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Exploring our food history and the impact of imperialism.

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THIS IS THE HISTORY YOU HAVE BEEN TAUGHT

REALITY CHECK:

Don’t be offended by the diagram on the

left - we don’t mean

to call you stupid. We just

wanted to illustrate the

enormity of the world and

everything that happens in it.

We get taught some things at

school, we learn other bits through

new methods like YouTube and social media, or even old fashioned ones like reading, as you’re about to when reading this book. But what we don’t get told is that at least some of the stuff we learn is wrong or at contains some gaping omissions.

THIS IS HISTORY

One of area that people think they know about but contains these massive gaps is the topic of the British Empire. Having been through the British Education System I know you get taught about this a fair amount, but not properly and I only came to learn this through researching it myself. Something that is utterly wrong. These omissions essentially end up glorifying a past that as a by product enslaved millions and forced millions more to conform to foreign rule for hundreds of years, all for no better reason than because we could.

Future generations need truth.

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Before we start...

A note from our editor Seb Lansdowne

This series of publications endeavours to expose this history to the light of day - bringing to attention some issues and histories that you might not even have begun to consider before. Every product on your supermarket shelf has a history - why is a banana in a corner shop or a British supermarket for less and £1 a kilogram (72 pence to be exact), bananas don’t grow here? how did we get a taste for them and how did they become the worlds favourite fruit? How did the national British dish change from fish and chips (itself an imported dish originally from Scandinavia) to a curry? a style of cooking that originates thousands of miles from our shores?

It is important to understand the history of our food and the implications that the journey they took to get to our plates have had on the rest of the world. It will become clear as you read through this book everything has an impact and a calculated reason, many of these impacts can still be seen today, be it in worker exploitation still continuing or even big business having a hand in running developing countries across the globe.

more informed decisions; about where the food we buy comes from, to who our money goes and the emissions it might have given off on its journey to us. Supermarkets are the undefeated bad guys here - they’re in a race to the bottom to have the cheapest fruit, spices, sugar, milk whatever it is they know - if they sell it cheap enough people will come in droves to buy it.

I implore you to try stepping back a few years and splitting up your shop, go to the grocers for your fruit, the butchers for your meat, local deli’s for spices and the fishmongers for... well you get the idea. This will on the whole be slightly more expensive but you will be able to know much more about the food you buy - the people that work in these places are often much more clued up on the answers of any questions you might have - at least much more than an 18 year old working in Sainsbury’s for a bit of cash. Read and be open to learn - unfortunately history doesn’t always have a good ending.

This publication is not intended to make you feel bad for consuming these products - buying them supports the livelihoods of millions if not billions of people the whole way around the globe so we must to continue. Though with full understanding of foods history we can make

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BRITISH BERMUDA EST 1612

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STEP BY STEP OF HOW NOT TO EAT:

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BRITISH GAMBIA EST 1660

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GLOBAL BANANA PRODUCTION BY REGION BASED ON ANNUAL DATA FROM 2019

EUROPE 638,270TONNES

NORTH AMERICA 3,790TONNES

CENTRAL AMERICA 10,144,540TONNES CARIBBEAN 1,999,320TONNES

The term “Banana Republic” was first coined in 1901 to describe Latin American countries whose economy relied heavily and usually solely on the export of bananas. The quintessential banana republic, Honduras, the first country to be nicknamed a banana republic, and corruption in the government has meant this probably isn’t going to change any time soon. Another country that is struggling to diversify their economy is Guatemala who’s economy heavily relies on Bananas, coffee and sugar - all non-native species brought over by colonisers, a direct effect of imperialism shown in the 21st century.

The legacy of bananas lives on and today, being the most consumed and one of the cheapest fruits available the problems persist. With workers being paid an average $441 a month for back breaking work the so called ‘exploitation’ may be over but there is till along way to go before this industry can say it is doing all it can to right its past wrongs.

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AFRICA 21,481,880TONNES

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ASIA 61,142,720TONNES

OCEANIA 1,781,110TONNES

Banana Republics still exist today, but no longer are they limited to economies based solely on bananas.

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Exploitation, Slavery and Botany The story of the worlds most popular fruit.

Photography: Sebastian Lansdowne / Freddie Nickerson, Art Direction: Sebastian Lansdowne, Styling: Sebastian Lansdowne. Words: The Independent

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The world’s undisputed favourite fruit is the banana. In 2017, 21.54 billion tons of bananas were traded across the world, worth $14.45 billion. This accounts for more than 14% of all fruits traded.

But where did this massive trade begin? England got its first glimpse of the banana when herbalist, botanist and merchant Thomas Johnson displayed a bunch in his shop in Holborn, in the City of London, on 10 April 1633.

Johnson’s single stem of bananas came from the recently colonised island of Bermuda. We don’t know what variety it was – but these days the chances are that any banana you will find in a British supermarket will be descended from the Cavendish banana.

This strain was developed in the 19th century by the head gardener at Chatsworth House, John Paxton. His invention is called the Cavendish, rather than the Paxton, after the family name of the owners of the Chatsworth estate, the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire. Paxton spent several years developing his banana. In 1835 his plant finally bore fruit, it won him a prize from the Royal Horticultural Society.

Europeans have long associated bananas with the exotic pleasures of distant, island paradises. When the exhausted Ilarione da Bergamo arrived in the Caribbean in 1761 after a long sea voyage, the sight of the local fruit convinced the Italian friar that the travails of his protracted journey had been worthwhile.

“Thus I began enjoying the delights of America,” he noted in his diary. Travellers marvelled at the exuberance of new-world nature, which – unlike her more parsimonious European sister – offered ripe, sweet fruit all year round.

Bananas originated in southeast Asia and were brought to the New World by European settlers – who, by the 19th century, were growing them on vast plantations in the Caribbean. Labour conditions on banana plantations were often atrocious. This combined with the flourishing slave trade and the ever growing confidence and dominance of white people over those of any other ethnicity led to the creation of Banana Republics.

The term “banana republic” was coined in 1901 by American author O. Henry in his book “Cabbages and Kings” to describe Honduras while its economy, people, and government were being exploited by the Americanowned United Fruit Company.

“A banana republic is a politically unstable country with an economy dependent entirely on revenue from exporting a single product or resource, such as bananas or minerals.”

The societies of banana republics are typically highly stratified, consisting of a small ruling-class of business, political, and military leaders, and a larger impoverished working-class.

By exploiting the labour of the working class, the oligarchs of the upper ruling-class control the primary sector of the country’s economy, such as agriculture or mining. As a result, “banana republic” has become a derogatory term used to describe a corrupt, self-serving dictatorship that solicits and takes bribes from foreign corporations for the right to exploit large-scale agricultural operations—like banana plantations.

During the early 1900s, multinational American corporations, sometimes aided by the United States government took advantage of these conditions to build banana republics in Central American countries such as Honduras and Guatemala. >>

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In 1910, the American-owned Cuyamel Fruit Company bought 15,000 acres of agricultural land on the Caribbean coast of Honduras. At the time, banana production was dominated by the American-owned United Fruit Company, Cuyamel Fruit’s main competitor. In 1911, Cuyamel Fruit’s founder, American Sam Zemurray, along with American mercenary Gen. Lee Christmas, orchestrated a successful coup d’etat that replaced the elected government of Honduras with a military government headed by General Manuel Bonilla—a friend of foreign businesses.

The 1911 coup d’etat froze the Honduran economy. The internal instability allowed foreign corporations to act as the de-facto rulers of the country. In 1933, Sam Zemurray dissolved his Cuyamel Fruit Company and assumed control of its rival United Fruit Company. United Fruit soon became the sole employer of the Honduran people and took complete control of the country’s transportation and communications facilities. So complete was the company’s control over the agricultural, transportation, and political infrastructure of Honduras, the people came to call the United Fruit Company “El Pulpo”—The Octopus.

Today, Honduras remains the prototypical banana republic.

While bananas remain an important part of the Honduran economy, and workers still complain of being mistreated by their American employers, another product aimed at American consumers has become a challenger—cocaine.

Because of its central location on the drug smuggling route, much of the cocaine bound for the United States either comes from or passes through Honduras. With the drug traffic comes violence and corruption. The murder rate is among the highest in the world, and the Honduran economy remains depressed.

the Central Intelligence Agency to carry out Operation Success, a coup d’etat in which Guzmán was deposed and replaced by a pro-business government under Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas. With the cooperation of the Armas government, the United Fruit Company profited at the expense of the Guatemalan people.

During the bloody Guatemalan Civil War from 1960 to 1996, the country’s government consisted of a series of U.S.-backed military juntas hand-picked to serve the interests of the United Fruit Company. More than 200,000 people—83% of them ethnic Mayans—were murdered over the course of the 36-year-long civil. According to a 1999 U.N.-backed report, the various military governments were responsible for 93% of the human rights violations during the civil war.

Resting on slavery, exploitation and western control of foreign countries through coups and deadly force bananas may seem unsuspecting now but their history is not.

We are not suggesting that you boycott bananas as that would do the opposite of what we want to achieve and send these banana republics in to an economic depression but understanding the history of your supermarket shelves is important. If you can buy from smaller stores such as green grocers rather than supermarkets - the cost may be higher but the amount that gets back to the actual producer will be much more than what the bulk buyers of Tesco and Asda will give.

During the 1950s, the United Fruit Company played on Cold War fears in trying to convince U.S. Presidents Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower that popularly elected Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán was secretly working with the Soviet Union to advance the cause of Communism, by nationalizing vacant “fruit company lands” and reserving it for the use of landless peasants. In 1954, President Eisenhower authorized

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STOOL OF BANANAS

PSEUDO TRUNK

And that is in the 21st Century - this exploitative practice has been going on for well over 400 years - imagine the conditions for a ‘sub human’ enslaved labour MALE force of the 1800s.

FLOWER

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LEAF SHEATH

Native Bananas present (not dominant banana strain we are focusing on)

2

Native Sweet Bananas present (Dominant global strain / family originated)

Stage Three: Portuguese settlers moved in to West Africa - a spot with perfect growing conditions for bananas, they brought these over to the canary islands in the late 1400s.

This is where English traders got their hands on them first.

By the 1850s Kew Gardens developed a new strain, the Cavendish - the strain most dominant in the world today, this was spread throughout Central America between 1850/80s to plantations staffed by slaves and exploited local, the beginnings of banana republics.

1

On average, workers only earn between 4 – 9% of the total value of bananas, whilst retailers keep are able to earn up to 40% of the price paid by consumers.

