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stifling cultural traditions.
viewing the difference as “progress”—something
“When the white man came, he had the Bible and we had the land. When the white man left, we had the Bible and he had the land.”
systematic handicapping
non-European scientific, ecological, and moral achievements, and legacies in European culture, were generally ignored.
zamindars,
Mogul
The basic pattern was to establish in the colonies specialized extraction of raw materials and production of primary products that were unavailable in Europe. In turn, these products fueled European manufacturing as industrial inputs and foodstuffs for its industrial labor force. On a world scale, this specialization between European economies and their colonies came to be termed the colonial division of labor
While the colonial division of labor stimulated European industrialization, it forced non-Europeans into primary commodity production.
Specialization at each end of the exchange set in motion a transformation of social and environmental relationships, fueled by a dynamic relocation of resources and energy from colony to metropolis: an unequal ecological exchange.
and for the first time in history, money determined what people ate and even if they ate.”
for the first time in history, money determined what people ate and even if they ate.”5
East India Company
industrialism is premised on transforming nature from a regenerative system
to mere “raw material.”
Overharvesting
species
reduce the productivity and integrity of an entire ecosystem.
early Portuguese colonists,
Caribbean
Sir Charles Trevelyan testified before a British parliamentary committee that the population of Dacca “has fallen from 150,000 to 30,000,
European development was realized through a racialized global relationship, “underdeveloping” colonial cultures.
encomienda
Women’s customary land-user rights were often displaced by new
food production, traditionally women’s responsibility.
reducing women’s control over resources and lowering their status,
coherent, nationalist movements
viewing world inequality as relational (interdependent) rather than as sequential (catch-up)
The conventional understanding is that individual societies experience or pursue development in sequence, on a “development ladder.”
produced a legacy of “underdevelopment” in the colonial and postcolonial worlds.
“Black Jacobin”
Decolonization was rooted in a liberatory upsurge, expressed in mass political movements of resistance.
connection between decolonization and development, where sovereign states could pursue national economic growth with First World assistance. The program of development pursued by new nations, “dependence” in independence, marked the postcolonial experience.
State elites regularly use their power to accumulate wealth and influence in the state—whether through selling rights to public resources to cronies or capturing foreign-aid distribution channels.
Just as political nationalism pursued sovereignty for Third World populations, so economic nationalism sought to reverse the colonial division of labor—as
as governments encouraged and protected domestic industrialization with tariffs and public subsidies, reducing dependence on primary exports (“resource bondage”).
The idea of development emerged during, and within the terms of, the era of the colonial project.
disorganizing the social psychology of colonial subjects.
The Bretton Woods system was unveiled as a universal and multilateral attempt to promote rising living standards on a global scale.
First World imprint. First, the World Bank was, and is, controlled by its five largest First World shareholders. Second, the president of the World Bank is selected by the United States president, and the managing director of the IMF is appointed by the largest European nations (the United Kingdom, France, and Germany).7 Third, the Bank finances foreign exchange costs of approved projects, encouraging import dependence (in capital-intensive technologies) in development priorities. Finally, the IMF adopted a “conditionality” requirement, requiring applicants to have economic policies that met
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The answer lies in the political structures of the development project. While import-substitution industrialization (ISI) protected Third World “infant” industries, farm subsidies protected First World agriculture under the terms of the GATT.
Within the development project, the “entire argument for increasing yields was framed by the specter of increasing population.”
albeit with a goal of squeezing agriculture to finance industrial growth and the Party.53
“Petro-farming”—marrying the chemical industry with the energy sector—both enabled and encouraged proliferation of green revolution technology, with the FAO providing extension services for the disposal of synthetic fertilizer across the Third World, intensifying agricultural dependence on the energy sector.57 Vandana Shiva suggests, “The Green Revolution seeds were designed to overcome the limits placed on chemically intensive agriculture by the indigenous seeds.”58
farmer suicides
The major wheat-producing countries in the Third World—India, Argentina, Pakistan, Turkey, Mexico, and Brazil—planted the bulk of their wheat acreage in the new hybrid varieties, accounting for 86 percent of the total green revolution wheat area by the 1980s.
Meanwhile, six Asian countries—India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Burma, and Vietnam—were cultivating more than 87 percent of the rice acreage attributed to the green revolution by the 1980s.62
Among farming households, the wealthier ones were more able to afford the package—and the risk—of introducing the new seed varieties. They also prospered from higher grain yields—often with easier access to government services than their poorer neighbors, who lacked the political and economic resources to take full advantage of these technologies.
creditors. Finally, the mechanical and chemical technologies associated with the green revolution either reduce farmhand employment opportunities for poor or landless peasants (where jobs were mechanized) or degrade working conditions where farmhands are exposed to toxic chemicals, such as pesticides and herbicides.
Within the framework of the development project, Third World governments strove to feed growing urban populations cheaply, for political support, for lowering wages, and for national security.
