It dependt on whether the cash crops are part of colonial network or a latifundia economy as in the Americas or whether it's based on small independent farmer producing it.
Well, to grow cash crops
as cash crops presumes that they're plugged into some sort of trade network. Independent farmers can of course grow some for their own use, or for local use, but for them to be really valuable as cash crops, they would require a better trade network... which is where the potential for indentured labour comes in.
If it's the later we would see the development of local farmer petit-bourgeois whom will serve to create a need of native proto-industry and the creation of a strong taxbase creating the incentiment for the development of a unitarian state.
I think the key factors would be
(i) whether a viable export network exists;
(ii) whether there is a general labour shortage;
(iii) whether indentured labourers are available or can be made available (serfdom, prisoners of war as slaves, etc)
(iv) whether the rules of land ownership allow more successful small farmers to swallow their neighbours (which would lead to plantations) or whether land ownership tends to be communal and/or inheritances are subdivided amongst sons.
If all of those conditions exist, then the rise of some sort of manorialism or plantation system is highly likely. That was what led to the rise of plantations in the New World and elsewhere, and it may or may not do the same in East Africa.
Incidentally, whether this sort of farming leads to proto-industry depends much more on the nature of the crop. Wheat required grain mills etc (and in time, mechanised harvesting), while corn and cotton were more suitable for hand cultivation. Tobacco in OTL was mostly a hand-grown crop and hand-rolled (cigars) until cigarettes came along. Kunduri will be... hmm, probably somewhere in the middle.
I could see it go both ways in East Africa the ease which it's harvested would lean toward the creation of large latifundias, but the lack of labourers and the need for long term planning in growing the plants would lean toward small freeholders.
The growth of large latifundias doesn't prevent them preparing for long-term planning, although it would be likely to encourage them to grow more cash crops and rely on food imports. Such as from small farmer neighbours, for instance, as happened in much of the Old South. Or, for different reasons, in sugar-growing Brazil. (In Brazil, the sugar planters owned the refineries; the small farmers had to come to the sugar refineries to process the sugar).
That would lead to an intriguing combination; a few wealthy landowners holding much of the land (and indentured labour), with some small farmer neighbours, who would be a meaningful political class (but not a wealthy one). Hmm...
Of course we may also see sdomething like pre-modern East Prussia the local Somali population enserfed by Ethiopian landowner, but with a significant class of wealthy freeholders based on Ethiopian settlers whom serves as yeoman-militia and a urban enclaves of European settlers serving as a mechant minority and as connection to wider Christian civilisation.
Sounds plausible, but I don't know enough about seventeenth-century Ethiopia and Somalia to be sure.
Fundamental the east Baltic in OTL was based on cash crops and we still saw the development of a strong burgher and yeoman (in East Prussia) class, it was only in the late 17th century the nobility succed in breaking their power, and still to introduction of communism East Prussia stayed until 1918 the areas east of the Elb with the smallest estates (a sign which usual show the power of the rural middle class).
True, although there were historical factors and attitudes to be considered there, too. It also makes me think that I need to look more into the power of the Ethiopian nobility in this period...
If anyone is up to the task, you are
Thanks... It is a challenge, that's for sure.
Awesome! Gotta love that ever-accurate Intellipedia!
Some things never change...
Very entertaining way of sharing the "dry facts" of Red Yam cultivation, thanks, Jared.
Glad to hear you liked it. I did try to throw in a few miscellaneous hints about the future of the LRG world which didn't really relate to red yams, either. (Or at least only indirectly.)
Can we expect another Intellipedia article on emus?quolls?
At this stage, I'm not planning on it. Quolls don't make that much of an impression on the wider world (mostly) - fun pets, and become invasive species in a couple of places, but not as significant as red yams. Emus are only really game-changing on one other continent.
Love the format of the recent update
Glad you like it. I felt like a bit of variety from the usual instalments.
Do you really think that the yam would totally substitute for the Kumara? So much so that it dies out?
Yes, I do, given the historical context in which it occurred.
There are several factors at play here. One is that it's not
just red yam displacing kumara, it's a whole package of Aururian crops well-suited to New Zealand's climate displacing a whole package of Polynesian tropical crops which were very poorly-suited to New Zealand's climate.
The Maori brought with them a whole host of Polynesian crops - kumara, taro, yams, pandanus, etc. Some of those crops didn't grow at all in NZ (pandanus, for instance), some were very marginal and mostly grown in Northland (yams, taro).
Kumara was the best of a rather ill-suited bunch. Even then, it didn't grow very well, particularly in the South Island. Worse, the cultivars of kumara which the Maori had available were the tropical varieties imported via Polynesia, which mostly grew to the size of a thumb in NZ's climate.
In ATL New Zealand, the Maori have a choice of digging a lot to plant a kumara which will grow to the size of a thumb... or digging a bit more and planting a red yam which will grow to the size of a forearm. If I were a Maori farmer, I know which way I'd bet. Kumara tastes nice, but it isn't that great...
It's also rather more than
just red yams displacing kumara. It isn't really covered in an article which focuses on red yams, but wattles are quite important too. So is murnong. Kumara just wasn't competitive in those circumstances, and so it was gradually displaced.
There's also the general point that Maori kumara agriculture was not even really established in the time in which Aururian crops spread. For the first few generations of Maori settlement in OTL, they were mostly a coastal people. They relied as much on seafood and fishing as agriculture, supplemented by moa hunting until the moa were mostly gone. It was only slowly, as seafaring was abandoned and , that the Maori started clearing the forests, moving inland, and setting up large-scale farming.
ITTL, the red yam and wattles make a better dietary supplement than the kumara, and so are largely taken up. When the moa are gone, emus are imported from Aururia to cover the shortfall, and copper tools allow faster clearing of the forest (and easier digging, too). The Maori who spread inland ITTL are already mostly accomplished red yam and wattle farmers, with kumara already relegated to a minor crop.
Over the next couple of centuries, kumara goes the way of little barley and other native domesticates in North America when Mesoamerican crops arrived. Or, for that matter, the way the kumara was going in New Zealand in OTL after the potato was introduced, until New Zealand got some better cold-climate suited cultivars from the Americas.