In recent days, an organization called "BCI" has become famous in China, but it is not a good reputation. The Chinese name of this organization is "Swiss Better Cotton Development Association". The purpose of the organization is to promote the so-called "Better Cotton" on a global scale.
If cotton is not produced properly, it will indeed threaten the cleanliness of water resources, soil fertility, human health and biodiversity. Therefore, in theory, good cotton should indeed avoid low-efficiency irrigation techniques, poor planting methods, and improper use of pesticides and fertilizers.
However, the definition of the so-called "Better Cotton" by this organization is not based on quality, but a lot of private goods . Even if you meet all the above requirements, as long as they find a reason, they can say that your cotton is not good.
Under such circumstances, a non-governmental organization serving the cotton industry suddenly gained a political aura, so that it became- "anti-China bridgehead" .
Xinjiang’s cotton is very white, but it is discredited by BCI.
According to relevant statistics, more than 90% of cotton farmers live in developing countries, and the average planting area per person is less than 2 hectares. For cotton farmers, cotton is an important economic crop, and for cotton producing countries, cotton is an important part of the national economy.
However, the BCI organization relies on the monopoly of more than 400 member companies worldwide to intervene in cotton production in developing countries, completely out of rational original intention.
The current BCI has become the "commercial competition tool" of developed countries in Europe and the United States, accusing other countries of internal affairs and concocting false stories one after another.
Maybe many people will find it ridiculous after reading the BCI statement, but why do people in the self-proclaimed European and American countries believe this story? The reason for
is actually very simple, because we have never had a black history of cotton in history, but European and American countries have long made huge profits through the exploitation of slaves in the cotton industry. Therefore, they treat the abdomen of a gentleman with the heart of a villain, and naturally think that we must also have this situation .
So today I want to give you a brief introduction to the slave cotton industry at that time, so that you can understand why Europeans and Americans can have this aspect- "imagination" .
In fact, before the emergence of the mechanized cotton harvesting model, harvesting cotton was not a simple job, it was just one- "labor-intensive industry" .
In fact, the processes required by the cotton planting industry are not complicated, but the man-hours required are considerable, even longer than the seemingly more complicated spinning and weaving. For the cultivation of
cotton, it’s good to say that only land can easily increase production, but it is not easy to improve harvest efficiency. This kind of work that needs to be completed in a short time to improve efficiency, the only way is to hire more workers Come into production. Therefore, the production efficiency of harvesting cotton has become a shortcoming in cotton planting.
Before 1790, the gin had not been invented, and the amount of cotton required by the textile industry was not so high. However, with the advancement of science and technology, ginning machines have begun to be used in large-scale production, which has greatly improved the production efficiency of textiles, and the raw materials required by nature have also increased wildly.
Faced with the huge demand for cotton production, because of the domestic abolition movement, the cost of hiring workers is very high for the British.
But in the United States, this is not a problem. As long as there is enough money, there is no need to worry about the labor force, because they have an extremely low labor force- "black slaves" .
"Smart Americans" saw opportunities in the cotton market, so the slave trade began to be active again, and a large number of slave labor was transferred from the northern part of the southern United States to the southern part, which is the so-called "Deep South."
According to statistics, in the 30 years from 1790 to 1820, 250,000 slaves were forcibly transferred. By 1830, there were 1 million black slaves in the United States growing cotton, that is, 1 in 13 Americans was engaged in the cotton industry.
Although some white Americans are also growing cotton, their output is completely incomparable with the farmer’s manor. The majority of people in the cotton industry are slaves. The story of the world famous "Uncle Tom's Hut " Occurs in a cotton plantation.
Therefore, the United States imported a large number of slaves through the slave trade to the United States, and sent about 1 million slaves to the deep south of the United States for work related to the cotton industry. This is more than "forced work"?
Uncle Tom’s cabin
A British observer went to the United States in 1811. After an inspection, he made the following statement:
"The cultivation of tobacco in , Virginia, and Maryland no longer arouses people’s interest; The black slaves who worked on this work were sent to the southern states, so that American cotton growers there were more manpowered and able to carry out their business more actively." The crazy scene of
grows unscrupulously on the land of the southern United States. We can even see the clues through a small county.
In 1840 , in Washington County, the center of the Delta, the ratio of slaves to white residents exceeded ten to one.
in 1850, each white household in Washington County had an average of more than 80 slaves.
