Colonial roots of Contemporary Capitalism
Various factors have contributed to the growth of capitalism, including labour, capital good, etc. except the key component to its rise its certainly colonialism. Bhambra argues colonialism should be centre stage in any understanding of capitalism stating that people fail to “acknowledge the significance of colonial relations underpinning these processes, as formative of, and continuous with them. This is a consequence of the dominant understandings (across different theoretical perspectives) of capitalism as a distinct and self-contained economic formation of modernity, the origins of which are seen to be endogenous to Europe and North America ''(Bhambra 2021: 307).
While colonialism is rooted in capitalism, its impact has affected it in more ways than one. To illustrate, the industrial revolution was key for Europe's advancements in capitalism but its success relied heavily on the transatlantic slave trade and plantation wealth. The industrial revolution required mass labour but the elite needed to provide a source of calories to ensure the workers had enough energy to produce effective labour. Their solution was the sugar plantations in the Americas, it was cheap since it was produced by slave labour on stolen lands and it was very successful as the sugar accounted for twenty-two percent of the calories consumed by European workers (Hickel, 2018: 74). Sugar then transformed the new capitalist health system as one it’s the key commodities. In turn, this permitted the elites to obtain more surplus from their workers, enabling them to shift their population from agriculture and industry. The industrial revolution was also very dependent on cotton as a key raw material, further highlighting the level of dependency capitalism had on colonialism. Without the slaves’ labour for cotton, there would be no industrial revolution. To truly grasp the amount of labour produced by the slave trade for the rise of capitalism, one million enslaved Africans had been brought to Spanish and Portuguese colonies in South America from 1492 to 1619. And by the end of the slave trade in 1853, around fifteen million were taken from Africa to North America, if the labour appropriated by the United States was paid for at minimum wage, it would be equivalent to ninety-seven trillion dollars today (Hickel, 2018: 73-74). By simply looking at the effects of the slave trade’s labour, we can determine the immense impact it provided for capitalism’s prosperity, but that wasn’t the only component of colonialism that improved capitalism’s state.
If England’s rise of financial affluence simply relied on the slave trade, it wouldn’t be able to strive considering other European countries were doing the same thing. In that case, how did England rise in power when it was falling behind other European competitors at the time? The quick change that transformed England to the first modern industrialized nation was due to the privatisation of land, “if wealth from the colonies and the slave trade contributed to Britain's industrial revolution, it was because the British economy had already for a long time been structured by capitalist social property relations. By contrast, the truly enormous wealth accumulated by Spain and Portugal had no such effect because they were unambiguously non-capitalist economies. We can, nevertheless, identify a specifically capitalist form of imperialism, an imperialism that was more the result than the cause of capitalist development and stands in contrast to other European forms” (Wood, 1999: 149) When compared to a country such as Spain or the Ottoman Empire which had more power than England during the 16th century, their economic sovereignty was dependent on the extraction of metals from the Americas. By the 1800s, 100 million kilos of silver was extorted from Potosi and shipped to Europe, but by being mainly dependent on gold and silver for financial development, it put the countries’ economies entirely at risk of collapse from their pre-capitalist exploitation. By 1584, the amount of silver had reduced by fifty percent, overall decreasing European power (Hickel, 2018: 71). On the other hand, England focused on the privatisation of land, which unlike the extraction of metals, can last permanently and only increase in value. This new exercise of power is seen through Ireland, England's first colony, through trial and error, England had tried to obtain control over Ireland through military means yet remained unsuccessful. This shifted when the Tudor state decided to inflict a new economic system alongside the ongoing military force in order to ensure Ireland was economically dependent on them. By changing their social property relations to initiate agrarian capitalism, England could effectively establish economic hegemony in the long term, setting a model of power that other European countries did not have access over (Wood, 1999: 153-154).
The way the British empire was able to establish value onto land was by having a stricter basis of property rights, Lock argued that “unoccupied and unused land could be claimed as property by those able and willing to render it fruitful” (quoted by Wood, 1999: 157-158). Simply occupying land wasn't enough, particularly indigenous land, Lock goes on to say that indigenous land had to be in a state of improvement meaning the poverty should increase in value. Thus, even if indigenous peoples were making use of their land, it still remained susceptible to colonial possession as he contended, they did not produce adequate profitable agriculture compared to the produced exchange value in England. Locks argument on American land mirrors the same theory Sir John Davies had on Irish land, in a letter to the Earl of Salisbury, he writes: “His Majesty is bound in conscience to use all lawful and just courses to reduce his people from barbarism to civility” (ibid.: 159). This argument once again fed into the idea that the West was more superior and profitably prolific and without them, other countries couldn't succeed as a civilisation. There's often the problematic argument made that although Western countries colonised the global East, they still ended up ‘helping’ in the long run by developing their countries economically and agriculturally. Fifty percent of people in Britain believe that colonialism was beneficial to the colonies (Dahlgreen, 2014), but the reality is that all the capitalist success in the West is a direct cause of the exploitation of other communities.
