Crop Influence on Human History

Sam Cox          December 2000 

The most significant event in human history since the recognition of self or the advent of bipedalism was the domestication of a few cereal crops: corn, wheat, rice. The net affect has been exponential human population growth leading to wars, organized religion, arts, music, technology and every other aspect of the modern human lifestyle. The success or failure of staple crops has largely determined our survival as a species. Most other homonids died out long ago (Conroy, 1997), and yet here we are, perhaps in part, because of a few domesticated crops. 

Moving beyond that basic backdrop, there are several crops which had an obvious and undeniable influence on world events, those that pushed history toward an alternate path. 

One such seminal crop is sugar cane, the propagation of which, on a large scale, accelerated colonization of the Caribbean islands and led to a massive Africa-America slave trade, whereby 10-13 million people were forcefully brought to the New World (Hobhouse, 1986). The descendents from those slaves remain in the Americas today, and have, over the last few centuries, developed altogether new cultures. Sugar also improved the popularity of bitter beverages made from coffee and tea, two other major players in world history. British sugar-producing colonies in the Caribbean were regarded by some parliamentary leaders in the 1700s as being more important than the North American colonies (Hobhouse, 1986). 

By the mid 1800s, the sugar plantations were in decline as a result of major competition from the sugar beet industry in continental Europe, high incidence of sugar cane disease on plantations and the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade by Britain in 1808, followed by the abolition of slavery itself in 1833 (Hobhouse, 1986). Massive financial turmoil ensued as sugar cane plantations went bankrupt. Revolutions and armed uprisings took place on many of the Caribbean islands, such as Haiti in 1802 (Corbett, 1995), Grenada in 1834 (Interknowledge, 1999), the Dominican Republic in 1965 (ABC, 2000) and others. The economic dysfunction of some islands continues to this day. A permanent trade deficit for this region hampers basic infrastructural devlopment. This economic dysfuntion has led to political turmoil and unrest. Virtually all of the Carribean islands, as well as surrounding coastal areas in Central America, have had a history of political instability and military dictatorships or marxist regimes. Consider Grenada in 1983, where United States and Central American forces rescued medical students from a leftist military government (that's the official line, anyway); or Cuba, almost ground zero for WW III  after Soviet missiles were pointed at Washington from its shores during the 1960's. Undoubtedly other factors influenced the events of the Caribbean during the 19th and 20th centuries, but the foundation laid by colonial powers of an economy based on a single cash crop combined with the importation of unsustainable population levels ultimately led to the regional economic collapse that lingers even into the 21st century. That many of the islands were heavily populated at all is owed to the massive slave trade of the 1700's. 

Also linked to the slave trade was cotton in North America. The cotton industry in southern states became so large that it economically, as well as culturally, divided the country and set the stage for the American Civil War, 1861-1865. Cotton was the cash crop which allowed the South to fight the more industrialized North. British textile industries relied so heavily on soutern cotton that Britain held out the possibility of formally recognizing the Confederacy until mid-1863. Slavery was at the root of the war, though politicians in the northern states avoided the subject at first.  Midway through the war, however, the emancipation of slaves was proclaimed by President Lincoln, and this goal was ultimately acheived with the Confederacy's capitulation and the radification of the thirteenth ammendment in 1865. If slavery was a root cause of the war, and cotton was the crop which demanded slavery to be a profitable venture, how would American events have unfolded if cotton were never grown in North America?

The potato is forever linked to the Irish for the way in which it shaped that tiny nation, as well as its people. Although widely grown throughout Europe, only in Ireland was it cultivated exclusive of all else. The average Irish man ate over 10 pounds of potatoes per day. Thus, only in Ireland did the crop failures in the 1840's, particularly 1845 and 1846, have such extreme consequences. Hundreds of thousands of peasants died from starvation or malnutrition, and 1.5 million people immigrated from Ireland to the United States (Agrios, 1997). Once again, we see that one crop was responsible for dramatically altering the populations and historical events of countries on both sides of an ocean. 