Stage Two: Moving in to Africa, the sweet dessert banana was a new crop some tropical parts of Africa already had cooking bananas such as plantains. This happened in around the 7th - 10th centuries likely brought over to Madagascar and moved in to the rest of the continent from there. There’s about 500 years of growth in Africa before the next stage.

Conditions are harsh male and female workers can often work for up to 14 hours a day, 6 days a week.

Stage One: Bananas were originally found in South East Asia, mainly in the Indo-Malay region. They were brought west by Arab conquerors in 327 B.C and to India in around the 5th century where they flourished. The Romans and the Greeks occasionally received shipments of Bananas but the fruit remained a luxury until the 1940s and 50s.

3

MID RIB

17

LEAF

18

BIR DIM

FAEL

In 1910, the American-owned Cuyamel Fruit Company bought 15,000 acres of agricultural land on the Caribbean coast of Honduras. At the time, banana production was dominated by the American-owned United Fruit Company, Cuyamel Fruit’s main competitor. In 1911, Cuyamel Fruit’s founder, American Sam Zemurray, along with American mercenary Gen. Lee Christmas, orchestrated a successful coup d’etat that replaced the elected government of Honduras with a military government headed by General Manuel Bonilla—a friend of foreign businesses.

The 1911 coup d’etat froze the Honduran economy. The internal instability allowed foreign corporations to act as the de-facto rulers of the country. In 1933, Sam Zemurray dissolved his Cuyamel Fruit Company and assumed control of its rival United Fruit Company. United Fruit soon became the sole employer of the Honduran people and took complete control of the country’s transportation and communications facilities. So complete was the company’s control over the agricultural, transportation, and political infrastructure of Honduras, the people came to call the United Fruit Company “El Pulpo”—The Octopus.

Today, Honduras remains the prototypical banana republic.

While bananas remain an important part of the Honduran economy, and workers still complain of being mistreated by their American employers, another product aimed at American consumers has become a challenger—cocaine.

Because of its central location on the drug smuggling route, much of the cocaine bound for the United States either comes from or passes through Honduras. With the drug traffic comes violence and corruption. The murder rate is among the highest in the world, and the Honduran economy remains depressed.

replaced by a pro-business government under Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas. With the cooperation of the Armas government, the United Fruit Company profited at the expense of the Guatemalan people.

During the bloody Guatemalan Civil War from 1960 to 1996, the country’s government consisted of a series of U.S.-backed military juntas hand-picked to serve the interests of the United Fruit Company. More than 200,000 people—83% of them ethnic Mayans—were murdered over the course of the 36-year-long civil. According to a 1999 U.N.-backed report, the various military governments were responsible for 93% of the human rights violations during the civil war.

Resting on slavery, exploitation and western control of foreign countries through coups and deadly force bananas may seem unsuspecting now but their history is not.

We are not suggesting that you boycott bananas as that would do the opposite of what we want to achieve and send these banana republics in to an economic depression but understanding the history of your supermarket shelves is important. If you can buy from smaller stores such as green grocers rather than supermarkets - the cost may be higher but the amount that gets back to the actual producer will be much more than what the bulk buyers of Tesco and Asda will give.

FO LOOTS SANANAB

During the 1950s, the United Fruit Company played on Cold War fears in trying to convince U.S. Presidents Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower that popularly elected Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán was secretly working with the Soviet Union to advance the cause of Communism, by nationalizing vacant “fruit company lands” and reserving it for the use of landless HTpeasants.

AEHS FAEIn L 1954, President Eisenhower authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to carry out Operation Success, a coup d’etat in which Guzmán was deposed and

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KNURT ODUESP

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ELAM REWOLF

And that is in the 21st Century - this exploitative practice has been going on for well over 400 years - imagine the conditions for a ‘sub human’ enslaved labour force of the 1800s.

The Fruit Issue

Native Bananas present (not dominant banana strain we are focusing on)

Stage One: Bananas were originally found in South East Asia, mainly in the Indo-Malay region. They were brought west by Arab conquerors in 327 B.C and to India in around the 5th century where they flourished. The Romans and the Greeks occasionally received shipments of Bananas but the fruit remained a luxury until the 1940s and 50s.

2

Native Sweet Bananas present (Dominant global strain / family originated)

Stage Three: Portuguese settlers moved in to West Africa - a spot with perfect growing conditions for bananas, they brought these over to the canary islands in the late 1400s.

This is where English traders got their hands on them first.

By the 1850s Kew Gardens developed a new strain, the Cavendish - the strain most dominant in the world today, this was spread throughout Central America between 1850/80s to plantations staffed by slaves and exploited local, the beginnings of banana republics.

1

On average, workers only earn between 4 – 9% of the total value of bananas, whilst retailers keep are able to earn up to 40% of the price paid by consumers.

Stage Two: Moving in to Africa, the sweet dessert banana was a new crop some tropical parts of Africa already had cooking bananas such as plantains. This happened in around the 7th - 10th centuries likely brought over to Madagascar and moved in to the rest of the continent from there. There’s about 500 years of growth in Africa before the next stage.

Conditions are harsh male and female workers can often work for up to 14 hours a day, 6 days a week.

3

19

20

In 1910, the American-owned Cuyamel Fruit Company bought 15,000 acres of agricultural land on the Caribbean coast of Honduras. At the time, banana production was dominated by the American-owned United Fruit Company, Cuyamel Fruit’s main competitor. In 1911, Cuyamel Fruit’s founder, American Sam Zemurray, along with American mercenary Gen. Lee Christmas, orchestrated a successful coup d’etat that replaced the elected government of Honduras with a military government headed by General Manuel Bonilla—a friend of foreign businesses.

The 1911 coup d’etat froze the Honduran economy. The internal instability allowed foreign corporations to act as the de-facto rulers of the country. In 1933, Sam Zemurray dissolved his Cuyamel Fruit Company and assumed control of its rival United Fruit Company. United Fruit soon became the sole employer of the Honduran people and took complete control of the country’s transportation and communications facilities. So complete was the company’s control over the agricultural, transportation, and political infrastructure of Honduras, the people came to call the United Fruit Company “El Pulpo”—The Octopus.

Today, Honduras remains the prototypical banana republic.

While bananas remain an important part of the Honduran economy, and workers still complain of being mistreated by their American employers, another product aimed at American consumers has become a challenger—cocaine.

Because of its central location on the drug smuggling route, much of the cocaine bound for the United States either comes from or passes through Honduras. With the drug traffic comes violence and corruption. The murder rate is among the highest in the world, and the Honduran economy remains depressed.

replaced by a pro-business government under Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas. With the cooperation of the Armas government, the United Fruit Company profited at the expense of the Guatemalan people.

During the bloody Guatemalan Civil War from 1960 to 1996, the country’s government consisted of a series of U.S.-backed military juntas hand-picked to serve the interests of the United Fruit Company. More than 200,000 people—83% of them ethnic Mayans—were murdered over the course of the 36-year-long civil. According to a 1999 U.N.-backed report, the various military governments were responsible for 93% of the human rights violations during the civil war.

Resting on slavery, exploitation and western control of foreign countries through coups and deadly force bananas may seem unsuspecting now but their history is not.

We are not suggesting that you boycott bananas as that would do the opposite of what we want to achieve and send these banana republics in to an economic depression but understanding the history of your supermarket shelves is important. If you can buy from smaller stores such as green grocers rather than supermarkets - the cost may be higher but the amount that gets back to the actual producer will be much more than what the bulk buyers of Tesco and Asda will give.

During the 1950s, the United Fruit Company played on Cold War fears in trying to convince U.S. Presidents Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower that popularly elected Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán was secretly working with the Soviet Union to advance the cause of Communism, by nationalizing vacant “fruit company lands” and reserving it for the use of landless peasants. In 1954, President Eisenhower authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to carry out Operation Success, a coup d’etat in which Guzmán was deposed and

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BANANA ORIGINS MAP

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Native Sweet Bananas present (Dominant global strain / family originated)

Stage Two: Moving in to Africa, the sweet dessert banana was a new crop some tropical parts of Africa already had cooking bananas such as plantains. This happened in around the 7th - 10th centuries likely brought over to Madagascar and moved in to the rest of the continent from there. There’s about 500 years of growth in Africa before the next stage.

Native Bananas present (mainly cooking varieties or other lesser known strains)

Stage One: Bananas were originally found in South East Asia, mainly in the Indo-Malay region. They were brought west by Arab conquerors in 327 B.C and to India in around the 5th century where they flourished. The Romans and the Greeks occasionally received shipments of Bananas but the fruit remained a luxury until the 1940s and 50s.

3

Stage Three: Portuguese settlers moved in to West Africa - a spot with perfect growing conditions for bananas, they brought these over to the canary islands in the late 1400s.

This is where English traders got their hands on them first.

By the 1850s Kew Gardens developed a new strain, the Cavendish - the strain most dominant in the world today, this was spread throughout Central America between 1850/80s to plantations staffed by slaves and exploited local, the beginnings of banana republics.

1

21

22

AVERAGE WAGE COMPARISON USING 2019 AS A BASE YEAR ALL MONTHLY & IN USD INDIAN WAGE $177

BANANA WORKERS WAGE* $60

UK WAGE $3,518

NIGERIAN WAGE $169

*USING A $2 A DAY RATE (SOME FARMERS ARE STILL PAID EVEN LESS THAN THIS)

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US WAGE $5,488

“It is as difficult for most poor people to truly believe that they could someday escape poverty as it is for most wealthy people to truly believe that their wealth could someday escape them.”

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- Mokokoma Mokhonoana

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WORKING DAY COMPARISON BASED ON GLOBAL WORK HABITS STUDY FROM PRINTERLAND 2020

NIG E

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900

TO 900

730

K0 1830

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HOURS AT WORK TIME COMMUTING

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O Nigeria produces 2.8 Million tonnes of bananas each year making it one of the top banana producing nations on the african continent. Alongside india who produce 29.7 Million these two agriculture heavy economies have very different working patterns despite both being colonised by the united kingdom - india in 1757 and nigeria in 1901, maybe the length of exploitation led to this stark difference as nigeria was only under british power for 59 years?

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OM FR

UA LL Y

M RO KF OR W

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US

HE

Y LL

WO RK DA YU SU A

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RIA -

25 A question of exported workload:

How do some of the richest countries in the world work the shortest hours?

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Lemon Exported

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THE GREAT BRITISH SECRET

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Victory tastes sour?

