However, many European countries viewed these lesser colonies as “primitive and backward.” Why can’t people feed themselves? As Lappé and Collins both note, people can’t feed themselves because Colonial Powers kicked the natives off their land, forced them into cash cropping, taxed the natives in the respective European currency, and finally, forbade the natives to grown their own food on their own land. The first step by the Europeans was to force the native peoples off their land so that the land itself may be used for cash crop production. John Stuart Mill suggested that colonies shouldn’t be thought of as civilizations or countries at all, but rather “agriculture establishments.” In most instances, these colonial powers
After the conquest and through the declined of the natives surrounding their overworked and poorer conditions, Spaniards did but little to care at the expense of their wealth. Bartolome de las Casas and the New Laws reduced this labor system which angered in part the encomenderos who through civil wars and lack of heirs had their encomiendas reverted to the crown. The repartimiento/mita which is a labor draft within the Inca Empire was changed to a forced labor draft for the Spaniards in order to mine, obraje labor, and agricultural surplus. Negatively speaking, it was an easy faster way to make Spaniards rich. Natives were used to a monetary system and were unconsciously willing to work in order to meet this new type of payments.
That agricultural industry in the South was so corrupt that farmers gained no profit from their livestock and crops, therefore was inefficient and moving backwards. Communication between the North and South was very difficult, almost as if the North and South were two different countries, the Liberal government didn’t do a very good job in controlling the two divisions. Cavour said “To harmonise the north with the south is more difficult than to fight Austria or struggle with Rome.” In 1896 Italy tried to gain back their empire, in doing so they tried to take Adowa back in Africa, but suffered a humiliating defeat, and stunted their right to being called ‘a Great Nation’. Due to the fact that Liberal Italy found it hard to communicate across the two divisions, Liberal Italy was therefore unstable and not very secure. The new
Stolypin believed that the encouragement of a class such as the Kulaks would make them hostile to further change therefore more conservative and loyal to the Tsar as the Tsar had made them wealthy. Furthermore, peasants made up 85% of the population of Russia and a majority relied on agriculture for their income. Reforms that would please the ‘dark masses’ would strengthen the tsarist regime. Another reason for reforming agriculture was to oppress peasant unrest. In Poltava and Kharkov provinces, mass impoverishment of the peasants, which was exacerbated by the poor harvests of 1901 led to 40,000 peasants took part in an uprising where they also ransacked 150 landlord properties.
As Strayer, Gatzke, and Harbison state in their textbook The Course of Civilization states “The basic trouble was that very few inhabitants of the empire believed that the old civilization was worth saving… the overwhelming majority of the population had been systematically excluded from political responsibilities. They could not organize to protect themselves; they could not serve in the army… Their economic plight was hopeless. Most of them were serfs bound to the soil, and the small urban groups saw their cities slipping into an economic decline.”(DBQ 2, Doc 1) What these men mean is the majority of the people (which were poor serfs) were excluded from political responsibilities. In addition, they could not protect themselves or serve in the army mainly because they were too poor (in order to be in the army, the people had to be wealthy) and the urban patricians saw their city fall into an economic downfall. What also led the downfall of the Western Roman Empire were the rise of Christianity and the large size
In 1605-1612, the colonists experienced the longest drought (Doc B). Because of the lack of rain, they weren’t able to grow crops (Doc B). The seasons also caused diseases to spread (Doc E). The occupations of the colonists contributed to the colonist dying. They brought gentlemen, rich men that didn’t work with their hands, and they wanted other people to build their houses and hunt for their food (Doc C).
Overpopulation will be biggest problem of the 21th century. Overpopulation means any given species cannot exceed the carrying capacity of the land it inhabits. Because of the pressure overpopulation, people don’t have enough water, food, and living area. This is the reason they develop the vast forest area used for farming and clear the area the people to live. For example in areas of Nepal, they cut down the vegetation to provide wood for heating and construction, the fertile topsoil is eroded by rain because it is now without the protection offered by natural vegetation.
Another problem with food distribution is that governments, like those in Africa, Asia, and Latin America are exporting crops to countries willing to pay higher prices as opposed to feeding its own people (Haviland, 2011, 2008). This practice was the cause of a famine in India during its colonial days, when British rulers used Indians to produce cash crops to support its manufacturing plants in the U.K. Because the land and labor was utilized to produce export crops, there were little resources left to farm crops to feed the people of India and led to a revolutionary uprising of the Indian people against the British (Lancaster,
The cotton economy would collapse, The tobacco crop would dry in the fields, and the rice would cease being profitable. Slaves were a key element in the livelihood of the south. One argument supporters made in defense of slavery was that the crop depended on cheap labor to be profitable. If slavery ceased to exist, plantation owners would be forced to hire from elsewhere in order to maintain their crops. Slaves were considered property, thus they worked for much cheaper than any other hired help would.
Subsequently, the settlement became highly dysfunctional since the English gentleman refused to do work that was necessary to the colonies survival. This difference in social status was one of the many problems faced by the Jamestown colony. These setbacks included disease, starvation, massive death rates, and the pending relationship with the Powhatan Native Americans. The Powhatan were initially friendly to the colonists and gave them food, but drought ended the Powhatans generosity. The colonists attacked the Powhatan to procure food and relations never recovered afterwards.