Student: Julia Revier
Graduation date: May 2017
Type: Area of Interest (double major)
Date approved: November 2014
Go to concentration landing page
Summary
I am a French Studies and ENVS double major and I am particularly interested in comparing agricultural sectors and policies of different countries. For my concentration I want to examine the evolution of agricultural practices in French post-colonial countries since colonial contact as a way to connect my interests in French studies and agricultural production. My studies will be focused on the French former colonies mainly in West Africa, East Asia, and parts of South America and have ceased to be colonies as recently as 1958 (Sils 1968). French colonialism in particular differed from Spanish and British colonialism in the way that they pursued policies oriented towards total cultural and political assimilation (Sils 1968). These types of policies are why so much French culture pervades in their former colonies and why I am excited to investigate if many of their agricultural policies remain today.
France in particular introduced several commodity crops to their colonies such as coffee, rubber, and sugar (Meyfroidt 2013). French colonialists pursued plantation/cash crop-style agriculture which most likely contradicted with the colonies’ traditional agricultural practices (Reinwald 1997). This style of agriculture was export-focused, funded by subsidies from the French government and was focused only on the commodity crops deemed valuable to the French (Huillery 2014). This type of agriculture persists in former colonies today for example, coffee commodity focused Vietnam and Haiti.
I will also investigate what effects colonization may have had on arable land in former colonies such as deforestation by French forestry practices in Mali (Beusekom 1999). The cash-crop production system that France introduced also depleted nutrients in the soil because of lack of crop-rotation and fallow years (Thompson 1958)Effects on the quality of former colonies’ land would present in agriculture options open to them today. I am also interested to investigate other aspects of agriculture that colonization may have affected such as gender roles and religious views of agriculture. There is no question that French colonization affected agricultural practices in post French-colonial countries, but I am eager to find the scope and depth of these effects.
Works Cited:
Beusekom, Monica M. van. “From Underpopulation to Overpopulation: French Perceptions of Population, Environment, and Agricultural Development in French Soudan (Mali), 1900-1960.” Environmental History 4, no. 2 (April 1, 1999): 198–219. doi:10.2307/3985303.
Colonialism. (1968). In D. L. Sills (Ed.), International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (Vol. 3, pp. 1-12). New York: Macmillan. Retrieved from http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CCX3045000216&v=2.1&u=lacc_main&it=r&p=GPS&sw=w&asid=46d9e101fb1d6a767d257e8a9e160071
Huillery, Elise. “The Black Man’s Burden: The Cost of Colonization of French West Africa.” The Journal of Economic History 74, no. 01 (March 2014): 1–38. doi:10.1017/S0022050714000011.
Meyfroidt, Patrick, Tan Phuong Vu, and Viet Anh Hoang. “Trajectories of Deforestation, Coffee Expansion and Displacement of Shifting Cultivation in the Central Highlands of Vietnam.” Global Environmental Change 23, no. 5 (October 2013): 1187–98. doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2013.04.005.
Reinwald, Brigitte. “‘Though the Earth Does Not Lie’: Agricultural Transitions in Siin (Senegal) under Colonial Rule.” Paideuma 43 (January 1, 1997): 143–69. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40341735.
Thompson, Virginia, and Adloff, Richard. French West Africa. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1958.
Questions
- Descriptive:What agricultural practices did the French take back to France from their colonies? What agricultural practices did the French introduce to their colonies? What effects did colonialism have on the agricultural culture of these colonies?
- Explanatory: Why did France choose these places to colonize? Why is agriculture in post-colonial countries still struggling today?
- Evaluative: Did France positively or negatively affect agriculture in post-colonial countries? Has the arable land in these colonies been improved or degraded due to colonialist policies?
- Instrumental: What policies should be enacted to mitigate the effect of colonialism on the agricultural industry of French post-colonial countries? How can we take this knowledge of colonialist agriculture and apply it to making agricultural policy in post-colonial countries?
Arts and humanities courses
- PHIL 215 (Philosophy and the Environment, 4 credits). Pre-approved A&H course; no justification required.
- FREN 230 (French Literature in Translation, 4 credits) Translation and cultural background on French and Francophone literature. This course will help give me a background on French culture which would help me understand French colonial actions.
- HIST 298-F3 (Environmental History of Modern West Africa, 4 credits) West African history that examines the relationships between natural resources, colonization, and decolonization since the mid nineteenth century. This course directly feeds into my concentration as West Africa contains many French colonies and I am examining an environmental aspect of these countries.