How the humble lemon helped the British keep naval domination of the globe.

Photography: Sebastian Lansdowne / Freddie Nickerson, Art Direction: Sebastian Lansdowne, Styling: Sebastian Lansdowne. Words: The Conversation

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Everyone knows that Britain’s conclusive victory over Napoleon was at Waterloo. The story of that day – the squares of infantry repulsing cavalry charges, the Imperial Guard retreating under murderous musket fire delivered by a red line of soliders, the just-in-time arrival of Field Marshal Blücher’s Prussian army – is one of excitement, horror and heroism. However, Britain’s biggest contribution to Napoleon’s defeat was much less romantic. It involved the first randomised controlled trial.

Without the trial, the years of blockades of French ports by the Royal Navy would not have been practical. This blockade kept the French fleet confined, and prevented Napoleon from invading Britain. Which gave the British freedom to trade and conquer across the world, helping finance not only the British but other European armies and nations. It threatened France’s trade and economy, which forced Napoleon to order the continental system: a Europe-wide embargo against trade with Britain. He invaded both Spain and Russia to enforce this boycott – actions that ultimately brought about his downfall.

Blockade work was often tedious, always dangerous. Navy frigates, keeping close to the shore, would watch the French ports, using signal ships to notify the main fleet over the horizon if the French were to sail. The ships (and sailors) had to maintain station for months without relief.

In 1804-5, Admiral Horatio Nelson spent ten days short of two years on HMS Victory, never stepping on dry ground, most of the time enforcing the blockade of Toulon.

The ability of the sailors of the Royal Navy to operate for such long periods at sea was remarkable. For most of the 18th century, ships could only stay at sea for relatively short periods (six to eight weeks), without the sailors developing scurvy.

with just 145 men left from the original complement of 1,955. Four died as a result of enemy action. Most of the rest died from scurvy.

This was not unusual – 184,889 sailors were enlisted in to the Royal Navy during the Seven Years’ War and 133,708 died or were lost due to sickness, again mostly scurvy, and just 1,512 died in combat. There is no way that the navy could have maintained the blockade of France for so long without preventing this disease.

“ just 145 men left from the original complement of 1,955.”

The cause of scurvy was unknown, and many cures were proposed. The Portuguese explorer, Vasco da Gama, made his men use urine as a mouthwash, an intervention that did not prevent two-thirds of them dying from scurvy.

The breakthrough experiment – the first randomised controlled trial – was carried out by Scottish Royal Navy surgeon James Lind in 1747. After eight weeks at sea on HMS Salisbury, there was an outbreak of scurvy. He took 12 sailors with the disease and, ensuring the cases were as similar to each other as possible, he put them together in the same part of the ship and gave them the same diet.

He divided them into six groups and gave each group a different treatment. For example, one group was given a quart of cider every day, another had to drink half a pint of seawater. Two sailors were given two oranges and a lemon daily. After six days, one recovered and returned to duty, the other was deemed well enough to nurse the remaining ten patients back to health.x

Victims would feel weak, bleed at the gums, old wounds would break down and they would get infections. In the later stages of scurvy, sailors would have hallucinations and could go blind before dying.

In 1753, Lind wrote a treatise describing this crucial experiment. While others had previously used citrus fruit to treat scurvy, this trial proved its effectiveness.

More sailors died from scurvy than enemy action. In 1744, Commodore George Anson of the Royal Navy returned from a nearly four-year circumnavigation of the globe

We now know that scurvy is caused by lack of vitamin C or ascorbic acid, present in large amounts in citrus fruit.

In the Napoleonic wars, all British sailors were issued with

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TOP LEMON EXPORTING COUNTRIES USING DATA FROM TRIDGE 2020

lemon juice or other fruit. In 1804, 50,000 gallons were purchased by the Royal Navy. The effect was remarkable. In 1809, the Naval Hospital, at Haslar near Portsmouth, did not see a single case of scurvy.

Lind’s controlled trial was essential for the defeat of Napoleon. Without it, the blockade could not have been sustained, Napoleon’s fleet could have disrupted British trade, and, more importantly, allowed the emperor to invade Britain. By holding up this wall of ships between Britain and France it also allowed the empire to remain connected and for explorers and colonisers to continue to flow out of the UK and in to the rest of the world. Which means without lemons then the empire could have crumbled before it even really started.

This shows how even the smallest cog can play the most important role in the machine and even though the lemon may have not been initially spread throughout the world because of the British Empire it was still the empirical spirit of Europeans to take what they saw wherever they went and to use it to their advantage.

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1

3

Interestingly none of the top lemon exporters are where the lemon is originally from; the top three lemon exporters sell over 70% of the globes lemons worth a staggering $1.9 Billion. The proper origin of the lemon is still up for debate but like most citrus fruits it definitely comes from South Asia and is a descendant of the Citron / Pomelo and Mandarin through a couple of other mutations first. How the fruit came to be in Europe Africa and Central America is all to do with European Imperialism - the Spaniards had an empire much like the British and heavily traded with Arabs who traded with India. Which led to lemons coming to Spain who then took them to central America - where British settlers traded them and took them to South Africa.

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34 A question of unexpected history:

If something as small as a lemon has this much unknown history, how much else have we not been told about?

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720 days LEMONS IN NUMBERS DATA FROM THE NIBBLE

<

1652

Lemons taken to South Africa by Jan van Riebeeck the Dutch colonial power in South Africa at the time.

133,708 1815 <

<

42 days

<

1,512

The number of days Admiral Nelson stayed aboard his ship in Tulon to blockade the port once the use of lemon juice was accepted in the British Navy.

The number of men that died in the 7 years war from fighting in combat.

The average number of days a British Naval seaman could stay at sea before getting scurvy without the aid of lemon juice and vitamin c.

<

8 20,005,000 <

<

<

16

The year that the British beat Napoleon due to their ability to blockade France’s ports and stop goods getting through.

27.43 <

2,500

The number of metric tonnes of lemons produced in 2020 across the world.

How many gallons of water a lemon tree requires each week to grow.

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<

The number of months it takes for a citrus tree to die after catching disease.

Lemons are transported to ‘The New World’ with Christopher Columbus - first bringing seeds to Hispaniola, it is around this time that lemons begin to be eaten Minimum number of in Europe. hours of sunshine each day a lemon tree requires to actually produce fruit.

<

<

24

1493

<

Number of varieties of lemon, not all of these are considered ‘true’ lemons as more varieties can be made through combining other species of citrus.

How many men died from scurvy or ill health in the 7 years war before the advent of lemon juice prevention.

Estimated number of years lemons were grown and used purely as an ornament.

36

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For hundreds of years the lemon wasn’t eaten it was used purely as an ornamental fruit, until the 10th century when Arabs brought them over to the Mediterranean and in to the south of Spain. This led to a boom in the growth of European lemons for a time .

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“Without the lemon the British wouldn’t have been able to dominate the seas in the way they did the lemon is integral to supporting the British Empire” The Fruit Issue

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A TIME LINE OF LEMONS

100 200

USING DATA FROM TRIDGE 2020

AD

1150

AD

Lemons transported form northern India to Africa and Arabia by Arab traders.

AD

Introduced into southern Italy and was being cultivated in Egypt and in Summer, the southern portion of Mesopotamia around this time.

900 1000

AD

First people start eating lemons previously purely used as an ornamental fruit for decoration.

AD

Arab traders bring lemons over to Spain the people who eventually bring them to the rest of the world.

Growing lemons has spread throughout much of the Mediterranean region something which has now become a staple of their diet.

1500

AD

Spanish Empire begins to spread lemons throughout the new world - also traded with Dutch and British Empires - this leads to Lemons in South Africa.

1751

AD

Lemons made their way up to California where they are grown and used as an ingredient in cooking.

1894

AD

A killer freeze hits Florida and the south USA this instantly ceases lemon production in the USA for 60 years.

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Grapefruit Exported

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DUTCH CAPE COLONY ESTD 1652

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Barbadosed The smallest cogs often play the biggest role Barbados in many respects was England’s first experimental tropical agricultural export colony, and was successful for a number of reasons. Market conditions for its first commercial crop, smoking tobacco, enabled the accumulation of quick profits, which were later utilised to finance the shift to sugar production in the 1650s.

In the first decade, when settlement was tenuous, the first Barbadian settlers encountered no opposition from Spanish or French rivals, nor was there a native Amerindian presence to overcome. In fact, the opposite occurred. Amerindians were brought from Guiana in order to instruct the early settlers in survival skills, such as knowledge of local foods and preparation methods, and the most effective ways of clearing dense tropical forest.

A locally elected legislature or House of Assembly was formed in 1639, which along with a nominated advisory Council and the Crown’s representative, the Governor of the island, ruled the island in tandem with the state sanctioned religion, the Anglican Church.

Barbadian planters such as the Draxes, made contact with individuals fleeing Brazil, and a most successful transference of the sugar industry took place. The climate and soil conditions in Barbados were perfect for the growing of this sweet grass. In a short space of twenty years, the economic phenomenon known as the Sugar Revolution transformed the face of Barbados forever. Tropical luxuriance gave way to a carefully controlled garden-like appearance of the entire island, as almost complete deforestation occurred. Not only was nature subjected to man’s tight control, but profound demographic and economic changes that created a whole new class society.

Sugar demanded labour and this poured into Barbados in increasingly large numbers, quickly making the island not only the most populated of England’s overseas colonies, but also one of the most densely populated places in the world.

Initially whites from Britain were brought in, as servants or

prisoners. After the Somerset uprising, many West Country men were “barbadosed” by Judge Jeffreys. 7000 Irish were taken to the island during the Cromwellian era. Barbados quickly acquired the largest white population of any British colony in the Americas. It became a springboard for British colonisation in the Americas, playing a leading role in the settlement of Jamaica and the Carolinas, and sending a constant flow of settlers to other areas throughout the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

However as the cost of white labour in England went up, on the advice of Dutch and Sephardic merchants, turned to West Africa for their source of manpower. Black slaves were imported in from the Gold Coast region in particular, especially from what is today the country of Ghana. The Asante, Ewe, Fon and Fante peoples provided the bulk of imports into Barbados. Nigeria also provided slaves for Barbados, the Yoruba, Efik, Igbo and Ibibio being the main ethnic groups targeted.

It is estimated that between 1627 to 1807, some 387 000 Africans were shipped to the island against their will, in overcrowded, unsanitary ships. Over time, many of these individuals were then re-exported to other slave owning colonies, either in the West Indies or to North America.

