1. Preparation for Capitalist Development
His502 Lecture, Week 3, Part 2
Lalita Sharma and Dr. Ryota Nishino
Edited by Dr. Gary L. Kieffner

2. Economy in the Pacific
Subsistence economy: living off the land and the ocean. Gathering and cultivating.
Money did not exist, except for Melanesia shell money.
Reciprocity: helping each other. ‘communalism’
Repaying debts: done in different forms. If A repairs your house; B gives A a fish.

3. Capitalism An economic system. Economy involves exchange of goods.
One wants to make a profit for herself / himself.
Money. Everything has a value. How much would you pay for ________?
Debt to be repaid with interest. Banks charge interest. Why?

4. Expansion of capitalism
Capitalism favours a constant growth of profit: the more the better.
It also tended to increase territories and people to trade with.
Capitalism: the driving force of imperialism
Imperialism: ‘The highest stage of capitalism’ (V. I. Lenin)

5. When an empire expands, the conquering power (state A) demands the conquered (state B) to engage in trade.
It is almost always done on state A’s terms.
State B to serve the needs of the conquering power.
State A should look after state B to help state A, but not too much.
The profit state A makes is shared within state A or re-invested.

6. Clashes of economic systems
What happens to a subsistence economy when capitalism is introduced from outside?
Chief’s debt to colonisers?
Time to pay debt.
Concepts of land.
Taxation: how much, who collects, how is it used?

7. Capitalist economy requires a flow of goods, money and labour.
Imperialists needed foreign land (plantations) to create goods for the colonisers’ profit.
But they needed people. Who will do the work?
Colonisers assumed that constant work is an important virtue. Sloth was seen as a sin.

8. Beasts of burden
To work is an economic activity. Wage is the price one receives for work one does.
Imperialism, capitalism, and profit. Cut costs on labour.
Use imported labourers

9. Slavery An ancient institution. People viewed as ‘things’: non-human.
How were slaves procured?
Wars; brokers; slave markets.

10. ‘Blackbirding’
Hacenderos (owners of haciendas, plantation owners) in Peru used African slaves, Chinese and South American indigenous workers.
1854: Peruvian President Ramón Castilla abolished slavery.
1856: Chinese migration ended.
South American indigenous workers refused to work for money.

11. 1862: Joseph Byrne and B. D. Clark pressured Peruvian government to import Vanuatu workers.
At Tongareva island (Northern Cook Isles), he met Beni – a beachcomber – and recruited 130 Tongarevans to work in Tahiti.
Tongarevans eager to work. Coconut trees diseased, people starving, missionary work ethics.
Byrne shipped islanders to Peru, instead.
What was life like for those workers?
Sold at big mark-ups, disease, loneliness.