Global South's Agricultural Changes: Export-oriented Tea Cultivation in 19th-century China’s Incorporation Process

• In Event: 3555 - Section on the Political Economy of the World-System Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 1. Economy and Inequality in Contemporary Capitalism

Abstract

When 19th-century China was drawn into the whirlpool of expanding global capitalism, China experienced a massive and unprecedented agricultural change related to Chinese tea exports. Because China’s tea exports ultimately were conditioned by the capitalist world-economy, in particular Britain, tea-cultivating areas and their component regions experienced labour migration, economic underdevelopment, and ecological degradation. By connecting China’s export-oriented tea cultivation to the expanding the modern world-system, I show how China suffered from underdevelopment and unequal trade and discuss how this consequently fostered China’s incorporation process. I conclude that China’s agricultural changes and the capitalist world-economy were closely intertwined in the long 19th century.

Author

• Sung Hee Ru, Binghamton University