However for both the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the high mortality rate among slaves working on the sugar plantations necessitated a constant input of fresh slaves in order to maintain a work force.

So, despite being such a tiny island Barbados played a central role in the development of the entire empire and the strategy employed by the British. At the same time it was a significant port in the transatlantic slave trade with over 400,000 enslaved people being transported there.

And despite the British slave trade officially ending in 1807, it was not until 1 August 1834 that slavery ended in the British Caribbean.

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CARIBBEAN SEA YEAR: 1684 WHITE POPULATION 23,624 (34%) SLAVE POPULATION 46,502 (66%) YEAR: 1643 WHITE POPULATION 16,167 (21%) SLAVE POPULATION 62,115 (79%)

14 MILES (23KM)

The Fruit Issue AREA WHERE MOST CITRUS FRUITS ARE NATIVE

Stage Two: In Barbados less care was taken to separate out fruits and mixed plantations were common - the island is only small. This led to the mixing of genes and for a new branch of the citrus family tree to evolve. The pomelo is a large sour fruit contrasting with the smaller sweeter orange - first written about in 1750 by Reverend Griffith Hughes - seeds were then taken to Florida.

3

21 MILES (34KM)

1

ATLANTIC OCEAN

Stage Three: After developing in Florida and the near

by Caribbean Islands for a number of years seeds were shipped to South Africa on the way back from the transatlantic slave trade. This has led to South Africa flourishing in to becoming the top producer of grapefruit in 2018 - producing 25% of the worlds grapefruit from their 8,500 hectares.

YEAR: 1629 WHITE POPULATION 1800 (97%) SLAVE POPULATION 60 (3%)

Stage One: Citrus fruits mostly originating in South Eastern Asia were brought over to the rest of the world from western colonisers. Pomelo (pumelo) the largest of the citrus family and the sweet orange were transported in the early to mid 17th century to Barbados - a small British colonised territory - most likely through the classic route stopping over in South Africa to resupply.

2

GRAPEFRUIT ORIGINS MAP CHANGE IN SLAVE POPULATION OF BARBADOS

(1629 - 1786)

45

YEAR: 1643 WHITE POPULATION 37,200 (86%) SLAVE POPULATION 14,000 (14%)

SODABRAB FO NOITALUPOP EVALS NI EGNAHC

46

)6871 - 9261( 3461 :RAEY )%68( 002,73 NOITALUPOP ETIHW )%41( 000,41 NOITALUPOP EVALS

Barbadosed

9261 :RAEY )%79( 0081 NOITALUPOP ETIHW )%3( 06 NOITALUPOP EVALS

The smallest cogs often Barbados in many respects was England’s first experimental tropical agricultural export colony, and was successful for a number of related reasons. Market conditions for its first commercial crop, tobacco, enabled NAECO CITNALTA the accumulation of quick profits, which were later utilised to finance the shift to sugar production in the 1650s.

servants or prisoners. After the Somerset uprising, many West Country men were “barbadosed” by Judge Jeffreys.

7000 Irish were taken to the island during the Cromwellian era. Barbados quickly acquired the largest white population of any English colony in the Americas. It became the springboard for English colonisation in the Americas, playing a leading role in the settlement of Jamaica and the Carolinas, and sending a constant flow of settlers to other areas throughout the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

In the first decade, when settlement was tenuous, the first Barbadian settlers encountered no opposition from Spanish or French rivals, nor was there a native Amerindian presence to overcome. In fact, the opposite However as the cost of white labour in England went up, occurred. Amerindians were brought from Guiana in order on the advice of Dutch and Sephardic merchants, turned to instruct the early settlers in survival skills, such as to West Africa for their source of manpower. Black slaves knowledge of local foods and preparation methods, and were imported in from the Gold Coast region in particular, the most effective ways of clearing dense tropical forest. especially from what is today the country of Ghana. The A locally elected legislature or House of Assembly was Asante, Ewe, Fon and Fante peoples provided the bulk of formed in 1639, which along with a nominated advisory 3461 :RAEY 4861 :RAEY imports into Barbados. Nigeria also provided slaves for Council and the Crown’s representative, the Governor )%12( 761,61 NOITALUPOP ETIHW )%43( 426,32 NOITALUPOP ETIHW Barbados, the Yoruba, Efik, Igbo and Ibibio being the main of the island, ruled the island in tandem with the state )%97( 511,26 NOITALUPOP EVALS )%6ethnic 6( 205groups ,64 NOITtargeted.

ALUPOP EVALS sanctioned religion, the Anglican Church.

Sugar demanded labour and this poured into Barbados in increasingly large numbers, quickly making the island not only the most populated of England’s overseas colonies, but also one of the most densely populated places in the world. Initially whites from Britain were brought in, as

It is estimated that between 1627 to 1807, some 387 000 Africans were shipped to the island against their will, in overcrowded, unsanitary ships, which made the Middle Passage a synonym for barbaric horror. Over time, many of these individuals were re-exported to other slave owning colonies, either in the West Indies or to North America.

However, and this is especially true for the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the high mortality rate among slaves working on the sugar plantations necessitated a constant input of fresh slaves in order to maintain a work force.

)MK43( SELIM 12

Barbadian planters such as the Draxes, made contact with individuals fleeing Brazil, and a most successful transference of the sugar industry took place. The climate and soil conditions in Barbados were perfect for the growing of this sweet grass. In a short space of twenty years, the economic phenomenon known as the Sugar Revolution transformed the face of Barbados forever. Tropical luxuriance gave way to a carefully controlled garden-like appearance of the entire island, as almost complete deforestation occurred. Not only was nature subjected to man’s tight control, but profound demographic and economic changes that created a whole new class society.

AES NAEBBIRAC So, despite being such a tiny island Barbados played a central role in the development of the entire empire and the strategy employed by the British, and at the same time it was a significant port in the transatlantic slave trade with over 400,000 enslaved people being transported there.

Exported

)MK32( S-EEXP LIM 41

The Fruit Issue

Stage One: Citrus fruits mostly originating in South Eastern Asia were brought over to the rest of the world from western colonisers. Pomelo (pumelo) the largest of the citrus family and the sweet orange were transported in the early to mid 17th century to Barbados - a small British colonised territory - most likely through the classic route stopping over in South Africa to resupply.

2

GRAPEFRUIT ORIGINS MAP

AREA WHERE MOST CITRUS FRUITS ARE NATIVE

Stage Two: In Barbados less care was taken to separate out fruits and mixed plantations were common - the island is only small. This led to the mixing of genes and for a new branch of the citrus family tree to evolve. The pomelo is a large sour fruit contrasting with the smaller sweeter orange - first written about in 1750 by Reverend Griffith Hughes - seeds were then taken to Florida.

3 1

Stage Three: After developing in Florida and the near

by Caribbean Islands for a number of years seeds were shipped to South Africa on the way back from the transatlantic slave trade. This has led to South Africa flourishing in to becoming the top producer of grapefruit in 2018 - producing 25% of the worlds grapefruit from their 8,500 hectares.

47

48

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BRITISH CAPE COLONY ESTD 1806

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TIMELINE OF SOUTH AFRICA USING A COMPILATION OF DATA SOURCES

1816-26 AD 1652 AD

Shaka Zulu founds and expands the Zulu empire, creates a fighting force that devastated the entire Xregion- then re-named Zululand after the chief.

Jan Van Riebeeck - the leader of a crew sent from the Netherlands to install a refreshment fort on the South African cape to feed sailors and traders on their way back from Asia to Europe. Van Riebeeck was under strict instructions not to colonise the region but to build a fort and to erect a flagpole for signaling to ships and boats to escort them into the bay. However, a few months after their arrival in the Cape, the Dutch Republic and England became engaged in a naval war (10 July 1652 to 5 April 1654). The completion of the fort became urgent.

START OF BRITISH COLONY

START OF DUTCH COLONY

EXPANSION OF ZULUS

1795 AD

1488 AD Bartholomeu Dias a nobleman of the Portuguese royal household, was a Portuguese explorer. He sailed around the southernmost tip of Africa in 1488, the first European to do so, setting up the route from Europe to Asia later on.

This may not seem like a big deal but now knowing that the route is possible led to the colonisation of Asia and Oceania. At this point most people believed the world was flat and there was an end point to the sea - so this moment is essential to the development of imperialism.

The Invasion of the Cape Colony, also known as the Battle of Muizenberg, was a British military expedition launched in 1795 against the Dutch Cape Colony at the Cape of Good Hope. The Dutch colony at the Cape, established in the seventeenth century, was at the time the only viable South African port for ships making the journey from Europe to the European colonies in the East Indies. It therefore held vital strategic importance, although it was otherwise economically insignificant. Territory is returned to the Dutch in 1803; ceded to the British in 1806.

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1835-40 AD The Boer people (Dutch settlers from the previous colony) leave Cape Colony in the ‘Great Trek’ and found the Orange Free State and the Transvaal.

1879 AD

1877 AD The British Annex the Dutch Transvaal

The Zulu army had grown and the British couldn’t have them as a threat to their ‘safety’ so decided to use force to take their territory. After months of fighting the Zulu’s (who themselves were northern settlers who came to South Africa in the 17th Century) thousands of British soldiers were killed and more injured - many more than Brits expected - especially considering they Zulu’s were fighting with spears and arrows and the Brits has modern (for the time) guns. The Zulus ceded to the British at Ulundi in July, and soon after the their land was formally annexed.

START OF BOER WAR

DIAMONDS DISCOVERED

1867 AD

1880 AD

At Kimberly a city in the northern territory only a few kilometres from Dutch Orange Free State Territory and Transvaal diamonds are discovered - this begins increasing the importance of South Africa.

The beginning of Dutch disobedience.

1852 AD The British give self governance to the Boers.

1858 AD The Boer declared Transaval a Republic.

1860 AD Thousands of Indian workers are imported by the British East India Company to work on South African farms - such as citrus plantations. This influx of workers continues until 1911.

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The Occupation of the South African Cape How the British created the legacy of Apartheid starting over 200 years ago.

Photography: Sebastian Lansdowne / Freddie Nickerson, Art Direction: Sebastian Lansdowne, Styling: Sebastian Lansdowne. Words: The Independent

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Two hundred years ago 5,000 people from Britain were settled in the south eastern part of South Africa in an area around present-day Makhanda and Port Alfred, then called the ‘Zuurveld’, by the British colonial authorities.

