Making of a Global World 3 Flashcards
what disease affected the african peoples?
In Africa, in the 1890s, a fast-spreading disease of cattle plague
or rinderpest had a terrifying impact on people’s livelihoods
and the local economy. This is a good example of the
widespread European imperial impact on colonised societies.
It shows how in this era of conquest even a disease affecting
cattle reshaped the lives and fortunes of thousands of people
and their relations with the rest of the world.
what is africa historically
Historically, Africa had abundant land and a relatively small
population. For centuries, land and livestock sustained African
livelihoods and people rarely worked for a wage. In latenineteenth-century Africa there were few consumer goods that
wages could buy. If you had been an African possessing land
and livestock – and there was plenty of both – you too would
have seen little reason to work for a wage.
what attracted europe to africans
In the late nineteenth century, Europeans were attracted to
Africa due to its vast resources of land and minerals. Europeans
came to Africa hoping to establish plantations and mines to
produce crops and minerals for export to Europe. But there
was an unexpected problem – a shortage of labour willing to
work for wages.
what measures were taken by europe to make africans wokr in plantation and mines
Employers used many methods to recruit and retain labour. i)
Heavy
taxes were imposed which could be paid only by working for wages
on plantations and mines.
ii)Inheritance laws were changed so that peasants were displaced from land: only one member of a family
was allowed to inherit land, as a result of which the others were
pushed into the labour market.
iii)Mineworkers were also confined in
compounds and not allowed to move about freely.
explain the rise of rinderpest?
Rinderpest arrived in Africa in the late 1880s. It was carried by
infected cattle imported from British Asia to feed the Italian soldiers
invading Eritrea in East Africa. Entering Africa in the east, rinderpest
moved west ‘like forest fire’, reaching Africa’s Atlantic coast in 1892.
It reached the Cape (Africa’s southernmost tip) five years later. Along
the way rinderpest killed 90 per cent of the cattle.
what imapct did loss of cattle have on africans
The loss of cattle destroyed African livelihoods. Planters, mine owners
and colonial governments now successfully monopolised what scarce
cattle resources remained, to strengthen their power and to force
Africans into the labour market. Control over the scarce resource
of cattle enabled European colonisers to conquer and subdue Africa.
what shows the two sided nature of 19th c world?
The example of indentured labour migration from India also
illustrates the two-sided nature of the nineteenth-century world.
It was a world of faster economic growth as well as great misery,
higher incomes for some and poverty for others, technological
advances in some areas and new forms of coercion in others
explain system of indentured labour migration
In the nineteenth century, hundreds of thousands of Indian and
Chinese labourers went to work on plantations, in mines, and in
road and railway construction projects around the world. In India,
indentured labourers were hired under contracts which promised
return travel to India after they had worked five years on their
employer’s plantation.
from where in india did indentured labourers come form
Most Indian indentured workers came from the present-day regions
of eastern Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, central India and the dry districts
of Tamil Nadu. In the mid-nineteenth century these regions
experienced many changes – cottage industries declined, land rents
rose, lands were cleared for mines and plantations. All this affected
the lives of the poor: they failed to pay their rents, became deeply
indebted and were forced to migrate in search of work.
wwhat was the destination of indian workers
The main destinations of Indian indentured
migrants were the Caribbean islands (mainly
Trinidad, Guyana and Surinam), Mauritius and Fiji.
Closer home, Tamil migrants went to Ceylon and
Malaya. Indentured workers were also recruited
for tea plantations in Assam.
who employed indentured labourers? and how did they manage to do tht?
Recruitment was done by agents engaged by
employers and paid a small commission. Many
migrants agreed to take up work hoping to escape
poverty or oppression in their home villages.
Agents also tempted the prospective migrants
by providing false information about final
destinations, modes of travel, the nature of the
work, and living and working conditions. Often
migrants were not even told that they were to embark on a long
sea voyage. Sometimes agents even forcibly abducted less
willing migrants.
why was it a new system of slavery?
Nineteenth-century indenture has been described as a ‘new system
of slavery’. On arrival at the plantations, labourers found conditions
to be different from what they had imagined. Living and working
conditions were harsh, and there were few legal rights.
workers found their own way of surviving. explain.
i)Many of them
escaped into the wilds, though if caught they faced severe punishment.
ii)Others developed new forms of individual and collective selfexpression, blending different cultural forms, old and new.
iii)In Trinidad the annual Muharram procession was transformed into a
riotous carnival called ‘Hosay’ (for Imam Hussain) in which workers
of all races and religions joined.
iv)Similarly, the protest religion of Rastafarianism (made famous by the Jamaican reggae star Bob Marley) is also said to reflect social and cultural links with Indian migrants to the Caribbean.
v)‘Chutney music’, popular in Trinidad
and Guyana, is another creative contemporary expression of the
post-indenture experience.
These forms of cultural fusion are part
of the making of the global world, where things from different
places get mixed, lose their original characteristics and become
something entirely new
what did workers do after their contracts ended
Most indentured workers stayed on after their contracts ended, or
returned to their new homes after a short spell in India. Consequently,
there are large communities of people of Indian descent in these
countries.
EXmples are V.S Naipaul, s Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Ramnaresh Sarwan.
what happened in 1900’s
From the 1900s India’s nationalist leaders began opposing the system
of indentured labour migration as abusive and cruel. It was abolished
in 1921. Yet for a number of decades afterwards, descendants of
Indian indentured workers, often thought of as ‘coolies’, remained
an uneasy minority in the Caribbean islands. Some of Naipaul’s
early novels capture their sense of loss and alienation.
