The companies themselves aren’t going out and conquering new
territories, but they do get involved indirectly. Companies often
provide campaign money for politicians, and if they are pro-empire,
they will be supported. Politicians need big money to campaign,
and companies need policies that work to their favor. This neat
little partnership is forged and, indirectly, industry supports the
enterprise of empire.The Plight of Farmers
Like most places on Earth, there was rapid population growth in
these regions in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, but there was
no outlet for their population in growing cities because there was no
industry to buy up their cheap labor. As a result, all of these people
remained in the countryside and became increasingly impoverished,
on smaller and smaller plots of land. Without the latest agricultural
advances—chemical fertilizers, machines, and hybrid plants—they
were having an increasingly hard time being fed.
The smart farmers realized that to survive, they would have to
invest in new equipment, and they of course went into debt to buy
machinery. Then, if the price for their crop dropped, they were
forced to foreclose. Whereas once they might have been poor
subsistence farmers, they have now become linked—and at the
mercy of a huge global trading system. These farmers’ lives are far more precarious than when food was
supplied locally, and now they are prey to food speculators, who
hoard grain and wait for the price to go up. The locals are now
subject to market forces that are totally out of their control. It was
the same story nearly everywhere: In the end, the vast monocultures
supplying the international markets won. Before the 20th century, the French used to get through famines,
but in the early 20th century, they were crushed by them. It was
one country producing for the profi t of another that caused the
famines—not natural disaster.