To some South Africans (and particularly to many of their descendants) they are heroised as having brought development and ‘civilization’ to the area.

But should South Africa celebrate or mourn their arrival and legacy?

The settlers were allotted land which African people had occupied for millenia. The western Cape of South Africa had long experienced the dispossession of indigenous land under the regime of merchant capitalism of the Dutch East India Company from the mid 1600s. But British colonialism ushered in powerful and devastating new dynamics.

From roughly the 1770s, wandering Dutch-speaking farmers tried to settle east of the Cape Colony. But for 40 years, their new and strong neighbours, the amaXhosa, resisted their efforts. They fought each other in 100 years of wars, which left the Xhosa weakened.

Once the British took over in 1806, via diplomatic agreements in Europe, everything changed. In the first great removal in South African history, the Xhosa were dispossessed. It began with the expulsion of 1811/1812.

What followed was an additional 70 years of war.

“Crops were destroyed, cattle confiscated, homes burnt.”

The Zuurveld was the crucible of South African history in the sense of being the area where the country’s diverse peoples first encountered each other. It was also the crucible of settler capitalism.

So what should we do with this 200th anniversary? It offers

an invitation to sober reflection on where South Africa has travelled as a nation over two centuries and how the savage inequalities established in the past, continue in its present.

This first round of expulsion was particularly cruel. Crops were destroyed, cattle confiscated, homes burnt. This led to 20,000 people under Chief Ndlambe’s leadership being forced across the Fish River and later the Keiskamma and ultimately the Kei. This ‘scorched earth policy’ has been described by the victors as ‘a superbly executed campaign’.

British colonialism drove this process of dispossession, employing unprecedented levels of force which soon led to yet another war. As tensions escalated, the British simply went over the borders and seized Xhosa cattle. At the beginning of 1818, the largest to date of such raids saw 2,000 head of cattle taken. By November that year, the number of cattle taken by force from the amaXhosa in yet another raid was 23,000.

The ensuing fifth ‘frontier war’ in 1819 left the British once again as military victors. The colonial forces nominally controlled the old Zuurveld, as well as new stretches of land beyond the Fish River boundary.

By then, experience had shown that the amaXhosa would not simply stay away from their former homes by diplomatic agreement. The conquered land could only be maintained in British hands by filling it up with its own people.

In other parts of the empire indirect rule, using indigenous leadership, often worked. But this had proven impossible in the borderline areas of the Eastern Cape. The settlement of the 5,000 British in 1820 was a direct outcome of the latest war. It was to be the largest settler scheme undertaken in the whole of the colonial era.

After 1820 a small elite group of British settlers built on this process to create a new and savage social order: settler capitalism, which involves the process whereby both the means of production and labour become commodities. >>

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While in this case the initial dispossession was driven by colonialism, the process of commercialisation was driven by an elite that developed their own brand of settler capitalism.

Deeply embedded in British colonialism, these settler elites soon articulated and perpetuated a virulent racism.

It followed hot on the tail of the most massive attack the amaXhosa had ever waged against the Colony. On Christmas Eve 1834, 12,000 to 15,000 armed invaders crossed the full length of the Fish River boundary in one huge wave. They burnt settler farmhouses, killed the occupants and confiscated livestock.

It was an all-out attempt to get rid of the unwelcome neighbours. Most of the direct engagements in the Zuurveld forced the British settlers to abandon virtually the whole country east of Algoa Bay, saving only the towns of Grahamstown and Fort Beaufort. The Xhosa now carried guns as well as their assegais and shields.

But in 1835 the colonial forces soon went on the offensive and cleared the Xhosa not only out of the Zuurveld area once again, but also from strictly Xhosa-occupied lands further east. They suffered severely when the British applied the same strategy as in 1811 – a scorched earth policy which destroyed their economic base.

As a result, many were reduced to eating herbs and roots and forced to seek employment in the Colony from the very people who had destroyed them. Once again, the large-scale importation of British troops secured a military victory for them after nine months of fighting.

The deep-seated racism of settler capitalism was linked to war. The war of 1834-35 was the first in which the settlers participated, and it created a particularly vitriolic racism.

In the words of one of the settler elite, Mitford Bowker, the Xhosa were ‘ruthless, worthless savages’.

The landscape around Grahamstown was the scene of many violent encounters in the wars of dispossession and the settler elite were directly involved as soldiers, as a source of supplies to the British forces and as members of the colonial administration. They had the most to gain, in

the form of new lands available for their own use. Some of these same people made small fortunes as war profiteers and war mongers. Overall, as Timothy Keegan wrote, the British settler elite, were marked as exhibiting “acquisitive, warmongering propensities”.

This settler elite promoted their personal economic interests. They did so initially through the occupation and commercialisation of Xhosa land and through establishing and extending lucrative trading networks.

Land speculation was extensive and involved buying up conquered lands and establishing sheep and cattle farms.

Cattle sales and wool exports became the basis of many settler fortunes. Between 1837 and 1845 property prices in the Eastern Cape quadrupled.

Settler capitalism also involved the incorporation and exploitation of the amaXhosa as wage labourers. The war of 1835 resulted in the importation of 16,000 amaMfengu as cheap labour for the colonists, while the war of 1846 concluded with major labour recruitment among the defeated amaXhosa. Settler capitalism also involved the establishment of the financial institutions and infrastructure to promote speculation and trade.

The new social order that emerged was defined by racism, primitive accumulation and ‘free’ labour. It involved a continual displacement and transformation of social relations.

It is not hard to see the roots of the 20th century apartheid policies in the legacy of the settlers. Throughout the winding down of the militarised involvement in South Africa in the early 20th century the tone was already set socially from 1811, they advocated total domination and geographical separation along race and colour lines. blacks and whites could not mix, the whites were ‘better’ and the blacks there to serve. This may have only been enacted into law in 1948 nearly 15 years after the British relinquished control of the country but had been forcefully drummed in to peoples mentalities through generation after generation of both settler and natives.

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1912 AD Native National Congress founded, later renamed the African National Congress.

1910 AD Formation of Union of South Africa by former British colonies of the Cape and Natal, and the Boer republics of Transvaal, and Orange Free State.

1881 AD First Anglo-Boer war ends in a negotiated peace.

1902 AD The Treaty of Vereeniging ends the second Anglo-Boer War. The Transvaal and Orange Free State are made selfgoverning colonies of the British Empire.

START OF THE GOLD RUSH

START OF 2ND BOER WAR

END OF 2ND BOER WAR

1889 AD British troops gather on the border of the Transvaal and ignore an ultimatum to disperse. The second Anglo-Boer War begins. In the fighting over 25,000 Boer people die, 22,000 British troops and 12,000 native Africans - a tragic loss of life fighting over access to minerals and metals that were taken from the poor and sold to the rich by the rich. The scorched earth policy was used to by the British though the biggest killer was not the fighting itself - it was the disease it brought with it.

1885 AD

1913 AD

Gold discovered in the Transvaal region.

Land Act introduced to prevent blacks, except those living in Cape Province, from buying land outside reserves.

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“The South African grapefruit industry isn’t the only byproduct of the colonial era, racism, division and social unrest were also left behind by the Europeans” Exported

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- SOUTHAFRICAHERITAGE.CO

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1931 / 1934 AD The Union of South Africa parliament enacts the Status of the Union Act, which declares the country to be “a sovereign independent state”. The move followed on from Britain’s passing of the Statute of Westminster in 1931, vvover South Africa.

1961 AD

EARLY 1960S AD

South Africa declared a republic, leaves the Commonwealth. Mandela heads ANC’s new military wing, which launches sabotage campaign.

International pressure against government begins, South Africa starts to be excluded from the Olympic Games.

APARTHEID BEGINS

END OF BRITISH RULE

1950 AD

1948 AD Policy of apartheid (separateness) adopted when National Party (NP) takes power.

Population classified by race. Group Areas Act passed to segregate blacks and whites. Communist Party banned. ANC responds with campaign of civil disobedience, led by Nelson Mandela.

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PRESSURE TO END APARTHEID 1960 AD Seventy black demonstrators killed at Sharpeville. ANC banned.

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1990 AD ANC unbanned, Mandela released after 27 years in prison. Namibia becomes independent.

1964 ANC leader Nelson Mandela sentenced to life imprisonment.

1990 AD Start of multi-party talks. De Klerk repeals remaining apartheid laws, international sanctions lifted. Major fighting between ANC and Zulu Inkatha movement.

1970 AD More than 3 million people forcibly resettled in black ‘homelands’.

END OF APARTHEID SOWETO MASSACRE

1976 AD More than 600 killed in clashes between black protesters and security forces during uprising which starts in Soweto - most of the dead are children or young people. A series of demonstrations and protests ensue led by black school children in South Africa beginning on the morning of 16 June, It is estimated that 20,000 students took part in the protests. They were met with fierce police brutality and many were shot and killed.

1994 AD ANC wins first non-racial elections. Mandela becomes president, Government of National Unity formed, Commonwealth membership restored, remaining sanctions lifted. South Africa takes seat in UN General Assembly after 20-year absence.

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Much like the grapefruit below South Africa today remains divided. All it takes is a quick look at almost any town in the country to see.

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WEALTH INEQUALITY IN SA HOW MAY SOUTH

WORLD INEQUALITY DATABASE

THE TOP 1% OF THE POPULATION EARN 19.2% OF TOTAL INCOME

THE BOTTOM 90% OF THE POPULATION EARN 35% OF TOTAL INCOME

THE TOP 10% OF THE POPULATION EARN 65% OF TOTAL INCOME

South Africa is 91.5% BIPOC (black or indigenous people of colour). The average black household net worth is $6,314 (US) white net worth is $110,500.

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A question of exported burden:

If the west caused this rift in the social fabric of South Africa does it have any obligation to help repair it?

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Pineapple Exported

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A DUAL SIDED SYMBOL

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A symbols hidden history Where the symbolic hospitality fruit came from

Photography: Sebastian Lansdowne / Freddie Nickerson, Art Direction: Sebastian Lansdowne, Styling: Sebastian Lansdowne. Words: Atlas Obscura

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If you were a rich 1700s nobleman, had a dinner table, and wanted to impress your fellow gentry, a pineapple would for sure be the way to go.

Indeed, if you find yourself at an old inn or perhaps even a new, trendy hotel, there will likely be a picture of a pineapple somewhere near you. It is a near-universal symbol of hospitality. But why? Thanks to centuries of pillaging and colonizing, the pineapple has travelled far and wide and come to represent something more than tasty fruit. Beyond merely being a symbol of welcoming, it has dark imperial roots to show.