If the West had not imposed on the East, many countries would arguably be more successful than they are now. Looking at India as a prime example, they were able to produce all necessary goods within their own country, relying simply on subsistence crops. This posed as an issue for England as they were unable to control them financially through export crops. As a result, not only did they enforce taxes, but they also went through the process of wrecking common lands and stealing ownership of forests to help build the British navy, impairing India’s safety nets and welfare systems that kept them sustained. “In 1765, the East India Company began collecting taxes in India, and then cleverly used a portion of those revenues (about a third) to fund the purchase of Indian goods for British use. In other words, instead of paying for Indian goods out of their own pocket, British traders acquired them for free, 'buying' from peasants and weavers using money that had just been taken from them. It was a scam” (Hickel, 2018). England's justification for this was to eradicate India’s ‘lazy’ process of production, they shouldn’t only produce what they need. This was successful for the British export industry as Indians were pressured into starvation, forcing them to produce much more goods. However, this ended up creating deadly consequences, considering the welfare systems like granaries and irrigation systems were destroyed, millions were killed from starvation and lack of safety nets after harsh droughts hit. Following the collapse of the East India Company in 1858, under British Raj rule, Indians were finally able to trade their goods directly to other countries. Nevertheless, to ensure profit back to the UK, a new currency was created by the Crown that could only be cashed in at London offices. The exchange value in rupees was paid in tax revenues, meaning they were once again defrauded, inhibiting India from making any profit with all the financial gains from exports going directly to the British government. Ultimately, this meant India was strained into taking out loans and falling into debt from the same country that scammed them. India had control over 27% of the world’s economy and after England's colonisation, this figure dropped to 3% (Hickel, 2018: 90).
Subsequently, this profit directly helped England with the development of capitalism in other Western countries including Canada and Australia, all at the expense of India. The biggest issue with this is that even to this day, England doesn't take responsibility for the heinous consequences, “the conservative historian Niall Ferguson has claimed that British rule helped “develop” India. While he was prime minister, David Cameron asserted that British rule was a net help to India” (ibid.). Similarly, in China the control of the world economy dropped from 35% to 7% after colonial rule. Like India, China produced all the goods they needed, refusing industrial exports in exchange for their goods. Out of desperation England retaliated by illegally selling opium to China until weak enough to invade, especially due to the fact that exploitation of silver was running out in the Americas. Asia was then used as England's personal enslaved profit market.
To truly understand how deep rooted the repercussions of colonialism had on capitalism, lets focus on the long-term effects it had that still exist today, “capitalists developed new strategies to forge new frontiers and to deepen existing ones. This cat-and-mouse game of resistance, strategy, and counterstrategy has been the history of capitalism's ecology” (Patel and Moore, 2017). The substantial effect that still heavily persists is the issues surrounding white supremacy and racism. It's shocking to still see coloniser countries romanticising the exploitation of the Western empires, convoluting it with patriotism. This is seen through the Trump election and Brexit, in 2017 Trump signed an executive order that banned entry from citizens of the countries Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia and Sudan as well as the fact that over 60,000 visas were revoked and 700 travellers detained (BBC, 2017). Yet the segregating result that colonialism produced isn't limited between the West vs others, it can sometimes cause indirect effects long after England's input. Colonial ideologies were deeply instilled in societal beliefs after years of socialisation and alienation even between neighbouring communities. Using the Rwandan genocide as an example, the Tutsi and Hutu were peaceful communities adjacent to one another yet after colonial thoughts were introduced. Ideas of superiority began to rise between them, ultimately leading to devastating mass genocide.
Having covered some of the links between colonialism and capitalism, I would like to point out how much further it goes beyond that. Everything is fundamentally created in favour of white supremacy. Even if certain topics don’t seem directly involved with capitalism, it still maintains its support for white supremacy indirectly, insuring as society changes, white power is consistently imbedded in our understanding of life. For example, even ‘factual’ and straightforward theories in science and biology have racist implications such as the theory of evolution, Darwin’s book, The Descent of Man was based on theories that the white people were far more biologically superior and even compared ethnic groups to being closer to animal biology than European races. He writes, “how little can the hard-worked wife of a degraded Australian savage, who uses hardly any abstract words and cannot count above four, exert her self-consciousness, or reflect on the nature of her own existence” (quoted by Beresford, 2017), contending that Australians lacked complex though compared to latter. Having said that, I’m not proposing that one should or shouldn’t believe in the theory of evolution, I am simply highlighting how white supremist beliefs can be rooted in seemingly unbiased subject matters.
To conclude, there is now the permanent urbanisation of society and most of the world. Even with the decolonisation of our viewpoints and awareness of our own capitalistic socialisation, we will never be able to return to a primitive society. At this point in time, capitalism is far too embedded in our everyday lives, every solution or outcome to improve society ultimately benefits the elite and ensures their position of power. Society is still extremely prejudiced, preserving the process where the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor.
Bibliography
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- Beresford, P., 2017. Why is the government waging a war against disabled people?. the Guardian. Available at:
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- Dahlgreen, W., 2014. The British Empire is 'something to be proud of' | YouGov.
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- Hickel, 2018. Where did poverty come from? A creation story File.
- Patel, R. and Moore, J., 2017. A history of the world in seven cheap things : guide to capitalism, nature, and the future of the planet: Cheap Lives. University of California Press,.
- Wood, E., 1999. The Origins of Capitalism. Labour / Le Travail, 44,