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 Culture of Superiority

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.

The Only Good Indian I ever saw was Dead”

General Philip Sheridan.

Europe interacted at several levels

Religion and Culture

Economics

Medical

Scientific, and

Administrative

Religion

This interaction starts with the Spanish Inquisition, and discussions about whether Africans have souls.It is a regime of “Zero Tolerance” sometimes using force; sometimes plain Paternalism.Christianity is the religion of the conqueror and the powerful.

1492: The Trouble Starts Here

The Impact of Western Religion

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.”

Bringing light to the Dark Continent

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 value-added.

Economics 3

The Europeans came to change the Tropics to serve themIn 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 export-oriented. 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

Darwin is the first of the evolutionary biologists, the originator of the concept of natural selection. His principal works, The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859) and The Descent of Man (1871) marked a new epoch.

This was used to reinforce the concept of White Superiority and to justify domination over other races.

"In October 1838, that is fifteen months after I had begun my systematic enquiry, I happened to read for amusement Malthus' Population, and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence [a phrase used by Malthus] which everywhere goes on from long-continued observation of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The result of this would be a new species. Here then I had at last got hold of a theory by which to work."

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 Land-Use

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)