Up until the 15th century, pineapples were not known by the Western world. In South American countries like Brazil, they were grown and enjoyed by the locals, but few others outside these countries knew of the pineapple’s existence.

Historical accounts claim that Christopher Columbus was the first European to come face to face with the fruit during his second voyage in 1493, when he and his crew found a Caribbean village that ate pineapple. They tried it and reportedly liked it quite a bit, deciding to bring it back to their European home.

The very concept of pineapples equating to hospitality, in fact, comes from these Caribbean trips, according to the World Encyclopedia of Food. Imperial travellers would go to these remote islands, and discovered that natives who hung the fruit in front of their entrances were welcoming to all strangers.

Thanks to their presence in front of villages and local huts, once they reached Europe pineapples became widely considered a gentry symbol of hospitality. The concept travelled to America too, where colonial houses began showcasing the pineapple’s image in common areas. Plantations took up the trend and started carving pineapple-like shapes into columns at their entrances.

This, in fact, became a well-known addition to entrance architecture. These symbols were there to please the rich white guests of the plantation owners - there to cover up the atrocities that were committed against the enslaved people that they used to profit off of. The pineapple made its way in to European architecture too - in ways such as bannisters, patterns and even a whole building.

The European bastardization of the pineapple symbol, however, meant more than just hospitality—it meant prestige. The richest of the rich bought these fruits, however expensive to show off to other their ability to have them. Since demand relied on the few shipments between the far-off continents, supply would often be scarce. This led to a brand new pineapple rental market taking the European gentry by storm, writes historian Mary V. Thompson. Although, by the 1700s, Europeans started growing them in their own hothouses.

All the same, pineapples were considered an extravagance at the time. In America, one pineapple could be sold for as much as the equivalent of $8000 ,according to Mental Floss. Back in Europe the price was no less excessive, says the BBC, with a pineapple’s value reaching as much as the equivalent of £5,000. It became a trend for hostesses to show off the large spiny things in parlours and dining rooms - often they weren’t even eaten.

“one pineapple could be sold for as much as the equivalent of $8000” Costing so much the only people that could afford these fruits were those who owned slaves as at the time in America this was one of few ways to create wealth. And it was sure to be much less skin off your own back than actually working for it yourself.

Today pineapples are everywhere, but they’ve come to represent more than just exotic fruit. This is partly due to during the Napoleonic Era, political cartoonists would put pineapples in to represent extravagance. In the 1600s the Christian church adopted the symbol, as architect Christopher Wren began fitting them on church finials.

Pineapples remain a popular mainstay in the hospitality industry. The very first words of the hospitality handbook Welcome to Hospitality: An Introduction plainly claim that the “universal symbol for hospitality is the pineapple.”

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Colonial houses still have pictures and depictions of pineapples throughout the rooms, and hotels continue to show them off. In fact, the Maxwell Hotel in Seattle uses the pineapple as its very logo. The symbol persists as a homage to past table centre pieces and a relic of the colonial lifestyle.

Despite this, the austere pineapple appeal has softened.

Beyond a more abundant supply of the fruit, more people began adopting its aesthetic. Sailors, for instance, would bring the fruit home from their travels and place them on their home’s gateposts as a sign of welcoming. This, writes historian Nicola Cornick, led to the pineapple signifying “a sense of welcome, good cheer, warmth and celebration.”

The next time you take a bite out of the fruit, think of its imperial past. What began as a treat for the rich—one which a Royal botanist described as “being so sweet in smell… tasting… as if Wine, Rosewater and Sugar were mixed together” in 1640—has become something more common and hospitable.

Although if you were to ask the non-gentry their thoughts on pineapples in the 1600s, they probably wouldn’t feel quite so welcome.

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PINEAPPLES DISSEMINATION

1

DATA FROM STORY MAPS

The first stage of pineapple dissemination starts in ‘The New World’ of South America - when Christopher Columbus - rumoured to be the first westerner to be confronted by pineapples found a love for the fruit. He took some back to Spain with him. Having originated in Brazil and Paraguay the pineapple was originally traded around central and South America for years before Columbus arrived.

It was around this time that the connection between pineapples and hospitality began. On the trips between Spain and the Caribbean imperial travellers would go to remote islands, and found that natives who hung this fruit in front of their entrances were welcoming to strangers.

Thanks to their presence in front of villages and small local huts, once they reached Europe pineapples became widely considered a gentry symbol of hospitality. Soon the concept travelled to America too, while pineapples were still so tropical and foreign it meant stocks were hard to procure and it showed hosting prowess - there was even a pineapple rental scheme started in England between the Georgian gentry.

1

2

The second stage of dissemina the Portuguese came to coloni of South America - finding the it across the Atlantic to their colonies, St Helena - now a British overseas ter British in subsequent years. After stop in 1505 the Portuguese took it on to M Southern India another two years late

Bringing the fruit in to South East Asia Manilla in 1565 the Portuguese really across much of the tropics. Then in 15 Portuguese colony traded with China pineapples in the East.

Coming back over to the western hem 1602 meant the Portuguese were in t slave trade from their west African co on the way back from enslaving hund

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3

From Macao the Spanish introduced the Pineapple to Java (1599), and around much of South East Asia including, Singapore (1637), Taiwan (1650) and finally Assam, Burma and Thailand by 1700.

This now brought the Pineapple to countries where most western powers had control making them slightly more readily available to those in the mother countries though transportation techniques by this stage still had not progressed enough for large amounts to make it through to the west.

ation was where ise Brazil and much e fruit and sailing , first stopping at rritory taken by the pping in St Helena Madagascar in 1548, er.

4

a stopping first in spread the Pineapple 594 the Macao further spreading

Over the next 100 years pineapples were taken on smaller voyages to across the world to Hawaii and Australia bringing them to every continent with humans living on it at the time.

misphere the start of the beginning of the olony in Guinea and dreds of people.

2

3

The Dutch used their empire to bring pineapples to South Africa to almost complete the pineapples journey across the continents.

The journey of pineapples is a long one that also encounters slavery and exploitation - as the colonising nations used natives to staff plantations and farm crops such as these pineapples for exploitative low wages. This hidden history is something that extends in to the modern day through the payment and working conditions in these highly physically demanding jobs of looking after the pineapple crop.

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PINEAPPLE DISSEMINATION DATA FROM STORY MAPS

1

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3

2

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Is a slice of island life still so tasty when you know it comes along with all this history?

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PINEAPPLE DIAGRAM INFORMATION FROM PINE.PROJECT CROWN

SLIP

PINEAPPLE

LEAF

ARIEL SUCKER STEM

GROUND SUCKER

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Exported

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WHO EARNS FROM PINEAPPLES USING BANANALINK DATA

25.5% PRODUCERS The owners of farms and plantations - these companies are often multinational companies like Dole set up in Hawaii to run plantations and supply western markets with canned pineapple something that boomed in the 70s and 80s as a cheap way for people to get tropical fruit.

4.9%

EXPORTERS The shipping companies that store and send pineapples over seas, a justified price share that represents the job they do in getting the pineapple to the end consumer should other stakeholders in the pineapple industry but also the fruit industry at large be more like this?

3.7% CUSTOMS Another justified increase in price - this proportion keeps ports going and ensure that infrastructure to get pineapples distributed is maintained - things such as roads and rail transport that otherwise would not be accounted for or paid for.

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9% FARMERS AND LABOURERS Less than 1/10th of the total price paid by consumers actually makes it to those who do the physical labour to grow and pick the tropical pineapples that we have on our shelves. An average priced Pineapple can be around £1 meaning 9 pence make it to the whole raft of plantation workers per pineapple - does this really add up to a liveable wage?

14.3% IMPORTERS AND TRANSPORTERS This group includes warehouses and transport companies making money through just buying supplies to sell on for profit in their own countries - is this a fair way of making money? Obviously it is necessary but should this stage make more money than plantation workers themselves?

42.6% RETAILERS The biggest of the bad, supermarkets are in a race to the bottom - buying up large quantities from suppliers putting pressure on them for cheaper and cheaper prices. This price pressure is passed backwards through the supply chain and puts more pressure on the 9% earned by the labourers just so they can increase their profits to nearly 50% of the price of pineapples.

This is not fair and ways to avoid this kind of price manipulation is to buy through fair trade which ensures that farm workers are paid a fair livable wage - even better is to buy through green grocers with fair trade policies where even more of the money reaches further back in the supply chain.

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SLAVE OPPRESSION

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STILL SYMBOLISED IN 2021

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SLAVESHIP ILLUSTRATION ILLUSTRATION FROM THE BRITISH LIBRARY

CAPTAINS CABIN

CREW QUARTERS

CREW QUARTERS

BALLAST AND GUNS STORAGE

SLAVES BELOW

STORAGE

STORAGE

Exported

83 = ONE SLAVE LESS THAN 1M HIGH 520 SLAVES SHOWN ON THIS SHIP

8 GUN HOLES ON EACH SIDE TO DEFEND THE SHIP - THESE WOULD BE DEAFENING TO THE PEOPLE BELOW DECK

ON THE WAY BACK FROM DELIVERING SLAVES THESE AREAS WOULD BE USED TO SORE GOODS SUCH AS PINEAPPLES

OFTEN CHAINED IN TO POSITION FOR THE FULL 2 / 3 MONTH JOURNEY THE ENSLAVED PEOPLE COULDN’T EVEN MOVE TO GO TO THE TOILET

A period in history where white westerners felt that they had the right to go over to Africa and sentence millions of free innocent people to a life in slavery working for free or to death either through the journey or through disobedience and subsequent punishment. All down to the colour of peoples skin - a prejudice so surface level so meaningless yet millions have died over it.

REALITY OF A SLAVE SHIP The reality of slave ships are quite horrific - on one average ship up to 600 slaves were forced in to around 2 decks of storage space. The slave decks were half the height required to stand up so that all the slaves would remain in one place for the whole journey. Stacked up between each others legs even changing position would be an arduous task that meant imposing on someone else’s already limited space.

Slaves were branded with a number from a hot iron under their breast, on their arm and on their back and this hot iron was something that the slave driver would threaten to use again if the slaves made to much noise.

1 in 5 slaves died on trips across the Atlantic making it one of the most deadly trips to make in the world at the time.

