Vandana Shiva Quotes
In England, the population explosion can be linked very clearly with the enclosure of the commons that uprooted the peasants from their land. In India, it was the same thing: the population increased at the end of the 18th century when the British took over and Indian lands were colonized. Instead of the land feeding Indian people it started to feed the British empire. So we had destitution. Destitute people who don't have their own land to feed themselves can only feed themselves by having larger numbers, therefore they multiply. It's the rational response of a dispossessed people.
Shiva, Vandana. Interview by Derrick Jensen. Listening to the Land: Conversations about Nature, Culture and Eros. Sierra Club Books, 1995, p. 57.
In Burundi, family land is divided among the male children of a family. The average Burundian woman has 6.3 children at that time, nearly triple the international fertility rate. With this population growth rate, the plots of land for each person inevitably get smaller and smaller over time. At 10,745 square miles, Burundi is slightly smaller than the U.S. state of Maryland, but it holds nearly twice as many people: about 10 million. The small plots of land are inefficient to farm and provide subsistence. So the nation was in a crises as there was little industrialization and land was essential for existence for most Burundians. See {35807} and {35808}.
The line, like many in good poetry, has several levels of meaning. The most obvious is that we had explored and conquered the land, before we became a nation.
The Romans were very organized regarding land ownership. When they conquered Africa, defeating Carthage, they found no written records of land ownership, no deeds, no bills of sale. Therefore, they opened up the entire land mass of Africa for what amounted to public colonization where the land could be worked and claimed legally. Illiterate Africans had no written records, and most areas where under the control of a strongman who “owned” all of the land with no notion of private ownership of land.
Most of her modern admirers tend to repress this quotation which is very embarrassing for most modern conservatives. However, there is a minority of thinkers who maintain that land, unused, is open to anyone who will make use of it to improve civilization. Many conservationists, in contrast, extol unused land for preservation.
this is a joke Tutu has used, but variants of it exist which are not original to him.
This is an important quotations for two reasons. First, one of the white Europan myths in the colonial era was that the Native America had not concept of land ownership and title. This quotation clearly refutes that/ Second, this shows that some Europeans coming to the new world opposed the view that the white Christians and a moral right to the Native American “heathen” land. A few like Williams did not.
If the land to be redistributed is divided amongst the majority population, each parcel would be too small to make any difference in any recipient’s life. For efficient agriculture there must be large land holdings. The colonial, stolen land history is valid for most former colonies, however, in Southern Africa, the situation was more complicated. When the whites landed at Capetown in the South, they moved North “stealing” land as they went. However, in Central Africa, Shaka and his Zulus were also a colonial power, and they moved South “stealing” land from the indigenous Blacks as they went. Eventually, the two Colonial Powers—the whites and the Black Zulus—clashed and the Zulu Wars ensued. So all of the land in Zimbabwe and South Aftica was stolen from the Blacks—except about half was stolen by Blacks. After the Zulu Wars, the victorious whites ended up “stealing” land from the Black Zulus that had been stolen by them from other Blacks. Also although the English were the official colonial power, the Dutch “Afrikaners” were a powerful subculture which was dominant on many parts of South Africa and especially at the frontier and they did most of the land stealing. The ethnic English were the businessmen and the city dwellers who actually ruled that Blacks were citizens with rights and slowedmdown some of the land stealing. There is no more complicated ethnic history in the world.
The early Zionists had an understanding of how they were then perceived by the Arabs who had been living in land that was to become Israel. Like most other parts of the world, the land of Israel has been conquered and reconquered over the years. The area had been a Jewish kingdom in the immediate centuries before the birth of Christ. They had conquered it from the tribes that had conquered it from the Egyptians who had also conquered it. Then the Romans conquered. After that there were Muslims, Christians, the Ottoman Empire, the British and finally Israel was formed. Throughout this entire history, both Arabs and Jews had lived on the land along with and under the authority of whoever was the latest conqueror. In the hundreds of years before the establishment of the state of Israel, the Arabs had been in the majority. The 20th century saw a large influx of Jews who immigrated, purchased land and settled. There had been low level conflict as the Arabs became concerned that with the immigration
At the time most people did not realize that the ability of a nation or land area to support a population was dependent more on agricultural and industrial productivity than on population size. In the most affluent and developed countries, land outside of the cities is quite affordable and available, whereas in poor, underdeveloped nations, land distribution and reform is still a factor. The majority of citizens of many developed, affluent nations do not own any land.
Over a decade later a leading English politician realized the same possibility and took steps to prevent it {636871}. Brazil was a colony of Portugal which grew at so fast a comparative rate, that Brazil became many times the size of the original mother country.
His idea was to send English people who were vagabonds, paupers, failures, and never do wells to America. These people in England were just “waste”. But in America, the could be apprenticed or become indentured servants, learn skill and they would (and indeed did) become the corps of laborers needed to cut down the trees, beat the hemp (for making rope), gather honey, salt and dry fish, dress raw animal hides, dig the earth for minerals, raise olives and silk, and sort and pack bird feathers. In England they were so desperate that they would work in the difficult conditions of the colonies and would be willing to venture out from the country and culture in which they existed—a major problem in getting colonial workers.
Vandana Shiva is an Indian scholar, environmental activist, food sovereignty advocate, ecofeminist and anti-globalization author. Based in Delhi, Shiva has written more than 20 books. She is often referred as "Gandhi of grain" for her activism associated with anti-GMO movement.
