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EPISODE 102 FEATURES RAJ PATEL
Raj Patel is a writer, speaker, activist and academic. He’s got degrees from Oxford, the London School of Economics and Cornell. He has worked for the World Bank and World Trade Organisation - but he has also protested against them.
Raj is a member of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems and the author of Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System. He’s currently finishing a documentary, filmed in Malawi, and the U.S. — showing how people can triumph over hunger, inequality, and climate change - and do it through re-imagining how they grow and cook their good. Hint, it involves getting men in the kitchen.
HIs latest book, co-authored with Jason W. Moore, is A History of the World in 7 Cheap things. It’s all about colonial frontiers and their perpetuation - the exploitation of nature, labour and energy, and how the patriarchy and capitalism drive it all. “Capitalism is not a system where cash is everywhere but rather one in which islands of cash exchange exist within oceans of cheap - or potentially - cheap Natures… Cheap is a strategy, a practice, a violence that mobilises all kinds of work - human, animal, botanical and geological - for as little compensation as possible.”
NOTES
Clare mentions “Cartesian binaries”. CARTESIANISM means relating to the French philosopher René Descartes. Cliff’s Notes here.
Raj’s jackets are from FABINDIA - India's largest private platform for products that are made from traditional techniques, skills and hand-based processes. Find them here
“Someone once said that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.” - Fredric Jameson
“ONLY SHALLOW PEOPLE DON’T JUDGE BY APPEARANCES.” OSCAR WILDE
COLUMBUS Christopher Columbus was born in 1451, probably in Genoa. ACCORDING TO http://www.museucolombo-portosanto.com/ At the time, the city-states of the Italic peninsula were trying to reach new Western markets, besides their traditional Eastern Mediterranean clients. In 1476, Columbus was in Lisbon, acting as business manager for other Genoese traders. When he left Portugal in 1486, he was determined to reach India by sailing westward.
The ‘First homage to Columbus 812 October 1492)’ by José Garnelo y Alda in 1892
“He lived for a few years in the Madeira archipelago, having, in 1479 or 1480, married Filipa de Moniz, daughter of Bartolomeu Perestrelo, the first Governor of Porto Santo. At the same time he made contact with Portuguese navigators who were connected to the discoveries in Africa’s Western coast, and brought to Europe news about misty, mysterious lands. Toscanelli’s calculations about the size of the Earth led Columbus to believe in the possibility of reaching the East through the West.
He left Portugal after being unable to gain the support of the king. He then went to Castile, but Ferdinand and Isabella, the Catholic Kings, were at the time too occupied with the conquest of Granada, the last Muslim dominion in the Iberian peninsula, and did not pay him immediate attention. It was only in 1492 that Isabella gave the project her approval.
On the 3rd of August 1492, three ships left Palos: Santa Maria, commanded by Columbus, Pinta, commanded by Martín Alonso Pinzón and Niña, commanded by Vicente Yanez Pinzón.
After a short stop at the Canaries, Columbus left Gomera island in September. On the 12th of October came the first sight of new land: one of the islands of the Bahamas archipelago. He would also explore the coasts of Haiti and Cuba, always convinced he was in the East.
On his return, he stopped at Lisbon in 1493, where he was received by John II, who at once laid claim to the lands, creating a diplomatic crisis.