Quinine, from the bark of South American Cinchona trees, protected millions of people from malaria in colonial times, enabling exploration and colonization in areas otherwise habitable but for this deadly disease. When administered promptly, quinine has the ability to halt malaria symptoms in just a few days (Garrett, 1994). Qunine has significantly affected the earth's population, for better or worse, by greatly reducing malaria's ability to control populations, especially in cities where large numbers of people were in constant close contact with each other.  Before quinine was introduced to India in the 1850s, malaria was killing 1.3% of the population annually. Quinine has allowed India's population to grow to 700 million, whereas without it, India's population would be about 7 times less (Hobhouse, 1986).  Populations of natives from western Africa had a high frequency of sickle cell anemia, which has deleterious symptoms, but had the great benefit of rendering afflicted persons largely immune to malaria. For many centuries, blacks from western Africa were preffered slaves because they could work in areas where other people would contract malaria, and be unfit for service. Quinine allowed slave traders to profitably deal in slaves of other races, and landowners began hiring large numbers of European and Asian indentured servants, who were treated little better than slaves, if not worse (Hobhouse, 1986). Malaria severely afflicted Confederate and Union troops during the American Civil War, infecting over a million men. Nineteen thousand American soldiers contracted malaria in WWI and over half a million in WWII. Virtually every United States conflict has been influenced by malaria and the ability of quinine to halt it (Garrett, 1994). 

Grapes have always been the most important "fruit" worldwide in terms of production (Hatmann, et al. 1988). More than 7000 years ago, as people congregated into villages, towns and cities, the problem of unsanitary water, which often carried lethal diseases, was remediated by the fermenting of grape juice, a process which transformed sugar into alcohol. The alcohol kills microbes in the juice, and the beverage was safer to drink than stream water; more pleasant and easier to prepare than boiled water. Throughout Europe and the near east, wine consumption in place of water consumption probably prevented millions of deaths due to water borne diseases (UPenn). As testament to the importance of wine, it has become integrated in religious ceremonies of most major religions. 

Tea became popular in Europe as an addition to make boiled, hot water palatable. In this way tea replaced wine or other alcoholic drinks as a beverage safe from pathogens, as well as free from mind-altering substances which might interfere with daily life (Hobhouse, 1986). The tea trade necessitated large fleets of ships to convoy to and from China, where most tea originated before the 20th century. The massive buildup of western European navies was due, in part, to the need for protection of tea/spice convoys (Lewis, 1962). Mecantilist theory, whereby the state takes an active role in the designs of the economy, was born through the tea trade, and an elaborate system of taxes and duties ensured that tea became the favorable drink in England. 
        In 1773, the English East India Company had a large surplus of tea, and was facing financial hardships at home. The company persuaded parliament to allow sale of the tea at reduced duty to American colonists under the Tea Act. Rather than welcoming the appearance of cheaper tea, the colonists saw this as a move to undercut the American tea trade (which was largely illegal) and impose a tea monopoly on America. A massive boycott of tea followed, and the issue united American colonists. On December 1, 1773, 150 men, led by Samuel Adams, boarded the British tea ships and dumped the lot of the cargo into Boston Harbor. The Boston Tea Party led an angry British parliament to impose in 1774 what the Bostonians called the Intolerable Acts, which included a blockade of Boston's port, reduced self government powers, and allowed for military troop quartering in colonists' houses (Jansen, 1991). Resentment to British rule grew dramatically in the next two years, and armed skirmishes up and down the seaboard became more and more frequent and intense until all out war waged for six years, ending in the surrender of General Cornwallis at Yorktown in 1781. American colonies had banded together to declare independence in 1776, and the United States was officially recognized at the Treaty of Paris in 1783 (Wallachinsky and Wallace, 1999). By almost any account, the United States has had a preeminent role in 20th century world politics. Tea was by no means the cause of the American Revolution, but one wonders how it would have turned out without the unifying event of the Boston Tea Party and the subsequent punitive acts by the British. 

