Agriculture and Colonialization
The study of colonialism is incomplete without understanding the role of export agriculture, land control and plantation economy. The hidden factors behind the industrial revolution and the advent of the modern era have a dark history of racial slavery, imperial violence, and oppressive economic exploitation of natural resources to extract exceptional profits from the colony. Colonialism was an economic prescription, a set course of augmenting European profits and markets by extracting natural resources (such as food, rubber, minerals, and lumber) and people (through slavery and indentured servitude) from colonized regions. The key facets of colonial-era agriculture were forced consolidation of land-holdings, slavery and servitude, and the increased globalization of foods, all of which modified people’s access to different varieties of food, altered people’s subsistence patterns, and entwined peasant farmers into the global capitalist economy. [ Source ] Tobacco, Spices, scent...