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Kept at arms length How the conditions have barely improved

Photography: Sebastian Lansdowne / Freddie Nickerson, Art Direction: Sebastian Lansdowne, Styling: Sebastian Lansdowne. Words: The Sour Side of The Fruit Industry

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Following bananas, pineapples are the second most important agricultural export. The international fruit groups Dole, Del Monte, Chiquita, and Fyffes form the main part of 550 international producers. There are hardly any small producers left. They simply cannot compete with the price and quality requirements prevalent on the international market i.e. supermarkets. In Costa Rica, pineapple farming takes up an area of 38,000 hectares. Traditionally, the fruits were cultivated on the Caribbean side, i.e. in the East and South of Costa Rica; now, however, they are cultivated increasingly in the North. The examined producers Agrícola Agromonte, with 2,412 hectares, and Finca Once, with a total of 1,064 hectares, are located there. The cultivation area of the largest fruit group worldwide, Dole, in Costa Rica amounts to 4,000 hectares in total, which is divided up into four plantations.

Often, new pineapple fields emerge overnight on freshly cleared land without authorities intervening properly. The plantations are advancing into protected wetlands – with disastrous repercussions for the environment, as can be seen in the case of Refugio de Vida Silvestre de Caño Negro, one of the most important nature conservation areas in Central America. Moreover, pineapple producers are exempt from taxation. Despite this, the government’s guiding motto is sustainable development. There is comprehensive legislation governing environmental protection, nature conservation and biodiversity. 30 per cent of the national territory is under some form of nature protection. Currently, negotiations on a law to protect water resources are underway. But do the expansion of fields and the pineapple industry’s behaviour fit with that?

A large share of the workers working on the surveyed plantations in the North of Costa Rica is from Nicaragua; some of them do not have a residence permit. While many have settled in Costa Rica, others cross the border every day. According to the respondents, more than 90 per cent of Finca Once’s field workers working in the lowest positions are from Nicaragua and do not have a residence permit. They are not hired directly by the company; instead they are hired via a middleman. The respondents at Agrícola Agromonte, 60 per cent of the field workers are from Nicaragua and do not have a residence permit.

They also work for a middleman. According to the workers

interviewed, those working for a middleman work under particularly dreadful conditions. Most of the time, their contracts, which are mostly concluded orally, last for less than just three months so that employment is not stable and holidays cannot be taken. Furthermore, middlemen often avoid making payments into social security funds; instead they simply keep the money. A middleman who contracts workers – mostly men – for Finca Once does provide housing for some of the workers. Four men, respectively, share ten square metres and thus live in miserable conditions.

While the workers interviewed at Finca Once and Agrícola Agromonte normally do receive the national statutory gross minimum wage of Colones 9,509 (approximately £14) per day, this minimum wage refers to a working time of eight hours per day. Many of the respondents, however, are paid according to their performance and thus work up to twelve hours in order to receive the minimum wage.

“the wage does not support a family”

Although piece work is legal, it must not undermine the payment of the statutory minimum wage. But those working for a middleman without documentation do not receive the minimum wage even after ten hours; they can earn anything between approximately Colones 3,500 and 5,000 (about £4.20 - £7.40) per day. This wage does not suffice to support a family. Many have to borrow money additionally. Living costs are very high in Costa Rica; consumer prices have risen by 218 per cent since 2001.

Since men are typically the sole breadwinners, their wage must be sufficient for the whole family.

How can such large companies justify this, How can Dole -a company that makes revenue of $4.5 billion, not afford to pay the people that produce their fruit a proper wage.

Chiquitas a company that is work $1.3 billion does the same - this race to the bottom is doing so much harm but you cant see that through a sale sticker. Is it worth human rights violations so that you can have that pineapple for less than £1? I think not.

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A question of political correctness:

Should symbols with connections like these still be used in the 21st Century?

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Watermelon Exported

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5000 YEARS TO BECOME A STEREOTYPE

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Not as free as I thought A personal account of how racism has infiltrated the watermelon

Photography: Sebastian Lansdowne / Freddie Nickerson, Art Direction: Sebastian Lansdowne, Styling: Sebastian Lansdowne. Words: Cynthia Greenlee

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My hand hovered over the fruit tray, about to spear a chunk of watermelon, when a white person walked up. I paused.

It didn’t matter that she was a colleague and likely more focused, like I was, on getting a pre-lunch snack during a long meeting. I moved my fork carefully away from the watermelon, grazing over the pineapple, and picked strawberries instead. Safer territory, I thought. Safer fruit.

Anxiety made me reconsider my choice. It stopped me from enjoying any watermelon on a scorching Mississippi day among an unusually diverse crowd of writers at an otherwise uneventful work training. But even though I was surrounded by many black and brown faces, it was even the very presence of white people, these aware, friendly and familiar white people — that gave me a literal pause.

I didn’t want to be an updated version of that Sambo figure, tap-dancing and braying in joy at a succulent watermelon.

I couldn’t remember when this watermelon shaped shame seeped into my eating. I had always eaten small triangles of watermelon on porches and at neighborhood cookouts since I was “knee high to a grasshopper” as a child. These were the only occasions that public spitting of the seeds — an uncouth habit, according to my parents — was allowed.

My mother covered our kitchen table with old smudgy newspaper to catch the juice that ran down my scrawny arms. But those moments, I realized, were cloistered events within my family home, reunions, or the circle of our middle-class black neighborhood in North Carolina, where white families had fled the nice brick ranches when people like us arrived.

Yet between childhood and work meetings, something had changed. Maybe it was during the Obama era, when bitter and biased white public officials and “blacklashers” turned out in droves to post presidential watermelon “jokes” on Facebook. Banana-eating GIFs. Monkey memes.

The first lady depicted as a monster. The commander in chief photoshopped into a historic Black Panther photo. At the same time that some people were busy building postracial castles in the air — few black people among them — the push back against a black president underlined the dangerous endurance of racism. And when “they went low,” I went watermelon-less.

It is a sobering thing to face your unbeknownst interior white supremacist nag. I had mild indigestion all day, but it had nothing to do with the fruit. It was a profound unease that I, as a black historian who fancies myself as informed and evolved, would be so complicit with a stereotype. I was angry with myself for letting racist rhetoric take over my taste buds. It was strange to apprehend: I’m not as free as I thought I was.

“Stereotype threat,” a friend matter-of-factly wrote on Facebook when I posted about my watermelon-eating fear.

In 1995, psychologists Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson coined the term, applying it to situations when people are “at risk of confirming … a negative stereotype about one’s group.” They applied the idea to education, studying the controversial question of whether stereotypes that black people are less smart make black students distance themselves from academic achievement; in their study, black students who heard that a half-hour test measured intelligence performed worse than white students.

“when Egyptian Pharaohs died they had a long journey ahead”

While I don’t buy into the “culture of unachievement” narrative, I read a lesson in the research: that little worm of white supremacy had embedded its way into my consciousness and changed my behavior. That’s why I stopped myself from eating watermelon, frozen as a Kara Walker silhouette stuck in some gross two-dimensional human rights violation.

But how did this stereotype come to be? No fruit — with the exception of that troublesome apple Eve got blamed for — has been infused with such negative significance.

It could be that the watermelon came to this country with a bit of a reputation as an Other; the fruit originated in arid African climates (ancient Egyptians even painted them or left them in pharaonic tombs, probably as water sources for the dead as they travelled thirsty between worlds).

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“No doubt the AK47s will fall silent, and the pangas will stop their hacking of human flesh, and the tribal warriors will all break out Exported

93

in watermelon smiles to see the big white chief touch down in his big white British taxpayer-funded metal bird.”

A comment written in a weekly column for The Daily Telegraph in 2002 - all part of a dig at the then prime minister Tony Blair

- BORIS JOHNSON

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At some point, watermelons emigrated to the Mediterranean, and pink-fleshed, green-skinned melons — the ones we know so well today — began showing up in 17th-century still-life paintings.

Historian William Black takes a stab at answering how watermelons became associated with black people in his recent journal article “How Watermelons Became Black: Emancipation and the Origins of a Racist Trope.” He points to a post-Civil War genesis for racialised watermelon narratives. One theory: The fruit’s rapacious vines spread without much tending, rendering it the perfect produce for the lazy. Perverse racial logic then attached the watermelon to newly freed people, who built a nation in bondage but were slandered as indolent loafers after the Civil War. A watermelon’s size meant that consumption had to be a singular activity; one could not casually work and gnaw on this fruit.

As freed people entered the market economy — as wage earners, fruit stand vendors, and emancipated hustlers — they sold watermelons in public squares and pocketed the money for themselves. Once the consumed, the nation’s essential free labourers became sellers and consumers, wrote Black. In the eyes of Southern whites, black people flaunted their freedom, disturbed the “natural” order of things, and had the nerve to eat what they pleased — and relish it. White supremacist haters took the most exception to black pleasure and enjoyment.

American media of the late 19th and early 20th centuries also thrived on the idea that black Americans had a pathological weakness for watermelon. Post-Civil War newspapers were filled with predictable anecdotes about black fruit thieves (often met by armed plantation owners who argued that their melons were an irresistible draw).

Medical journals wrote in scientific earnestness of the black patients — always black patients — whose intestines were clogged by watermelon seeds. An 1888 report by Dr. D.Z. Holliday of Harlem, Georgia, described how he broke down a bowel obstruction using rectal manipulation, a tobacco enema, and castor oil. Once the mass was “released,” he claimed to have counted 820 seeds, ingested during one man’s night of watermelon bacchanalia. Such intemperate men could not be trusted.

Neither could such patently ridiculous stories, repeated until they masqueraded as truth. But here’s the thing, stereotypes tell on the stereotypers more than the vilified.

White people tried to implicate black appetites and black character through watermelon. But they revealed the lengths to which they would go to define propriety and argue that black people were simpletons who needed to be controlled. And here was this stereotype controlling me. And for what: something as mundane and harmless as whether I ate a piece of fruit. Toni Morrison once called this “racisms lethal cling.” How would I disentangle myself?

I polled black friends if they felt even the faintest unease around watermelons. One had actually observed a white woman asking a black co-worker if they had taken all the watermelon from a catering tray, clearly a funny quip in her mind. A former boarding school student assiduously dodged watermelon slices in the cafeteria. There was another friend who refused a free watermelon on the beach, afraid that the white man offering it was not being generous, but trolling her in a nasty joke.

