Cultural Change and Colonialism

1
Cultural Change and Colonialism

• Internal and External Sources of Change.
• Equitable Versus Hierarchical Sources of Change.

2
The Key Questions

• How do societies change due to internal factors?
• How do societies change due to external factors?
• What is the major sources of change in the world
  today?

3
Internal Source of Change

• Invention
• Diffusion, or borrowing
• Environmental factors
• Increasing land/people ratios
• Resource depletion

4
External Factors of Change Colonialism

• Colonialism defined the political subjugation of
  one people by another.
• Loss of control over economic resources.
• Indigenous populations often become the bottom
  rung of the social and economic ladder.
• Spread of European political forms, populations,
  culture and economics throughout the world since
  c. 1500 AD

5
Reasons for Colonialism

• Economic expansion colonies becamee sources of
  cheap labour, raw materials and markets for
  European goods.
• Also territories where surplus labour from
  Europe could settle.
• Economic systems of colonized countries became
  linked in a system of surplus relations with
  metropolitan or colonizing countries. Led to
  distorted development, with profits being
  siphoned off at each stage of the chain.

6
Mechanisms of Insertion into a Colonial World
Economy

• Taxation systems.
• Forced labour migration, e.g. slavery and
  indentured labour.
• Imposition of money economy and markets.

7
From Subsistence to Cash Crop Production

• Colonizers viewed subsistence production of
  foragers, horticulturalists and pastoralists,
  even agriculturalists as primitive.
• Introduction of cash crops for the colonies to
  pay monetary taxation, e.g. cotton, sugar-cane,
  opium, tea, coffee, sisal, indigo, all oriented
  to an external, export market. Decline in
  locally based subsistence crops.
• Introduction of plantations mechanisms to force
  peasants to work on plantations including
  takeover of wide areas of lands.
• Suppressing peasant farming.

8
A Contemporary Example Debt and The Drug Trade
in Peru

• Peru in debt to the World Bank and IMF,
  institutions set up in 1948 to help countries
  over balance of payments difficulties, due to
  recession.
• Forced to take a Structural Adjustment Loan in
  1991. Goal of SAP was to
• to promote an environment conducive to foreign
  direct investment.
• Tight fiscal and monetary policies i.e. raising
  interest rates and decreasing the money supply,
  also cutting back on government spending,
  especially health and education.
•  Removing all tariffs and quotas against foreign
  consumer goods. (Although this is not the case
  with developed countries).
•  Devaluing the currency

9
Effects of the SAP

• Devaluation and trade liberalisation instituted
  immediately.       Rapid and steep rises in
  prices of imported goods, such as kerosene and
  drugs.       Severe cutbacks in health and
  education       Public health infrastructure
  in rural regions completely collapsed.      
  Health consequences child malnutrition,
  tuberculosis and meningitis increases.      
  Cholera epidemic from 1500 reported cases before
  August 1990 to 200,000 cases 6 months
  later.       Cholera a water-borne disease and
  people couldnt afford to boil their drinking
  water any longer.       Rural economy, land
  laws and the narco economy.