part of the debate about post-colonial ‘dependency’ and will be referred to
again in that context in Chapter 4.
On the one hand, it was quite possible for cash crops and even raw mate-
rials to be produced for the imperialists by pre-capitalist methods. The ear-
lier stages of imperialism did not find it necessary to affect the mode of
production in the colonized society. Peasant production was in no way cap-
italist but could still produce the commodities that the West needed.
Colonial interests were pursued through existing relations of production
within peasant or tribal communities except insofar as mechanisms were
introduced to increase the rate of exploitation of labour.
On the other hand, where there were mining enclaves, plantations and
expatriate agricultural settlement the effect on the indigenous societies was
most traumatic and was likely to transform peasant producers into wage
labourers or capitalist farmers. European capital investment was relatively
high in such areas, and some encouragement was given to the development
of an industrial economy (Barratt Brown, 1963, p. 169). There was far less
capital investment in areas without European settlement. Investment in pri-
mary production also brought changes to a colony through the creation of
wage labour in ports and railways. In such cases capitalism can be said to
have transformed indigenous social and economic systems. Sometimes the
quest for raw materials led the Western powers to interfere in the relations
of production and in market relationships, particularly changing the balance
between food crops and cash crops to increase the production of the latter.
Local political control was important in turning local producers away from
subsistence agriculture towards exportable commodities for the European
economies. Imperialism thus became associated with famine in some
circumstances, as in parts of India.
So the extent to which imperialism actually affected or interfered with
pre-capitalist modes of production varied a good deal. Probably nowhere
were traditional pre-capitalist forms of production and the social relations
accompanying them completely abolished, but nowhere were they left com-
pletely unchanged. Where a system of landlordism existed, for example,
which the colonial authorities found convenient for the management of
labour and other features of local society, the colonial authorities would at
the same time tax the incomes of landlords who, as a consequence, were
denied full access to the resources over which they previously had com-
mand. Relationships with tenants and labourers was changed. This hap-
pened in India when the colonial authorities used the richer tenant classes
for the management of society and the extraction of revenue (Kiernan,
1974, pp. 18–19).
40 Understanding Third World Politics