Many of my online friends revelled in giving the finger to the white gaze, though. They ate watermelon with gusto whenever and wherever, laughing on the inside all the while — or on the outside, head thrown back Zora Neale Hurston-style. Some grew up in Caribbean or other countries where white colonialism had ruled, but they were free from the everyday indignities of Jim Crow. What white people thought just didn’t register with them.

After the fruit tray epiphany, I decided that the only way to go was self-induced exposure therapy. I would eat watermelon in public, in white company, in work settings, from roadside stands. As I kept eating, I did notice how pink and juicy the watermelon was. Perhaps it was an exceptional late-summer melon, the kind to savour on the front porch. Or maybe the sublime taste was the heightened sensation of liberation in progress, of the maligned melon becoming my freedom fruit.

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MALE FLOWER

VINE STEM

WEBBING

GROWING WATERMELONS

The Fruit Issue (Dashed line) Trade route only

LEAF

Origins are difficult to define more than the continent of Africa

FEMALE FLOWER

VERY FEW TO NO SEEDS

Stage Four: The fruit finally made its way to colonial America, carried on the same ships that slaves were transported on. It was found growing in Florida as early as 1576 and in Massachusetts by 1629. Selective growing started as soon as it landed and by the 1950s the sugar content had risen to create a much deeper red flesh and also so that the seeds were gone from the fruit. Much of this progress was tended by slave labourers.

WATERMELON VINE

Stage Three: Slavers and colonisers brought the fruit from Africa and Asia over to the New World along with slaves.

2 TENDRIL

Stage Two: The Egyptians like to trade and by this point (2000 years since the last stage) the fruit had become much sweeter and the flesh turned form yellow to pink. By the 5th Century the fruit was growing in India and the 9th it had made its way to China and the Iberian peninsular.

3

1 FROM DREAMSTINE

Stage One: Watermelons originated somewhere on the African continent. It is known that 5000 years ago they were farmed in Egypt for access to water - at this stage the fruit resembles little of what we might recognise today - it would have been smashed in to a pulp to extract the water. It was at this time 4000 years ago they were traded with Romans and Greeks - they were a great natural canteen for water on long voyages.

3

WATERMELON ORIGINS

95

96

and pink-fleshed, green-skinned melons — the ones we REWOLF ELup AMin EF 17th-century know so well today — began showing still-life paintings.

Historian William Black takes a stab at answering this question in his recent journal article “How Watermelons Became Black: Emancipation and the Origins of a Racist Trope.” He points to a post-Civil War genesis for racialised OT WEFnarratives.

YREV watermelon One theory: The fruit’s rapacious SDEES ON vines spread without much tending, rendering it the perfect produce for the lazy. Perverse racial logic then attached the watermelon to newly freed people, who built a nation in bondage but were slandered as indolent loafers after the Civil War. A watermelon’s size meant that consumption had to be a singular activity; one could not casually work and gnaw on this fruit.

As freed people entered the market economy — as wage earners, fruit stand vendors, and emancipated hustlers — they sold watermelons in public squares and pocketed the money for themselves. Once the consumed, the nation’s essential free laborers became sellers and consumers, wrote Black. In the eyes of Southern whites, black people flaunted their freedom, disturbed the “natural” order of things, and had the nerve to eat what they pleased — and relish it. White supremacist haters took the most exception to black pleasure and enjoyment.

American media of the late 19th and early 20th centuries also thrived on the idea that black Americans had a pathological weakness for watermelon. Post-Civil War GNIBBEW newspapers were filled with predictable anecdotes about black fruit thieves (often met by armed plantation owners who argued that their melons were an irresistible draw).

Medical journals wrote in scientific earnestness of the black patients — always black patients — whose intestines were clogged by watermelon seeds. An 1888 report by Dr. D.Z. Holliday of Harlem, Georgia, described how he broke down a bowel obstruction using rectal GNIWORG manipulation, a tobacco enema, and castor oil. Once the SNOLEMRETAW mass was “released,” he claimed to have counted 820 seeds, ingested during one man’s night of watermelon bacchanalia. Such intemperate men could not be trusted.

ENIV NOLEMRETAW

Neither could such patently ridiculous stories, repeated ENITSMAERD MORF until they masqueraded as truth. But the thing is, stereotypes tell on the stereotypers more than the vilified.

FA EL White people tried to implicate black appetites and black character through watermelon.

But they revealed the LIRDNET lengths to which they would go to define propriety and argue that black people were simpletons who needed to be controlled. And here was this stereotype controlling me. And for what: something as mundane and harmless as whether I ate a piece of fruit. Toni Morrison once called this REWOLF ELAM “racisms lethal cling.” How would I disentangle myself?

I polled black friends if they felt even the faintest watermelon unease. One had actually observed a white woman asking a black coworker if they had taken all the METS ENIV watermelon from a catering tray, clearly a funny quip in her mind. A former boarding school student assiduously dodged watermelon slices in the cafeteria. There was another friend who refused a free watermelon on the beach, afraid that the white man offering it was not being generous, but trolling her in a nasty joke.

Many of my online friends reveled in giving the finger to the white gaze, though. They ate watermelon with gusto whenever and wherever, laughing on the inside all the while — or on the outside, head thrown back Zora Neale Hurston-style. Some grew up in Caribbean or other countries where white colonialism had ruled, but they were free from the everyday indignities of Jim Crow. What white people thought just didn’t register with them.

After the fruit tray epiphany, I decided that the only way to go was self-induced exposure therapy. I would eat watermelon in public, in white company, in work settings, from roadside stands. As I kept eating, I did notice how pink and juicy the watermelon was. Perhaps it was an exceptional late-summer melon, the kind to savor on the front porch. Or maybe the sublime taste was the heightened sensation of liberation in progress, of the maligned melon becoming my freedom fruit

Exported

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1

(Dashed line) Trade route only

Stage Three: Slavers and colonisers brought the fruit from Africa and Asia over to the New World along with slaves.

Stage Two: The Egyptians like to trade and by this point (2000 years since the last stage) the fruit had become much sweeter and the flesh turned form yellow to pink. By the 5th Century the fruit was growing in India and the 9th it had made its way to China and the Iberian peninsular.

3

Origins are difficult to define more than the continent of Africa

Stage One: Watermelons originated somewhere on the African continent. It is known that 5000 years ago they were farmed in Egypt for access to water - at this stage the fruit resembles little of what we might recognise today - it would have been smashed in to a pulp to extract the water. It was at this time 4000 years ago they were traded with Romans and Greeks - they were a great natural canteen for water on long voyages.

3

WATERMELON ORIGINS

2

Stage Four: The fruit finally made its way to colonial America, carried on the same ships that slaves were transported on. It was found growing in Florida as early as 1576 and in Massachusetts by 1629. Selective growing started as soon as it landed and by the 1950s the sugar content had risen to create a much deeper red flesh and also so that the seeds were gone from the fruit. Much of this progress was tended by slave labourers.

98

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Microagression (noun) A statement, action, or incident regarded as an instance of indirect, subtle, or unintentional discrimination against members of a marginalized group such as a racial or ethnic minority.

The association between specifically black people and watermelons can be considered a microagression.

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A FRUIT ONCE DESCRIBED AS ANGEL FOOD

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SLOWLY MORPHED IN TO SOMETHING SINISTER

The Fruit Issue

MICROAGRESSIONS / RACISM IN THE UK INFORMATION FROM YOUGOV

78% of respondents believe racism is visible in the UK both institutionally and within personal views.

29% 29% have been stopped by the police on the street.

Only 46% are satisfied with the inclusion measures in place in the UK.

78% 9% have been stopped by police multiple times.

9%

46%

34% do not consider their workplace to be diverse.

34% 2% have experienced no racism in their life.

2%

44% have had their career impacted by racism or prejudice.

44%

74% of respondents have been asked ‘where are you really from?’

74% 52%

52% have been on the receiving end of assumptions about their race.

Based on a study of 1,200 BAME Britons (2020)

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So there we have it...

We have looked at 5 stories of fruits that have a journey previously untold. We aren’t isolated from the histories that these objects hold, history is ever-changing and now that you have read this magazine you know more than you did yesterday, so for you history just became a little bigger.

What you do with this information is up you but we hope that it leads you to good things. Supporting local small scale producers rather than supermarkets is an important step to breaking the cycle set in place by our imperial history. Bigger is not better and cheaper (although it might seem like it on the surface) certainly is not.

Do you want to contribute to the next edition of Exported?

You can get in contact now entries are open until 09/06/21 send articles, imagery and even ideas to: submit@exportedmag.co.uk We endeavour to get back to you within one working week with a response and a plan to go forward with your ideas.

We love the community that surrounds this magazine and we want to engage with you more so if you have any more ideas for directions and stories that we should include then be sure to let us know.

To you 10p extra might seem like nothing but to someone working for as little as £1.80 a day its huge - its a price that is worth paying.

For a digital experience of this issue head to the fruit issue special website available only to those who have purchased a copy at www.exported.cargo.site.

What’s coming up next for Exported is an issue centring around inventions that are used day to day and the inventors have received little to no recognition. Looking at objects like the traffic light - invented by Garrett Morgan in 1923, the refrigerated truck invented by Frederick McKinley Jones in 1940, colour computer screens and even the improved revision of the light bulb.

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With many thanks to all those who helped me while producing this book, especially to my tutor Gabriel Solomons for the guidance in to becoming the designer I am today, and to my housemate Freddie Nickerson for helping me stay sane during the crazy last 12 months of 2020/21. With thanks to my publisher for helping me get this through to production and with special thanks to you for buying this book - without you I would not have a job and I am forever grateful.

Here’s to making the world a better place.

Start small.

Seb Lansdowne

First published in 2021 by UWE Publishing in Bristol.

Introduction & much of the writing by Seb Lansdowne, with occasional help from writers using other authors writing under the cover of rights for students to use content without fear of litigation from copyright infringement as production of this book is for purposes of study and not intended for sale or reproduction to be disseminated further than necessary to obtain a first class degree.

Design by SebLan Infographics by SebLan Information collected through academic research.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright holder © 2021 Printed in Bristol, England, on sustainable paper using minimal waste as to reduce the impact of this book on the current climate situation.

ISBN 392-1-28342812-12-5 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

W

Exported

A look in to our history through the lens of seemingly every day objects. Western imperial history has deep roots, and they reach forward even to the present day, but for most of us these histories are unrealised. That is where exported comes in, we break down 5 items, objects, foods or customs within each issue, delving deep in to the connections you didn’t even know we have.

This is a small world made smaller by global domination and exploitation for hundreds of years.

Things are not always as they may seem.