In 1860 , Stephen Duncan, the largest grower in the Delta, owned thousands of slaves and was valued at $1.3 million.
It can be seen that the cotton production in the United States has not changed at all over time, but has become more and more prosperous.
At that time, the entire southern United States was engaged in the cotton industry. From the perspective of the proportion of cotton in trade, almost all cotton used in international trade was produced on farms with an area of more than 100 acres.
And these farmers can have such output not because they have mastered any production technology, but "a large number of exploited slaves under the name" .
According to statistics, the slaves owned by farmers at that time accounted for 91.2% of all local slaves. The larger the size of the farm, the more the growers can generate economies of scale by exploiting slaves.
has almost no so-called human rights for slaves, and the farmer just uses them as a machine. So if the machine dared to express dissatisfaction or passivity, what kind of treatment would it receive him?
A slave named Henry Bibb described it like this:
"In the horn of the overseer, all the slaves gathered to witness my punishment. I was stripped of my clothes and forced to lie face down on the ground. On the ground. I smashed four stakes and tied my hands and feet to these stakes. Then the overseer beat me with a whip."
Slave catchers, slave dealers, slave transporters, slave auctions, and slave huts. These bloody violence made the United States Cotton production expanded rapidly, earning a lot of money for them.
And Britain, which faces the United States across the sea, is enjoying its success. They have made the United States bear the reputation of slavery, but they have used these bloody cotton to promote their own industrial revolution .
Some people may think that the British do not know the source of cotton, but in fact they know it very well, because after the British cotton merchant William Rathbone went to the United States for an inspection, he reported to his father- "Black people and here Everything fluctuates with the price of cotton."
It can be seen that the British are very clear about the source of the raw materials they need for the industrial revolution, but this does not hinder their enjoyment. The British have no intention of changing this situation.
Because slave labor is essential to maintaining their decent lives and the Industrial Revolution, the Liverpool Chronicle andThe European Times has stated- "If the slaves are liberated, the price of cotton cloth may be doubled or tripled, bringing devastating consequences to the United Kingdom" .
With the development of the industrial revolution, more and more cotton is needed on the British market, and whenever the price of cotton on the British market rises, it is the “time when the slaves are the most painful” . In order to improve efficiency, the farmer at this time would ask the overseers to flog the slaves frantically, forcing them to work overtime and earn more profits for themselves.
After seeing such a large profit, American slave owners became even more unscrupulous. They used their powerful capital to build a tight political moat . Through the offensive of money,
succeeded in making the federal government implement a policy of exploiting Native Americans, and they continued to expand their farms by encroaching on more southern land. Every time
goes to uncultivated land, the farmers will start staking out the land, and then buy more black slaves to serve themselves, and turn blacks into production machines in the same way over and over again. With the help of the slaves’ “selfless dedication” , in just a few decades, the southern region of the United States has grown from a dilapidated tobacco plantation to a transcontinental “cotton empire” , which has developed into a modern one for the future of the United States. The capitalist countries have laid an important foundation.
In 2013, a film reflecting the black slaves picking cotton was released. This is "Twelve Years as a Slave" . Through the movie, we can clearly see the tragic experience of these black slaves. The protagonist of
, , Solomon , was sold to the manor owner as a slave, and then resold to Mr. Epps. In the plantation, Solomon picked cotton day after day and witnessed the tragic fate of many black slaves. Mr.
Epps has a big name, this is "The Black Slave Terminator" , he set strict disciplines for the slaves, each slave must collect 200 pounds of cotton every day, otherwise it will Was brutally beaten.
On the surface, this movie has received high praise, but in fact it is just the curiosity of the descendants of slave owners. Do they really have any guilt for the black slaves of the year? ? has always been facing the treatment of black people, I think you should have a deeper feeling in the past few years.
The " history of getting rich" after the founding of the United States was written by countless black slaves with their sweat and lives. It was the cruel slave trade that earned the first pot of gold for the development of the United States and promoted the development and modernization of the United States.
Therefore, when Europeans and Americans see the popularity of cotton in Xinjiang today, they naturally think of the so-called "forced labor" , because this is a dark history that they cannot avoid, and it is a rumor that can arouse empathy among Europeans and Americans. The story, the so-called "save others by oneself" is this truth.
And we don't have such a dark history at all, and naturally we can't imagine why such rumors have such a market among Europeans and Americans.
