Issue 335 Historical Control May 14, 2014

I went over two forms of control this week so far, but have not touched upon one of history’s most sinister forms of control.  This form happened during the age when colonies were used as cash cows by the British and other Empires around the globe.  So here is how they manipulated an islands populace.

Step 1, replace the subsistence farming:  Subsistence farming is farming for food.  But when the British and the Dutch came to these island nations they had all the food crops replaced by cash crops like cotton, tobacco and the like. Basically whatever crops they needed for industrial use were grown on these islands instead of food. But how would this make the people there dependent?

Step 2, provide food:  As the local populace no longer produces their own food they must be provided for.  The British and the Dutch would have ships come in and deliver food and supplies to the locals to keep them alive and working.  In exchange they would load up the cargo of cash crops like the tobacco and cotton and make their way back to port. This is thus how they made the populations dependent and a little more as well.

Step 3, Suppress resistance:  If the local population would rebel, then the British and the Dutch simply stopped supplying food to the populace.  As the soil generally got depleted of nutrients by the cash crops and that it would take months for food to grow in general, starvation would take hold and weaken the populace of the colony.  Then when suitably weakened, the British and the Dutch would send in troops to suppress the populace and reassert their control. 

Step 4, continue back at step 2:  Basically, after a rebellion was suppressed the Colonial powers would again push the population to farm the industrial crops that they wanted.  The locals would be forced to submit or be replaced by locals from other communities to keep up production.  Of course the locals had no say in the matter as they would be starved to death if they did not comply.

Conclusion:  This is the most blatant and traditional form of control.  In fact it can still occur in the world today, but on different scales.  So it can happen in the home in the case of child/sex slavery, or on a national scale like Russia denying oil to other countries that are dependent on them.  Land locked regions can suffer the same fate as these island nations of the past.  Basically, it happened before and it can happen again.  This is my warning to you all, don't let it happen to you.