Miscellaneous, 



850 



[October, 1910. 



from want of resources ; propitious 

 seaspns as quickly restore the small 

 measure of prosperity. 



" With a peasant proprietary body, the 

 exports of a community will be small ; 

 the individuals will be chiefly engaged 

 in raising food, and in producing a 

 limited quantity of articles for export, 

 in order to supply the small amount of 

 clothing, and the tools and implements 

 which must be imported. Should the 

 tendency be towards extensive ex- 

 ports, the peasant proprietary system, 

 by acquisition of property, will pass into 

 the estate system." 



This, then, is the condition of things 

 to which the native of the tropics, when 

 left to himself, settles down. He is but 

 little removed from the condition which 

 we have described as grow-what-you- 

 want-and-consume-what-you-grow. As, 

 however, he has progressed beyond the 

 very early stage which we have con- 

 sidered there is no a priori reason to 

 suppose that he cannot progress farther 

 yet, and we must go on with the study 

 of agricultural progress to determine 

 the conditions which favour it. The 

 next stage was the incursion of the 

 enterprising trading uations — the Arabs, 

 the Chinese, the Europeans — and we 

 may, by a study of this incursion 

 and its effect, arrive at a further under- 

 standing of the conditions that favour 

 progress. 



The first-comers, the Arabs and the 

 Chinese, did not indulge in conquest, 

 but merely settied in convenient spots 

 along the coasts, and commenced to 

 collect and export the produce of the 

 interior. A careful examination of the 

 spots where these settlements took place 

 will repay us, as illustrating one of the 

 fundamental principles involved in agri- 

 cultural progress. The places selected 

 for settlement were not only coast places, 

 but such as afforded the best transport 

 facilities into the interior. In other 

 words, for progress in agriculture, 

 transport facilities are necessary. 



Too much stress cannot be laid upon 

 these points. Finance and transport- 

 ation, said a President of the United 

 States, are the keynotes of progress, 

 and nowhere is this more true than in 

 reference to agriculture, and nowhere 

 in agriculture itself more true than in 

 that of the tropics. We shall see the 

 effects of these factors coming out ever 

 more and more strongly as we follow 

 the later history of agriculture in the 

 tropics. 



We have already seen that the differ- 

 entiation of cultivation of crops, A 

 growing one thing and B another, 

 involved more risks than the older 



simpler form of agriculture. Everyone 

 would want some little money in hand 

 to get along comfortably under the new 

 system, and slowly and gradually it 

 might come about that small capitalists 

 would arise. But by the introduction 

 into agriculture of larger sums of capital 

 made elsewhere or in other business, 

 great changes might be rapidly effected. 

 This is what has happened in the tropics. 

 Into countries almost innocent of money, 

 though often containing capitalists rich 

 in land, have come in increasing numbers, 

 western capitalists with comparatively 

 enormous sums at their disposal, which 

 they have not infrequently applied to 

 agriculture, with results nothing short 

 of revolutionary. 



The first comers among the tropical 

 people, the Arabs, known in the east as 

 Moors to this day, had comparatively 

 little capital, but they opened up means 

 of transport to distaut countries, aud 

 thus provided a new market for the 

 spices of the east, and developed a con- 

 siderable trade in these by way of the 

 Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, and Venice, 

 and thus enabled the differentiation into 

 growers of different crops, indicated 

 above, to go on to a further extent, for 

 the risk in disposing of the produce was 

 lessened. With the discovery by the 

 Portuguese of the route round the Cape 

 of Good Hope, the dhection of trade was 

 speedily altered, and the Arabs were 

 attacked by the Portuguese whenever 

 met with, so that their trade was soon 

 destroyed, and they confined themselves 

 for the future to the internal trade of 

 the eastern countries, which is still to a 

 large extent in their hands. 



The Portuguese, until the arrival in 

 the east of the Dutch and English, next 

 had matters in their own hands. They 

 conquered suitable places of settlement, 

 such as Goa, Colombo, and Malacca, 

 and commenced trade with the people, 

 exporting the produce to Europe. The 

 trade was largely in spices, five shiploads 

 a year of pepper, fcr instance, being ex- 

 ported from South India to Portugal. 

 Beyond the application of oapital to 

 means of transport, and introducing new 

 crops into many countries, the Por- 

 tuguese made no other advances in 

 agriculture. 



They were soou followed by the Dutch, 

 who devoted more attention to trade 

 and less to proselytising. Among the 

 alterations which they introduced was 

 the establishment of Government mono- 

 polies in the spices of the east, and it 

 may be well to give an account of the 

 monopoly in cinnamon which was carried 

 on for so many years in Ceylon, at first 

 under the Dutch and afterwards under 



