Student Research Paper
Date of Creation
Colonial encounters generate incredible degrees of societal transformation. Such transformations most often occur at the expense of the colonized majority and ultimately serve as means to benefit the colonizer minority. A specific case where this kind of unbalanced societal change can be observed is colonialism-induced transformations to indigenous agriculture. In this paper I use both ancient and modern examples of colonial encounters —Roman Gaul and French West Africa—to show that a number of conclusions can be drawn on how colonialism impacts indigenous agriculture. I argue that in both Roman Gaul and French West Africa, colonial-induced changes to agriculture brought forth negative consequences for the indigenous populations because they lost their sovereign control over the means of agricultural production and crop production was altered in such a manner that rarely benefited rural farming populations.
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Katzung Hokanson, Brandon R., "Oppression and Dispossession out of Fields of Plenty: Colonialism and Indigenous Agricultural Transformation" (2020). Student Publications. 824.