Colonialism – Debate Environmental Tales

Egyptians, Greeks, Romans and the seafaring Phoenicians founded colonies in the antiquity. Later the Arabs and Vikings used the same pattern.

But the idea, that a nation can subordinate another reached its peak 1914, as seen in the image below. Worth noticing that even though most Latin American countries had already gotten their independence from Spain and Portugal, still over 80 % of the globe was colonialised.

Image: Year 1914 most of the World was colonised.
Attributing the author: By Andrew0921 – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11022316

European colonialism

Principalities and states of Europe had over the centuries of local warfare developed their cannons and other firearms to be quite mobile. This enabled taking the originally Chinese invention – gunpowder – afloat and made relatively small number of European soldiers a scary and lethal threat to anyone armed with spears and arrows.

15^th and 16^th centuries some European merchants and royals funded seafarers to explore new territories and new routes to known distant trading partners. Residents of “new” lands were then converted to Christianity and subjected to taxation – and often to slavery or at least forced labour.

Ripped wealth

Gold and silver from the Latin American mines were shipped to motherlands – or their creditors or nobles to which some previous wars had run the “conquesting states” into debt. Luxury goods like sugar, tobacco, tea and coffee was farmed with African slaves and exported for profit.

This new wealth created markets and financial instruments boosting the British industrial and agricultural revolutions as well as national and international trading.

New lines of trade were also taken over. India had been World leader in exporting cotton for thousands of years. China dominated the silk industry. For centuries these two Asian powers were leading the World trade. This changed, when the British financed a sizable army with the Latin American gold and silver paid by the Spanish crown as a payoff of previous debts of conquests – and the Britts conquered India.

Heavy taxation and other colonial acts soon lead to collapse of Indian cotton trade, paving way for the water and steam powered British textile industry. Eurasian trading has been accumulating wealth to Western World ever since and the idea of exploiting the natural resources and cheap labour of the peripheries has prospered.

Consider:

Historically colonialism had considerable impacts to the societies of both the colonialised areas and the motherlands. As European hygiene was poor, in the early days the “conquistadors” brough diseases that killed large amounts of American natives. Europeans also relocated large amounts of “pagan people” even between continents to serve as labour in mines, construction sites and plantations. Impacts are still seen.

Many of those past luxury products like tea, coffee or chocolate are now commonplace.

Tasks:

1. COCOA. Globalisation follows some paths built by colonialism. It brings tropical products like chocolate to all corners of the World.

Due to long supply chains, we rarely think how our favourite chocolate came to the store we use. African state Ivory Coast is the largest producer of cocoa, vital ingredient of chocolate. Read about the child labour used in harvesting cocoa and how growing cocoa has affected to the nature of Ivory Coast.

Choosing products with the Fair Trade -logo helps to improve the situation, but it still encourages turning forests to grow cocoa and keeps farmers occupied with an export product and not to cultivate food for local use. If you like chocolate, as many of us do, can you think how to satisfy your sweet tooth in a more sustainable way? Would it be possible to save chocolate to some special occasions and to eat more often other candy, cakes – or maybe even fruits – fresh or dried.

We do not need to stop all our pleasures – but if half of us would take sustainable choices daily, it would really have global impact.

What is your sustainable choice today?

2. COFFEE. Globalisation and our current economic system have brought lot of wealth, but also caused the climate change. Some plants like coffee are more demanding to their surroundings. Rising temperatures and extreme weather threaten to narrow the areas that can grow coffee in the future.

Since 1960’s production of coffee has tripled. We drink 2,25 billion cups of coffee every day. As we still use too much fossil energy daily, we also are cutting various chances of future generations and current youth.

What would happen, if areas suitable for cultivating coffee would be cut to half, and consumption would keep rising – as World population still grows?

Probably coffee prices would rise. It could again become a luxury item it once was.

Our daily choices count. What local product will you chose today?

3. TOBACCO. History often repeats itself. For few decades the tobacco industry lobbied against smoking restrictions to maintain its business. Later oil, gas and coal companies adopted the same pattern of denial and have managed to slow down global restrictions to use of fossil fuels.

Tobacco companies have then had to pay hefty fines to people suffering of lung diseases caused by smoking. Do you think it would be fair, that same would happen to fossil industry? What would it require?

4. GLOBALISATION. Colonialism collapsed in few decades on the 20^th century. Free trade Globalisation has now lasted for few decades.

Colonialisation was largely funded by nations. In the end it became too expensive to maintain. Also, WWII – the 2^nd World War – was so destructive, that many colonial powers had to concentrate their efforts to re-building their war-torn societies.

Globalisation is good for the corporations, their management and stakeholders, but it is getting to be expensive to countries as extreme weather caused by climate change – that is propelled by globalisation – is causing damage to infrastructure and crops.

Summer 2024 damages of the floods in Central and Eastern Europe rose to billions of euros in just few days. And it was not the first time this decade. Not to mention the forest fires and pests destroying ancient olive trees, pine forests, etc.

At the moment it is the insurance companies, that cover some of the damages. But as weather related disasters will be more frequent and stronger in the future, there will be a moment, when insuring becomes so expensive, only the richest can use it. By latest at that time there will be pressure in the civil society to have organisations that have been causing the climate change to be accountable for their previous profits and actions.

Links – read more about colonialism:

Impacts of colonialism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonialism#Impact

Decolonisation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonialism#20th_century

Economic globalisation:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globalization#Economic_globalizatio n

Take action:

Children harvesting cocoa: https://www.cocoainitiative.org/issues/child-labour-cocoa

Environmental damages caused by cocoa:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocoa_production_in_Ivory_Coast#Impacts_on_environment

Climate change and coffee:

https://coffeeandclimate.org/what-you-always-wanted-to-know-about-coffee-and-climate-change

Stories: