
themselves superior in many ways to the
“primitive people” they met.
Much the same was true of the relations
between immigrant Americans and the
Native Americans.
Europe interacted at several levels
Religion and Culture
Economics
Medical
Scientific, and
Administrative
Religion
1492:
This interaction starts with the Spanish
Thewhether
Inquisition, and discussions about
Africans have souls.
Trouble
It is a regime of “Zero Tolerance”
Starts
sometimes using force; sometimes
plain
Paternalism.
Here
Christianity is the religion of the conqueror
and the powerful.
The Impact of Western Religion
Bringing
light to
the Dark
Continent
It displaced, or merged with, the traditional faiths,
but societies were under siege from the
missionaries.
The missionaries brought the “virtue and dignity
of work” concept, which usually meant working
for someone else.
Converts became “lost souls” in their own
societies. Local societies adopted the “White
Man’s Religion.”
Economics
The first trade was in those things that could
stand the cost of transport: tea, slaves,
ivory, gems, silk, sugar…
The second phase was to lock-in sources of
raw materials and captive markets. For this
reason, it was necessary, not just to trade
with these places, but to possess them.
Hence Colonialism and Imperialism.
Economics 2
There was fierce competition for the raw
materials and the markets, partly because of
the theory of Economics at the time, and
this led to Colonial rivalry.
Monopolistic possession of these territories
allowed the fixing of the cost of labor (very
low), and the export of most of the valueadded.
Economics 3
The Europeans came to change the Tropics to
serve them
In some cases they took large areas of land, and
turned them into plantations.
In other cases they taxed the natives, who could
pay the taxes only in cash or cash crops, which
meant they had to plant new things. This was
called Incorporation.
In some cases, the natives were forced to work on
farms belonging to “settlers” as part of their
obligations.
The Plantation
The first major attempt at changing land
use.
This is not Incorporation, but
Transformation.
Land is alienated; Locals are turned into
Laborers; The cultivation is a monoculture;
The enterprise is totally commercial; It is
centrally-managed; It is export-oriented and
involves minimal processing
The Settlers
Most settlers went to places most like their own (e.g.
Australia, North America, Argentina etc.)
But some went to the Tropics, such as to most of Latin
America, Kenya, Algeria, Zimbabwe, South Africa).
Land was “alienated” for them at cheap prices, and the
locals were turned into laborers at subsistence wages.
These farms were totally commercial and often exportoriented. The farms around them were not, and often were
not allowed to be, in order to keep up the supply of cheap
labor. This gave rise to the Dual Economy.
Western Science
Western Science is seen by its practitioners
as generic; i.e. it is Science. Based on
empiricism.
So, local concepts of “ethnoscience” were
not of any interest because they “weren’t
science.”
So, there was no attempt to find out how
local systems functioned, though they too,
were based on empiricism: experience.
Darwin’s Contribution
"In October 1838, that is fifteen months
after I had begun my systematic enquiry,
I happened to read for amusement
biologists, the originator
of the and
concept
Malthus' Population,
being wellof
prepared to appreciate the struggle for
natural selection. His
principal works, The
existence [a phrase used by Malthus]
which everywhere goes on from longcontinued observation of animals and
Selection (1859) and
The
Descent
plants,
it at once
struck meof
thatMan
under
these circumstances
(1871) marked a new
epoch. favourable variations
would tend to be preserved and
unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The
result of this would be a new species.
White SuperiorityHere
andthen
toI justify
domination
had at last got
hold of a
over other races. theory by which to work."
Darwin is the first of the evolutionary
Origin of Species by Means of Natural
This was used to reinforce the concept of
Determinism
We already mentioned
Determinism, associated
with Ellsworth Huntington
of Yale. This suggested that
Man is a direct product of
the quality of his
Environment, and the
Temperate Environment
produced a superior type of
being.
Superiority: Cultural and Racial
Achieved through three elements:
Through a Dominating Proselytizing faith out to
make converts.
A Capitalist, commodity-oriented trading system
looking to maximizing profits by controlling
natural resources and markets.
A superior weapons technology because of the
“scientific rationalism” of the West.
The “Universality” of Western Science.
Changes to Agriculture and LandUse
Crops became commodities for export.
A market in land developed, and much land
was “alienated.”
The rise of monocultures.
Locked into an international web of
dependence (price, market etc.)
Isolated from the true market value of the
crop (export of value-added)