On the 14th of March 1493, Columbus’ first voyage came to an end. The Catholic Kings gave him a hero’s welcome. In October 1493, he sailed westward again, in command of a powerful armada, which carried about 1500 people. During this second voyage, he “discovered” more islands: Guadeloupe, Puerto Rico, Martinique and the Antilles. He returned to Europe in the Spring of 1496, having left some settlers in Haiti. In 1498, he sailed forth for the third time, arriving in Trinidad and sighting the Venezuelan coast. But he was the victim of intrigues, and returned to Spain as a prisoner in 1500. His fourth voyage took place in 1502, in the direction of the Honduras and Panama, which Columbus took to be Indochina, and where he looked insistently for the Malacca Strait. On his return to Europe, in 1504, he was received with indifference and died discredited in 1506. He always believed he had been to the Far East, and never knew the world also included the gigantic American continent and the Pacific Ocean.” This section all via http://www.museucolombo-portosanto.com/
MADEIRA is an autonomous region of Portugal, comprising 4 islands off the northwest coast of Africa. Now it’s a popular holiday resort, but long ago, it was known for sugar. In 1472, “the island exported 280 tons [of sugar], peaking at nearly 2,500 tons in 1506;” yet by 1530, output had fallen back by nearly 90%. “To say sugar is to say deforestation,” writes Moore, noting that only metallurgy devoured forests as quickly as sugar: one “pound of sugar required no less than 50 pounds of fuelwood (and this is a conservative estimate).” By the 1530s, there just wasn’t enough accessible wood on Madeira to feed the boilers. (The island’s very steep topography did keep some old growth inviolate.) And by 1560, wine had replaced sugar as Madeira’s most famous export. Wood for wine casks had to be imported from New England as early as the seventeenth century.” Via JStor Daily.
© Michael Schlegel
See Michael Schlegel’s haunting black and white photographs of some of the remaining ancient trees on the island here.
Madeira Natural Park is UNESCO World Heritage Site - an outstanding relict of a previously widespread laurel forest type. It is the largest surviving area of laurel forest and is believed to be 90% primary forest. It contains unique plants and animals, including the Madeiran long-toed pigeon. Find out more here.
THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH painted Mr & Mrs Archer in 1749.
The COMMONS refers to the cultural and natural resources accessible to all members of a society, including natural materials such as air, water, and a habitable earth. Commons can also be understood as natural resources that groups of people (communities, user groups) manage for individual and collective benefit. For an interesting take on the history of the Commons before the Agrarian Revolution, try this.
ENCLOSURE privatised common land in Britain from the 12th century. The new landlords literally enclosed it - with fences and walls.
According to A Short History of Enclosure: “Over the course of a few hundred years, much of Britain's land has been privatized — that is to say taken out of some form of collective ownership and management and handed over to individuals. Currently, in our "property-owning democracy", nearly half the country is owned by 40,000 land millionaires, or 0.06 per cent of the population,1 while most of the rest of us spend half our working lives paying off the debt on a patch of land barely large enough to accommodate a dwelling and a washing line.” Read it in full here.
ANARCHISTS reject hierarchies in favour of self-managed, self-governed societies based on voluntary, cooperative institutions. Listen to Episode with Tim Flannery here - we talk about anarchism at the end.
The ROJAVA conflict, also known as the Rojava revolution, is a political upheaval and military conflict taking place in Northern Syria, known among Kurdish nationalists as Western Kurdistan or Rojava.
The INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION began in Europe in mid-18th Century. Jethro Tull’s SEED DRILL had changed agriculture from 1701. James Hargreaves invented the Spinning Jenny in 1764 - it was the first multi-spindle spinning frame, and a key developments in the industrialisation of weaving during the early Industrial Revolution. The cotton gin was invented in 1790.
The LUDDITES were skilled textile workers in Nottinghamshire, Yorkshire and Lancashire, whose trade and communities were threatened by a combination of machines and other practices that had been unilaterally imposed by the aggressive new class of manufacturers that drove the Industrial Revolution.
What’s believed to be the first mechanised factory in the world was a silk factory opened by John Lombe in Derby 1721. It used water power from the River Derwent and employed around 300 people. Read more in the article, “27 Industrial Revolution Inventions that Changed the World” on Interesting Engineering here.
Find The Ease of Doing Business Index here.
THE SOILS FOOD & HEALTH COMMUNITIES PROJECT is in Northern Malawi. Find out more at www.soilandfood.org
Working with over 6,000 smallholder farming households in Malawi, SFHC supports Malawians in building sustainable, healthy, equitable, and resilient communities.
“CAPITALISM IS A SYSTEM THAT DOESN’T PAY IT’S BILLS.” - RAJ PATEL
Buy the book here.
MUSIC is by Montaigne, who sang this special acoustic version of “Because I love You” from her album Glorious Heights, just for us.
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Clare & the Wardrobe Crisis team x