Louis Proyect writes:
>...
>Although equations may be more fashionable, it is
>necessary to pin names and faces to the human agents of such catastrophes,
>as well as to understand the configuration of social and natural conditions
>that constrained their decisions. Equally it is imperative to consider the
>resistances, large and small, by which starving laborers and poor peasants
>attempted to foil the death sentences passed by grain speculators and
>colonial proconsuls.
First, I'm not qualified to speak about other countries than India.
There is one simple thing on the equation side that has to be stressed because it
has been hidden under a carpet of lies and "statistical errors" by most western
historians. Let's forget a moment all the talk about the creation of a market and
speculation (as if there were no markets before the British). Here's a simple fact:
During the whole period India remained a big net exporter (according to A.K.
Banerji, the surplus was worth 20 to 25 million pounds a year at the end of the XIXth
century). And it exported almost only agricultural products (according to K.N.
Chaudhuri, 15 to 30% of the agricultural production was exported at the beginning of
the XXth century). But India became more and more indebted. Does that ring a bell?
Indians were virtually forced by taxation and monetary policy to grow export crops
and to send the product of the sales to London. That's how Britain used to pay for
its b. of p. deficit. This is in no way a theological application of the principles of
Smith et al. but feodal exploitation at an international level.
Let me speculate as to why there was relatively little resistance: People were used
to pay taxes and lived with it. The fact that the taxes were not spent in the country
and reinjected in the local economy as they used to be but sent abroad instead
was not something that most people could observe and react to. Also, opposing
taxes meant confronting not speculators or some officials but the might of the
empire which blew people from the mouthes of cannons, recruited armies on racial
basis, and later starfed crowds from airplanes.
Of course famines have many causes and I'm not mascarading this as the only
cause or even as the main cause.
Julien
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