June 27, 2019 Thursday
Bedtime Story
South Carolina Senator's Gloat
Cotton had become so central to the world
economy in those times and the South had become so prosperous through it due to
the confluence of various factors – most of them arising purely as a matter of
random chance rather than any conscious or willful planning - converging at one
place and time that it made a senator of South Carolina boast:
“Without firing a gun, without drawing a
sword, should they make war on us, we could bring the whole world to our feet…
What would happen if no cotton was
furnished for three years?
England would topple headlong and carry the
whole civilized world with her save the South.
No, you dare not make war on cotton.
No power on the earth dares to make war
upon it.
Cotton is king.”
This, I think, says it all.
But just as an exercise of imagination do
try to think what all things had to have happen for the Senator to make such a
tall but fairly substantive claim.
There had to be a Mughal Empire in Indian
Subcontinent from the 16th to 18th century with Mughal
Kings who introduced agrarian reforms and revenue system that incentivized
production of cash crop (in contrast to subsistence crops such as maize, rice,
wheat and potato which is a norm for farmers and agriculturists) by linking it
to market demand.
There had to be accompanying industrial
revolution that could allow mass production of yarn from cotton through devices
such as flying shuttle, spinning jenny, stocking frame and of course Watt steam
engine.
Then there had to be a British Empire and
its famous and ambitious and yes, greedy and adventurous East India Company
that would exploit and distort the cotton production to its favor by
deindustrializing Bengal, imposing bans and tariffs upon Indian-made goods and
obtaining total monopoly on India’s large market and cotton resources.
Mahatma Gandhi – a true Hindu baniya and an
English barrister by training but never in committed practice – saw through
this whole charade of exploitation.
He summed up the whole cotton game of East
India Company or the Raj through his five lucid points:
Point 1: English people buy Indian cotton
in the field, picked by Indian labor at seven cents a day, through an optimal
monopoly.
Point 2: This cotton is shipped on British
ships, a three-week journey across the Indian Ocean, down the Red Sea, across
the Mediterranean, through Gibraltar, across the Bay of Biscay and the Atlantic
Ocean to London.
One hundred percent on this freight is
regarded as small.
Point 3: The cotton is tuned into cloth in
Lancashire.
You pay shilling wages instead of Indian
pennies to your workers.
Stay tuned to the voice of an
average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.
Advertisements
Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
No comments:
Post a Comment