One comment towards the end about Empire/outsourcing peasant class and the point of remaking the world for food / extraction reminded me of how that happened in practice with England's farm labourers.
The collaspe of the Agricultural Unions in the 1870s was matched by efforts by promoters from colonial governments and the UK government to entice the members/families to migrate to farm elsewhere. New Zealand for example made huge efforts to attract these labourers. For a period of time in the 1870s, a significant chunk of NZ's British immigrants came from the SE- the Home Counties (and SW) and were largely made up of farm labourers. Then in the next decade lots more sons of farm owners. So, the UK government basically attempted to outsource its problematic rural labourers to NZ.
Then of course these immigrants, if they became farmers in NZ ended up largely exporting back to England, marketing their produce as "British or English" style lamb/mutton, as contrasted to European or Argentinian produce.
"To eat well in England you should have breakfast three times a day," W. Somerset Maugham
Just listened to this - very interesting!
One comment towards the end about Empire/outsourcing peasant class and the point of remaking the world for food / extraction reminded me of how that happened in practice with England's farm labourers.
The collaspe of the Agricultural Unions in the 1870s was matched by efforts by promoters from colonial governments and the UK government to entice the members/families to migrate to farm elsewhere. New Zealand for example made huge efforts to attract these labourers. For a period of time in the 1870s, a significant chunk of NZ's British immigrants came from the SE- the Home Counties (and SW) and were largely made up of farm labourers. Then in the next decade lots more sons of farm owners. So, the UK government basically attempted to outsource its problematic rural labourers to NZ.
https://nzhistory.govt.nz/files/documents/peopling4.pdf p17 onwards
Then of course these immigrants, if they became farmers in NZ ended up largely exporting back to England, marketing their produce as "British or English" style lamb/mutton, as contrasted to European or Argentinian produce.