Of cotton, hemp, spice and holocaust
Of cotton, hemp, spice and holocaust
One of my other favorite films of all times is David Lynch’s Dune. Although he later denounced it, I liked it well enough to read all six books. Sadly, Frank Herbert had his meeting with Shai-Halud back in ’86, leaving the series lacking in closure.
And with this I begin a lengthy ramble…
His son, Brian, has taken up the torch after finding some secret golden tablets from his dad that were hidden away in a safety deposit box for decades. He cowrote a “prequel” trilogy about the birth of Leto, and then another about the Butlerian Jihad, which is the backstory for the whole shebang a thousand years before the first novel takes place.
I’ve started the third of that trilogy now, and while it is indeed “compulsive reading” as one critic claims on the cover, it also strenghtens my opinion that Brian has opened a can of peas, boldly plummeting into logistical pitfalls that his father most artistically was able to sidestep. Was that a run-on sentence?
The premise of Dune is simple enough at first. Frank himself said that he wanted to write about a “hydraulic” economic system. There is no doubt that he modelled his story on the power struggle for oil.
Of course, in the books, it was not about oil but rather a drug. This drug extended life, and gave certain specialists superhuman powers. Without it, civilization as they knew it would verily grind to a halt.
Which brings me to a few interesting links.
The first is about King Cotton. PBS is starting a documentary series, and I’ll just cut and paste here:
A remarkable new PBS series, "Slavery & the Making of America" which
begins on February 9. Borrowing heavily from slave narratives and
incidents seldom recorded in history books, the series emphasizes the
political and economic importance of slavery while giving the viewer a
window into the personal pain and courage of the slave. Teachers can
find a collection of lesson plans, images, and other materials at a site
set up just for them.
The program is an eye opener even for those who think they know American
history. A few excerpts from the website:
|||| Senator James Henry Hammond of South Carolina declared in 1858:
"What would happen if no cotton was furnished for three years? England
would topple headlong and carry the whole civilized world with her. No,
you dare not make war on cotton! No power on earth dares make war upon
it. Cotton is King." Hammond's reasoning was hard to fault. Government
statistics from 1860 confirmed that the 12 wealthiest counties in the
United States were in the South. However, cotton powered the economy of
the entire country; the South purchased $30 million of mid-western food
and $150 million of northern manufactured goods. Northern shipping and
banking were also tied to the cotton economy. The South's "white gold"
was not marketed directly to Europe; rather it was sent to New York
where factors (who loaned money to planters in advance of the crop),
commodities futures traders, and merchants shipped it to northeastern
textile mills (which produced $100 million worth of cotton goods) or to
Great Britain. Northern banks also provided loans to southern planters
to purchase slaves and land. State and local governments also made money
by taxing slavery through sales and inheritance taxes.
Furthermore, cotton had made the South a player in the world economy.
While cotton exports totaled only $5 million (seven percent of total
U.S. exports) in 1800, they rose to $30 million in 1830 (41 percent of
U.S. exports) and reached $191 million in 1860 (57 percent of total U.S.
exports). By 1850, cotton consumption averaged five and a half pounds
per person in Great Britain and the United States, in large part because
the price of cotton textiles had fallen to roughly one percent of their
cost in 1784. Worldwide, southern cotton dominated two-thirds of the
market. Southern cotton accounted for 70 percent of the raw material
fueling Britain's industrial revolution, and British experts believed
that Indian cotton could not replace it in quantity or quality. . .
.||||
|||| It is estimated that as many as 15 million people were transported
as slaves, with unknown numbers dying enroute. Most of the enslaved
people ended up in South America or the Caribbean, while nearly 500,000
were transported to North America. Almost all of the enslaved Africans
worked as plantation laborers or else in mining, and most of those in
the Caribbean and Central and South America died from the harshness of
the work and the brutality of their living conditions. Only in North
America did the slave population reproduce itself, with individuals
having a life expectancy equal to that of the white population. In
Africa, European traders dealt with African suppliers, seldom capturing
the slaves themselves. Importantly, the practice of slavery had been in
operation in Africa and in central Europe for centuries prior to the
redirection of the trade to the Americas. Muslim slave traders from
Arabia and Turkey, for example, had transported enslaved Africans and
Europeans into South East Asia and the Iberian Peninsula for centuries.
Nothing in the past, however, equaled the Atlantic slave trade in size
or in the extent and depth of its impact on the world. |||||
Heavy, eh?
Who could imagine in this day and age that 1) cotton had such an economic impact and 2) up into the 1860s the south was the source of such an economic powerhouse. No wonder that went down to brother-against-brother.
But back to the Dune theme: drugs. Or lack thereof. Another fine textile, hemp.
NORML - The United States is the only developed nation that fails to
cultivate industrial hemp as an economic crop, according to
Congressional Resource Service (CRS) report published last week. Hemp is
a distinct variety of the plant species cannabis sativa that contains
only minute (less than 1%) amounts of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the
primary psychoactive ingredient in marijuana. Farmers worldwide grow
hemp commercially for fiber, seed, and oil for use in a variety of
industrial and consumer products, including food.
"In all, more than 30 countries in Europe, Asia, and North America grow
hemp," the report states, adding that the European Union instituted a
subsidy program in the 1990s for hemp fiber production. "The United
States is the only developed nation in which industrial hemp is not an
established crop."
Federal law makes no distinctions between cannabis and industrial hemp,
and makes it illegal to grow hemp without a license from the US Drug
Enforcement Administration (DEA). According to the CRS, "The DEA has
been unwilling to grant licenses for growing small plots of hemp for
research purposes," even when such research is authorized by state law,
because the agency believes that doing so would "send the wrong message
to the American public concerning the government's position on drugs."
As an example, the report notes that the DEA "has still not ruled on an
application submitted in 1999 by a North Dakota researcher" to grow a
trial plot of hemp in compliance with state law. More than a dozen
states have enacted laws authorizing the licensed cultivation of hemp
for research purposes.
"The federal ban on hemp cultivation and production is a direct
outgrowth of the government's absurd war on cannabis," NORML Executive
Director Allen St. Pierre said. "This report should help to galvanize
support among US farmers, industrialists, and environmentalists for the
legalization and regulation of hemp as an agricultural commodity."