Britain received almost all tea, silk and spices from China, but China was such a large country that the British could find little to interest the Chinese for trade. Opium was introduced into China in the seventh century by Arab traders. The phsycotropic effects of opium were not realized widely until the Dutch brought the practice of smoking tobacco to Formosa, their China trading post. The practice of smoking opium spread across China, and became a high value item when its use was banned by the Chinese Emperor in 1729 (Simpson and Ogarzaly, 1986). The British refused to honor Chinese requests to halt opium imports because it was such a lucrative practice. They strictly controlled the amount of opium imported so as to keep the price very high, thus gaining large amounts of silk and tea for very little in return. Britain grew poppies for opium production in India, then used middlemen to cloud any link from British colonies and merchants to Cantonese traders. In 1839, Chinese officials destroyed a large supply of British opium in Canton. England retaliated by invading China, touching off the first Opium War which resulted in China ceding Hong Kong to Britain (Carroll, 2000).  Hong Kong remained a British holding until 1999.
    It is difficult to tease apart the histories of tea and opium since they are so closely intertwined. Together, they opened up China to trade, destabilized the Chinese Emporer, resulted in British control of several ports for decades or longer, spread ancient Chinese porcelain and art (as ballast for tea ships) all over the world and created a very large illegal drug problem which continues to this day. The planting of poppies in India spread to Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the proceeds from illegal heroin production largely funded terrorist activities in the late 20th and early 21st centuries..

Trade of other drugs has also had important impacts. The successful colonization of Virginia by the British in the early 1600's would not have been economically possible without the lucrative tobacco trade, involving the superior tobacco growing fields in America (tobacco.org, 1997) which could produce four times the revenue growing tobacco as could be made growing corn (Simpson and Ogarzaly, 1986). Production of cocaine and crack from the coca plant in Columbia and other parts of Central and South America continue to undermine government authority, and political instability and military violence is ever present. Consumption of heroin from poppy and cocaine/crack from coca plants has led to massive social problems in countries all over the world. The use of hypodermic syringes to inject heroin into blood vessels has also been a major cause for spread of infectious diseases like HIV (Garrett, 1994). 

But a few of the many hundreds of influential crops have been mentioned here, but it is sufficient to illustrate that the history of man has been heavily influenced by seemingly humble plants. 



 

References

ABC News. (www.abcnews.com/reference/countried/DR.html) 

Agrios GN.1997. Plant Pathology, 4th Ed. Academic Press; San Diego, CA. p 10. 

Carroll JM. Chinese collaboration in the making of British Hong Kong. In: Hong Kong's History, edited by T. Ngo. 2000. Routledge; London. pp 13-18. 

Conroy GC. 1997. Reconstructing Human Origins.WW Norton and Co.; NY, NY. 

Corbett C. 1995. A Review of Jan Pachonski and Reuel K. Wilson, Poland's Caribbean Tragedy: A study of Polish legions in the Haitian War of Independence 1802-03. (www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/43a/038.html) 

Garrett L. 1994. The Coming Plague. Penguin Books: NY, NY. 

Hartmann HT, Kofranek AM, Rubatzky VE, Flocker WJ. 1988. Plant Science, 2ed.Prentice Hall, Inc. Englewood Cliffs, NJ. p 594. 

Hobhouse H. 1986. Seeds of Change. Harper and Row; NY, NY. 

Jansen C. The Boston Teaparty. In: A survey of American History, edited by Alan Brinkley et al; 1991. McGraw-Hill; NY, NY. 

Lewis M. 1962. The History of the British Navy. Pelican; Baltimore, MD. pp 50-54. 

Simpson BB, Ogarzaly MC. 1986. Economic Botany: Plants in Our World. McGraw-Hill; NY, NY. 

tobacco.org  (www.tobacco.org/History/Jamestown.html) 

Upenn.  (www.upenn.edu/museum/Wine/wineintro.html) 

Wallechinsky D, Wallace I. 1999. Hidden History: American Revolution. (wysiwyg://92/http://www.dreamscape.com/morgana/britrev.htm) 

www.1 Grenada History and Culture. (www.interknowledge.com/grenada/gdhis01.html) 



 

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