Lecture 30: Food Imperialism around the World
Sometimes getting people to work for the big companies was done
with force, too. In the Amazon, Indians were driven off their plots
and forced to carry rubber for a British company. In the Belgian
Congo, they just burned the local villages so that the people were
forced to come and work on newly cleared plot. Even more subtly, the imperial power could just tax the locals
exorbitantly, which essentially is getting them to devote a portion
of their land and labor to the imperial power for nothing. If the
locals have no money (which was often the case), they would be
invited to grow cash crops for export, which the colonizers would
buy. Therefore, for example, Africans go from growing millet and
sorghum for their own use to growing peanuts and cotton for export.Banana Republic
In 1870, the vast majority of Americans have never seen or eaten
a banana, unless they went to the tropics or someone brought
one back as a novelty. Captain Lorenzo Baker, a New England
seaman, was in Jamaica and noticed people selling bananas, and
he decided to give it a shot, so he bought 160 bunches and got
them to Jersey City in 11 days. People went berserk over them. He
was so successful that within a few years, he founded the Boston
Fruit Company. At almost exactly the same time, another investor decided to
approach the government of Costa Rica with a railroad-building
scheme, and he was given both a land grant to build and ample
acreage straddling the railroad. He then got the idea of lining the
tracks with bananas, which could be harvested and shipped directly
from all over the country. He also did very well. Over time, these two companies merged, creating a bigger
operation, which became the United Fruit Company in 1899. These
two men developed their own distribution system, built their own
fl eet of ships, went public on the New York Stock Exchange, set
up a communications network via radio, and even carried mail to
the United States. Essentially, they monopolized all transport and